here,” Etsudo said. “We’ll both be in the cockpit for this. Sound acceleration alarms, everyone needs to be strapped in and secure.”
“The ship is the same one we saw earlier,” Sabir said. “The pirate ship. It used the name
Queen Mohmbasa
when it docked.”
“We’ll use that to identify her.” Etsudo added the tag. The cockpit dripped with lamina, screens, trajectories, notes from the Port Authority demanding to know why they were leaving dock without formal permission.
Etsudo swept it all away.
Time to focus on one thing for now, keeping up with the
Queen Mohmbasa
. Because the Hongguo would not mindwipe a helpful ally in its new war, nor deny him fuel for his ship.
They might even promote him.
CHAPTER TEN
K ara and her brother watched the slow sunset. The inside of Agathonosis curved up on either side of them. The patchy green farmlands rose until they met far up above them. Agathonosis was shaped like a can, with the brilliant fusion-powered thread of the sunline running right through the weightless center to provide the light the crops so desperately needed.
Night began slowly at the far end of the cylinder, a dark bead that appeared on the line as it came out of the haze and then began to grow. The line slowly turned off, a half-mile section at a time slowly dimming, until flickering out. It had started at the far end cap of Agathonosis, almost ten miles away from them. It would continue until it reached the other end, ten more miles farther behind them.
On the walls of Agathonosis you could walk and feel heavy, but near the sunline at the center of Agathonosis, you could fly. As long as you didn’t get close enough to the sunline to burn. The sunline mainly provided light and the right kind of it, not heat. Heat came from the ground in vents or warm pools of water.
Then came the sound, carrying in the approaching twilight. Mortar fire?
Kara stopped and turned, trying to locate where the sound had come from. A puff of smoke drifted over a muddy hill. She grabbed her brother, Jared, and pulled him down to the ground, then used the zoom function in her eyes to peek out from behind a false decorative rock that shifted as she pushed against it.
Several hundred yards down the drying trickle of the Parvati River, fifteen self-styled “hopolites” broke cover. Green strips of ripped cloth hung from their skeletal bodies.
Kara thought she recognized a few faces in the group. Maybe one of them had sold her an ice cream cone once or bumped into her on a public trail somewhere. Maybe it was a cousin of hers, or an uncle, running down to the edge of the muddy water.
They carried their weapon with them, slipping and sliding in the mud as they crossed over to the opposite bank. The mortar looked homemade: several pieces of scrap welded to the bottom of a tube to create a makeshift tripod. Maybe it had been someone’s potato gun at one time, or a teenager’s launch tube for a model gyroplane. Now it was a weapon of desperation.
The hopolites settled behind the ruins of what had once been a boat dock near the bank of the Parvati. Jared sat up slightly and Kara put her arm on his shoulder. “No,” she whispered.
She remained focused and zoomed on the muddy river.
A series of footprints appeared near the far edge, as if by magic, slowly tracking toward the hopolites as they loaded their homemade mortar. A long-haired man in nothing but trousers sighted and gave the thumbs-up.
The mortar thunked. The projectile arced upward leaving a slight trail of smoke. Up, up, Kara and her brother craned their necks looking straight above them to watch until it dwindled into a small dot against the great brown patches that curved far over their heads. The other side of their world right above their heads. It made Kara shiver, thinking of explosions and weaponry being fired all throughout the habitat. Already the air seemed hard to breathe. She wondered if that was due to the great machinery in the depths of
“The ship is the same one we saw earlier,” Sabir said. “The pirate ship. It used the name
Queen Mohmbasa
when it docked.”
“We’ll use that to identify her.” Etsudo added the tag. The cockpit dripped with lamina, screens, trajectories, notes from the Port Authority demanding to know why they were leaving dock without formal permission.
Etsudo swept it all away.
Time to focus on one thing for now, keeping up with the
Queen Mohmbasa
. Because the Hongguo would not mindwipe a helpful ally in its new war, nor deny him fuel for his ship.
They might even promote him.
CHAPTER TEN
K ara and her brother watched the slow sunset. The inside of Agathonosis curved up on either side of them. The patchy green farmlands rose until they met far up above them. Agathonosis was shaped like a can, with the brilliant fusion-powered thread of the sunline running right through the weightless center to provide the light the crops so desperately needed.
Night began slowly at the far end of the cylinder, a dark bead that appeared on the line as it came out of the haze and then began to grow. The line slowly turned off, a half-mile section at a time slowly dimming, until flickering out. It had started at the far end cap of Agathonosis, almost ten miles away from them. It would continue until it reached the other end, ten more miles farther behind them.
On the walls of Agathonosis you could walk and feel heavy, but near the sunline at the center of Agathonosis, you could fly. As long as you didn’t get close enough to the sunline to burn. The sunline mainly provided light and the right kind of it, not heat. Heat came from the ground in vents or warm pools of water.
Then came the sound, carrying in the approaching twilight. Mortar fire?
Kara stopped and turned, trying to locate where the sound had come from. A puff of smoke drifted over a muddy hill. She grabbed her brother, Jared, and pulled him down to the ground, then used the zoom function in her eyes to peek out from behind a false decorative rock that shifted as she pushed against it.
Several hundred yards down the drying trickle of the Parvati River, fifteen self-styled “hopolites” broke cover. Green strips of ripped cloth hung from their skeletal bodies.
Kara thought she recognized a few faces in the group. Maybe one of them had sold her an ice cream cone once or bumped into her on a public trail somewhere. Maybe it was a cousin of hers, or an uncle, running down to the edge of the muddy water.
They carried their weapon with them, slipping and sliding in the mud as they crossed over to the opposite bank. The mortar looked homemade: several pieces of scrap welded to the bottom of a tube to create a makeshift tripod. Maybe it had been someone’s potato gun at one time, or a teenager’s launch tube for a model gyroplane. Now it was a weapon of desperation.
The hopolites settled behind the ruins of what had once been a boat dock near the bank of the Parvati. Jared sat up slightly and Kara put her arm on his shoulder. “No,” she whispered.
She remained focused and zoomed on the muddy river.
A series of footprints appeared near the far edge, as if by magic, slowly tracking toward the hopolites as they loaded their homemade mortar. A long-haired man in nothing but trousers sighted and gave the thumbs-up.
The mortar thunked. The projectile arced upward leaving a slight trail of smoke. Up, up, Kara and her brother craned their necks looking straight above them to watch until it dwindled into a small dot against the great brown patches that curved far over their heads. The other side of their world right above their heads. It made Kara shiver, thinking of explosions and weaponry being fired all throughout the habitat. Already the air seemed hard to breathe. She wondered if that was due to the great machinery in the depths of
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