Blaze (The High-Born Epic) (42 page)

             
“What do you mean?” Harold asked with a mouthful of cornbread.

             
“Well,” she thought for a moment as she took a sip of water.  “I still get sleepy, but I just don’t need as much sleep as I used too.”

             
“Hmmm...” Harold said and bit off a piece of ham.  “Now that I think about it, I’ve noticed the same thing.”

             
“I guess it’s a good thing,” Gabby said as she took another bite.

             
“I think so,” Harold replied.  “We’re gonna’ need it.”

             
“Yeah,” she said.  “I think so too.”

             
They both sat silently for a moment just eating and drinking, “I’ve got something really cool to show you after it gets dark.”

             
“Oh really?” Harold answered as he looked at the darkening sky.  “Well, at least I don’t have to wait too long.  What is it?”

             
Gabby pressed the grid, and its green lights blinked to life.  Several prompts displayed and she pressed the navigation icon.  It twisted and twirled and several other prompts replaced it.  GPS, GR, SN were now displayed on the monitor.  Gabby pressed SN and it spread out into the words: Star Navigation.  She pressed it, and several small green points of light appeared.

             
“What’s this?” Harold asked.

             
“They’re called constellations,” Gabby said.  “I’ve seen them before, but there were only a few that I knew of in Marksville.  Uncle Elton knew some of them, like Orion’s Belt, and the Big and Little Dippers.  I figure that when it gets dark enough we can go up to the top of some of the ruins and look at them.”

             
“Sounds like fun,” Harold said, but then thought for moment.  “What about High-Born patrols and our heat signatures?”

             
“I’ve got that covered,” Gabby replied.  “But I like the way you’re thinking.”

             
“What do you have in mind?” Harold asked.

             
“After practicing it with the kids at the lake, I figured out a way to use my air shield to totally camouflage our temperatures,” Gabby said with a smile.

             
“Well,” Harold smiled.  “I guess that’s
‘cool’
,”

             
“Or maybe it’s ‘
hot’
, hottie,” she laughed.

             
Harold smiled and asked, “How does it work?”

             
“Basically, I create two air shields around us and trap air in between them,” Gabby answered.  “That way the temperature of the surrounding air appears to be constant.”

             
“Have you tested it yet?” Harold asked.

             
“Yeah,” she answered.  “I’ve been doing it to the gunship’s thrusters,”

             
“It seems like the High-Born would’ve already fixed that problem,” Harold replied.

             
“For the most part, they have,” Gabby answered.  “They have greatly reduced the heat signature, but it is not completely effective.  And they do have systems in place that do something similar to what I do, and I even got the idea from those systems.”

             
“Alrighty then,” Harold said.

             
They sat and talked for a while about their plan of attack on New Pylos while waiting for the sun to set.  The plan was straightforward and rather simple, but would produce a lot of damage.  Then they talked about nothing in particular for about an hour as Gabby went over some of the gunship’s operations with Harold.  Soon, it was dark enough to see the stars.  Harold touched Gabby’s shoulder and they flamed out of sight...

             
...To just outside the gunship.  The night air was cool and crisp, and though the trees were thick enough to partially obscure the sky, it was plain to see that it was relatively free of clouds.  Gabby called to her air-shield and covered their heat signature as Harold found a large tree limb.  He grabbed her shoulder and air-burned them to it.  They enhanced their vision and scanned the night, but saw nothing that gave them concern. 

             
A few hundred yards away was an ancient and abandoned ruined building that still had about five remaining stories that had not been blasted away.  Harold judged it would take him three air-burns to get reach it, and he found two more trees.  He grabbed Gabby’s hand...

             
...And they appeared in the first tree... And then the second tree... And then they appeared on top the building.  The roof had many large holes in it and they had to be careful as they walked across it.  Once they got fairly close to the center, Gabby pointed up.

             
“There’s Orion’s Belt,” she said.

             
“Right there?” Harold pointed.

             
“Just to the left a little,” Gabby answered.  “Those three stars.”

             
“Oh, okay,” Harold said.  “I’ve seen those before.”

             
“Yeah, they’re not hard to see,” Gabby said.  “And over there is the Big Dipper.”

             
Harold looked for a moment, tracing the path out in his mind, “Yeah, it looks just like a ladle.”

             
Gabby found some sort of metallic box, and sat down on it.  Harold found a spot close to her and sat down too.  Then, they both looked out across the city of New Pylos.  Harold had often seen the individual squares of light from the confines of Foxx Hole, but now he was just a few miles from them, and he was in awe at the sight.  He wished that he could just walk as a free man on those streets and experience the wonders of city life.  But that was a forgotten age, lost to the annals of time, and Harold just absently watched the specks of light that the air-taxis made as they zipped around the city.  Much to his relief they never seemed to get more than 100 yards of the city’s newer buildings, and there were several miles worth of ruins in between them and the stand of central buildings.

             
There were several billboards scattered throughout the city, and for the most part, they kept showing the same advertisements over and over.  Some were about upcoming movies, others were advertisements for the slave trade, some were about various restaurants and businesses, but the one he saw the most was the one commemorating the uniforms of the High-Born pilots.

             
“What do you think they mean by Ascension of the Dragons?” Harold asked.

             
“I really don’t know,” Gabby answered as she rubbed her chin.  “But if I were to venture a guess... I would say that was when they took on the A.I. Drones and won.  Then they probably turned on the Low-Born after that.”

             
Harold nodded understandingly, “That makes sense.”

             
“Uncle Elton’s granddad said something close to that anyways, but he didn’t call it that,” she replied.

             
Then she leaned back and stretched out, just looking straight up into the stars.

             
“That’s a good idea,” Harold said and did the same.

             
They laid their for a few minutes just stargazing and talking about different things, and Harold caught a glimpse of small pinpoint of light high in the sky.  He focused on it and pulled fire into his eyes.  He studied it intensely, but it was so far away that its general shape evaded him.

             
“What is that?” he pointed it out to Gabby.

             
She focused her power into her eyes and looked as well.

             
“I’m not sure,” she answered.  “But they may be satellites.”

             
“Satellites?” Harold asked.

             
“I don’t know much about them,” Gabby admitted.  “But there’s something in the gunship controls that I’m learning to use called G.P.S. or Global Positioning System.  It always says something about a satellite uplink.  But I’ve never activated it because it seems to be tied into the tracking device and that would bring the High-Born down on us.  But I’ve heard Uncle Elton talk about satellites before and he said that they were things that flew in space and were important during the conflicts that led to the A.I.R War.”

             
“What did satellites do?” Harold asked.

             
“I don’t know,” Gabby said.  “But they probably used them to see things on the ground and in the sky.”

             
Harold nodded, “They could’ve been used for weapons too.”

             
“Maybe,” Gabby answered.

             
Harold looked across the sky, slowly, back and forth, and could see many of them slowly floating around the sky.

             
Suddenly, Gabby tapped him, and pointed in the southeastern sky, “You got to look really hard.  And someone like us may be the only ones who can even see it.”

             
At first, Harold could see nothing, but then he caught a glimpse of what could only be a small blue exhaust point flying just above the treetops.  Gabby’s eyes glowed brighter and she leaned towards it.

             
“That’s not a gunship... it’s too small,” Gabby said.  “I can’t tell what it is.”

             
They watched as it stopped on some of the ruins well outside of the city.  It stayed there for less than a minute, and then began moving away from them, circling around the city.  It stopped two more times before they lost sight of it as it headed out of the city.

             
“I say that we call it a night, and get back to the gunship,” Gabby said.

             
“Yeah,” Harold said, and touched Gabby’s shoulder and they both flamed out of existence.

Chapter 37

              “It’s time to deliver a message to the High-Born,” Harold said.

             
“I’m ready whenever you are,” Gabby said.

             
Harold grinned at her and nodded.

             
She stood up and said, “Let’s go.”

             
Harold also stood and put his hand on her shoulder and they made eye contact, and then flashed from sight.

             
Blaze and Aireon boomed into view on top of an outlying building and surveyed the area.  They were about four stories high atop the ruins of a destroyed building.  Vines were crawling over the edges, giving the impression that they were trying to pull what remained of the building down to the ground.  Muck and grime covered the concrete beneath them, and scorch marks and bullet holes littered both the level they were standing on and the jagged remains of the wall that resembled the ramparts of an old castle from Scott’s comic book.

             
As Blaze stepped up to the edge, he pulled fire into his eyes and looked across the city.  He could see many High-Born air-taxis zipping down the airways, and he could see dozens of High-Born walking up and down the sidewalks.  Farther into the city, he could glimpse the central military compound and he studied its perimeter.

             
There were several squads of visored soldiers walking around the compound, but they didn’t seem overly concerned.  On the grounds of the plaza were a couple of tanks and there were three gunships on top of the facility.

             
“They don’t seem too worried, do they?” Aireon asked.

             
Blaze regarded her slightly glowing eyes, “No, they don’t.”

             
He looked up at the roof of the nearest High-Born building, and then at Aireon.

             
“Can you make it there?” she asked.

             
“Yeah,” he said. “I can, but I’ll have some trouble getting you there too.”

             
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.

             
“Just don’t scream,” he replied as he stepped close to her.

             
She smiled and cocked her head as she put her arms around his neck, and his arms slid around her waist.