Jumping
the
Jack

The car dodged whole families drifting and screaming in zero gravity, some roped together, most not. The air was littered with flotsam: leg-tied chickens, blankets, cordwood, buckets slowly trailing water, rocks tied for anchors and lost, a squealing pig, a treetop. Hannah watched a wailing child spin past, then a swooping bird-man snatched it up. The mute mroyas fluttered everywhere, tirelessly hauling huge tangles of terrified humans and cargo. Some people tried to cling to tunnel walls, but few knew how to maneuver in zero-G. Here and there fights broke out between lizard-folk and griffins. The mroyas broke them up by lobbing the assailants in opposite directions.

"I hate to think all this suffering is our doing!" Hannah shouted over the wind. She was fair and tall, almost ephemeral.

"It's not." Sam was squat and dark, solid as a warhead. The two were husband and wife, both astroengineers, though it had been a while since they'd seen a starship. "We're trying to stall catastrophe, remember? Still, no problem's so bad that a little help won't make it worse. Duck!"

The giant tunnel ended at a round mouth big as a spaceport hanger, but the metal rim of the tunnel burned red-hot. Black streaks charred paint in spiderweb patterns. As the air-car screamed through the opening, the unarmored occupants shielded their heads against the blistering heat of the burning bearings.

Cool wind again blowing in her face, Hannah involuntarily grabbed her seat. Before them yawned a circular panorama that aimed straight down like a well of the gods. An engineering miracle, a miniature planet encapsulated in space, a home for four sentient species, an archaeological treasure. And a mess. Sweeping sunbeams from window-lakes shone on clouds of smoke. Fires burned in croplands and pastures where sun-lamps had crashed. Frightened cattle lowed. Birds flew erratic patterns, trapped like bugs in a bottle. Acrid smoke stung her nose: a tang of woodsmoke, but also - chilling an engineer's heart - the stink of burning insulation.

"There's our doing!" called Sam.

Just below the immense mouth that led out of the pod, Union marines backlit by built-in lights escorted a flood of refugees up a jury-rigged scaffold of logs and out of the pod. A clutch of ragged humans, men and women, former slaves, were half-carried by friends and family. Among them were salted frightened lizard-women slung with bundles and children. More quicksilver tliggoes lugged flat bows and woven packbaskets. Towering korzas like mythic griffins carried goatskin duffelbags and food satchels. And overhead, aiding where they might, flitted the mroyas like ugly dark angels with clever polehooks. Together the ragtag force wafted refugees and still more refugees up the log staircase to safety.

Hannah cried with happiness at the sight. Sam glanced down and back, then sniffled. Hannah laughed, "Softy!"

"Pay attention. Find that village. We're not out of the woods yet."

In the car rode the two engineers, drafted as ambassadors, and their escort: two lizard-folk, two griffins, and a Union Marine in lobster-shell armor and overlong rifle. The marine, named Punchy, asked, "Shall I load with antipersonnel rounds, sir, ma'am?"

"Oh..." Raised as a pacifist, Hannah hesitated.

"Load." Sam was spawned on a planet often compared to Hell. "One of everything you've got."

The air-car hummed through thin clouds marking the center of East Pod. Around spun patchwork fields, green crops, erratic fences of wood and coaxial cable, black roads that ended abruptly near villages. Everything was cloaked in perpetual dusk. Only intermittent sunshine flashed through the lake-windows, so most villages and towns had heaped huge bonfires on their commons as if to scare off ghouls and ghasties.

"That's the place!" Hannah pointed at the inverted landscape, which rose upwards in all directions as if seen through a lens. "We never did learn its name."

Sam steered for a small town clustered around an ancient brick hall a sheep-cropped park turned war zone. Two trees had been hacked down and left burning, a store across the square was gutted and smouldering, and before it lay two dead tliggoes, probably looters. Smoky air from a bonfire made all dark as dusk.

"You do the talking," said Sam. "I'm fed up with talk. I'm itchy to plant jet-axe charges and blow things up."

"Patience, dear. First we need permission."

"We'll get it. You, Marine. Don't be afraid to shoot. I'm sick of being taken prisoner, too."

"Sam!" Hannah chided.

"At home we say, `No one's lucky forever.' We're way beyond our limit."

With that, Sam settled the air-car in a pasture just out of gunshot from the smoking village. The marine Punchy slapped her visor shut and raised her faceshield. Boxed up, her voice issued from a chest speaker. "Can you hover, sir? We might want a fast fade." Sam agreed, so floated the air-car a meter above billowing wheat.

The village seemed a jumble of boxes and brush backlit by fire. But despite the dark, they were spotted immediately. Guards with antique muskets trotted from two sides of the village. The air-car bobbed as the armored Punchy hopped out and braced her assault rifle across her chest, muzzle high.

The diplomatic team waited in the car. The town militia paused while reinforcements streamed from the village or peered cautiously from alleys. Every villagers came armed, some only with pitchforks or meat cleavers and torches. At their head strode the waspy, gray-haired mayor.

Hannah raised both hands and hallooed as gaily as she could, "Mayor! We're back! With good news!"

Villagers crept closer. As their circle of torchlight glinted on the air-car, they saw the armored marine. Then someone yelled, "Those are tliggoes!"

Ancient guns were levelled at the air-car. Like a machine, Punchy snapped her assault rifle flat, racked the bolt, and yelped, "Fire over their heads, sir, ma'am?"

"No, no!" Hannah hopped down into waving wheat.

"Hannah!" yelled Sam.

The erstwhile diplomat dodged past the marine, clearly putting herself in danger to offer peace. "Please, mayor, Matilda, listen to us! Oh, put those guns up, won't you, please? We just need to talk!"

Hannah's chest hurt for holding her breath. This was the most nervewracking moment so far. Professional soldiers and warrior griffines might keep their heads in a crisis: these were frightened peasants with iffy weapons.

"We're friends, really!" pleaded Hannah. "We just want to explain what's going on! If you don't like it, we'll leave! But please don't let anyone get hurt, okay?"

"Wait!" The mayor pushed up the barrels of hotheads. "Okay, talk! We need news! What the hell's going on? You wouldn't believe the rumors we've heard, each one more idiotic than the last, but still scary! People say the invaders are from the Old Union, or old Earth, or Blenari pirates. Someone said the lizards fight back because the invaders ran out of food and are roundin' 'em up like cattle! Or they'll drain the air out of the Jack and loot the metals! Then, just after the invaders get here, the quakes start and wouldn't stop! It's like the end of the world!"

Hannah sighed with relief. "It's not, yet, mayor. But it will be without your help..."

Yet they'd no sooner begun their explanation before there came another interruption. The Marine Punchy watched everywhere but kept her muzzle high. Now she touched her helmet as her headcomm crackled. She listened, replied, "Affirm. Hang on."

To Sam and Hannah she said, "Sir, ma'am. There's a firefight in West Pod. A baron won't honor the ceasefire. He's barricaded the end of North Pod and plinks anyone comes near. The skipper's sending a force of us, lizards, beaks, and militia to kick his royal ass. If you're square here, may I go?"

"Yes, go, and thank you." Hannah watched Punchy whoop with delight. Slapping down her visor, she tucked her weapon close and bounded into the air to land in the air-car. Sam and their alien escort barely hopped out before, gunning the engine, the marine soared into the sky like an iron eagle.

"Some people get all the fun," groused Sam.

"Combat is fun?" Hannah shook her head, dizzy from weeks of stress and no sleep. "Things are happening too fast."

"Or not fast enough," said Sam, always contradictory. "We've still got a ton of work to do."

"And so little done." Watched by dozens of eyes human and alien, Hannah scanned the vast inside-out world stained with smoke and death. "We've been fighting to save this place for two months now, Sam. With never a clue to what's happening. Remember when we woke up here?"

"I remember," growled Sam. "And I'm still torqued..."

You've read the first chapter.  Now buy the ebook!