Machines of Eden Read Free Page A

on the instrument
panel. The sky-bot’s cables were dancing this way and that,
overcharged and vibrating.
    “ What’s going on?” John yelled.
    Mochizuki ignored him. “ –
say again we have lost our starboard engine and are losing
altitude. Please advise on nearest airfield for emergency
landing.”
    There was no reply.
Mochizuki slammed his fist against a console. “Mayday, mayday, this
is PAC-M-flight 339, our starboard engine is gone and we are going
down. Engaged by hostile fire, coordinates – ”
    John stared. Hostile fire? The war is over.
    No , came the familiar voice of Sergeant Wiley, in his
head. It’s never over.
    John grabbed Mochizuki’s shoulder. “What hit us?”
    “ SAM. Came out of nowhere,
not a word of warning from Lucky or the onboard
systems.”
    John shot a look at the little sky-bot. A thin tendril of white
smoke was drifting from a seal on the side of the cylinder. A small
motor-driven hatch on top was opening and closing several times a
second.
    “ Your bot’s
flipped!”
    Mochizuki shook his head,
concentrating on hitting several switches and keeping his hands on
the stick. “Lucky’s been with me for years, he’s solid.”
    “ I’m telling you,
y our bot has flipped!” John reached over and yanked the
sky-bot’s cables from the console in front of it. There was a
shower of sparks and the smell of melted electronics, and the bot
did an emergency shutdown that ended in a high-pitched
whine.
    “ Hey!” Mochizuki screamed
in protest. “You killed my sky-bot!”
    “ Can you manually set her down on
the water?” said John .
    “ I used to be able to.”
Mochizuki’s knuckles were white on the controls. “Be a lot harder
without Lucky.”
    John watched the ocean come up to meet them, moon glinting like
silver on a thousand little waves.
     
     
     
     

3
     
    First, pain.
    Thick pain, hammering just
behind his eyes. He debated opening them, decided he would, and
then squeezed them shut again with a groan.
    John was lying on a beach of brilliant white sand that stretched away in either direction to the
horizon. The glare of the brief glimpse doubled the throbbing
behind his eyes.
    How did I get here? And
what day is it?
    A moment later, though, he
opened his eyes again, this time in a miserly squint. It was
beautiful. Before him lapped the turquoise water of a lagoon from
paradise, as deep and blue as any pic or holo he’d ever seen. A
dreamlike sense of lassitude crept over him. If this was a dream than it was a nice
dream, and he’d had few enough of those to appreciate this one. He
would wake up soon enough, probably back in Recovery, so it made
sense to enjoy it.
    But behind the throbbing
pain behind his eyes and the surreal beach was a nagging thought
that shouldered its way into full consciousness. The sun was too
hot for this to be a dream, the sound of the surf too wet, the sand
too gritty in his teeth. This was real.
    That thought made his eyes
open a second time, and stay open.
    He squinted against the
glare, doubly bright off sand and water. His back was damp, and he rolled to one
side and saw that the depression he ’d been lying in was soaking wet.
He licked his lips and tasted salt, not the metallic saline of
blood, but the brine of the wide blue expanse in front of him. He
sat up and rolled his head on his shoulders. There was no
appreciable increase in pain. That was good. He gave both arms and
both legs a shake. Other than a deep ache and incredible stiffness,
he was intact.
    His physical
discomfort reinforced the reality of his
situation. He reached down to his ankles,
stretching his back and hamstrings. That
felt better. The surf around him was
pleasantly cool, easing the hot glare of
the sun, and a warm breeze made him want
to slide back down into unconsciousness. Instead, he opened his
eyes a little.
    It suddenly occurred
to John that if
he sat on a beach facing the open sea, there must be a landmass
behind him, and he pivoted. A wall of dense tropical