Awakening on Orbis (32 page)

“Look, Switzer, do you have a better solution?” I asked, pushing Charlie into the shadows of a trading chamber.

“Of course. We can all go. You jump with me. My belt will store the coordinates. We jump back out and then grab circuit-man here.”

“You really don’t trust me, do you?”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you; it’s that I don’t trust them. I’ve got a good thing here. I lose this belt and I have nothing. There’s no way I could get back to the Hollow, and I don’t even want to think about what the Council will do to me. I really thank you for getting me out of that hole, but I cannot risk going back in there. If you want your little friend, then we do it my way. I’m not letting this belt out of my sight.”

“What if we jump right into
them
and give our plan away? Then we lose the element of surprise.”

“I’m afraid there ain’t much to give away,” he said.

“Let’s do it, JT,” Charlie urged. “I don’t think we have much time.”

A clatter was seeping through the stillness. I peeked out of the shadows and glanced up the empty alley. On the horizon, a jagged line of darkness was gobbling up the sky.

“Who are they?” I whispered.

“You want to stick around here and find out?”

“Fine! Give me the belt. Charlie, we’ll be right back. And stay hidden!”

Charlie nodded as Switzer unlocked his belt and moved next to me. I slipped the belt around my waist and grabbed Switzer. I was so angry with him, I wanted to throw him through the jump.

I remembered the corridor Drapling had taken me to in order to see Switzer. That’s where we jumped. As we refocused, Switzer and I crouched with our backs to each other. It was a standard position we learned using SEMs at the Hollow when jumping tandem into a hostile environment. I had never tried it before, but I needed it.

Four armed guards from the Council’s Preservation Forces were marching straight toward the spot where we had materialized.

“Again!” Switzer shouted, and I jumped behind the four guards as they readied their plasma rifles.

Before they could spin around, Switzer and I dropped to the floor and swept their feet out from under them. The four guards collided into one another as Switzer and I each secured a plasma rifle. Since I had the belt, I knew Switzer was unable to jump again, so I refocused back to my original position. My hope was to keep the guards disoriented.

“Hey!” I screamed. I greeted the first guard with my right foot. I spun around and planted my new plasma rifle in the belly of the second guard. Then I turned to help Switzer.

“Could you take longer,” he said. Switzer stood triumphantly over the remaining guards, who were unconscious, with both of their rifles slung over his shoulder.

“Show off,” I muttered under my breath. Switzer was a natural.

I stared down the corridor. No one else was coming.

“What’s wrong?” Switzer asked.

“I don’t know. It seems too easy.”

“I tell ya, we’re Space Jumpers!”

“Still.”

“Think they contacted anyone?”

“I don’t think they had time,” I told him.

“Your guys might have.”

“Funny.”

“So where’s split-screen?”

“Don’t call him that.”

“Fine, any idea where we might locate
Theodore
?”

“He has to be in one of these rooms. You never had any guards watching your cell. I guess they weren’t as afraid of you.”

“Now,
that’s
funny,” Switzer said.

I found Theodore in the third cell down from Switzer’s. He sprang from the floor when he saw me.

“JT! How —?”

“Don’t worry about that. We have to get out of here.”

“You want to go get circuit-man first?” Switzer asked.

“What’s he doing here?” Theodore asked.

“Don’t worry — he’s on our side,” I said.

Theodore only snorted.

“We could leave you in there, you know,” Switzer said with a sneer.

“No, we won’t,” I argued.

I jumped to the other side of the energy field and refocused next to Theodore.

“Golden!” he cried.

“Grab on to me,” I instructed.

Outside of the cell, both of us refocused next to Switzer. “Now you,” I told him.

“Give me my belt. I can take both of you,” Switzer protested.

“You’re ridiculous,” I said, unlatching the belt and handing it to Switzer. He slipped it lovingly around his waist and then held his arms out to both of us.

“Come to Papa!”

“Oh, shut up,” I snapped.

Back on the surface, Charlie was waiting patiently, shrouded by the shadows. The angry mob I had seen in the distance now spilled through the streets of Murat. I had to shout in order for Charlie to hear me.

“Who are they?”

“Knudniks, Citizens, all of them angry,” Charlie replied. “Very angry.”

“Charlie?” Theodore said, his voice almost cracking.

“Hi, Theodore,” he said. “I missed you.”

“But . . . I thought . . . he . . .” Theodore was gawking at Charlie, then Switzer, then me.

“It’s hard to explain, but, yes, that’s Charlie.”

“Part of me,” he corrected me.

“The best part,” I pointed out, and Charlie smiled.

“Enough with the family reunion,” Switzer butted in. “I don’t like hanging out here in the middle of their party.”

I looked down the alley and saw that the mob was blocking the entrance. I watched hundreds of aliens file past, some with metal pipes, some with sticks, a few even with real weapons. Zinovian claws were popular, but I also saw a Fedaado blade and even a Choi cril.

“They mean business,” I said.

“They’re everywhere,” Theodore remarked. “Ever since the Council began adding more and more restrictions on our way of life, people have been rallying. They want a war.”

“So does the Council,” I replied.

Suddenly I felt a horrible rumble that dampened the sound of the crowd. The shock stretched down the alley and called up the stone beneath my feet.

“What was that?” Theodore cried.

The crowd was turning. I watched a Honine backtrack and then fall. Another retreating alien stomped on his chest, and the Honine screamed in vain. I jumped to the end of the alley.

“JT!”

Panic. The crowd was rushing from something, but I could not see what that was. Another explosion. I jumped to the top of the building across the street to get a better look.

“What do you see?” Theodore called out.

I didn’t speak at first. Not because I couldn’t see what was coming, but because I couldn’t believe it. An army of Neewalkers was marching, rolling, and flying through Murat. One machine, or monster (there wasn’t much difference), rolled over anything in its path while firing at anything above it. A Neewalker, strapped to the controls, artfully maneuvered the rolling tank against the outmatched aliens. I counted more than a dozen of the machines before I jumped back into the alley.

“It’s bad,” I told them.

“What do we do?” Switzer asked.

“We should help them,” I said.

“Let’s do it.”

Neewalker defense strategies were a vital part of a Space Jumper’s training. These nefarious creatures were often at the heart of conflicts in this star sector. At least this is what we were taught at the Hollow, and it happened to be the norm on the Rings of Orbis.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Switzer asked. His faced brightened with anticipation.

“Remember: I can push into those stilts and disable them once you knock them out. It will take you too long to decipher the interface.”

“Always trying to show off,” he muttered.

“And I’ll handle those rollers as well.”

“Why do you get all the fun?
Those
I can handle.”

“Fine,” I agreed. “But let’s get the guys on the ground first. Those machines look like they’ll take forever to turn around.”

“Got it.”

“I’ll be right back,” I told Theodore, and turned to Charlie. “Make sure —”

“I will.”

Switzer and I jumped behind the center roller. We refocused next to a Neewalker. We dropped fast, swiping out the stilts with our legs. My good arm was far more effective, and I grabbed the first Neewalker and snapped its stilt. As it fell, I pushed inside the stilt chips and trashed anything I could find. Switzer and I took out more than a dozen Neewalkers before they even knew what had hit them, and even then they couldn’t find us. When one spotted us, we jumped to the other side of the battalion, working in unison. I jumped a nanosecond behind Switzer, waiting for the Neewalker to fall before taking out its computer. I began to see glimpses of Switzer as he broke through time and space and refocused next to the unprepared Neewalker, as if a ghost image of him revealed his whereabouts between dimensions. I found the effect extremely useful in trying to stay close to him.

Soon Neewalkers began to abandon their broken stilts, but their fins were useless on the streets of Murat. The rollers crushed many of them as they frantically searched the skies for Switzer and me.

“JT!” Switzer called.

I turned to Switzer, who was strapped into one of the rollers, firing on our enemy. I watched the Neewalkers turn and run while the crowd of angry aliens moved in on them.

“Get out of there!” I shouted at him.

“I couldn’t resist!”

One of the other rollers saw Switzer and returned fire with a direct hit.

“Switzer!”

I jumped next to the attacking machine and pushed into the controls. The machine was useless by the time it tried to fire again. I jumped to Switzer’s machine and found it pitched wildly on its side. Switzer was coughing and swiping at the smoke as a small fire licked at the cockpit, but he was still alive.

“Get out of there, Switzer!” I grabbed him by the collar with my good arm and hoisted him out, and we both jumped to the ground.

“The Tonat!” I heard someone cry from the crowd, and a group of aliens near the front line rushed in and smothered me. “The Tonat! The Tonat is helping us!”

The words echoed through the crowd.

“It’s time to go, Switzer!” I cried out.

The aliens were trying to lift me up. Hands grabbed at me from all sides, like kids reaching for a pouch of toonbas.

“Tonat! Tonat! Tonat!”

“Now, Switzer!” I shouted.

We both refocused in the alley.

“That was amazing,” Theodore cried.

“Dazzling would be a better word,” Switzer argued. “Maybe even stunning, but we can’t stay here. There’ll be more.”

“Come on, this way,” Theodore instructed.

We followed Theodore through the streets. My blood was pumping; I was filled with pride in our victory.

“That was golden,” I told Switzer.

“I gotta tell ya, you’re fast,” he complimented me.

“Did you see the looks on their faces?”

“They didn’t have a clue what was happening to them.”

Switzer followed Theodore up another street, and I fell behind.

“You were amazing, JT. The way you and Switzer worked in unison, those Neewalkers didn’t have a chance,” Charlie said.

“Thanks, Charlie.”

It seemed obvious to me why Space Jumpers worked in tandem. Switzer and I had performed like a single machine connected by some kind of cosmic cable as we sliced through space, refocusing in the exact position required to chop down our enemy. I wondered if I could work with Switzer, as in permanently. When Space Jumpers were teamed together by the Trust, the only thing that separated them was death. What would that be like? What would Max say?

Theodore stopped outside a building draped in permanent shadow. The plastic structure was the color of despair, and if you didn’t have a reason to be here, you would never even see it.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“The hideout,” he whispered as he pushed the door open and stepped inside. “This is where Max and Ketheria are. Hey, everyone,” he called out into the darkness, “look who I found!”

“Theodore! No!” I cried.

But it was too late. Switzer and Charlie had followed Theodore inside. My cry was muffled by Ketheria’s scream as she caught sight of Charlie. I stayed back as she jumped up from her metal crate and charged at her old friend. Gone was the Scion, the person who had the weight of the Universe placed on her shoulders. Instead, I saw the little girl I knew as my sister, the little girl who loved the man once called Charlie.

The Honock scooped her up in his clumsy arms and hoisted her into the air like a piece of solar paper. She dripped tears of joy on his face.

“Charlie! How! Oh, Charlie,” she cried.

Max walked up behind her. She was looking at Charlie, but she saw me as well. She moved slowly, and then, as if everything that had happened between us recently melted away, as if the Rings of Orbis had melted away, she rushed toward me. That was my signal, and I flung myself at her. We collided in the middle of the room, and I gulped her in. How long had I dreamed about this moment? With my face in her hair, I felt her tears on my neck. I squeezed her tighter.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I love you,” I whispered back, and she held me tighter.

We were all together again. Despite what had happened and who we had become, it was still us — just the kids from the
Renaissance.
This is what Max had always wanted. This is what
I
had wanted. It should have been a wonderful reunion, but it lasted only a nanosecond.

“JT, a trace has been placed on Theodore,” Vairocina whispered in my mind. “It was triggered the moment you left his cell. A mobile force has picked up the signal. They have you as well, I’m afraid.”

“I know,” I replied silently with Max in my arms. It crushed me to let the outside in during that moment. I knew we were in trouble as soon as Theodore found this place. That was why they just let me take Theodore. They knew we would come here. “How long do we have?”

“Not long. Not long at all.”

It was the most difficult thing I ever had to do, but I unlocked from Max’s embrace.

“Listen, everyone!” I called out. There must have been thirty people or more spread out across the dusky rooms. When I spoke, more kids stepped out from their hiding places. “Do you have any weapons?”

“What’s wrong, JT?” Max asked.