“Stop.”
And the machine obeyed.
Rigel gestured with his right hand, opening his fingers, and the battle armor did the same. Barrow tumbled from its grip, hitting the ground painfully. He ignored the hurt and crawled away in case it was only a temporary respite, stumbling upright and hobbling to where Rigel was standing. Rigel did not spare him a single glance. All his concentration was directed at the machine in front of them.
Rigel lowered his left hand, and the machine lowered its cannon. He closed that hand into a fist, and the glowing in the depths of that deadly weapon died down immediately, along with the whine of its charging.
Then Rigel took a step forward, slowly, as if overcoming great resistance.
“Rigel…,” Barrow said, but he was ignored. He could only watch as Rigel approached the machine, step after struggling step.
When he reached it, Rigel closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and placed both hands on the battle armor.
The metal around Rigel’s hands glowed blindingly bright, and Barrow noticed that it had changed shape from before, becoming wicked-looking metallic gloves entwined around the flesh of Rigel’s hands. When they made contact with the battle armor, there was a soundless shock wave that threw Barrow backward, making him stumble a couple of steps. A burst of cold followed it, and then something like a wordless scream that he felt more than heard.
The crimson glow of the machine died down. A split second later, the light coming from Rigel was gone. Rigel looked back at Barrow then, sweating, a half grin on his face.
“It’s gone,” he whispered. “I banished it.”
Then Rigel fainted.
Barrow rushed forward, ignoring his own injuries, and knelt by Rigel’s side, holding his head up with his good arm.
“Rigel? Rigel, answer me!” he shouted. His voice broke on the last word.
Rigel did not move, and Barrow looked around in increasing panic. He had to get him to a hospital. He had to get a vehicle somehow, move quickly or—
Rigel’s eyes fluttered open. Barrow groaned with sheer relief.
“Rigel!”
“Hey, Steve,” Rigel said, his voice hoarse.
“We need to get you to the city. Hang on. Let me find a way….”
Rigel smiled and held up his right hand. Barrow caught it, holding it with his. The metal around it was warm, but it was no longer hard and unyielding. It seemed to be part of Rigel now, moving smoothly along with his fingers.
“I’m okay,” Rigel said, his voice a little bit stronger. “Help me sit up….”
Barrow did, crying out with pain when he jolted his broken arm by mistake. He felt one of his ribs gingerly, but it was not broken.
“Are you okay?” Rigel asked him, worried.
“Broken arm,” Barrow said. “Below the elbow, hurts like hell. My side is killing me. And I think my nose is also broken.”
Rigel’s eyes widened. He touched the wounds carefully, and Barrow grimaced.
“Ouch.”
Rigel immediately sat up on his own. “We need to fix the arm, with a splint maybe, before you hurt yourself any more. Then we need to get to a hospital as quickly as we can—”
Barrow grinned at the sudden role reversal and held Rigel closer. He kissed him to shut him up.
It worked. Rigel seemed surprised at first, but then he was returning the kiss with fiery intensity. Barrow felt an incredible happiness bubbling inside of him, something precious and unexpected after he had been moments away from dying. It was all the more desperate since he had also been so close to losing Rigel for good.
“I’m so happy you’re okay,” Barrow whispered in between kisses.
“Me too. Steve?”
“Huh?”
“Promise me you’ll never charge an armored machine like a demented bull again.”
Barrow chuckled, winced with pain, then started laughing, and suddenly the tension that had built up in him started pouring out in an unstoppable stream of laughter that hurt like hell. Rigel followed suit almost immediately, and the two men laughed for a good minute, their voices echoing in the cave. When Barrow finally got ahold of himself again, wiping tears from his eyes, he smiled at Rigel.
“I love you, Rigel.” It came out so easy. To him, it rang true.
“I love you too, Steve. Thanks for saving me.”
“Hey. I think the one being saved was me.”
Rigel grinned. “I think we saved each other.”
“Yeah. We make a pretty good team.”
Barrow moved slightly, but the pain everywhere made him grunt.
“You okay?” Rigel asked him.
“No. We should probably think of some way of getting out of here.”
Rigel looked up, into the cavernous darkness above them. “How about the way we came?”
Barrow shook his head and pointed at the wrecked remains of the spiral staircase. “Blown up by the machine. We’re not getting back up that way. And I don’t know any other way out.”
Rigel looked at the gaping hole through which the battle armor had broken through. Bright sunlight still streamed through it.
“How about that way?”
“Let’s go have a look.”
But it was no use. There was a ledge outside the hole, a sort of natural formation in the bare rock of the mesa that was nearly three meters wide, but which led nowhere. There was a sheer drop of several dozen meters below it, all the way down to the level of the desert. Above there was a small overhang of rock but no ladder or doors of any kind.
“Unless we can fly, this way is no use either,” Barrow said, sitting down heavily on the rocky ledge, legs hanging over the side.
He looked at the battle armor. Tanner had used it to get there originally.
Rigel followed his look. “It won’t work, Steve, I’m sorry. I had to destroy the entire circuitry to banish the Shadow from inside it. That machine is just a dead hulk of metal now.”
Rigel sat down next to him, leaning against his good arm. Despite everything, Barrow felt warm comfort wash over him at the contact.
“I guess we’re stuck,” he said, and despite the implications, he found he was not afraid.
“I guess we are,” Rigel answered.
Barrow deliberately forced himself not to think about how long they would last without any food or water. Wounded like they were.
“Hey,” he said, pointing at the breathtaking scenery spread out below them. “At least we have an awesome view.”
“Yeah. There’s that.”
Rigel leaned his head against Barrow’s shoulder, and they watched the day go by.
It was a magnificent sunset. Their ledge faced west, and the golden and orange rays of the setting sun bathed them and the entire landscape in their fiery glow. The desert spread out all around them like a beautiful tapestry of shades of tan, brown, and terra-cotta. The sky overhead was a deep orange that changed into crimson the closer the sun got to the horizon. There were no clouds in the sky but one, a tiny dark blur in the distance. The air was cool with the promise of oncoming night. It felt as if they were the last men on the planet.
“It’s beautiful,” Rigel whispered.
Barrow started. He had thought Rigel was asleep.
“Yeah, it is,” he answered.
“How is your… everything?”
“Still hurts like hell. All of it.”
“I’m sorry,” Rigel said.
“I’m not. I’m here with you, after all. And it’s not like I have to endure the pain for much longer.”
Morbid though the comment was, Barrow saw Rigel smile, looking up at him.
“I love that about you,” he said.
“What?” Barrow asked.
“Your strength. The way you face everything head-on.”
Barrow chuckled. “That’s funny. After everything we’ve been through, I think you’re the stronger one.”
Rigel rolled his eyes. “No way.”
“I mean it.” Barrow took one of Rigel’s hands in his own. The slender, sharp-looking metal around them glinted brightly, reflecting the light of the setting sun. “You never told me what happened in there. In the virtual world.”
So Rigel told him. And when he was done, and the light of the sun was almost gone, Barrow looked at him with newfound respect.
“So you gave up on being healed?”
Rigel nodded. “I did. I don’t regret it.”
“But this metal on your hands…. It feels different.”
“It is Atlas’s gift. A gift of power, I guess. Part of what Atlas Itself is.”
“You used it to stop that machine.”
“Yes. I feel…. It’s hard to explain. It’s like an awareness of other machines. Like a link of some kind that I can use to control them.”
“I bet it will come in handy in the future.”
Rigel smiled sadly. His eyes told Barrow that he, too, had accepted they would not be getting out of there at all. “Right. In the future.”
Barrow held Rigel close to him with his good arm, feeling the warmth of his body. He ignored the pain in his limbs and looked out at the last of the sunset. Up above, high in the sky, the lonely dark cloud had gotten bigger.
And it was moving quickly, against the wind.
Barrow frowned and sat up a bit straighter on the rocky ledge.
“Is that…?”
Rigel followed his gaze and gave a sharp intake of breath. They watched it get closer, flying so high up that the sun still painted its metallic hull with bright gold and crimson.
“It’s an airship,” Barrow said, but he didn’t move. He knew from long experience that airships had no useful surface sensors that could detect two lonely men from so far away. They also had set trading routes, and they never deviated from them. Rescue was impossible, even if they’d had something to signal them with.
They watched it approach in silence, trying to ignore the bite of the cold desert wind.
The sun disappeared over the horizon with a final flash of light.
Rigel sat up again and then suddenly climbed to his feet.
“I feel…,” he said, his eyes distant, fixed on the airship.
Barrow looked from him to the aircraft, and his eyes widened in surprise when he saw the ship turning. It was losing altitude, headed for them.
“Another Child…,” Rigel said with a far-off voice. At the same time, he raised both his hands to the sky. They began to glow.
And from the airship, bright in the desert twilight, a sudden flash answered.
Barrow got to his feet with his mouth hanging open, disbelieving. A big glowing symbol was etched on the curved hull of the airship, a stylized capital sigma. Rigel wasn’t moving but held his hands straight out, his eyes focused with such burning intensity that Barrow knew not to distract him. Instead he looked at the approaching craft, and when it was close enough, Barrow saw that it was unlike any airship he had ever seen. It was too big, too advanced looking, too imposing to be anything other than an ancient vessel.
Eventually the ship got close enough that it was possible to see a small crew of people standing together behind the enormous glass panel of the command bridge. They were all young. A couple even looked like children.
Rigel let his hands drop. The orange glow faded away.
He looked at Barrow, a wide smile on his face.
“They come seeking Atlas,” he told him. “They freed another Child.”
“Are they friendly?” Barrow asked, looking at the impressive ship bearing down upon them.
Rigel nodded. “I spoke with someone—the Seer. He says…. He says we are welcome aboard. That together, with the power we hold, we can fight.”
Barrow grabbed Rigel’s hand as the ship came to a halt, and a bright doorway opened on its side.
“Well, let’s go,” he told Rigel. He got a reassuring squeeze in return.
“Yeah. Let’s fly.”
THE AIRSHIP
was impressive. Rigel had seen ships flying over Aurora all the time, but this one was at least three times as big. Its main segment was blimp shaped, covered in metal plates that were occasionally crisscrossed by glowing lines of what felt to him like pure energy. Two huge wing-like protrusions extended from the rear of the ship like oversized scythes, and between them was what had to be a gigantic spinning engine, gear shaped, rotating slowly. It was attached to the rest of the ship by nothing more than flickering flashes of energy, essentially floating in thin air. Rigel had never seen anything like that before. It looked a little like magic.
When the side hatch opened, Rigel felt as if he had stepped into an alien science-fiction movie where green men came out of their ship with a lot of smoke, light, and impressive sound effects. Some kind of mechanical ramp extended from the ship’s hatch all the way to the rocky ledge where Steve and Rigel were waiting, bodies tense. Rigel’s brief mental contact with the one who called himself the Seer had felt friendly, but compared to Atlas, the Child these young people had awakened felt far more powerful. What if they weren’t friendly after all? What if they just wanted Rigel for the power he now held in his hands?
A dark figure was suddenly outlined against the bright glow coming from the ship.
Rigel squared his shoulders. He had to appear strong before that person, whoever he—
“Hey!” the figure shouted, running on the walkway straight at them and waving his arms. “Hey, you, desert people! We come in peace!”
Rigel exchanged a quick puzzled look with Steve before the guy who had spoken got close enough to see properly. He’d run all the way to the end of the ramp and jumped onto the ledge easily, kicking up a cloud of dust.
He lifted his hand up and started waving frantically. “Hello!”
Orange. That was the first thing Rigel thought, looking at him. He couldn’t have been older than fifteen. Everything he wore except his white T-shirt was a shocking shade of neon orange, even right up to his spiky hair.
Rigel didn’t react, and Steve was frowning suspiciously. The kid looked to either of them, raising an eyebrow.
“I’m Kenichi,” he said. “Um, hello? Do… you… speak… my… language?”
He gestured exaggeratedly, and Rigel cracked a smile.
“Of course they do, Kenichi,” an authoritative female voice said. Rigel looked at the ramp and saw a tall woman coming down it like it was a catwalk in a fashion show. She was arrestingly beautiful, with impossibly perfect red hair that fell to her waist. She was older than Kenichi, but not by much. Her expression, though, was completely different. Guarded.