Evolution (5 page)

There isn't time to press for answers to all my questions, not when we're scrambling to get ourselves to safety. But soon I will demand them.

 

4

Shortly before midnight, we leave the valley.

I'm strapped into a passenger seat in the main cabin of the hovercraft, at the two-person round table behind the cockpit. Fiona sits across from me, nervously chewing on her lip, ready to jump up if we run into any mechanical problems in flight. Darren is at one of the other tables. Sandy is still in surgery, and there's been no word from Uma or the doctor yet as to how she's doing.

I grip my armrests tightly, bracing myself against the jolting of the ship from the stormy turbulence outside. Thick snow swirls in the darkness beyond the cockpit window, making it impossible to see more than a few yards ahead of us. The defroster is on high so the window won't freeze over. We're relying on flight instruments to follow a clear flight path to the Pipeline, and to pick up the signal of any approaching raiders. I hate not knowing where the swarm went after we lost it in the storm. It could be on the other side of the Surface by now or a hundred miles ahead of us, flying in our direction.

Beechy's keeping us close to the ground, in case we need to make a quick landing. I'm glad he and Skylar are the ones up in the copilot seats; they're the only pilots I'd trust to get us through a storm like this.

“Bird one, ease off thrusters.” Skylar's voice comes through my ear-comm, speaking to one of the X-wing pilots. “You're going too fast.”

“This is bird one,” the pilot answers through the static. “Copy that. Slowing down.”

Sam paces behind Skylar and Beechy with his arms folded, the slight limp still visible in his leg. Beneath his stony gaze, I can sense his nervousness.

I spoke to him a couple minutes before take-off. He intercepted me on my way to my seat, acting as if he were ordering me to carry out a task for him. But the words he said under his breath were far less kind.

“Don't make the mistake of thinking you're safe, just because I pardoned you and your friends until we reach the Core,” he said. “You might've convinced Lieutenant Dean to argue on your behalf, but I'm still the commander of this ship. I could throw you out the air-lock if I wanted. So, I need you to understand something.” He took a step closer to me, his eyes cold as ever. “If you or any of the rebels make any move to defy my commands, I will strand all of you on the Surface. I doubt you'd last more than a few days before you'd freeze to death. And I will personally make sure you have no way of calling for help or returning to the Core.”

The smile he gave me was a vicious one. Before I could say anything in response, he turned away to answer Skylar, calling him up to the cockpit.

It was likely a ploy to scare me; I doubt he has the guts to really throw all my friends and me off the ship, especially with the Mardenite army so close. He wouldn't give up bodies that could help defend the rest of his squadron. Still, I glare at his back and grip the barrel of the gun tucked out of sight under my holster belt. I wish I'd shot him in a better spot than his leg back at headquarters. If only I'd crippled him enough that he was no longer fit for command of the ship.

My fingers brush something hard inside the zippered pouch in my holster belt. Three thin, tubelike objects—the three syringes full of Charlie's serum. The ones he gave to me with instructions to readminister the serum to myself every twenty-four hours, before it wore off. I'd forgotten about them. I should get rid of them before someone, namely Sam, finds out I have them and tries to use them to subdue me or any of my friends.

But as I stare at Sam pacing up in the cockpit, an idea begins taking shape. If I could get him alone, if I had the opportunity, I could inject him with all three of the syringes. One dosage is powerful enough to trap a person—even one with a mind strong enough to resist control—inside his body for twenty-four hours. And I doubt Sam has the strongest mind of the lot. Three dosages at one time could be enough to kill him, or at least knock him unconscious for several days. And if I could do it quickly, when no one else was around, it would be a lot less messy than shooting him, and a lot harder for someone to find out I was responsible.

I'd just have to make sure he didn't wake up.

The sliding door opens at the other end of the cabin, and I quickly drop my hand away from the zippered pouch. Dean walks into the room. He was downstairs closing the air-lock doors when we took off. He moves swiftly down the aisle between the passenger seats, his eyes meeting mine for a fraction of a second longer than seems normal.

Shifting his gaze away from me, Dean joins Sam in the cockpit. “How are we looking?”

“We're on course to reach the Pipeline in twenty minutes,” Beechy says off comm, tilting the nose of the hovercraft up to avoid the mountain pass slowly becoming visible ahead of us in the snowstorm. “Should be a relatively smooth ride.”

“No sign of raiders yet,” Skylar says. “All the birds are still with us.”

I can't see the X-wings out the cockpit window, but I know they're flying in tight formation with the hovercraft.

There's no point in staring out the window the whole time. It won't get us to the Pipeline any faster.

To distract myself, I look around the cabin. About half the passenger seats are filled, since only seven of Sam's soldiers remained on the hovercraft, while the rest split up among the X-wings. All the soldiers look as tense as I feel. I'd expect them to be more used to dealing with scenarios like this, since they've been training for war all their lives. Then again, an army of aliens hasn't invaded Kiel in any of their lifetimes.

“Any return transmissions from the Core yet?” Sam asks.

“Still none,” Skylar says.

Sam grinds his teeth together. “Try re-sending the emergency transmission.”

“Copy that.”

Across the table, Fiona shakes her head in disbelief. “The fleet must be generating a huge electromagnetic field for it to be causing this much interference. We're lucky other flight equipment hasn't started malfunctioning.”

“Do you think the Mardenites are targeting our radio signal?” I ask.

“If they are, they're doing a poor job of it, since I got our ear-comms working again. All I had to do was secure the grounding of the wires connected to the transmitter box.” Fiona's eyes drift past me, staring off into space. “No, if the Mardenites are targeting anything, it's some other electrical equipment. And our transmitters are just being affected as well.”

“Or maybe our transmission actually went through,” I say. “And the Core is just not responding.”

“Yeah. That's crossed my mind too.”

“Fifteen minutes to the Pipeline,” Beechy says up in the cockpit. “Flight path still looks clear ahead.”

I look back out the window, at the snow swirling through the darkness. If we can make it just a bit farther, we'll escape the storm as well as the raiders. The war won't be over, but once we're belowground we'll be out of immediate danger.

“Clementine,” Fiona says.

I turn back to her. “Yeah?”

She hesitates. “Can you tell me something?”

“Anything.”

“How many other Alliance rebels have been captured?”

My stomach twists. I wish she'd asked an easier question. “I don't know for sure. When I was captured, Charlie had taken three others prisoner: Beechy, Skylar, and Logan. But Charlie forced Beechy to hand over a list of people working for the Alliance. That was last night. Charlie said he was going to put out the call for their capture to all of his soldiers in the lower sectors.”

“Was my sister on the list?” Fiona's voice is small, nervous.

She means Paley, her twin. They were inseparable whenever I saw them at the Alliance compound, spending their days fixing engine parts and refueling ships in the flight port. But the two of them were forced apart when the Alliance infiltrated the lower sectors to launch our uprising against Commander Charlie and the other Developers. Paley went with the crew led by Beechy; Fiona stayed behind to keep headquarters running. She and the others who stayed behind were supposed to join us at a certain point and help us invade the Core, but nothing went according to plan.

I twist my mouth, trying to recall the list of names. It wasn't complete, not by a long shot. It gave me hope Beechy was fighting his injection too. “I don't think she was.”

Fiona exhales in relief. “Thank stars. Ever since she left, I've been terrified something horrible had happened to her.”

“Last I heard, she was working undercover in Crust,” I say. “She'd helped blow up the quarantine facility.”

Fiona smiles proudly. “Guess we'll have a lot of catching up to do when we see each other again.”

I smile back, but I can't help wondering:
Will
they see each other again? Even if we make it back to the Core, Crust will be far away.

There's a loud beeping up in the cockpit. A sharp intake of air from Skylar.

“Enemy sighting,” she says. “Raiders are approaching from the southeast.”

Both Fiona and I snap our attention to the window. I search frantically for the shapes of warships on the horizon. The snow is starting to clear a little outside, but I can still see hardly anything in the darkness. The lights beaming from our ship fall on the faint figures of trees below us on the mountainside. Of course I wouldn't see any raiders; we're heading north, so they must be approaching us from behind.

Sam takes two strides forward, leaning over Skylar to see the radar screen. “Can you tell how many?”

“Seven.”

“How far away?” Dean asks.

“Three miles.”

“Turn us northwest,” Sam says. “Let's see if they follow.”

Skylar quickly relays the order to the X-wing pilots through the ship-comm, while Beechy rolls the hovercraft to the right, tilting the nose upward to take us higher in the sky.

I dig my nails into the cushion of my seat and stare at the snowstorm. I count the seconds as they tick by in silence.

Twenty-seven.

Twenty-eight.

Twenty-nine.

“They're flocking this way,” Skylar says, a tremor in her voice. “They've locked onto our signal.”

They know we're here. They're following us.

We're about to be under attack.

 

5

“We need to lose them,” Sam says.

Even if they don't catch us, if we can't get rid of them before we reach the Pipeline, they'll follow us underground. We'll lead them straight to the lower sectors. The underground cities didn't exist the last time we faced the Mardenites in combat, so those sectors are our biggest advantage right now, our strongest defense. We need to hold that advantage as long as possible; we need to keep the raiders from discovering the tunnel entrance.

Up in the cockpit, a look passes between Beechy and Skylar, a silent, uneasy conversation.

“Should we?” Skylar asks.

“Might as well give it a shot,” Beechy says, unbuckling.

The two of them quickly switch seats, and Skylar takes over the main flight controls. She inhales a deep breath and focuses, switching on her ear-comm speaker again. “Pilots, do you copy?”

The static is getting worse. We're losing the radio signal again; there's too much interference with the raiders closing in. But the pilots' voices still come through, one after another, saying they copy.

“We're gonna pull a Mad Jack and lose these bastards,” Skylar says. “Birds one and two, on my left. Three, four, five, stay on my right. On my mark.” She grabs hold of the control clutch.

I double-check my seat belt is secure around my waist and shoulders. I have no idea what a “Mad Jack” is, but it sounds like the flight could get rough. My gun is digging into my stomach, so I tuck it into the actual holster.

“Now!” Skylar says.

I barely have time to grab my armrests again before the hovercraft swerves to the left. The force of gravity presses me back against my seat. Out the window, a mountain peak comes into view through the snow and the fog. Skylar rolls our ship farther to the left, taking us around the other side of the peak. For an instant I see one of the X-wings with a red light flashing on its right wing, but then it falls behind us again.

As we speed past the peak, Skylar abruptly turns the hovercraft in the other direction. My right arm bangs against my seat, and a sharp pain shoots through the muscle beneath the bandage. I clench my teeth, trying to ignore it.

Bright moonlight peeks through the falling snow. I can glimpse the full moon beyond a mountain ahead of us, rising higher in the sky. Before it, the acid shield shimmers in the darkness. But I don't see any of the Mardenite battle stations; they must've passed out of sight in their orbit.

Skylar tilts the nose of our hovercraft toward the ground, and we speed for a low pass between the mountains ahead of us. I think we're circling back in the direction we came from. I wish I could see more of the flight panels up in the cockpit, particularly the radar screen. Then I'd have a better idea where the raider swarm is in relation to our ships, and whether or not we're losing them.

This maneuver needs to work. Right now they only have seven ships to take on our five, but I wouldn't be surprised if they have more nearby. There were at least twenty in the swarm we saw heading for these mountains earlier tonight. And we have no way to call for backup, no one close by to save us.

I'm not ready to die tonight. I wouldn't have a chance to tell Logan how sorry I am for hurting him while I was under the serum's control. I'd never be able to hug him again, or kiss him again, or tell him I love him.

Maybe I should feel lucky we found our way back to each other for a short time. Months ago, after I was picked for Extraction, I never expected to see him again. I feared he'd be replaced long before I could find a way back to the Surface. But we beat the odds, and we had a week in the safe confines of the Alliance compound to wake up beside each other every morning and know the comfort of a life that had only ever been a dream. Still, it wasn't enough. We deserve more days; we deserve more weeks; we deserve more years than we've had.