He looked up. Sin Kra was staring at him, grinning toothily. Sarai's blood still stained the scorpion's jaws. Above the beast's serrated head, his stinger curled, dripping venom, ready to strike.
David fired his last round.
The bullet slammed into Sin Kra, shattered, and ricocheted. Shrapnel tore into David, sizzling hot, digging into him.
The gargantuan scorpion leaned close. Claws slammed into David's hands, nailing him to the floor. He bellowed.
Sin Kra brought his jaws near David's ear.
"I will not kill Jade," the scorpion hissed, his breath rancid. "I will hurt her. I will twist her. I will make her one of us. She will hunt pests. Die knowing that will be her fate."
David stared into his tormentor's eyes. Small, golden, alien eyes.
"You cannot defeat us," David said, voice growing stronger with every word. "We have not forgotten our home. We are not all cowards. The Heirs of Earth will fight you, beast! Humanity will rise again!"
As the stinger tore through his chest, David closed his eyes.
The pain was fading now. The sounds melted into a murmur like waves. He had never seen the waves of Earth, but he imagined that he floated upon those distant seas.
We came from Earth's oceans, he thought. Someday, Rowan, may you walk upon golden shores.
He thought of his fallen wife. He thought of Jade. He wept. There was no more pain now, only the waves rolling over him, pulling him under, then an endless field of stars until their lights went out one by one, leaving only darkness.
CHAPTER TWO
Most folk didn't believe Earth was real, but Rowan was not most folk. She believed.
She knew.
"It's real," she whispered, huddling in the steel duct. "Earth is out there. And someday we'll go there. You know that, right, Fill?"
Her robotic dragonfly tried to flap his wings, but they creaked and shed rust. The poor little creature looked a fright. Rust, dust, and grime coated him, and dents covered his little body. Rowan kept repairing him, but every day, air whistled through the vents, blowing the tiny robot away. Often it took an hour to find him in the ductwork, then another hour to repair him, lovingly tightening sprockets, unbending the teeth of broken gears, and oiling aching joints.
"Course I do, Row!" Fillister said. His voice sounded a little too grainy today, his speakers perhaps clogged with dust. "Real as the gears in me body."
Rowan smiled. "Someday we'll be there," she whispered. "We'll walk along the beach and feel the sand beneath our feet. Well, I will. You can fly beside me. We'll smell the sea air, then find a forest, and we'll walk among the trees and see horses."
"Horses knock about grasslands, not bloomin' forests," Fillister said.
"We'll walk in grasslands too, and we'll feel the sunlight, and we'll drink water from streams. Real water, cool and refreshing, not just condensation on air conditioners. We'll run and fly, not crawl through ducts, and we'll see sunlight, Fill. Warm and yellow like in the stories. And we'll eat real food! Not just scraps. Food like in the movies." She smiled shakily. "I've always wanted to taste some pancakes. They look really good."
Tears filled Rowan's eyes. When she tried to wipe them away, she winced. Her black eye was still swollen, still painful. She had dared to climb out of the ducts last night, to try to steal some food from the casino trash bins. The janitor had caught her—a hulking alien with stony skin and fists the size of her head. One of those fists had left her bruised and reeling and cowering here in the ducts. She had not eaten dinner that night, but Fillister had grabbed her some discarded seeds from the floor before artificial dawn.
She turned toward one of the stainless steel walls of the duct. In the dim light from Fillister's eyes, Rowan could see her blurry reflection. The black eye looked as bad as it felt. Her eye was narrowed to a slit. She touched the puffy bruise and cringed.
She sighed and looked at the rest of her reflection. As always, Rowan wondered if she looked like her parents. She could barely remember them, only what she saw in the single, smudged photograph she kept in her pocket.
Her hair was brown and short. She cut it herself, leaving it just long enough to cover her ears and fall across her forehead, but not long enough to cover her eyes. Those eyes were almond-shaped and dark brown—at least, the eye that wasn't squinting through a bruise. She had a young face, round and soft. She was sixteen already, but it was still the face of a girl.
Earth had fallen two thousand years ago. All the old races of humanity had mingled in their long, painful exile. But Rowan had watched many movies from the Earthstone, and she knew old Earth well. Often she thought herself a mix of Caucasian, Asian, maybe a touch of Hispanic tossed in—but it was hard to tell. The old nations of humanity were long gone, and the survivors had mingled in their diaspora. Today humans were few and far between, the last exiles from a long-lost world, struggling to survive in the darkness of space. As far as Rowan knew, she could be the only human left.
I wish I could see you again, Mom and Dad. She lowered her head. I wish I could see Earth.
"Chin up!" Fillister said. He flew under her chin and nudged it upward. "No need to be so gloomy, Row. Don't you worry. Someday, we'll have hot tea under a splendid warm sun. And you'll ride a bloody fine horse, you will."
She smiled. A while back, she had managed to figure out Fillister's internal programming and give him a Cockney accent. It always amused her, reminded her of Earth.
"A white horse," she said. "Like Shadowfax from The Lord of the Rings." She sniffed, tears on her lips. "Are you up for another movie marathon, Fill?"
The dragonfly bobbed his tiny metal head. "You know I am."
Rowan's smile widened enough to show her teeth. She caught herself and covered her mouth. She was self-conscious of her teeth, how crooked they were, but she couldn't avoid grinning. There was still some joy, even here. She still had a friend.
"Then come on. To the living room!"
She crawled through the steel duct. Her dress rustled. She had sewn it herself from a discarded blanket down at the roach motel. The ductwork coiled for kilometers, branching off, paths twisting, rising, falling, rejoining at junctions. Some paths led to massive furnaces that rumbled like ancient monsters, belching out fumes and fire. Other paths led to air conditioners taller than Rowan, icy beasts like polar giants, sending forth cold winds.
Paradise Lost was a large space station—among the largest in the galaxy, they said. It hovered on the frontier of space, near a wormhole where only the roughest sort traveled. Few decent folk flew this way. Not so close to the border with the scorpion empire. Here was a hive for smugglers, gamblers, thieves, druggers, and countless other lowlifes. They came from a thousand planets.
But not from Earth. Never from Earth.
Rowan had never met another human, only aliens. Large, rough aliens of stone and metal. Boneless aliens that left trails of slime. Reptilian aliens. Furry aliens. Clammy aliens. Aliens as large as elephants and as small as beetles.
All aliens who saw her—a human—as a pest.
And so Rowan stayed inside the HVAC ducts. It was dark and lonely, yes. But it was safe.
As she crawled, she passed by vent after vent, glimpsing bits of Paradise Lost. Through one vent she saw a gambling pit, dark and grimy. A group of aliens—ranging from giant reptilians to dank, feathered beasts the size of chickens—rumbled and shrieked and chortled. They tossed dice, dealt cards, and played slot machines that spewed out crystal skulls instead of coins. Through another vent, Rowan smelled cooking meat, and she glimpsed a group of humanoid vultures leaning over a table, ripping into a roasted alien with many tentacles. Rowan's mouth watered, and she hurried by before the scent could drive her mad. A third vent revealed a robotic brothel. Aliens were mating with robots shaped like their desired species—not always the same species as the customer.