Star of Hope E-Book

Moira McPartlin

• Herausgeber: Fledgling Press
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Serie: The Sun Song Trilogy
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 382

Beschreibung

Book 3 of The Sun Song Trilogy. This third and final exciting volume of The Sun Song Trilogy finds Sorlie and Ishbel working together in one last attempt to save Esperaneo. As The Prince's health deteriorates he hands over leadership of the Star of Hope's mission to Sorlie and Ishbel. But what is the Star of Hope? All they know is that it will free the native race from slavery On mainland Esperaneo Major, Ishbel travels north through a hostile artic forest while Sorlie, Reinya and Dawdle head for the southern dry lands. On the way both parties battle extreme weather and betrayal, but it is only when the two missions meet that the frightening truth of their world is revealed. And one final betrayal decides the fate of the mission and their fight for freedom. The Sun Song trilogy explores life in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic Britain where society's norms have broken down and life has to be lived differently.

Leseprobe

Steadie Reservation, Year 2089

Sorlie

It was like watching a toddler walk on glass. Pa on blades. Plastic straps tied them to what was left of his legs. He wore shorts and I saw where the blade fixings pressed and cut. The pain on his face tore at my gut. I wished I could go through it for him but he was the one who got blown apart. All I could do was help him recover.

‘Come on Pa, just three more steps and you can rest.’

Harkin should be at his side but Reinya, so close to her birth date, needed Harkin more. So I was stuck with Pa in his rehabilitation. Not that I minded or anything.

I propped him up under his good arm, s’truth, his only arm. ‘That’s it, Pa.’

His teeth ground and not just from pain. He hated me helping him. He’d almost reached his goal when the siren began to WAH.

‘What the snaf, that’s the third time this week.’

‘Leave me here,’ Pa said. ‘I’m not going in there again.’

‘You have to.’

‘No.’ But he was defenceless as I hoisted him into a piggyback.

Even though his blades were plastic he was still pretty heavy. His limbs hung and rattled against my legs, almost tripping me up. The specials silent-screamed and flapped as the oldies huckled them towards the hothouse. Despite their fear, as they rushed by us, they gave Pa, their Prince and saviour, a wide berth and a respectful bow.

I ran with him past Harkin’s infirmary tent.

‘Harkin, quick,’ I hollered. Reinya appeared in the doorway, her face sweaty, her bloated belly ready to pop.

‘She’s not ‘ere,’ she said.

‘Where is she?’

‘Don’ know.’

I searched through the chaos hoping to see a glimpse of her black curls.

‘Sorlie, get yur Pa out of ‘ere, thur comin,’ Reinya shouted before retreating into the tent. I heard the Military trucks trundling into Steadie. They’d soon be on us like flies to shite. She was right, I needed to get Pa to safety.

The door to the hothouse was closed. Locked. I hammered. ‘I have The Prince. Let us in,’ I screamed.

Pa breathed hot on my neck. ‘They’re just frightened.’

I turned back to face Steadie, using my heel to kick the door.

‘Open up, Betty. Are you in there?’

The trucks stopped by the canteen. Bio-suited Military poured onto the duckboards, tearing open the container homes, searching for the specials and oldies they knew were here somewhere. One Jeep kept on, closer to the hothouse than they’d ever dared to come in the past. At the helm was a brute of a man I’d never seen before, his armour and mask terrifying with scales, grey-harled like the destroyer in the vid game I’d played at home. He held out a sabre, a copy of my game avatar’s favourite weapon. Games Wall for real. What the snaf?

‘You!’ He pointed it at me, or maybe Pa.

Behind me the door opened. A hand reached out and grabbed us. I stumbled back through the opening but before it closed on me I heard the voice roar again. ‘Sorlie Mayben, I’m coming to get you.’

Time, shielding, distance. That was the secret to staying safe in the hothouse.

Inside the specials were already in their penguin formations. The shuffling huddled mass that ensured those on the inside of the huddle were protected from the radiation. Those on the outside take it for as long as their monitors stay quiet then the positions are changed. Harkin explained it to me the first time I had to hide in here with the oldies and specials. The building was highly radioactive which was why it remained safe from the Military. Once inside we needed to make sure we minimised our own damage. The rules, she told me, time, shielding, distance and the specials knew those rules.

I kept Pa strapped to my back while I moved into the safe penguin huddle with the specials, but their huddle seemed more erratic today. They bumped and shoved and girned at being put out of step and I realised it was our uneven shape – me with the hump of Pa on my back. I could feel him stiffen in pain every time a special touched him. He never uttered a word but his agony seeped into me.

‘We’ll go into the corner.’

‘No Sorlie, you must keep safe.’

‘It’s OK, we won’t be here long. They were here a couple of days ago. There isn’t anything for them to find and most of the disarray they caused then has still to be mended.’

I gently eased Pa into the corner beside Betty. He slumped, head on chest. She gave him a small pat and moved to give him space. She chewed her lip. ‘These raids sap his energy and it’s not good that he’s more exposed.’ I checked his bar badge – amber, shit.

She held out a worried hand to me. ‘Where’s Harkin, Sorlie?’

‘I couldn’t find her.’

‘This is bad.’

‘She’ll be fine.’

Betty shook her head. ‘We don’t know that.’

Ever since they closed the hothouse door I’d been pushing back the thought that Harkin maybe wouldn’t be fine. She didn’t look special. The first time I met her, when she tended to my injuries after Vanora’s kidnap, I thought of her as just a girl. Then, during that first raid, I noticed her difference, her exotic looks, her strange wanderings and the fact that the normally silent specials talked with her. And now she was out there while the Military rampaged through the camp, finding mischief.

‘Raids are not so frequent but three in the last week. This is bad Sorlie.’ She tapped the bar badge stapled to my lapel – amber.

Betty was a wise oldie. I had to believe her. Was the increase in frequency anything to do with the new leader heading up the raids? That roar, so alien and yet there was something familiar about it. Who was he? He knew me and he wanted to harm me.

Betty passed round the hard sweets, the pacifiers to keep the specials from worrying too much about yet another raid and what was happening outside.

She handed the poke to me. Pa took one with his good hand. I handed them back and waved her away.

‘Suit yourself,’ she snipped.

We sat quiet, listening to the shuffling specials. I wondered if Pa too was thinking about Harkin, she was his healer after all. But I was wrong. After a while he spat the sweet into his hand and tucked it in the gutter behind him.

‘Sorlie, it will soon be time to act.’ I looked at Pa, a remnant of the man I remembered. He was The Prince, the saviour who was to lead the natives from slavery.

He nodded. ‘I know what you think. How can I lead? But I won’t always be like this. Just you wait and see.’

‘You need to get strong.’ I didn’t say whole but that’s what I meant.

‘There’s no time for that. The Eastern Zone has been quiet for too long. There have been developments on the Bieberville border.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve had reports. Some of the TEX disciples have been organising themselves, or are being organised. TEX disciples are idiots, empty grabbers, wanting something for nothing, can’t do anything for themselves. But they are up to something. We need to get to the source first.’

‘I don’t know what you mean. What TEX disciples? What source?’

Pa began to slide over. He pushed back to sitting, sweat washed his face. I moved to his battered side and let him rest on me. I could smell his torn flesh.

‘Why can’t they do more for you?’

‘Harkin is trying,’ he sighed. ‘But things are so primitive here. Another reason to find the source.’

‘Pa, stop talking in riddles.’

‘Sorry, it’s just before the Switch-Off my recovery could have been different by now. Cyborg technology.’

‘What Switch-Off?’

‘The internet. Switched off, supposedly to stop terrorists.’

I signed. ‘Come on Pa, you’re talking cyber-attacks, everyone knows that.’

‘It wasn’t just that.’

‘That’s what we were taught.’

He snorted and my face whooshed with stupidity.

‘Yep OK,’ I said. ‘Taught History is a joke.’ For sure. It was debunked for me at Black Rock when I read the real books in my grandfather’s library. The Purist uprising, their right wing elitism and cruel purges, followed a few years later by the Land Reclaimists’ fight back; their crippling environmental policies making natives’ lives even more miserable. Even now I can’t tell which was worse.

‘We need a revolution, Sorlie.’

Just then a scuffle broke out in the huddle. I couldn’t see, the huddle was a mess, specials stumbling everywhere. I watched, still stunned by Pa’s words, trying to make sense of his riddles.

‘Sorlie!’ Betty roared.

I jumped, letting Pa slip to the floor. I elbowed my way into the melee. The group parted. A young boy was on his knees, choking. An old man held onto a walking frame with one hand and made feeble attempts to thump the boy’s back. I grabbed the boy and hauled him to his feet, grasped him round the waist and jerked my arms under his rib cage. I felt him go limp, I jerked again, this time a sweet shot from his mouth and landed on the floor. One of the other specials moved to pick it up. ‘No,’ Betty snapped. The special shoved his hand in his pocket instead. The boy gulped in hoops of breath and leaned his head on my shoulder. I patted his back, I didn’t know what else to do. Betty rubbed my arm. ‘Thank you, Sorlie. What will we do when you are gone?’

‘Gone? Where am I going?’

I turned back to ask Pa, but his spot was empty. The door lay open, the raid over with the specials starting their trail back to their jobs and ransacked homes. We were met by the usual mayhem; natives putting their homes to right and tending to the injuries sustained through Military brutality.

Harkin. I rushed to the infirmary. She was nowhere in sight. Reinya paced the floor, her swollen belly seemed to pull her frame over like a half shut knife. She had both hands pressed into the small of her back as if pushing herself straight.

‘Have you seen her?’

‘Cool yur jets Sorlie – she’s around.’

‘But have you seen her since the raid?’

Reinya pringled her brows. ‘Now you come to mention it.’

‘Did they take her?’

She shook her head. ‘Word is they found nothin this time. Con reckons they’ll give up altogether soon and leave us the ‘ell in peace.’

‘Where is Con? He’s chief elder. He should be out there sorting this out.’

‘’e just popped his ‘ead round the door lookin for ‘arkin.’

‘I knew it, she’s missing. Where the snaf is she?’

‘Where the snaf is who?’

The tent flap pulled back and there she was. Her curls tumbled around her cheeks and clung in little wisps to her forehead, like she’d been running.

‘Where the snaf have you been?’ I took a step towards her then stopped. I wanted to hug her, I wanted to shake her for making me worried.

She dumped an armful of vegetation on the floor. ‘I was out foraging on the high top. I heard the siren so I had a little stravaig.’

‘Stravaig?’ Con had warned me her dangerous habit of wandering aimlessly would get her in trouble but this time it had saved her.

She moved toward Reinya. ‘Is it bad?’

‘Not too bad.’

Harkin wiped Reinya’s forehead. ‘You are too brave for your own good, let it go.’ She took her arm and walked with her. ‘Walking is the best thing.’ Harkin looked at me. ‘How’s The Prince?’

I burled round expecting him to be there. ‘Someone must have taken him back. He’s in a lot of pain. When can you help him?’ Harkin avoided my eyes. ‘He said in the time before the Switch-Off he would have been whole by now.’

She laughed, something rare and eerie.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘How many times have I heard that from the oldies? “Before the Switch-Off things were better”, blah, blah.’

‘What is it then? This Switch-Off?’

‘Ask your Pa, he’s the historian.’

‘An’ ma grandda,’ Reinya said. ‘’e’ll know.’

I found him in a wheelbarrow, left like a sack of potatoes, his head flung back, looking at the sky and letting rain drop on his face. A special came by and pulled up the hood of the barrow. It was a mix of blue and green tarp welded together in a plastic crimp. Pa peeked out and smiled when he saw me.

‘Lovely day.’

‘You are joking, right?’

‘No I’m not. Look over there – white cloud, I think we may actually see blue later.’

I’d forgotten his maddening optimism. He hadn’t shown much of it in the last few years after Ma had been given her Hero in Death status. After all, how could you be optimistic when your wife was ordered to be a suicide bomber?

‘Take me to the beach, Sorlie. Remember that last time I took you?’

How could I forget? It was just before Ma fulfilled her status and blew herself up. Back where it all began and my life changed forever. The time he told me about that catastrophic change that was about to take place. About my grandfather Davie, and Black Rock Penitentiary. I now knew he had been preparing me to meet him. To live with him on that prison island.

As if he read my mind, Pa said. ‘So many disasters in your life, Sorlie, but there was so much more.’ I placed him on the sand, propped back against the barrow. His limbs straight out in front of him. I could see him move to scratch the space below, then stop. He let out a sigh, almost a shudder. ‘Give me a moment,’ was all he said.

We sat in silence looking towards the sea. The broken turbines out there baring their toothy girns. Despite his optimism, malevolent grey clouds hung on the horizon promising a storm later but for now I could sense we had a precious few hours of dry.

Pa pointed to the turbines. He hated them.

‘Yes, I know,’ I said. ‘The money men running to the sun.’

‘It wasn’t just that. Energy and technology is the key to our survival and yet they spoiled it. It all got out of hand. The tech revolution.’

I held my wheesht. I felt a boring lecture coming on. Why hadn’t I noticed this before? Pa was a typical teacher.

‘Politicians didn’t keep up.’

Here we go.

‘You’ve heard of the internet?’

‘The thing before FuB? Yeah, Scud told me. The governments wanted to take back control of the information. Stop terrorism. Gave us FuB. Fake information.’

‘Fake news.’ Pa started to laugh. ‘There was a man once who obsessed with this, but I’m afraid to admit he might have had a point.’ Pa began to draw a diagram in the sand with his finger, a circle with lots of branches sprouting from it. ‘Did Scud tell you about artificial intelligence?’

‘He said they switched the internet off. But he couldn’t say any more. The surveillance, you know, on Black Rock.’

‘It was because the machines were taking over. There was a group called TEX. They were once so powerful, so rich, they had the whole world in their grasp. They took the jobs of almost everyone and gave them to robots and algorithms.’

I thought of the specials sifting through the piles of radioactive rubbish and wondered how this was a bad thing.

‘They treated poor people like slaves.’

‘The way the Privileged treat natives?’

‘Worse than that.’

‘How can it be worse than that?’

‘There was more contempt. They could choose who ate and who starved.’ Pa gulped, and I saw the passion blaze in his eyes. ‘They held governments to ransom. They controlled even the WMDs. They could destroy us all at a whim. They were kings. The politicians were old school, bickering like children. Couldn’t agree. Didn’t see it coming. It got out of control. Governments held secret meetings but of course the TEX knew. You think surveillance is bad now with the chips. Before the Switch-Off, TEX knew everything, every movement we made. The governments were lost. Then one maverick TEX did the honourable thing for the planet and the survival of homo sapiens.’

‘How?’

‘He pulled the plug on everything and sent the world back to the dark ages.’

‘But how?’

‘I don’t know, but he did. And when he did, all hell broke loose. Everyone thinks this period began with the Purists’ uprising. That was bad enough. But after the Switch-Off chaos reigned and, of course, the Purists took full advantage.’

‘Who was he? This TEX who pulled the plug?’

‘You mean who is he? He’s still alive and living near the Bieberville border.’

‘What’s his name?

‘Skelf. And I’m sending Ishbel’s men in to find him.’

Ishbel

The harbour lights flickered on in the early afternoon and, for the millionth time since Ishbel’s arrival on Freedom all those months ago, she wondered why Vanora insisted on burning so many lights during the day. They were on an island in the northern seas, many kiloms from the nearest civilisation, why waste precious generator fuel? Still, she shouldn’t complain, it allowed her to sit longer on the damp hillside and watch the comings and goings. Seabirds whirled above her, oblivious to the strong cold wind that blew from the north. Somewhere on the shoreline a curlew’s lonely call reached out to its near-extinct family. Broad streaks of rain slashed the sky in the south before disappearing into the black sea; they never break their promise of a storm, she knew that now.

On the quayside she watched a group of dissidents Sorlie had helped escape from Black Rock. They had a well-established routine now that The Prince’s Blue Pearl brigade had taken control of Vanora’s army. The Blue Pearl flag cracked in the stiff north wind, reminding everyone that they were now in charge, and they would lead the revolution to free the natives from the State.

Ishbel lay back, allowing her elbows to sink into the soft moss and, not for the first time recently, she wondered what Sorlie and the others were up to in Steadie. As the months passed she had begun to get used to the idea that she could spend the rest of her life here, oblivious to the suffering of the rest of the Esperaneo natives. And then the order had come through from The Prince two days ago, she was to prepare for action.

She spied her brother Kenneth on the quay, a guard by his side. This was his daily walk, always guarded since his vicious attack on Vanora. Poor Kenneth. They said he was mad beyond help, but it was grief. Ishbel couldn’t blame him for hating Vanora and attempting matricide. Kenneth had loved the guard Ridgeway and Vanora had been careless with his life and death.

At the time of Kenneth’s attack, Vanora, although shaken, had put up a brave front and tried to resume her role as empress and all round deluded despot. But that time had long disappeared and as the months went by Ishbel witnessed that behind all the bluster, Vanora had shrunk into the old woman she was. Her only ally now was Monsieur Jacques, the elderly Noiri king. Two aging has-beens propping each other’s armies up like a house of cards.

Ishbel watched Kenneth retrace his steps back to his quarters in Freedom’s infirmary. A whistle escaped through the gap in her front teeth before she sucked in her courage. She couldn’t put it off any longer.

The infirmary orderly was a stern man given to staring past Ishbel as if she didn’t exist. He was of a generation that still found face to face interaction threatening, and who found native women even more threatening. Ishbel thought she must terrify him. A whole two generations of natives brought up to interact only with their friends in a virtual world – friends real and not so real. Vanora had told her that before the Switch-Off, children were introduced to extra Tactical Social Classes to teach them how to interact with other humans. How could it have grown so bad? The damage had been done decades before. The faceless generations out there. And Ishbel loathed having to deal with them.

Kenneth smiled at her entry. ‘Come to rattle my cage have you?’

‘That’s unfair and you know it.’

He held his hands out to Ishbel. ‘Come talk to me. You are my sister, and yet I’ve never really spoken to you. Never got to know you.’ He chuckled and she knew why. ‘Except through your fine fare, that is.’ Ishbel had been one of the domestic’s natives who had fed Vanora’s clandestine army. She had grown extra fruit and vegetables in the Mayben garden. Pickled them and sent them, via Dawdle’s Noiri network, to Kenneth’s hideout as well as two other coverts.

‘You kept me alive, Ishbel.’

‘If I hadn’t someone else would have.’

He stroked his well-trimmed beard and glowered at his feet.

‘What are you going to do with me?’

‘I’m going to give you a project to keep you from trying to kill Vanora again.’

‘What? Not execute me for insubordination?’

Ishbel laughed. ‘Oh, Vanora is baying for your blood but there isn’t anything she can do to you anymore.’

‘Why?’

‘It was agreed at Black Rock, after you’d tried to kill her. You’d be my responsibility.’ He put his head down and she knew what he was thinking. He started to cry.

‘Ridgeway and I had only just found each other again,’ he said, choking on his tears.

Ishbel wanted to put her arm around him but found she couldn’t. The emotional repression of her upbringing was too strong.

‘I know,’ she said. ’Ridgeway was a good man.’ Ishbel also knew that Vanora hadn’t needed to take Ridgeway with her on the mission where he perished. She only did it to deny Kenneth his company.

Kenneth sniffed loudly and cleared his throat. ‘I miss him so much.’

‘I know, he served us well.’ She saw Kenneth’s shoulders stiffen. ‘He was a good man,’ she said again, biting her stupid tongue. She placed her hands on his shoulders and forced him to face her. ‘Look Kenneth, we are going to win this fight. We will conquer Esperaneo Major. The Prince has it all worked out. But we need good people back here to build a strong society. What’s the use of taking control if we are left with a heap of uneducated natives who can’t even communicate with each other?’ Kenneth lowered his sad eyes, but she lifted his chin again with a gentle hand. ‘You are useful. Scud has history, you have science.’ She clicked her comms and scrolled through some screens. ‘Look, remember, Davie’s library at Black Rock.’ He peered at the screen with his old watery eyes and failed to keep the interest from his face.

‘We have saved the books. They’re back where they belong on Black Rock. We have the old knowledge, true knowledge. Knowledge we thought we had lost after the Switch-Off. You and Scud are going to set up our education programme.’

He dry sobbed and took in a great breath. ‘Ishbel, I want to fight in the revolution.’

‘You are too old to fight.’

His eyes became fierce. ‘I will never be too old to fight.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Ishbel said.

He sat down wearily. ‘When are you going on your first mission?’

‘Soon.’

‘I’m coming with you.’

‘The Prince will never agree.’

‘Then don’t tell him.’

He stood up and walked towards her and she could see his past still blazing in his eyes.

‘You owe me, Ishbel. All those years Vanora had me ensconced in that cave for nothing. You expect me to retire to a cosy school room.’ He thumped the wall. ‘No, I fight.’ He pointed at her. ‘And, and I tell you, if Scud wants to fight, you let him. We might be old men but we have been in this mess a lot longer than you.’

‘I hear rumours that Scud is not well. He wants to go back to Black Rock.’

‘Rumours,’ he shouted at her. ‘From that Noiri scoundrel, Dawdle, no doubt. No wonder Scud’s not well. You didn’t have to go through the purge – see your career thrown out as useless. You didn’t have your loved ones ripped from you.’ Spittle flew with each passionate word.

She put her hands up against this onslaught, looking round for the emergency bell. She’d call to sedate him soon if this kept up.

‘Kenneth, I am leaving you now,’ she said, drawing herself to her full height. ‘You will be kept under lock and key until we can place you outside the toxic range of Vanora. You can’t come with me and I think you know that too. You are a scientist first and foremost. Think that over and think what good you can do the cause with that knowledge.’

The day before Ishbel was due to leave on her mission Kenneth asked to see her. She expected another plea to allow him to fight so she was surprised to find him in calm mode, sitting at his work bench.

‘Kenneth.’

As she approached he held up a vial.

‘What is it?’

‘A virus.’

Ishbel baulked. ‘Have we not had enough manmade viruses in our lifetime? The population has been selected, and reduced to near extinction, we don’t need any more killing.’

He shook his head. ‘It isn’t a virus for humans. It affects concrete.’

‘Concrete?’

‘You asked me to apply my brain to a solution. Well I did. I’ve actually been working on this all year. There’s a waterborne virus that erodes concrete, so I asked myself, what if it were made airborne? Think how much concrete there is in the Capital.’

Ishbel examined the innocent-looking vial. ‘Has it been tested?’

‘Sort of,’ he said, his eyes to the floor, and she knew he was lying. ‘There is only one way to find out. We could test it in Beckham City first. What harm can happen there? I’ve heard the place is a dump. If it works then take it forward.’

‘What if it gets out of control?’

‘We have to take that chance, Ishbel.’

‘No, absolutely not. I forbid it.’

Kenneth glowered at her below his busy brows. ‘You asked me to apply my knowledge and now that I have you reject it.’

‘It’s untested, Kenneth. If you can show me test results on how it works, how it is controlled and contained, I will consider it when I come back from my mission. Not until.’

‘But…’

‘No!’ She held her hand out for him to shake a goodbye but he stared at it like a petulant child.

‘Bon voyage, Kenneth, you will be going to Black Rock tomorrow. I will ensure your lab equipment follows you and you can perfect your virus when not helping with the education programme.’ He stared at the wall, his eyes glazed over with indifference.

‘I will fight one way or the other. I will fight.’

Ishbel whistled through the gap in her teeth. She’d be glad when he was safely ensconced on Black Rock.

Sorlie

Pa was wrong about the good weather to come. Rain plashed down heavier than normal for the PM. I lifted him back into the barrow and wheeled him to his container. I was just helping him up the duckboard step when Reinya’s screams tore through the whole camp. Scud rushed from the canteen tent, his face paler than normal, his mutant expression, soapy and weak.

‘What are they doin tae her? Make them stop,’ Scud moaned, his hands over his damaged ears. Tears started in his walnut eyes. His Privileged looks meant he didn’t have to hide from the raid. He’d have stayed out, working in the plastic reprocessing plant when the raid started.

He grabbed my free hand. ‘You go Sorlie, see what’s happenin. They’ll no let me near.’

As I looked at the beseeching face of my friend I recognised an expression I’d seen in him many times before. In danger, in hope and in pain, he had asked for my help, the help of a mere boy but in his eyes still a Privileged, superior. But this time it was different. Our roles were more equal.

‘OK.’ I said as I let him take the burden of Pa.

I stepped out into the busy streets of Steadie where natives and specials continued to clear up the mess. Could no one else hear her? I hopped along the ridged plastic duckboard, jumping over broken sections, skiting round those now sunk in the mud. Relentless rain had battered this area in the last two months. In the old days this fourth quarter had been called Winter and was reputed to have brought a coldness so cold it burned; ice and snow and clean air. Not in my lifetime, so I was doubtful for a rain check any time soon. Ice was something the State President put in his Mash.

Another scream ripped through the camp. The door to the infirmary tent was pulled tight shut. As I bounded the steps two at a time I heard a slap then silence. Another scream issued from Reinya, just as painful but different. This scream held the hurt of nations.

A native woman pulled the flap open and almost fell over me. ‘It’s a boy,’ she said through her gummy oldie grimace.

Betty moved out behind her and stared at me with worried eyes.

‘What? What is it? Is Reinya OK?’

She shook her head. ‘Go and see for yourself.’

‘I’ll get Scud.’

‘No. Sorlie, you go first.’

I hesitated at her worried look. A cold thread plumbed my spine as I remembered Reinya’s story. This child was the result of violence done to her on the Prison Ship. I didn’t want to find out what was in there. Before I ducked into the tent I turned to survey Steadie. There were the specials, protected from the State in this radioactive haven. They would have been destroyed during the early purges for their flaws. Deemed a burden to our cleansed society. The result of nature or too much tampering with nature. They chose to be silent because society had shunned them. Both Privileged and native did not want to hear what they had to say. And now this baby. What if? But the what if didn’t matter when I saw Reinya propped up in bed, her rusty hair spread out against the pillow, dampened round the edges.

‘’e’s beautiful,’ she said, smiling down at the bundle she held. This fierce girl who never smiled, always angry at a world who robbed her of her childhood. ‘’e’s beautiful,’ she said again. The room seemed to be holding its breath and cold air curled around us. I stepped up beside her and looked down at the baby so pale it was almost translucent. His eyes were cold, his lips blue.

‘’e’ll never be able to leave ‘ere as long as thurs no freedom. ‘e’ll always be in the middle of the pack ‘idden. But ‘e is the most beautiful baby uh’ve ever seen and uh’m goin to make ‘is life worth livin if it’s the last thing uh do.’

I touched his forehead. It was warm but cooling fast. The baby was dead.

‘’is name is Kooki,’ Reinya said, her lips trembled. ‘It means Star of ‘ope.’

Betty went to Reinya and placed her arm across her back. ‘Let me take him.’

Reinya hugged the bundle closer. How could she not feel the cold from him? She stared at us, one after the other. The smile on her face started to slide. She pulled the blanket tighter around him. ‘’e’s gettin cold, uh must warm ‘im up.’

Betty nudged me. ‘Do something, Sorlie,’ she whispered.

I looked at Harkin, who stood in the corner, watching us, her arms crossed over her chest. Her face blank of emotion.

‘Harkin?’ I said but it was Scud who stepped up. He’d been standing in the doorway watching the scene. I don’t know how long he had been there but it was enough to know the score. He walked to the bedside and knelt down. Since our arrival in Steadie, Reinya had worked hard to rid herself of her revulsion at her mutant grandfather. In the past months they had even sometimes shared a meal. She now turned her head to Scud. Her lips twisted, there was a tear on her lower lid.

‘It’s this place,’ she whispered. ‘Uh should never ‘ave brought ‘im ‘ere.’

Scud touched the baby’s head. ‘He would have been ma great grandson.’

Reinya’s mouth hung open and a line of spittle dribbled from it. With the back of one hand Scud wiped it clear, with the other he eased the tiny bundle from her grasp. Tears streamed down her face, her mouth forming an ugly gape.

‘Please,’ she whispered, trying to keep hold.

‘Reinya, he’s gone. Let him go,’ Scud rasped.

As Scud removed the baby from her bedside, Harkin moved in and hugged Reinya close to smother the heart-breaking gasps. My chest was tight and a hard lump lodged in my throat. I stood helpless like a tube. As I turned to go I clocked Betty’s normally jolly face grim with disappointment.

I followed Scud into the grey morning. ‘What do we do now, Scud?’

He remained silent as he walked serenely towards one of the outer tents.

‘Scud,’ Betty hailed. ‘Wait up.’

When he turned I noticed tears rolling down his face. We waited as she hirpled along the duckboard.

‘Our death dealer will take care of him.’

‘How?’

‘There will be a cremation.’ She pointed to a small building beside the hothouse. ‘In there. Let me take care of it, Scud.’

He handed the baby to Betty. ‘Make sure Reinya gets tae see him before he goes.’

‘What if she wants to hold on to it again?’ I asked.

Scud looked at me as if I were mad. ‘She won’t,’ he said. ‘And it’s ‘him’ not ‘it’.’ He walked away. I ran after him.

‘Scud, wait up.’ I grabbed his sleeve but he shook off my grip. ‘Scud?’ I ran round him and stood to block his way.

‘Let me go, Sorlie.’

‘Where?’

‘Anywhere away from here,’ he gasped. ‘Ah can’t bear tae see her pain. Ah can’t take this anymore. All those years in prison, workin as an agent for Vanora. Twenty-odd years. Ah always had hope. But the pain just keeps on happenin. The needless sufferin.’ He cast his arm around the site. ‘Look at this place. The specials, the oldies, forced tae live in this hell-hole because the alternative is death. Why did we have tae bring her here?’

‘Because we thought she would be safe.’

‘We should have taken her tae Freedom.’

‘There’s no place for her there, you know that. The Prince was clear, it was for warriors only.’ I felt a chill as I thought about that order. No one questioned it at the time, but Scud was right. Reinya should have been taken to Freedom. ‘Ishbel returned there because she was useful to the cause,’ I continued. ‘The Prince and Reinya would go to Steadie to recover.’

‘Mebbes sometimes The Prince is wrong.’

‘How can you say that? Only a few months ago you told me he was the best person to lead this fight.’

Scud stopped. ‘And what fight is this? When will this revolution start?’

I squared my shoulders. We were both small but I tried to grow taller in defence of Pa. ‘These things take time to organise.’

‘Organise!’ he spat the words. ‘He needs tae act now. These people need tae get out o here before they all die.’

I tapped the bar badge on my overalls.

‘They know how to live here, Scud. They know when they’ve had enough and get moved to the perimeter and those at the perimeter move in a bit.’

He took hold of his own badge, and ripped it from his jacket. ‘And who told ye that?’

‘Con did.’

‘And did the great elder, Con, tell ye how many specials they have carted off tae that incinerator over there?’ He pointed but he couldn’t look. ‘The Death Dealer has his work cut out for him here.’

‘Scud, you’re upset.’

‘Upset!’ he screamed. ‘Snafin right ah’m upset. My wife died o a broken heart, my daughter was forced into being an addict and ended her days dyin a horrible death on a prison ship. My granddaughter suffered unimaginable horrors there too and that baby, the one good thing tae come from all that violence, is dead.’

‘You can’t blame Steadie for that.’

His eyes blazed at me. ‘Ah can blame whoever ah like.’ He took a step towards me, his finger jabbed my chest. ‘And what about you? The great Privileged hope.’ His face was right in my mug. His breath rank with years of decay. ‘Get it sorted, Sorlie. Now get out o my way. Ah’m goin tae spend some time wi Reinya before ah leave.’

Ishbel

Ishbel loved this bleak landscape she now knew so well. The treeless wasteland scoured by the fierce winds and relentless rain had washed the weariness from her soul. She wanted to roam free on the hillside and take a small sailing boat out to the bay to harvest some precious fish. But she knew this wish was futile. Tomorrow she would leave to whatever her fate would bring her but she knew the memory of the place would remain with her and she would return.

As Ishbel made her way back to the control centre she heard rich laughter coming from the boathouse that sat back from the quay. She saw Huxton back out, his arms full of some booty. His laughter caught her unawares. He was normally so solemn. Which she was glad of. It was one of the reasons she’d appointed him her right hand man after she’d taken control. Also he was the most chemically stable.

She had learned that when the Black Rock prisoners had first arrived on Freedom, some had been ill with chemical withdrawal, in the same manner as Scud. But many had been immune to the DNA dilution they had been subjected to while on Black Rock. Perhaps this was due to a higher concentration of Privileged genes in their original make up. These men had stature and confidence. Many had been freedom fighters after the Purist purge until their eventual incarceration.

One such prisoner was Huxton, a tall thin man, with premature grey hair and of undiscernible age. He had a permanent look of concern on his face which Ishbel had always suspected hid his true nature. She had observed that men did what he wanted before he even asked. Ask him if he wanted a cup of brew and he would answer with a look that might be interpreted as telling you, ‘yes a brew is acceptable but please beware, it might be poisoned’.

After her arrival at Freedom Ishbel had walked among the men as an invisible woman until she donned her Blue Pearl Commander uniform, so different from the ragged second-hand one of Vanora’s army. Vanora’s army was no more since The Prince’s Blue Pearl marched in, took control and organised operations to their standards. Ishbel touched the fabric of recycled fibre and remembered Vanora’s smirk the first time she saw Ishbel in her new uniform.

‘Green. Just your colour,’ Vanora had quipped.

‘That’s kind of you, although it is the same colour as domestic natives.’

‘Well you can thank The Prince for that.’

When Huxton first saw her as Commander, he’d looked almost relieved and had readily agreed to assist her. She’d heard rumblings of unrest around the base. It wasn’t going to be easy.

Upon her appointment The Prince had advised Freedom to watch all news reports coming out of The State news agency, as if this was something Ishbel hadn’t already thought of. She had set one operator with the sole job of monitoring all new incidents where insurgents’ attacks took place and then ranking them as fake news or genuine based on footage matching.

She knew she’d done a good job at the control centre but the flutter of excitement she felt in her belly when the latest instruction came through awoke her inner desire.

Ishbel was to assemble a team of men and send them on a mission. Men, she thought, always men. But she knew why. All the escaped prisoners from Black Rock were men. If she wanted an army of women she would need to orchestrate another prison break in another sector where only women were held. But there were fewer female political prisoners because The State still held the archaic belief that women were not worth bothering about.

She’d read through the plans for Freedom. She organised the rota of work that needed to be done around Freedom and she’d looked forward to the long dark months of quarter four and the tedium that went with it. She knew there were a few prisoners who were good leaders, good organisers. But she knew she could lead this mission. When she confided in Huxton that she was taking charge of the mission, he shrugged.

‘I don’t blame you.’

‘Will you stay and take command here?’ This was a request not an order.

‘I’d rather not. See, I’ve been stuck in prison for ten years. Sometimes this island feels like a prison too. I want to be free of Freedom. I’d rather come.’

‘OK, then you pick the men we take. You know them better than me.’

Ishbel considered her available options and chose a man who looked like a toad to manage the control centre. His name was Henny and his eyes nearly popped from his head when she asked him to take charge.

‘Vanora will try to interfere,’ she’d told him. ‘If she does, don’t try to fight her. Let her have her way for a while, then reverse everything she does. Her engineers know the score. They won’t let her do much harm.’

He swallowed hard. ‘You’ll be fine,’ she said, resisting the urge to give him a reassuring pat.

‘OK,’ was the short reply delivered to her shoulder, his eyes shifting everywhere but to her face. He certainly wasn’t the most confident cracker in the box but was the best of the bunch.

Before final preparations began she visited the dentist and had her suicide pill reinstated. Another bone she had to pick with Dawdle. Even though his ripping her last pill out her mouth had probably saved her life, she still resented his interference.

Ishbel faced the coming storm and let the rain scour her face before pulling her snood over her head. Tomorrow they would leave and when they did she’d instruct the harbourmaster to extinguish all but the lighthouse lamp.

Sorlie

‘Grow up, Sorlie,’ Scud said, creeping up behind me as I was leaving Pa’s tent after taking him some grub.

‘I thought you’d gone.’ I don’t know why Scud had turned all aggressive. His face, normally peely wally, was blotched with spots of rage.

‘Ah’ve one more thing tae say tae you before ah go.’ He stood with hands clenched. This wee wily man who’d been my native on Black Rock, had risked his life for me and all natives, now stood as if to knock my lights out. He’d had his DNA diluted, but that had been stabilised. Apparently some souterrain community knew how to do that. Was this aggression a side effect?

‘Ah’ve watched you wi your Pa. All you see is a cripple.’

‘Not true.’

He took a step towards me, invading my space as natives sometimes do.

‘Aye, true. Ah see you watch him move, put a hand out tae catch him, steady, even when Dougie didn’t need help. Every time you’re near him your expression fills with horror lines.’

I could feel my face pink at his words. He wasn’t finished.

‘Your generation grew up in a world cleansed of disability. The fact Steadie is filled wi specials seems tae have bypassed your notice. Shows your Privileged disregard for what is unimportant tae you.’

‘That’s a lie.’ It was my turn to step into his space but he stood his ground.

‘This is personal. Your Pa was once the strong Military leader, now he’s a broken man that a young girl has been tasked tae fix.’ A small bead of spittle formed at his mouth. ‘Don’t you see?’

‘See what?’

‘The cut o his jaw when you’re near him. Are you blind tae it? Too many times ah’ve had tae walk away because ah can’t bear tae watch father and son play the part in this gruesome charade. He’s your Pa for snaf sake. Have you forgotten what he is capable of?’