Integral - Julie Steimle (snow like ashes txt) 📗

“Hurry up! Tacy! Marka!”

The ragged threesome scrambled under the high shaking domed ceiling dodging and jumping over raining debris as the sky rumbled and rocked from shuddering booms. Ducking under a fallen beam, Marka dragged her younger sister who stared about with horror at the cracked gaps in the ceiling above that revealed the battle overhead in the night sky.

“Come on! We have to find a ship before they blow this whole place to pieces!”

“And us along with it!” their senior classmate, Larke, shouted back. He hurried through the tunnel of toppled railing and chunks of concrete beckoning them to the other side, his panic equally shown on his flushed face as sweat dribbled down his neck covered in dirt. They passed a sprawled body. Tacy yelped, jumping back before being dragged further to the other side of the arched ruin where they stared out at what was left of the fighter ships in the military bay. Shining and yet charred shrapnel lay everywhere among the speckled and flagged ships.

“This is stealing!” Marka shouted at Larke, holding back as her eyes fell on the fighter jets.

“When the Gardo are done with us, do you really think there will be a military? I don’t know about you, but I want to live!” Larke rushed into the open hangar. The roof was clear off, open for the previous launches. Most of the ships on the outside runway and hangar were in pieces, though others were just buried by debris.

“There!” Larke pointed, also gesturing for the two cadets to hurry. “I knew one was still here!”

Marka gasped. “But that one is experimental!”

Tacy stepped forward, staring at the burnished brass and powder blue elliptical shaped craft as Larke rushed ahead to the outside hatch. “A Neodiver?”

“It’s not a diver, Tacy.” Marka pulled her along by her wrist, shaking her head as she followed Larke straight to the experimental ship where he was already opening the hatch that was more like a doorway.

No security. No guards at all. All the other surviving pilots must have already taken off anyway for the battle. This unguarded piece of top military space material available for the stealing was sitting like a duck unaware of the hawk overhead. They had to take it. It would be a waste otherwise.

“It is a subspace flier. Experimental. Didn’t you read the memo on it?”

Tacy made a face and rushed up the steps that suddenly folded out as the hatch opened. “That silly piece of data. Yeah. I saw it, but I considered it none of my business. We’re cadets, not top secret pilots.”

“We’ll all be dead cadets if you two don’t get in here now and shut that door!” Larke already darted down the hall into the cockpit and turned the pilot chairs around to slide his rear in. He clicked on the nearest digital display for instruction, delving straight into its database.

Marka grimaced back but did as he said, shoving Tacy aside as she pulled the door shut and turned the manual seal before setting the computer operated control to latch it tight. Tacy squeezed to the side so her sister could get by. Then noticing flashes of white light through the front view panel, she dashed to the cockpit, peering out. Up above the ship, explosions lit the sky as well as the tin roofing overhead.

“They’re coming back this way.”

Larke’s brow dug deep crevices in his forehead as he inspected the words scrolling down on the screen. He stopped on one place, drawing in a breath. “A gel interface?”

“Was that in the memo?” Tacy asked, whipping around to face Marka who hurried to peer at the view screen also.

Marka shook her head and then immediately turned toward the wall in the narrow hall they had just passed through, feeling for the panel where the gel interface ought to be. “I’ll find it and get in.”

Like a spring, Larke practically leapt from his seat and grabbed hold of Tacy’s arm as he did, pulling her with him to bar Marka’s way. “No! The best pilot ought to be in there!”

Swinging around with a look of horror, Marka’s eyes turned to her sister who looked just as startled. “Tacy? No! She’s still a kid!”

Tacy’s face contorted from surprise to one that said quite clearly that sixteen years old was not a kid, but Marka wouldn’t even give it a glance.

“It’s gotta be me,” Marka said, still feeling for the door that ought to unlatch and slide open easily for the pilot to get in.

“It has to be Tacy!” Larke shouted back as he barred Marka’s way with his shoulder and then the rest of himself. “Do you want to die? They’re veering back down on this place! The best pilot has to be in the interface! This is how the ship works!”

“I was not born to be a co-pilot! Besides, I told our mom I’d watch out for her! They said this thing was experimental. That the interface—”

“Get out of the way, Marka. I’ll do it.” Tacy felt to the right of where Larke was standing and undid the catch herself. The door slid open.

In front of them quivering like an electro-charged sheet of green Jell-o was what they were looking for—the interface. Larke turned to lift Tacy up, taking her by her waist. The interface was built for a large man, not a tiny sixteen-year-old girl.

“You have to go in backward,” he said, helping her slide into the goo that already oozed around her backside with a clinging sensation that drew her in. “Your face should always be out so you don’t suffocate.”

“But the memo said the interface takes over! Larke! That’s my sister! She shouldn’t have to do this!” Marka had not given up. She pulled on Tacy’s jacket sleeve to get her out of there, though her strength could not overpower Larke and Tacy together.

Tacy lifted her eyes and met Marka’s, looking morose as well as determined to go on. “I have to. Momma would want us to live.”

Larke shoved Marka out of the way with his elbow. “Yeah. You go to the manual pilot seat!”

Marka dropped her arms, hanging them from her shoulders with a stricken look at her sister who was slowly being swallowed up in the rippling green gel, her feet now fitting in so that she could barley see her toes. Larke had to take off Tacy’s boots as well as her gloves, whispering to Tacy that she needed skin contact with the gel for the interface to work. He had just barely taken her jacket, her bare arms shivering as they were enveloped in the goo. With one backward step towards the pilot’s seat, Marka bit her lower lip hard. Her sister’s eyes were already staring ahead as the interface started to connect with the back of her head. Then Tacy went rigid.

“Larke!” Marka lurched forward again, suddenly watching Tacy shake; her fingers, her toes, her entire body rippled with the gel. Larke held Marka back with his arm, his own expression tense.

“It’s ok. The interface is connecting.” He pulled Marka towards the cockpit and stood back himself, watching Tacy’s eyes dilate. Then Tacy suddenly slipped back into the gel, the goo sliding along her face until only the front strip of her face around her eyes nose and mouth showed.

“Tacy!”

Shoving hard, Marka tried to force her way past Larke, but he seized her arm.

“Come on! She’s interfaced! We have to guide the ship out now!”

He pulled Marka to the front seats, shoving her in one. “Now fly us out of here!”

“Me? But you said that Tacy would—”

“Someone has to be in the interface for the ship to work. Two pilots, Marka! Now fly us out of here, or we’re all going to die!”

Already the walls to the hangar were crashing down around them like a child’s blocks. Near the far end an explosion rocked the earth, flinging debris against the ruined ships. Marka sobbed as she grasped the controls to start the engine.

“Fly,” Tacy whispered before closing her eyes.

Her mind slipped into the interface as blackness filled her vision with electronic flashes that winked like stars among green lines rippling with energy. Nothing else went before her eyes, not even the wall in front of her.

She felt a jolt. Then a lift.

They went up.

*

Her eyelids were heavy as if they were sheets of chain mail protecting her eyes from things that would pierce them. Tacy lifted her lids up with effort, staring at the wall. It was the same sheet of pieced metal and fiberglass she had seen as when she had gone into the interface. Shifting a bit, she noticed she could move her head somewhat in the gel but still not completely pull it out from the goo. Inside the gel all she could hear was the hum of the engine, which sang much like a lullaby that had kept her asleep for who knew how long. Drawing her ears from the interface gel, Tacy immediately heard the hollow echoes of the open ship’s cabin.

“….more supplies. But where do you think is the safest place to make port?”

The voice sounded like her mother’s, but that was impossible. They were in space. Their mother would never even set foot on a space ship let alone be in the one they stole.

“I’ve scanned just about every moon around that gas giant, and I think I saw some uranium on B468.”

“Uranium? Larke, we can’t scavenge moons for fuel. We have to find civilization.”

“They’ll have our heads if we go there.”

“I’m willing to risk it.”

“What? Like pirates? I want to keep my head, thank you.”

“What about food stores? What about—”

“Marka?” Tacy tried to lean forward, but was unable to dislodge her head any further. The gel clung as if her hair was now attached wire to the machinery, pulling painful threads the further forward she leaned out.

Immediately heavy things clattered to the ground as if dropped. A scruffy looking man and brown haired woman with bits of gray rushed over to where Tacy was stuck, panting as they stared at her. The woman reached out and touched Tacy’s face.

“Oh! Tacy! You’re finally awake!”

Tacy blinked at her. The woman had a face similar to her mother’s but also to Marka’s. “Who—” She shook her head. “How long have I been asleep?”

“A while now,” Marka said.

“You look so old.” Tacy squinted at Marka’s face where there were now crow’s marks at her eyes and a few wrinkles along the sides of her mouth showing how much she had frowned and perhaps wept. Her eyes had dark circles under them.

“Just weary,” Marka said with a smile. Her hand felt bony, cold, and just as tired as she looked.

Tacy looked at Larke. The lower half of his face was covered in a thick beard, trimmed somewhat but mostly just managed with brushing and two ties. Their clothes and hair looked equally as worn and ragged.