Blood Impulse

Part 18.1 - THE BADGER

Archer Sector, Centaur System, Sagittarion

Five, six, seven, her hand moved quickly, tapping the children on the shoulder as they scurried by. Eight, nine, ten, the sirens in the next block over began to wind themselves into a scream, their howl churning the nighttime smog.

"Hurry!" she whispered, pushing the line along. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. The flashing lights of fires and sirens was giving the particle-laden air a dawn-like glow, unwanted and unwelcome as the false daylight grew ever-closer. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen.

It was getting closer. The sound of distant screams reached her ears, echoing down the narrow alleys of the decaying megacity. Twenty-two, twenty-three, they had to move faster. Flakes of ash were raining down, dancing on the rancid wind like the snow no one born on Sagittarion had ever seen.

A thunderous boom clapped through the air, and then the sound of the riots was peppered with gunfire. Twenty-five, twenty-six and twenty-seven. That's everyone. "Alexian, hold onto Veronica till we get there," she called to the last boy in line, who half-carried one of the younger children in his arms.

"Yes, Matron," he nodded, rushing after the others in the littered alleyway.

She fell in line behind him, ushering them faster. Almost there. The riots behind them were drawing closer, the swell of violence uncontainable on such a miserable world, but the greater threat was gathering above the city in the hot and heavy air.

It was damp, the humidity rising as she drew her shawl around her shoulders. The rain would be here soon. It would put out the fires and end the riots, chasing anyone who didn't wish for blindness into shelter, corroding another bit of Sagittarion's internally rotting infrastructure.

They had to hurry.

Behind them, the riots had ignited a building. The orange flames burned above the cityscape, a funeral pyre for a dying world. She turned from the screams, chasing the kids from the stained concrete filth of the alley.

They knew the way, rushing onto the walkway in front of them. A sinkhole had swallowed the buildings around it years ago, leaving this raised path a lone bridge onward. Welded to the railing, curving up and over like rib bones, old lamp posts lit the solitary path, but not the inky pit of acidic sludge below it.

The air reeked of chemicals, warning that anything that fell would be slowly dissolved into its component ions and the flickering artificial dawn of the fires and sirens gave barely enough light to see the churn of the swamp. It was little more than streaks of obsidian swirling around black shadows in the darkness. In the daylight, this toxic lagoon swirled around the skeletons of long-dead trees and the husks of abandoned machines – slowly but inevitably dissolving them down into compounds that would join the churning sludge.

The children in front of her knew well the dangers of what lay below. Their footfalls were hurried, but not careless as they fled. They hadn't asked questions. When she'd woken them in the middle of the night, they had gathered their things – what few possessions they had – and followed her into the littered streets, now racing across this long and narrow bridge that stretched on toward a seemingly distant star.

Almost there, she thought again, rushing forward into the bright white spotlights. Twenty-eight pairs of feet thudded up the metal stairs, knocking chips of rust into the darkness below. The bitter stench of fuel greeted them on the patched asphalt as they pushed past a corroded safety gate.

The raised platform extended from there, an artificial plateau that met the city again on the distant side of its flat acres. Ships were parked atop it, resting on weathered landing gear, many of their hulls tarnished from atmospheric reentry, as varied in their condition as they were in their purpose.