Evolution (29 page)

“Sandy told me the name,” Beechy says, as our raider lifts off in the flight port.

“Of your baby girl?”

He nods. “We're going to call her Grace, after Sandy's mother. I think it's a good name. Don't you?”

I smile. “I do.”

“Sandy's mother died giving birth to her, so she thought it would be nice to honor her that way,” Beechy says. There's hoarseness in his voice. He's still afraid he's going to lose Sandy or Grace, before she's born.

I reach out and squeeze his hand. “Grace will be perfect. You and Sandy will make wonderful parents.”

“I hope so,” he says softly.

The ship rumbles beneath us as our raider departs from the
Hessana.
I watch all twelve of the battle stations grow smaller and smaller through the porthole as we leave them behind. My passage to freedom, if we can stop the Developers before they blow them to pieces when they destroy Kiel. Soon the acid shield blocks my view of the fleet, and then they fall out of sight in their orbit above the atmosphere.

I turn away from the porthole and look out the cockpit window instead. The black shapes of hundreds of raiders fill the sky ahead of us like a cloud of insects. We're approaching the range of snow-topped mountains. The same mountains where we were flying during the night the army of vul arrived. It seems a lifetime ago.

I fiddle with the pod-race coin I tucked into the pocket of my uniform, thinking of Logan when I saw him in the
mayraan
. Young Logan, the boy who was my first friend and my main comfort in the work camp. And older Logan, the boy who kissed away my tears last night and held me closer than ever before.

I'd give anything to hug him right now. I need to know he is safe.
Hang on a little longer.

I look around the raider, at Jehara and the vul warriors sitting in their seats, poised and ready for battle. At Skylar, nervously chewing her lip in the chair on the other side of Beechy. At Uma and Jensen, talking in low voices. At Mal, unloading and reloading his gun, testing the weight of it.

At Paley, her eyes bloodshot and glazed with a mix of sadness and fury. She finally learned what happened to Fiona in the vul attack. I was afraid she'd be so angry with them—or me—that she wouldn't want to come with us on the mission. But she told me she only blames the Developers, since Fiona would've been safe inside the Alliance compound if not for their orders.

I see the ghosts of Fiona and the other friends we've lost in the empty spaces between our passenger seats: Oliver, Laila, Buck, Cady, and too many others I didn't know as well.

We can't let the Developers make ghosts of any more of us.

*   *   *

The first twenty minutes of the flight through the Pipeline are silent, save for the occasional hiss and click of the vul warriors talking among themselves.

Out of the silence, there's a faint booming sound that radiates through the tunnel outside. A bomb line must've been triggered.

I hold my breath, waiting for a message to pass through the comm system. It takes several minutes to come. Jehara translates it into Kielan for the rest of us.

“We've lost two raiders,” she says. “Pilots have been ordered to fly with extra care, to avoid the wreckage.”

“Did they not send the probes ahead to trigger the bombs?” Skylar asks.

“They did,” Jehara says. “But the reach of the explosion was farther than anticipated.”

Twice more, a faint booming sound reverberates through the Pipeline. Probes we sent ahead trigger two more bomb lines. Five more raiders are lost. With five vul aboard each ship, thirty-five vul warriors are dead before we've even reached the Core.

We're almost to the end of Mantle sector when we receive word the ships at the front of the swarm have made it to the Core's outer level. They fly into the first hangar they come to, as instructed.

“Our people are in,” Jehara says. “They encountered no soldiers in the hangar.”

I frown. The Developers know without a doubt the Core is under invasion now. Why wouldn't they have stationed soldiers to fight us as soon as we landed?

Beechy has the same worry in his eyes.

“You don't think they could've finished building the bomb already, do you?” I ask. My heart's racing fast.

We should still have three more hours. But maybe construction went faster than Fred expected. The bomb could go off at any second and ripple through the walls of the Pipeline, blasting our raider apart. We're not in the Core yet; we haven't made it to the zone where we'd be safe. And we haven't warned Hashima to move the battle stations away yet. They'd be destroyed, along with everyone on board and all the vul still on the Surface.

Sandy is still on board the battle station. Beechy's knuckles are white, gripping his armrests.

“I don't know,” he says. “But we need to assume the timer is up and the bomb could go off at any second. We need to find Commander Charlie and the other Developers and capture them as soon as possible.”

*   *   *

The vul pilot puts our raider down in the flight hangar closest to Restricted Division. The hangar is empty of people, like all the others. But in the upper levels, Core soldiers stormed the vul warriors in the nearby hallways. The soldiers had set up barricades and opened fire. It might just be my imagination, but I can almost hear the distant
BOOM!
of gunfire through the walls, and the pounding feet of the soldiers. I don't know how many vul we've lost so far, or how many Core soldiers they've killed or captured. But chances are, there will be soldiers waiting to attack us in a corridor close to here.

I unbuckle and move outside the ship with everyone else in our group. Two other raiders have also landed in this hangar, adding ten more vul warriors to our count. We're hoping the rest of the army can keep the fighting contained to the Core's upper levels, while we break into Restricted Division unnoticed and go after the Developers.

“We need to find a comm and use it to contact Lieutenant Dean,” Skylar says, clicking off her gun's safety. “See what he's doing and whether he can help us. He might know where to find the Developers.”

She's right. But we don't have any comms besides the one on the vul ship, which doesn't run on the right frequency.

“We know they'll be somewhere in Restricted Division,” Beechy says. “The most likely place is the room where Colonel Fred is finishing his work on the bomb.”

“They could've moved it to a different location,” I say. In fact, I'm sure they would have.

“Where is the Tessar?” Jehara asks. “We should rescue him first and get him aboard our raider, in case the fighting turns bad. The savior must be returned to his people.”

“He's in a laboratory on the way to the Core bridge,” I say.

“Let's head there, then,” Beechy says, leading the way to the hangar exit. At the doorway, he signals us to stop, and checks that the corridor outside is empty. “All clear.”

I grip my gun tightly and follow the others around the corner. The hallway is quiet, save for the pounding of our boots on the linoleum. I tense as we come to the end of the corridor and another corner.

Again, Beechy stops us to check for soldiers. “All clear.”

All the soldiers must be upstairs fighting the vul, or downstairs defending the Developers.

There's a staircase through the doorway ahead. Beechy leads the way inside. This is where we split up. Uma, Paley, and Jensen will go with five of the vul to the upper levels to deal with the Core citizens. The rest of us will go downstairs to Restricted Division.

“Good luck,” Beechy says.

“You too,” says Paley. There's fierceness in her eyes as she starts up the staircase.

When the stairs end, Beechy pauses, listening through the door for a sign of anyone waiting outside. But there's nothing but silence, and the faint echo of the others still climbing the stairwell.

Beechy carefully pushes through the door and steps out into the corridor.

We've made it ten feet when the blasters start firing.

 

30

The soldiers are shooting at us from the end of the hallway, where the corridor splits off into two perpendicular ones. They must've been waiting around the corner, listening for anyone coming through the staircase door.

“Get back!” Beechy yells, ducking at the front of our group.

There's nowhere to go, unless we retreat into the stairwell. But even as I stumble backward to avoid the fire—almost tripping over Skylar—Jehara and the other vul move forward, firing back at the soldiers. The vul at the very front of the group is hit square in the shoulder of his armor, but he doesn't even stagger. He just keeps shooting at the end of the hallway.

Smoke floods the air ahead of us, so I can hardly see the soldiers anymore. But I hear their grunts and thumps as their bodies hit the floor.

The gunfire stops after another minute. The vul are still moving toward where the soldiers fell.

“Come,” Jehara says, beckoning for the rest of us to follow.

At the end of the hallway, there are seven bodies of soldiers on the floor amid the smoke. They aren't dead, just stunned. Who knows if they were subdued or not, but I can't help feeling relieved. We didn't come here to kill everyone in the Core; we came here to save them.

“Aren't you hurt?” Mal asks, looking at the vul warrior who was hit by the blaster.

The warrior has his hand covering his shoulder. When he pulls it away, there's blood seeping through the hole in his armor. “It will heal,” is all he says.

“Thank you for saving us,” I say.

His unblinking yellow eyes meet mine, and he nods at me.

“We'd better keep moving,” Beechy says, stepping over the bodies on the floor. There's a door ahead that leads to the inner chambers of Restricted Division. It requires a security code to enter. Beechy tries four different codes, but none of them work.

“Here, let me try,” Skylar says, pushing past me. She taps in two more codes. The third one unlocks the door. “Lieutenant Dean gave me a couple before we left that should get us through the security barriers,” she explains when she catches me raising an eyebrow at her. “I'm just not sure which codes will open which doors.”

I can't help feeling a pinch of annoyance that Dean gave Skylar the codes instead of me. But I'm glad he told one of us, at least.

Mal grabs a couple extra guns from the fallen Core soldiers before we move into the next hallway.

*   *   *

Another code Dean gave to Skylar gets us into the area where Cadet Waller took me to visit the Tessar. We encounter no more soldiers on the way to the laboratory. But there must be more of them here in Restricted Division; the Developers wouldn't leave the place unguarded. I wonder where they've all gone.

Jehara communicates with one of the vul kaarns in the upper Core level through the small comm she has in her helmet. “We've taken the two highest floors,” she tells us. “There is still much fighting in the levels beneath them, though. The soldiers are not giving up.”

“They won't give up until the Developers order them to quit,” I say. “Most of them aren't in control of their bodies.”

Just one more reason we need to reach the Developers and force them to surrender as soon as possible.

We come to the door to Dr. Troy's laboratory. It requires another passcode, but this time none of Skylar's codes work. Nor do Beechy's. All I can remember is that it included the number 2, but there are still four more digits that need to be figured out.

“There is a quicker way,” Jehara says. “Stand back.”

“What are you—?”

She fires a blast at the door, and I duck, gasping. The blast cracks the door down the middle, raining dust and bits of wall on all of us. The noise reverberates through the corridor.

“A little more warning next time, please,” Skylar says through clenched teeth, slowly removing her hands from her ears.

“My apologies,” Jehara says.

She and two of the other vul warriors kick through the door the rest of the way. Inside, the room looks exactly as I remember it. The same tables with stacks of vials and glass scales, the same giant microscope on the right side of the room. But Dr. Troy isn't here.

“Where is the Tessar?” Jehara asks, looking around the room.

“This way,” I say, hurrying toward the stairs leading up to the second room.

As I reach the top, I freeze in my steps. I can see the blue glow of the water tanks through the glass door ahead of me.

All three tanks are empty.

“He's gone,” I stutter.

Jehara pushes past me, touching the glass door and peering at the room beyond it. She bares her yellow teeth and hisses. “He cannot be gone.”

“They must've moved him,” I say. “They knew we'd try to rescue him.”

“We must find him,” Jehara says, spinning around. “They cannot harm him, or there is no knowing what worse destruction may fall upon the universe. There will be no saving Marden without him.”

“I bet he's close to the Developers,” Beechy says, heading back toward the door out of the room. “We find them, and we'll find him. We'll start at the first rooms we come to and work our way toward the Core bridge.”

Jehara doesn't look entirely pacified, but there's nothing else we can do at this point. We all head back out into the corridor.

“What's the status on the fight upstairs?” Mal asks. “Maybe we could get some backup.”

As if on cue, there's a crackle in the ceiling. A speaker turns on. “This is Commander Regina, a leader of the free people of Kiel. I am speaking to the Mardenites who've invaded our home, and also to those of you fighting on behalf of the Alliance, against your own people. I know you've all been fighting hard, but you are not going to win no matter how hard you try. I am giving you one opportunity to surrender. I urge you to take it. You have thirty minutes.”