Rebellion (4 page)

“Copy that.”

“Yessir.”

“Right away.”

Through the window, one flight pod lifts off the ground and makes for the tunnel leading out of the facility. A second ship follows, and a third. Logan’s on one of those ships. If there are other enemy ships out there, he will be the first to face them.

Please don’t die on me, Logan.

“Derrick and Sloan, hang back and await further orders,” Beechy says. “Skylar, follow me. We’ll intercept the ship in the southern tunnel.”

“Got it, Captain,” Skylar says. “Hang tight, Clementine.”

She pulls the control yoke back. I grip the edges of my seat as we lift into the air. My palms are already sweaty. I’m not used to how cramped a two-person jet feels compared to a flight pod.

The jet rumbles beneath me as we speed after Beechy’s pod into the entrance tunnel. I stare at the blue lights dotting the ceiling until they blur.

I know I practiced this earlier, but I don’t feel ready. I feel like I’m right back on the spaceship with Beechy, fumbling for the controls and praying we’ll make it to the moon before the bomb explodes.

There will be no innocent deaths this time, no repeats of the past. I won’t let what happened to Oliver happen again.

Straight ahead, the tunnel branches in two directions: one heading north, one heading south. North is the side of the mountain I entered the first time I came here, when I saw the barrier with the words
KIMO FACILITY
written across it in faded paint.

We head in the opposite direction, south. A set of double security doors zips open as we approach, controlled by Sandy in the command center. They close behind us once we’re through. The dark steel walls on either side of us blur as we zoom past them.

“The ship’s not on radar yet,” Skylar says. “Must be going slow.”

The only ship on my control panel’s radar screen is the one careening through the tunnel ahead of us—Beechy’s pod.

“Make sure your guns are prepped,” he says over comm.

“Copy that.”

Turning my attention back to the control panel, I flip the red switch that should initiate the sequence. A target monitor lowers from the ceiling.

I wrap my palms around the control clutches. The
beep-beep-beep-beep-beep
of the system fills my ears. Circles appear on the green grid, showing me where the guns are aimed. Right now I could hit Beechy’s pod if I wanted. If I accidentally pressed the clutch buttons, a stream of fire would hit his ship and knock him off course.

I’m not sure I trust myself with these controls. But I need to calm down. I know how to do this.

“Weapons system engaged.”

“Good job,” Skylar says, glancing sideways so I can catch the small smile on her lips through her helmet. “You’ve got this, Clementine.”

The radar on my dashboard still shows only our jet and Beechy’s pod. Where’s the other ship? This tunnel is long, but it can’t be far ahead.

I pray there’s only one ship. Charlie’s full force could pummel us with gunfire and rip apart our hulls, along with the walls of our facility. His ships could destroy us.

“Enemy contact,” Skylar says.

My eyes flit to the radar once more, and my heartbeat quickens. There’s a new dot on the radar. A new ship ahead of us in the tunnel, heading our way.

“If there’s only one, it’s likely to try to run,” Beechy says.

If
there’s only one.

I grip the control clutches tighter as Skylar maneuvers to close the space between us and Beechy’s ship. I stare at the moving dot on the radar, begging it to turn around.

“It’s not running,” Skylar says.

Beechy’s pod veers to the left and the enemy ship comes into view at the far end of the tunnel. A sleek, silver hovercraft, small in our sights but growing bigger by the second. There are burn marks on its hull, as Sandy said.

It’s not turning back.

“Buck, Harriet, Jensen, are there any enemy ships on your radar?” Beechy asks.

Buck’s voice crackles into my helmet: “No, sir. We have zero enemy contacts.”

“This is Jensen. I second that.”

The symbol of the Core—a bronze full moon—is painted on the left wing of the enemy hovercraft. We have the same symbol on our hovercrafts in the flight port, but this one isn’t ours. If the pilots on board were our men, they’d have the proper ID code to show up as friendlies on our radar and connect to our comm system.

But if this ship isn’t ours and it didn’t bring backup, why isn’t it fleeing?

“What should I do?” I ask.

“We should question the pilots on board,” Skylar says.

“Hold positions,” Beechy says. “Clementine, fire past the ship when I give the command. Let’s see if it surrenders.”

I grip my control clutches tighter. We’re well within firing range.

The green circles on my target grid move this way and that as Skylar maneuvers our jet. The circles keep passing over the nose of the hovercraft, but I’m not aiming for the nose. I don’t want to injure those on board if they might surrender, if they might not be the enemy we expected.

“Fire past the ship,” Beechy says again.

Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep—

The target circles keep jumping onto the hovercraft; I can’t keep my hands steady. I’m afraid if I nudge the firing button, I’ll hit the ship.

I feel like I’m suffocating inside my helmet. “I can’t do this.”

“You can,” Skylar says. “Just aim and squeeze the clutch like you practiced.”

My breaths are coming too fast. My vision blurs around the edges as I squeeze the clutch with sweaty palms.

Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep—

I blink and I’m not in the copilot seat anymore; I’m on a hard, metal table in Karum prison, my arms and legs chained so I can’t move. Commander Charlie looms over me in the near darkness.

With a gleam in his eyes, he steps forward and wraps his fingers around my neck. I struggle against him, but he is too strong. He squeezes harder and harder. His fingers are knives and he’s cutting into my throat.

Stop,
I choke.
Stop, stop, stop—

“Stop!” Skylar yells inside my helmet.

Her voice snaps me back to reality. My hand is frozen on the clutch, squeezing it hard.

Laser fire streams from our ship’s guns, pummeling the hovercraft ahead of us. It shudders and tilts sideways. It’s going to crash-land.

“Clementine, let go!” Skylar screams.

Panicked, I tear my fingers off the clutch, but it’s too late.

The hovercraft crashes and skids across the steel floor of the tunnel. It takes centuries to stop.

When the screeching sound dies, the ship sits in silence, engulfed in smoke erupting from its damaged hull. My pounding heartbeat fills my ears like thunder endlessly roaring.

What did I just do?

4

Skylar puts us down on the ground near the rubble, beside Beechy’s pod. The jet cover lifts above me.

“What the hell was that?” Skylar says, unbuckling.

She looks at me for an explanation. But how can I admit what happened? I lost control and let Commander Charlie intimidate me, though he is far, far away.

Shaking her head, Skylar climbs over the edge of her seat and hops out of the jet.

“Sandy, get a medic team here immediately,” Beechy says over comm, his voice rough and angry as he and his copilot climb out of their pod. His eyes find mine and then move swiftly away. There’s something sad in them. I’ve disappointed him.

I’m sorry
. The words freeze on my lips and I don’t know how to force them out.

BOOM!

Fire bursts from the hull of the damaged hovercraft. My hands fly up to cover my head, and I cry out instinctively.

Skylar and Beechy ducked too. They’re okay, thank the stars.

When the smoke clears, the enemy ship is in flames. The engine must’ve exploded.

Beechy curses over comm. “We need to get the pilots out of there!” he shouts, running forward.

I need to get down there and help them. I need to unfreeze and face what I did.

I shot down a ship that didn’t even threaten us. I might’ve killed everyone inside—people who might be innocent, not allies of Charlie. After all, why would he send someone here with orders not to shoot at us?

The whir of engines reaches my ears over the loud crackling of the flames among the wreckage. Three flight pods arrive from the direction of the tunnel’s southern entrance. They must be the ones who circled around from the other side, as Beechy directed them.

A fourth ship—the medic team—arrives in a pod from the flight port. The team rushes onto the ground as soon as the ship lands.

If I don’t move, everyone’s going to wonder why I’m not helping. They’re going to realize this was all my fault.

And they’ll be right.

Just do it.
I climb out of my seat and slide off the side of the jet. My feet hit the ground as Logan appears near the wreckage.

He barely looks at the flames; his worried eyes go straight to me. He limps past Skylar and Beechy and the medics, who are prying open the door of the hovercraft.

“What happened?” he asks. “I heard Skylar yelling your name over comm. Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m fine. Nothing happened. It … was an accident.”

He stops before he reaches me, confused. “An accident?”

I use the first excuse that pops into my head: “Our weapons malfunctioned. They wouldn’t stop firing.”

The lie tastes like acid in my mouth.

Logan presses his lips together. He knows I’m not telling the whole story.

“Bring the stretcher closer!” Beechy shouts.

Over Logan’s shoulder, Skylar and Beechy haul a passenger out of the hovercraft. The woman’s clothes are all but shreds. There’s something familiar about her, but I can’t make out her face—she’s covered in soot.

“Cady,” Skylar says in a broken voice. “Oh, stars, no.”

Cady.
My hand flies to my mouth.

Cady, who helped me escape from Karum. Cady, who fought beside me the day I flew to the moon.

The medics lift her limp body onto the stretcher. Cady’s eyes aren’t open; she doesn’t seem to be breathing. Her black hair has burned away. What skin is visible through the tatters of her uniform is charred, red and raw like meat meant for frying.

Skylar pushes one of the medics aside and tries to resuscitate her. “Come on, come on, come back!”

“She’s gone,” Beechy says, pulling her back. “Sky, it’s too late.”

Gone.

My fault.

I’m going to be sick. Turning away, I hurry around the Davara jet and throw up the hash beans from this morning.

When I’m finished, I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. My hands tremble a little, and I ball them up to make them stop. I can’t have a panic attack, not now.

“You okay?” Logan asks behind me.

I turn to see him standing a few feet away. “Fine.”

He hesitates like he’s going to ask me something more. I can guess well enough:
Did you shoot the ship down?

“We should see if they need help,” I say, pushing past him before he can speak. I’m not ready for him to force the truth out of me.

The medics cover Cady’s body with a sheet and carry her back to their ship. Skylar calms down enough to help Beechy and his copilot pull another passenger out of the wreckage and lift him onto a second stretcher.

I don’t recognize him. He’s a young man not much older than me, his blond hair falling out of a ponytail. He’s wearing the dark armor of Surface officials, but he is covered in blood. His chest rises and falls, so he must not be dead. But his eyes won’t open, and his left arm seems broken.

I know there are a few Surface officials working undercover for the Alliance, but I have a hard time believing it. I’ve had too much experience with officials who taunt and hurt and kill children without remorse.

Beechy seems worried too; he must not recognize him either. But all he says to the medics is, “Take him to the sick bay.”

Whoever the boy is, he’s already incapacitated, and we need him to talk.

There’s one more survivor amid the wreckage. The pilot.

Logan joins me again and slides his fingers between mine as the medics heave the pilot out onto another stretcher. He’s awake but in shock and retching, his face stained with grease and tears. There’s a deep gash in his abdomen where a piece of metal lodged inside him.

He is another member of the Alliance.

“Darren, stay with me,” Beechy says.

He presses a cloth to Darren’s wound to keep him from bleeding out while the medic secures a safety helmet around Darren’s head in case there’s any acid drifting through the tunnel.

“Where am I?” Darren asks, his voice small and cracking.

“You’re back at headquarters,” Beechy says. “Do you remember how you got here? Can you tell me what happened?”

“We did what you said. We found out Charlie’s plan.” The helmet muffles Darren’s voice. “But everything got screwed up. Our ship broke down when we were trying to leave. Mal helped us steal another—”

“Who’s Mal?”

“A good guy, an official. He saved us. Wants to fight the Developers too.”

“The young man in the uniform,” Logan says, more to himself than anyone.

I hope that’s who Darren means. I hope that official isn’t dangerous.

“He helped you steal a ship,” Beechy says. “And then?”

“It had a tracker on it.”

Jaw tensing, Beechy looks back at the wreckage of the hovercraft. There’s no way the tracker survived the explosion; there’s no part of the hull that isn’t burning, though some of our fighter pilots are working to put the fire out. But the ship wasn’t burning fifteen minutes ago. If Charlie’s men were keeping an eye on the tracker’s location, they know where the ship ended up.

They know where we’re hiding.

“Did you notice anyone following you here?” Skylar asks, hovering close behind Beechy.

Darren shakes his head, but I can’t tell if he’s responding to Skylar’s question or struggling against the pain. His eyes are streaming water.

Beechy stands, letting the medic take over pressing the cloth to Darren’s wound. “We need to get everyone back to headquarters. We need to evacuate.”