First Angels Read online

  “Marea - waiting for me?”

  “Of course.” Marea’s command of the local language was improving, and was growing closer to the others as a result, but she still spoke to Isavel in the language of their southern mothers. “Sorn and Rodan are already out here, and I think I saw Dendre entertaining the elder coder. You should go to them, Isavel.”

  Isavel tried to smile, but mostly she was cowed by the sheer amount of human activity all around her. “Dendre entertaining anybody is something I’ll need to see to believe.” She heard rustles in the crowd behind her and turned to look. People were watching her, and some of them looked afraid. She didn’t want them to come if they were afraid - she didn’t want to ask that of anyone. She gestured out towards the wilds. “Follow me, and one way or another you’re fighting in a new Ghost War. But if you’re afraid, stay here, and be the reason we fight - the lives we aspire to return home to.”

  That wasn’t much, but people smiled and cheered. They seemed to appreciate her minimalism; at least she hoped they did. They would make their choices, but there were more than enough people coming along already. The ghosts wouldn’t be able to resist the will of the gods much longer.

  She started walking, taking Marea by the arm. Marea led her to Sorn; he and others were standing watch near the expedition’s leaders. Isavel gave him a smile and reached out to embrace him; he returned both, if somewhat nervously. No surprise - there was a great deal of nervous energy in the air today. He was quick to let her go, nudging her towards the leaders as though she belonged among them - which she did, technically. To her continued surprise.

  There was Dendre Han, the Bulwark and leader of the city guard; Mother Jera, elder priestess of Glass Peaks’ temple; Venshi, the temple’s strange steward with her uncanny knowledge of the ghosts; and a new face, someone Isavel had never seen before. He was clearly old, his hair greying out and the skin of his face beginning to sag - a fairly universal sign of approaching death. He had the flat, rounded and slightly bronzed features of many of the people in this part of the world, and he wore a tunic covered in intricate weavings.

  Or - no, as she drew near, she realized those were not fabric weavings. They were code symbols, strange and ancient magic glimmering faintly throughout his clothes. She had no doubt as to who this must be. She needed to introduce herself, to show confidence, so she walked up to him and interrupted his conversation with Dendre.

  “Elder Tan.” Mother Jera had told her a bit about him. “I’m glad to see you’ve made it out here.”

  He gave her a pleasantly simple smile. “You must be Saint Isavel, the Herald. I have heard so much about you.” He glanced at Dendre. “All of it good, I assure you.”

  She bowed at the shoulder, ignoring Dendre’s eye-roll. “Elder, are you here alone? I don’t see the other coders.”

  “No, not alone. I could die at any minute, and that wouldn’t help anybody. The younger coders, let me see...” He turned around and squinted. “Ah, I’m surprised you didn’t notice. They stick out like sore thumbs.”

  The Elder was gesturing to a group of men and women dressed in familiar-looking black tunics, standing huddled apart from everyone else and glancing around as though they weren’t quite sure what to do with themselves. Isavel’s eyes caught on a pair of young coders with remarkably similar faces, a blue-haired woman and a dark-haired man. She caught the woman’s eyes briefly, but those eyes widened in surprise and looked away, as though afraid. Isavel didn’t quite know what to make of it, but she had heard time and again that the coder’s gift somehow made them skittish people.

  She turned back to Elder Tan who, grinning and amiable, didn’t seem to fit that image. “Elder Tan, will they be enough to help destroy the ghost shrine?”

  He didn’t seem worried. “I’m sure of it. Our ancestors locked the ghosts away once before, well enough for hundreds of years at least. I believe we can study the sigils they left behind and come to understand how to destroy this shrine once and for all. If we find it.”

  Tan was still smiling simply, but for him to lead the coders, there must be more to him than simple optimism. Cunning, intelligence, vast magical power? Hard to tell. Then again, with Mother Jera’s stone-faced piousness, Venshi’s uncanny mystique, and Dendre Han’s pugnaciousness, it was nice to know that at least somebody in the army’s circle of leaders might be pleasant.

  Isavel looked back to Marea and Sorn, chatting by the edge of the group. She frowned; where was Rodan? He was the last of the party, but he didn’t keep as close as Sorn or Marea did. She tried to pick him out from the crowd, but couldn’t see him anywhere.

  “Are you looking for someone?” Venshi’s warbling question drew her back.

  “Rodan - have you seen him?”

  “I have not. Shall we wait?”

  Isavel blinked at that question. It felt odd. “Wait, what do you mean, we? The entire army?”

  “Besides getting the leaders on the haulers, everyone is ready to leave.”

  She wasn’t aware of any haulers. “What do you mean?”

  “You and the other leaders will ride on the haulers we recovered from the ghosts.”

  Isavel frowned. She didn’t like to think of herself as one of the leaders, but it seemed true for now - people followed her, just as they followed Dendre or Jera or Tan. Followers were the mark of a leader, whether or not they had chosen to lead. She was different, though; younger and carried here by the gods rather than her own strength. It didn’t feel right to ride on an ancient relic above everyone else.

  She shook her head at Venshi. “I’ll walk, thanks. All due respect, I’m sure Elder Tan and Mother Jera won’t want to be using their feet that much. But I’m young enough to walk.”

  The two eldest smiled, Tan warmly and Jera courteously. Dendre, older than her but much younger than the other two, grimaced. “I take it you expect me to walk alongside you, Herald?”

  She knew the part he was playing, and how she ought to react. “I can lower my expectations if you prefer, Bulwark, but you certainly don’t need to walk alongside me .”

  “Not unless I need a flashlight.”

  Despite his words, his hostility barely registered. If Isavel wasn’t going crazy, she might even think it had cooled a bit, as though he had at least accepted her as a fixture of his life for the time being. He didn’t seem like the type to plot and hide his opinions - of course, perhaps that simply meant that Isavel was easily fooled. It was hard to say. Still, the thought gave her hope.

  The two haulers arrived then, awkwardly floating around at the command of young men and women inside who seemed equal parts fascinated and scared. How they were controlling the things? She watched as Elder Tan and Mother Jera clambered atop one of them, with a few more coders, priests and guards joining them. The other was mostly guards, but Dendre didn’t join them. Somebody brought him a horse, and he pointedly did not look at her as he mounted it. No walking for him, then.

  She heard familiar voices, and turned to see Rodan greeting Sorn and Marea with slaps on the shoulder. People on the vehicles were setting up great white banners - matching the white light of their Saint Herald, a symbolism that made Isavel avert her eyes - and the crowd, this army, was moving forward. They said it would take them five days’ walking to reach Hive. It would be a long road.

  Her other friends joined her as they set out. Isavel clapped Rodan on the shoulder. “Rodan. You’re late.”

  He grinned, shaking his head. “I’m just in time.”

  “You - wait a minute. Is that a hickey?” Isavel peered at the purple blotch on his neck.

  He just repeated himself. “I’m on time. Have you been to Hive before?”

  Sorn glanced at Isavel and smirked at the evasion. Rodan’s question had been directed at Isavel, but Marea answered first. “No.”

  “You came straight to Glass Peaks from Sajuana?”

  “No, stopped at Fogpoint. Then here.”

  More places Isavel couldn’t imagine. She had heard whispers of t
he cities to the south, but beyond Hive there was little she really knew that she hadn’t heard from her mother’s travels. Fogpoint, Angelos, Vegas, Sajuana - names of places, yes, but also spells people recited in their stories to give them allure. Maybe she too would someday be able to cast such spells. For now, she could only shake her head and sigh. “Imagine a straight line between Glass Peaks and the village I was born in. I’ve yet to stray.”

  Sorn nodded. “Hive’s a bit weird. I’m not sure I like it.”

  “What’s wrong with it? I thought you had a friend there.”

  “If he’s still there. But the Mayor’s drones are… well, they take some getting used to. It’s just different, being watched all the time.” He looked at the white banners. “Though I guess you must be used to that by now.”

  Sorn sounded sympathetic, but the question made her turn and scan the crowd over her shoulder. Sure enough, there were still more than a few pairs of eyes pointed in her direction. She shifted uncomfortably, her hackles rising a bit. The comparison made her even less keen on visiting Hive than she already had been.

  “I don’t know. I only know that the Mayor’s celebration is pointless, so I hope we can just get the information we need and leave. But for now it’s a five day march, so Rodan - how about you tell us about your evening?”

  Chapter 2

  Cherry’s cool, matter-of-fact tone carried words straight into Ada’s brain. It will take approximately twenty minutes to reach Hive at low-altitude cruising speed.

  She smiled, wishing only that Cherry could have been there for her sooner in life. “I like those numbers, Cherry.”

  Ada laid her bare hands on the command grooves, linking her mind and senses to the ship’s own systems, and they kicked off as one into the air. Cherry hummed gently as it folded its fins backwards for a sleeker shape. She lunged forward through the air, away from Campus and out over the sea.

  Zhilik had promised to take her hauler to Hive the next morning. It was not an impressively fast vehicle, so they would meet in the early afternoon. That gave Ada almost a day to investigate the city alone - her favourite way to work. She had a good feeling about this.

  From up in the air Ada could just barely see the sun dipping into the western ocean. Humans being the superstitious creatures they were, she couldn’t be sure what would happen if she flew a spaceship into a large city, so she would have to make a quiet approach. As she left Campus behind, she felt for another of the ship’s many functions in her mind, Stealth . She wouldn’t see much of a difference from the cockpit, unless she bent the ship’s fins forward and watched the material melt away from all eyes, barely visible as a distortion of the clouds and land behind them. She was essentially invisible; the ship’s power and potential sparked warmth and tension in her chest, and she smiled as she flew.

  Cherry had already traced out a path to Hive, one that shifted and changed slightly as Ada bobbed the ship up and down in the air. There was a great expanse of open water to the south-east, interrupted only by the impossible height of the Pillar of Heaven. She angled the ship down towards the water, tentatively rolling sideways to catch a fin-tip on the waves. She could feel the drag and pull in the wing, as though it were part of her own body. She pulled up towards the Pillar itself, winding as tightly as she could around the ancient structure, its solid core just meters away from her cockpit window.

  Flying was exhilarating, and yet felt safe. Ada was not being hunted here, and if she were she could blast her pursuers to ribbons of hot ash. She was grinning, eyes darting around the world outside, fingers flexing against the ship’s arcane controls.

  She zipped off just above the surface of the water, towards the sheen of night slowly creeping westwards over the sky. A cluster of islands guarded the inlet that lead to Hive, and as she approached it she rose well above the treeline. Small sprinklings of light twinkled in the darkening forest - a village or hovel here, a campfire there. Maybe the occasional flash of a warrior’s or hunter’s gift. She was above them all.

  Deeper into the inlet she began to see more light in the distance. A cluster of tall, ancient towers not unlike those of Glass Peaks stood huddled against the shore, cramped between the ocean, a lake, and two arms of the forest.

  Cherry’s sudden warning startled her. Ada, I detect thirty-seven aircraft around this settlement.

  Ada’s eyes widened as small yellow spots filled her vision, buzzing lazily about the city like bees around, well, a hive. She ascended and slowed further, taking stock of what must be the city’s famous drone fleet.

  They mostly stayed within the confines of the city, but a few of the yellow blips were patrolling the forests beyond the walls, and one was high above the city - very, very high. She couldn’t imagine what it was doing up there, and some predatory instinct in her gut wanted to lash out and pick it from the air, but she held back. She needed to keep quiet, for now.

  “What can you tell me about them?”

  There appear to be three models here, all autonomous. One is a workhorse drone, designed to carry up to one hundred and fifty kilograms. Another is a surveillance model with spherical, high-definition multispectral and audio recording systems. The last is a military-grade weapons platform designed to engage light vehicles and urban combatants.

  “A lot of those words mean nothing to me, Cherry. Are any of them a threat? To us?” Ada guided the ship in a gentle circle around the city, keeping her distance for the time being.

  Absolutely not.

  The corner of Ada’s mouth rose. “Absolutely? That’s more confident than I would have expected.”

  The odds of a surveillance drone detecting us are extremely low, unless we happen to cause significant atmospheric vibrations near them or in a visible medium such as smoke. If they did find us, all three armed drones emptying their entire energy reserves at once in the form of weapons fire would barely register on our shields. Depending on their trajectories and your aim, you could shoot all thirty-seven drones out of the sky within 9.8 seconds.

  Ada chuckled. It was funny to think of how much power she had at her fingertips.

  “I wish I could.” But she needed to find the location of the control centre, and neither the outers nor Cherry’s records gave her any good notion as to where to start. Lighting up the sky would scare people, so for now she was down to her last and least favourite option: get out there and ask human beings for help. “Cherry, you can operate autonomously, right?”

  Yes, given mission parameters.

  “So you can drop me off and pick me up whenever I call you?”

  As long as you’re wearing the pilot suit, yes. The suit has limited transmission range, but within that range it will transmit its location to me, and you can contact me using subvocal speech.

  “Okay, great.” She smiled. Cherry wasn’t a person, of course, but Ada felt more comfortable with the ship than she did with humans. Her ship was reliable, impartial, and generally clear in its meaning - a big improvement over most people.

  After circling the ruined city a few times and taking stock of the drones floating around it, she curved south of Hive and down to the shoreline, feeling through the ship’s astounding array of sensors to find the most secluded spot she could. She instructed Cherry to remain out of sight, somewhere high in the sky, and trusted the ship to figure the rest out on its own. Cherry melted away into a shimmer in the night, and Ada watched in pleased awe as it swept away, leaving behind only a gentle breeze.

  When she turned around to face the city walls looming in the distance, she felt a pang of loneliness.

  The rocky shore crunched beneath her feet as she moved inland, saltwater rolling in from the sea. Not far from the shore, the terrain started resting in suspiciously rectangular patterns, hints of ancient glory long buried by the forest. She was close to the modern city gates, close enough not to have to worry about ghosts in the woods, but even so close to a city the world was forgetting humanity.

  Ada took a deep breath, and hoped she might get
a chance to help the world remember, if she succeeded. She carried only a few important supplies - her fiery gun, a shield gifted from the outers, some food, and the clothes on her back. She would sort out the rest.

  She reached the city gates quickly, stepping out of the woods onto a broad, beaten pathway leading straight to the gates. The gates themselves were not much more than a glorified door, and she tried to conceal her disappointment as she walked up to the guards. The ring had spoiled her for architecture, it seemed.

  The guards stepped forward, one of them gesturing for her to stop. She glanced to the skies, and thought she saw the glint of a drone’s eye up there.

  “Are you a ghost?”

  Ada almost laughed in the guard’s face. Was everyone an idiot here? “What kind of a question is that? If I were a ghost, do you honestly think I’d say yes?”

  The guards exchanged glances. “So you might be a ghost?”

  “Why not ask me if I’m one of the gods? Look, what do you want? Do you want to see if I’m armed? I’m armed.”

  She pulled the gun out of her bag and showed it off.

  “You’re not confiscating this, I can tell you that now, but I have no desire to use it in the city. Is that what you want to see?”

  The lead guard looked at her companion again, but he provided no answer. “What have you heard of the ghosts, traveller?”

  “They’re out there, and they’re dangerous.” Ada tapped her foot, wondering if she should just turn away, circle the city walls, and swim to the docks instead of dealing with this. “I know less than you do, I bet. Look, can I just get inside, please? I really need to rest my feet.”

  The guards looked at each other in quiet confusion, and sighed. “Okay, fine. Listen, we need to keep ghosts out, but they wear human faces - even faces people know. So do you have any suggestions?”

  Ada thought about it, but after a moment's thought, of course, she saw the guards’ predicament. She wouldn’t know how to tell ghosts from humans either. “Yeah, fine, I get it. Sorry. I don’t know either; just let me in.”