Evolution (25 page)

The comm box on the dashboard starts beeping. A voice comes through the static: “Pilot, turn your ship around. You are not authorized to take your transport out of the Core hangar—”

Skylar presses a button to shut it off, rolling her eyes. “Yes, we know we don't have clearance.”

We're coming up to the Pipeline. I tighten my grip on the control clutch, preparing to turn us in the right direction.

“Which way are we heading?” Skylar asks.

“To the mountains,” I say. “Not the city. The entrance to the Surface is blocked on that side, not to mention the vul might assume we're part of another squadron of troops and blast us out of the sky. From the mountain side, we can plan a better approach to one of their settlements.”

“Good plan.”

We come to the Pipeline, and I turn the ship in the direction of the mountains on the Surface. Now it's safer to pick up speed, since it's a straight course ahead. Unless something slows us down, we should reach the Surface in an hour.

As if on cue, two dots of ships appear on our radar screen, emerging from another hangar in the Core, about a mile behind us. They're moving fast in our direction. They must've been dispatched to chase us down.

“You can lose them,” Skylar says. “Jam the thruster forward and give us more speed.”

I do as she says, but my hands are unsteady. Flying doesn't scare me on the Surface when we're out in the open, but in a tunnel like this, I'm terrified I'm going to lose control and veer into one of the walls. Especially when we're going so fast.

The transports are still gaining on us. One of them sends a stream of gunfire past our ship. It's far enough away that it's clear they weren't trying to hit us; they're trying to scare us into turning around. But it isn't going to work.

Skylar grips the clutches that control the firing weapons and sends a blast in the direction of the transport that fired. I watch through the rearview monitor: the fire nearly hits the hull, but the ship jumps aside at the last second.

Without a pause, Skylar sends a barrage of fire at the transports. One of them is hit this time, hard enough it is knocked off course and forces the second transport to veer too close to the Pipeline wall. I see a burst of flame and smoke through the rearview monitor. It grows smaller and smaller as we get farther away.

I feel a pinch of guilt for the pilots on board. But I'm sure they're okay; the crash didn't look deadly. And it was necessary. We can't have anything stopping us from reaching the Surface.

“Nice job,” I tell Skylar.

“Same to you,” she says, letting go of the firing controls. “We should be in the clear now. We're far enough away they wouldn't be able to catch us if they sent anyone else after us, so I doubt they'll try.”

We've made it out of the Core. But there are still miles and miles ahead of us, and many more steps of the plan to be carried out before Fred finishes building the bomb and the Developers set it off.

I check the time on the dashboard. Twelve hours to go.

Skylar kicks up her feet on the dashboard, apparently less worried about the ticking clock than I am. “Please tell me you brought food.”

“It's the middle of the night,” I say. “Didn't you just have dinner a couple hours ago?”

“Of course. Doesn't mean I'm not hungry now.”

I snort, but I toss her my knapsack. She digs through it and pulls out one of the meal bars I grabbed from the cafeteria.

I keep my hands on the control clutches, my mind wandering back to Logan in the Core. The coin he won for me in the pod race burns a hole in my pocket. I am doing this for him, for everyone.

We need to survive, for Logan and for Kiel.

 

25

When we reach the Surface, the moon is dipping out of sight over the western mountains, beyond the shimmering acid shield. Time in the Core is kept according to the position of the sun in the city on the other side of the Surface, where it's just slipping toward midnight. But in this part of the world, the sun will soon be rising.

Skylar has taken over first pilot responsibilities. We've both changed into safety suits and helmets we found in the back of the transport. I examine the map on the dashboard, trying to pinpoint the exact location of the nearest vul settlement. I remember there was one on the edge of the Habus Sea to the east, beyond the plains that stretch for about fifty miles past the mountains. But it would be best if we had the actual coordinates. Something I should've tried to find out before we left.

“You remember the general area, yes?” Skylar asks.

“I'm pretty sure.” The dot of the settlement Commander Charlie showed me on the map in the Core was on a promontory on the eastern edge of the Habus Sea. There were two more colonies in the jungle beyond, but those would be even harder to find without coordinates. The promontory should be relatively easy to spot.

“We'll search for the settlement along the ocean. They'll likely know we're coming before we see the colony. As soon as we pick up a raider signal, we'll put our ship down and send up a warning flare. Hopefully they'll realize we're surrendering instead of attacking them.”

“Hopefully,” I say.

We want them to capture us. What we don't want them to do is bomb us out of the sky, which is what could happen if we get caught in a swarm of raiders, or if we approach their settlement without giving any warning. I'm not sure we'd survive a crash landing in this small hovercraft as well as we survived the last.

Skylar types a set of possible coordinates into the navigational system to set us on a course. I grip my armrests with tight hands, keeping my eyes on the mountains out the window ahead of us. There's always a possibility we could run into raiders before we reach the vul colony. I search for black shapes on the horizon, where the first rays of sunlight pierce gray clouds. But there's no sign of any warships.

The vul don't know we're coming.

*   *   *

I've never been this far east of the Surface city. The snow-topped mountains turn into rolling hills, which become grassy plains leading to white shores on the edge of the Habus Sea. Thick gray clouds hang over the water, making the sky almost as dark as nighttime. The barometer on the dashboard shows the air pressure rapidly dropping. We're flying straight into a storm.

“Hang tight,” Skylar says. “There might be some turbulence.”

Sure enough, the bumpy weather starts soon after we make it over the water. Rain lashes on the glass of the cockpit. A bolt of lightning flashes in the clouds ahead of us, casting an eerie glow on the rocky sea. Skylar keeps us low, so we'll have more visibility, but it's still hard to see much ahead of us. There's only endless ocean and the storm.

A tremor runs through the hovercraft, jolting me in my seat. Pain shoots through my chest, and I press a hand to it, wincing. The pain medicine Dr. Jeb gave me must be wearing off. I should've taken another dosage before we left. I'll have to manage without the medicine, and hope my ribs won't take any more damage on this mission.

There's a beeping on the dashboard, a high-pitched whine. A message flashes on the control screen:
LOW FUEL
. My stomach clenches. The needle on the gauge is a few centimeters from empty.

Skylar curses under her breath. Her knuckles are white on the control clutch. “Well, that's just lovely.”

“How much farther do we have to go?” I ask.

“A hundred miles or so. We should have enough to reach the coordinates I put into the system. The trouble is, that probably won't get us all the way to the colony.”

We might end up stranded out here in the ocean, or on the shore miles from civilization. In this storm, who knows how long it will take for vul ships to find us? We could lose hours waiting for them to pick up our signal, or searching for them along the shore. And we don't have any time to spare.

“Can you do anything to conserve fuel?” I ask.

“I could power down some of the flight instruments,” Skylar says. “Rely on manual functions. But I don't think that's smart to do when we don't know where we're going and we can hardly see a thing in this storm. Don't worry, though. We'll make it.” She doesn't sound all that confident.

Now I can't help wishing we'd run into a raider swarm. Even if they shot us down, at least we wouldn't waste any time waiting to be captured.

For a hundred miles, I remain tense in my seat, watching the fuel needle slowly move closer to empty. The storm doesn't let up. Ice forms on the cockpit window and the defroster works overtime to clear it up. The navigational system still seems to be guiding us toward the coordinates Skylar put in, but I can't help worrying we've flown off course. There's not yet any sign of land, and there should be.

“I think I'd better put us down,” Skylar says.

“But we're not out of fuel yet.” Wouldn't it be better to land on dry ground than in the middle of the sea?

“I know, but I think it'd be smarter to save our reserves until we have more visibility. We'll wait until the rain clears up and then we'll keep going.” She eases off the thruster, slowing us down and lowering us over the water.

I hesitate, wanting to argue. But even if we kept going and made it to the shore, we'd be just as stranded and we'd have even less fuel. It does seem smarter to keep our reserves as long as possible. I just hope it won't take long for the storm to pass on.

Skylar puts us down on the sea with a bump. The ship has a special function that allows it to float on the water, but the waves still knock us this way and that.

I squint my eyes, peering out through the rain and heavy fog. We can't be that far from the shore, or even that far from the vul colony, unless our estimation of the coordinates was way, way off. “How many signal flares do we have?”

“There should be at least four or so on board,” Skylar says, shutting off the engine.

“Maybe we should send one up. Just in case anyone out there can see it.”

She frowns. “It's not likely they would. They'd have to be pretty close, and there's no sign of a ship on our radar.”

“I know,” I say. “But what if we're closer to the colony than we think? They wouldn't necessarily have raiders flying in a storm like this. And if there's even a chance they'd see us and come for us now instead of hours from now, we'd lose a lot less time.”

The Core time on the dashboard tells me we're down to less than ten hours until the bomb's construction will be completed.

“Fine,” Skylar says, unbuckling. “But we're only using one flare. If it doesn't work, that's it. We'll wait to use the rest until we're sure someone will see it.”

“Works for me.” I get out of my seat and follow her to the back of the hovercraft.

We find two flare guns inside the emergency compartment, along with a medi-kit and floatation devices. Each gun has two flares. There's an escape hatch in the ceiling of the hovercraft one of us can use to go outside and fire it.

“I'll do it,” I say.

“Are you sure?” Skylar asks, raising an eyebrow. “It'll be dangerous in the storm.”

“I'm sure I can handle it.” Anyway, I want to get a better look outside, without the ice on the cockpit window blocking my view.

Skylar lowers the ladder from the ceiling. I take one of the floatation devices with me, just in case, and head up the ladder with the flare gun in my holster. Checking one last time to make sure everything is secure, I pull the lever to open the escape hatch. The storm rushes in, rain lashing against my helmet.

“Be careful,” Skylar says.

I heave myself up the rest of the ladder and climb out onto the top of the transport. It's slick with ice; I can barely keep my footing. I hold on to the top of the hatch for support.

“Can you see anything?” Skylar yells from down below.

“Nothing!” I shout back.

But that's not entirely true. Even through the torrent, I can see the waves rolling all around us, crashing against our hovercraft.

Clenching my teeth, I pull the gun out of my holster and shoot the flare into the sky. It explodes in a burst of red fire that lights up the clouds overhead, almost as bright as a lightning bolt. I watch the fire streak into the ocean.

If there's anyone nearby, they couldn't have missed that.

As I peer out at the storm, searching for the black shapes of raiders, a fierce wave rolls beneath the hovercraft, knocking me off balance. I lose my grip on the hatch door.

I cry out, fumbling to get a hold on it again, but it's too late. My feet are already slipping, sliding down the icy top of the ship. There's nothing to grab on to. All I have time to do is take a gulp of air, and I'm underwater.

 

26

The force of the ocean presses against me on all sides. The flare gun has slipped out of my hand. The water is freezing; it feels like daggers are slicing through my safety suit. Waves pull me down and shove me back up to the surface. I suck my lungs full of air before I slip back down again.

I don't know how far the water has carried me. I can't tell which way the transport is.

The floatation device is still on my back, but I need to press a button to blow it up. I come up for air and struggle to get the device off my shoulder. But before I can manage, I'm dragged back under again.

Darkness engulfs me. The iciness is a burning hand, stabbing my chest. I kick my heavy legs, trying to get back to the surface, but I can't. Nor can I get the floatation device off my shoulder.

Panic grips me. My safety helmet's keeping the water out of my eyes and mouth, but I don't have an oxygen tank. I need to get to the surface for air or I'm going to drown.

I kick and kick with all my might, but I've lost all my sense of direction. The water is an icy tomb, caging me in darkness.

The ocean isn't anything like the tank I swam in once with Beechy, long ago, in the Core. It seems endless. I could sink far down into the black and no one would ever find my body.