“Don’t know what?” he dared to ask.
“Things have … changed … since you got here,” Loriana said.
“For the better, I hope,” Faraday said. “Tell me, did Scythe Curie win her bid to become High Blade of MidMerica?”
Agent Barchok pursed her lips again. “I think you’d better sit down,” she said.
Munira did not like taking orders from this junior Nimbus agent, but she understood why Faraday had deferred to her. These were her people in the pods, so she would know best how to deal with them. And besides, Munira was aware that her own reaction was childish. This young woman, who had just survived a devastating trauma, needed a moment of control far more than Munira needed her pride pandered to.
Munira counted thirty-eight safety pods beached on the sands of the atoll. Not one of their ships had survived the attack. Bodies were already beginning to wash up on the shore, and in the tropical heat, the dead would quickly become nonviable. Even if rescue eventually came, there was no way to preserve them long enough to ship them out for revival. Which meant that the dead would stay dead. They would have to be buried or, more likely, burned, because they had no tools that could dig deep enough into the rocky atoll.
What a mess. Problems would do nothing but compound. The atoll had no fresh water, except for the rainwater they collected. The coconut palms and wild fruit trees provided enough sustenance for two, but not for all these people packed within the pods. In no time at all, they’d be left with a diet of whatever they could bring in from the sea.
Although the girl didn’t know why they were sent to these coordinates, Munira did. The Thunderhead had overheard Munira and Faraday plotting back when they were in the old Library of Congress. They had inadvertently made it aware of the blind spot, and the Thunderhead had sent these agents to find out what had been hidden from it.
Late in the afternoon, the pods began to open as those within regained consciousness. Munira and Loriana attended to the living, while Scythe Faraday ministered to the dead who washed ashore. He did so with loving care, treating them with the kind of honor and respect that new-order scythes did not.
“He’s one of the good ones,” Loriana said.
“Many of them are,” Munira told her, a bit irritated by Loriana’s assumption that good scythes were hard to find. “They just don’t insist on the spotlight the way the dishonorable ones do.”
Faraday seemed to be overwhelmed by grief as he tended to the dead Nimbus agents. Munira had yet to know the reason, so she just assumed it was his way.
In total, 143 survived. Everyone was equally stunned by the turn of events that had landed them here, and at a loss as to how to proceed.
“What is there to eat?” they were already asking.
“Whatever you can catch,” Munira bluntly told them. None of them liked the sound of that.
Loriana found that keeping busy was the best way to avoid panicking at their current situation, and, in a vacuum of leadership, most people were willing to take direction from her – something they probably never would have done in the comfort of the AI offices. She supposed that people used to a bureaucracy found security in following directions. After all, she always had.
But now, since Director Hilliard’s pod had not yet opened, she was the one telling people where to be and what to do, and it tickled her that they listened. Or at least most of them did.
“On whose authority are you giving us orders?” Agent Sykora asked.
Was it evil of Loriana to be disappointed that he had survived? Loriana smiled warmly at him. “By the authority of that scythe over there,” she said, pointing to Faraday, who was still collecting bodies. “Do you want to talk to him about it?”
And since no one, not even Sykora, wanted to file a complaint with a scythe, he did what he was told.
She organized them all into teams so that they could drag the pods farther from the beach and arrange them in such a way that they could serve as the walls of shelters. They scavenged the suitcases and other debris that came ashore for clothes and toiletries and anything else that might be of use.
Director Hilliard was one of the last to regain consciousness and was too dazed to assume a leadership role.
“I’ve got things under control,” Loriana told her former boss.
“Fine, fine,” she said. “Just let me rest for a while.”
Funny, but in spite of how dire their situation now was, Loriana felt oddly fulfilled in a way she hadn’t before. Her mother had said she needed to find her bliss. Who’d have thought it would be on an island in the middle of nowhere?
I am pleased to announce that the Vault of Relics and Futures has been retrieved intact from the Endura wreckage. The founders’ robes are undamaged and shall shortly begin a touring exhibition under the auspices of the Interregional Museum of the Scythedom. The scythe diamonds are all accounted for and have been divided evenly between all regions. Scythedoms that did not have a representative present at the salvage site may claim their portion of the diamonds by contacting the Amazonian scythedom.
I understand some regions have taken the position that their land mass or the size of their respective populations should entitle them to a larger portion of the diamonds; however, we in Amazonia stand by the decision to divide the gems equally. We do not wish to involve ourselves in any controversy, and consider the matter closed.
While I am personally leaving the site, there are numerous ships from various regions still at work salvaging the wreckage. I wish all those engaged in this solemn but necessary venture the best of luck. May the deep reward you with treasures and treasured memories of those we have lost.
Respectfully,
Honorable Scythe Sydney Possuelo of Amazonia,
August 2nd, Year of the Cobra
9
Collateral Consequences
Whatever it was her health nanites were supposed to be doing, they weren’t doing it, because Citra felt awful.
It wasn’t pain so much as an abiding unwellness. Her joints felt like they hadn’t been flexed in forever. She was nauseated but lacked the strength to even retch.
The room she awoke in was familiar. Not as a specific place, but she knew the type of room it was. There was an artificial peacefulness about it. Fresh-cut flowers, ambient music, diffused light that seemed to have no identifiable source. This was a recovery room in a revival center.
“You’re awake,” said a nurse who entered the room just a few moments after Citra had regained consciousness. “Don’t try to speak yet – give it another hour.” The nurse moved around the room, checking on things that didn’t need checking. She seemed anxious. Why, wondered Citra, would a revival nurse be anxious?
Citra closed her eyes and tried to puzzle out the situation. If she was in a revival center, it meant that she had gone deadish, yet she couldn’t dredge up the circumstance of her death. Panic rose as she tried to dig for the memory. Whatever had caused her latest demise was hiding behind a door that her mind wasn’t ready to open.
All right, then. She chose to leave it alone for now and concentrated on what she did know. Her name. She was Citra Terranova. No … wait … that wasn’t entirely right. She was someone else, too. Yes – she was Scythe Anastasia. She had been with Scythe Curie, hadn’t she? Somewhere far from home.