At Galactic Central

Chapter 2

2

The wind gusted, snapping at the tight fabric of the glider wings against her back. Scout clutched the handles tightly as the wings wobbled back and forth. She’d gotten the hang of flying quickly, but that didn’t change the fact that she’d only been doing it for a few days.

Watching the flyers surrounding her, it was obvious they had far more experience than she did. Flying with the gliders was a common teenage pursuit in Galactic Central, and judging by their size, it was teenagers flanking all around her.

Teenagers, or a bit younger.

The wind died down again, and the clouds closed in around them, the five other gliders disappearing in the fog around Scout. But she knew they were still there. The glasses on her cheeks heated up, quickly dispelling the droplets of moisture that were collecting in front of her eyes. She supposed the other kids had similar tech, but it was difficult to tell. In the brief glimpses she had gotten of them, they had seemed to be wearing all-black, tight-fitting clothes with hoods that covered their entire heads, nothing visible but their own reflective glasses built into their masks.

She’d seen other young people wearing something similar before. But all white that time, to blend in with the snow that covered all of Schneeheim.

Black didn’t blend in with anything, especially not in this softly pink sky. But maybe they weren’t trying to hide anymore.

The clouds parted once more, and she saw they were still around her, but no closer than before. They were just flanking her as if waiting for something else to happen. She’d been heading back to the room she shared with Daisy and the dogs in the very center of the city of floating islands. They were nearly there. The islands here were much closer together, many even connected by delicate-looking bridges. The buildings were taller, some boxy like the buildings on Amatheon Orbiter 1, but others spiraling up like elongated snail shells or built like stacked platforms with no walls, just impossibly thin pillars holding the levels apart, like studies in maximizing negative space.

But everywhere she looked was swarming with people. Dense crowds had become normal for Scout. After years spending the bulk of her time alone in vast prairies, she never thought she would get used to people pressing in all around her, would be unbothered by it, but somehow she had.

More than that, at this very moment, those thronging crowds looked like the safest, most welcoming place to be.

Scout maintained her trajectory, trying to appear as if she didn’t mind or even notice the five of them flying so close around her. Then she drew near one of the islands with the tall negative-space buildings. A providential updraft caught the wings of her glider, and she let it carry her up in the air, the others riding the same current with her. She sensed the air changing as the updraft died and flattened the wings close to her sides to dive back down to the island. She spread her wings at the last possible moment, shooting like a dart between the floors of one of the open buildings.

Floor probably wasn’t the right word, she thought as she looked down at the plants growing everywhere below her. The different levels were like stacked gardens, but not pleasure gardens like the wealthier, more isolated islands had. These were vegetable patches with fruit orchards. She even saw a person at the edge of a field tending to a beehive. They looked up in surprise as she zipped past, losing altitude pretty steadily now that she was over an island with its artificial gravity pulling down on her.

She hadn’t really thought she would evade her pursuers, and indeed they followed her with little trouble. Being more skilled flyers, they weren’t losing altitude like Scout was. By the time she reached the end of the platform, the topmost branches of the trees were slapping at her, threatening to catch her and snatch her out of the air.

But then she was clear. She came out the other end, back out to the relatively weightless in-between place, and climbed on another current of air higher above the ever thicker clusters of islands.

Her pursuers flanked her once more, the two on either side of her almost ahead of her now. Still, they didn’t move any closer. What were they waiting for?

Scout kept climbing up into the air until she could make out her destination. At the very heart of the cloud were the two largest islands, joined by a stone bridge. This bridge was the very opposite of delicate. It had its own artificial gravity and joined those two islands irrevocably.

It was also one of the most crowded places in Galactic Central. The marketplace.

She was never going to be able to outfly her pursuers, but on the ground, she might have a better chance.

She started to spiral down to land in the large square at the center of the market. She expected them to match her moves again, but this time the one on her left slid in closer to her, not quite close enough to catch hold of her but more than enough to make Scout nervous. Then something flashed in their hand, but before Scout could quite see what it, it was tracing an arc through the air. Scout heard the hiss of a very sharp knife through the very thin fabric of her glider, and then she was falling.

One of the others tried to catch hold of her, to break her fall, but Scout dodged away from that extended hand.

The left wing of her glider was slashed in two, the tattered fabric flapping uselessly against her side. She extended her other arm, trying to catch as much air as she could. It wasn’t enough to hold her weight, especially here directly over the market bridge. She was in full gravity here, not close enough to either edge of the enormous bridge to get back out into the floating place.

She grasped the wrist of her still-flying arm with her other hand as the buffets of wind pounded on the wing, threatening to tumble her over. She managed to stay level, to slow her fall, but it wasn’t quite enough. The roofs looked like they were rushing up to meet her.

She angled her legs down, aiming for the top of the tallest steeply sloping roof. The moment her feet touched the tile, she threw off the remains of her now-useless glider.

Then she was sliding down the rooftop, still moving far too quickly down the tallest building on the bridge. There was still a lot more down for her to face without a gilder.

She tried to break her momentum with her heels and then her gloved hands, but the tiles were perfectly smooth. There wasn’t so much as a gutter to catch hold of to keep her from vaulting off the end of the roof. Then she was once more flying through the air.

The building opposite had an awning over a dining area, just a decorative element, as there was not enough sunlight anywhere in Galactic Central to need any sort of shade. Nor rain either, so there was no reason to make the awning in any way sturdy. Scout’s body punched right through it.

But she caught the very edge of it, where it wrapped around a support pole. It was enough to break her fall, but her weight started bending the cheap metal almost at once.

The last few weeks of rock-climbing had made her strong, but not strong enough to hang by her fingertips forever. She tried to pull herself higher, but she was already worn out from her climb up the wall. She watched in horror as her fingers pulled away from the pole one by one.

But when her grip gave way, she realized the ground was only a meter or so below her. When teaching her to rock climb, Daisy had also taught her how to fall. Scout didn’t have time to think about it, just let the instinct from the practice take over. Her legs collapsed beneath her and she redirected her momentum into a tight forward roll.

Her whole body ached, but nothing was broken.

She got up and ran.

She didn’t look behind her to see if her pursuers were still on her. She didn’t need to. She could just feel them there, like their fixed gazes on her were little pinpricks.

Scout pushed her way through the thick crowd emerging from the island’s transportation station, then slowed down so that she could just brush between them. Leaving a wake of angry people behind her was not going to help her escape.

Then she saw an opening between two of the shops and ran down the narrow alley into the next road that ran along the bridge.

She was getting closer to one of the sides, which was good, but there were probably three or four more lines of shops between her and the edge of the bridge.

And she no longer had her glider.

But she could deal with that when she got to the edge.

She reached another narrow alleyway that led to the next line of shops. She paused before running into it, just long enough to look back and see if her pursuers were still behind her.

They were. Their gliders were folded closed against their backs, but they still had them. They had the air of being willing to follow her forever, jogging with the unhurried gait of trained athletes.

Scout sprinted down the alleyway, then heard the sound of music. Mostly just the bass, a deep thumping that invited the people walking home from their workday to come inside and dance.

Scout plunged into the dark interior of the club, unzipping her jacket and unfurling her long blue scarf. She pulled a gray cap out of her pocket as she jogged down the ramp to the lower level of the club, slapping it on her head and tucking in the loose strands of her honey-colored hair.

Not much of a disguise—she doubted it would be enough—but if they stopped at the railing to scan the heads on the dance floor below, they might miss seeing her.

She had never gotten the hang of dancing, but one person simply plowing through all the dancing groups would be too noticeable. She watched the others around her and tried to mimic their movements, working her way across the floor but not in an obvious way.

Even harder to do in a non-obvious way was watching for her pursuers. She had to rely on that prickly feeling to tell her when they arrived.

She was halfway across the dance floor when she felt it. They were still with her.

But just in case they hadn’t seen her yet, she maintained her dancing motion across the floor. There had to be a back door out of there. But she wasn’t sure where to find it.

The lights pulsing with the driving beat would’ve been blinding if her glasses weren’t automatically correcting for it. She focused on the dark corners, and they compensated for that as well.

She saw the outline of a doorway at the end of a short hall. She was nearly there.

But they were watching.

She danced closer to a group of girls about her age. They were catching each other’s hands and spinning each other around, laughing at the almost-violence of it. Scout drew nearer and one of them caught her outstretched hand, pulling her into their group, spinning her and spinning her. Scout pretended to laugh and enjoy it. Then she grabbed one of the other girls, taking her own turn at spinning someone else before releasing her.

She had spun herself closer to the door. As unnoticeably as she could, she danced away from the group and blended back in with the crowd.

As she approached the short hallway that led to the back exit, she risked a look up at the banister. Two of her pursuers were there, easy to spot, even in their all-black clothing, as they were still wearing their hoods with reflective lenses over their eyes. There was no sign of the other three, but Scout knew if they had blended in with the crowd around her, they could be within arm’s reach and she wouldn’t be able to see them.

She turned and ran down the short hallway, throwing her weight against the heavy door to bang it open and then running up the steep steps that brought her back up to the street level of the bridge.

She was in another narrow alleyway. She ran to the left, quickly reaching the very edge of the bridge. The walls of the buildings on either side of her were flush against the balustrade.

There was no way out, no space to squeeze through to reach the next alley. She’d gone the wrong way.

She turned to run back the direction she’d come, but the door banged open once more and two of her pursuers spilled out, only taking a moment before catching sight of her standing against the bridge railing with the bright pink sky behind her. Then a third came out. This one tapped them each on the arm, and at that signal, all three of them started advancing on her.

Scout looked over her shoulder at the bridge railing. Normally she’d just vault over it, but normally she would have her glider with her. Without it, getting home was going to be a bit more complicated.

She backed up until the top of the balustrade pressed against the small of her back. The three of them were still advancing, but slowly. Their hands were up in a ready position, but no weapons visible. If one of these three was the one that had slashed the wing of her glider, there was no sign of a knife now.

But Scout wasn’t anxious to see what they intended to do when they reached her. She hopped up on top of the balustrade, then got to her feet. The balustrade was too narrow for both of her feet at once, but she could put one foot in front of the other.

It got a bit trickier when she reached the building. She had to turn her body to walk with her back to the wall, the drop into nothingness before her.

Scout shut her eyes and swallowed hard, but her head was clear. The bouncing, tumbling-forward, off-balance feeling had been plaguing her less and less since she and Daisy had reached Galactic Central, but she still had episodes.

To her immense relief, she wasn’t having one now. She opened her eyes and continued along the balustrade. She glanced back over her shoulder to see her three pursuers watching her, the reflective lenses under their black hoods making their intentions inscrutable.

Then one hopped up onto the balustrade to follow her. Scout turned her attention back to where she was going, hurrying her steps as much as possible.

She didn’t hop down when she reached the next alley. She could see the island ahead of her, its barren rocky foundation extending below the bridge. It jutted out into the void beneath the bridge. Not far, but perhaps far enough.

Her pursuers certainly wouldn’t expect her to go this way.

Scout clutched the ends of her unzipped jacket, holding them out like the wings of a glider as much as she could. Then she ran along the balustrade, across the length of the alley, and then alongside the next building butting up against it.

She stumbled, caught herself, and ran some meters more before stumbling again. This stumble she just went with it, pushing away from the bridge, letting herself tumble into the free fall zone. She only needed a little luck, to catch a gust to throw her back where she needed to be.

She had forgotten that while her glider was gone, her pursuers still had theirs.

And they were very skilled fliers.