Rebels (28 page)

“Listen to me, okay?” she says, almost dropping to one knee.
I stare off into space, unmoving, collecting my thoughts. “We have to go. Now. You gotta come with me.” A sigh, her frustration increasing. “Get up, Livia. I need you to . . . just get up. I need you.
Please
.”

I turn to her sharply. “I hope you know what we're doing.”

◊  ◊  ◊

We move fast and low, crawling through the riggers' sleepers, remaining in the dark. Lex seems to know where she's going. “You always mark the exits,” she whispers. “Whenever you enter somewhere unfamiliar, that's the first thing you do.”

“But where are we going?”

“This is not the time for questions.”

Hep
, I think, slipping around a corner.
The gardener. He looked me in the eyes, then nothing at all.

The PCF pile into the hoister that will lift them to the top platform. They're huddled together, an unmoving mass of black silitex and aggression.

A few stay behind, keeping watch of the ground level. Hep's body lies at their feet.

◊  ◊  ◊

“Oh,” I say, shocked to find us standing over a second dead body, this one much larger. There's no time to think, let alone mourn Durley. I hardly knew him, yet he sacrificed himself for us. What am I to think of that? Were we worth it?

We've climbed all the way to the roof of the rig, where the winds are strong. That booster energy is all Lex is running on, and by now it's wearing thin. I'm not far behind. I can hear the hoister on its way up.

“Hep mentioned a craft, didn't he?” I say. “ ‘Big clunky rattler. Won't get you more than a few feet, though.' ”

“Well, won't help us much if it's a dud, will it?”

“It doesn't have to be
that
craft, does it?” I say.

Together we choose the patroller the farthest from the others. The pilot is still inside, watching a live feed of the op on his monitor panel.

“Confirmed,” he says. “One boy. Bad attitude. Anti-Indrithian Hate Speech. . . . Copy. Got a heads-up from the dead kid before we took him out. Seems the girls fled topside. One is PCF, but she turned. Team going after them right now.”

I draw the zinger. It's already humming.

“Quiet that thing!” Lex whispers harshly. “C'mon . . . what's a sword gonna do against a blaster?”

Plenty, just as it did to you
, I want to say, yet stop myself.
Egotistical, pretentious little girl
.
You still have much to learn of our world.

I head toward the pilot, Lex's disbelieving fury coming in waves from behind me.

I'm the soldier
, she's thinking, already braced to spring.
And now I will be forced to jump in and save you
.

The hoist has risen to the top. The doors are opening. The pilot is still fixated on his monitor.

Now there's a zinger blade to his chest.

“What the—”

I kick him in the gut and use his own weight against him to pull him out of the cabin and throw him to the ground. Two hard strikes and he's not speaking. I lean over, delicately removing his blaster.

I toss it underhand to Lex, having not even broken a sweat. “Well, are you coming or not?”

The hoist gate opens. The PCF spill out and the platform between us is vast and empty, but it won't stay that way.

Lex sits in the pilot's seat and I take the one next to her.

“Get it going!” I say.

One engine hums, then the next. “It takes time,” she says.

The PCF move quickly across the platform toward us. We cannot take them all.

Then from out of the nowhere, the riggers mount the sides of the platform. They crawl up through the gaps in the landing zone. They were already there, hiding and hanging underfoot just below the surface, ready and waiting to attack the unsuspecting PCF from every angle. They brandish pipes and tools fitted with spinning metal blades and drills made to crack granite.

Lex has the patroller in the air as the riggers engage, and they whoop loudly as the two groups break against each other. I'm glad we have risen above it. The violence sickens me. I can only hope the riggers have their justice.

◊  ◊  ◊

Lex works the control panel as though it's an extension of her hands. She's afraid of good-natured Veda, but this machine doesn't faze her. Nor does shooting into the sky at disarming speeds, apparently.

I clutch the arms of my seat, a shriek escaping.

“Strato, huh?” she says with a smile. Next to her is the pilot's backup blaster, which she surprised me by pulling from a compartment under his seat.

“Standard procedure,” she'd said, running her hand over the weapon lovingly, as though being reunited with a long-lost friend. Her good humor doesn't last long.

“He planned it,” she says. “Hep gave himself up to lead those PCF into the trap.” She sighs. “Durley, too.”

And they didn't mind dying
, I think,
just to make it happen.

“And now . . . the IHC?” I say.

“I already set the coordinates.”

I nod.

“Why would they die for us?” I say.

“I don't know.”

I think it probably wasn't for us. That their grudge was older and nastier than either of us can comprehend. Trouble has been festering between PCF and Riggers for a long time, and now it's turned into very real violence.

Lex and I rip through the sky, headed straight for the tallest, most magnificent building in the City of Indra. We don't talk. There's not much to say.

One is PCF, but she turned.

That's what the officer said. Right before Livia pulled him out of the patroller and left for the riggers to tear him into bloody pieces.

I was a cadet. Rock Bottom Patrol. I lived by my mission. I was never disloyal. The only ones who turned? The PCF. On me.

Now I'm right back where I started. Alone. Outside the outsiders.

Except for Livia, I guess. I got her whether I like it or not.

And I'll get Kane, even if it kills me.

I look at the airgirl next to me. She's clenches her teeth, scared of the ride.

I'll get Kane
, I think,
even if it kills both of us
.

◊  ◊  ◊

I'm pushing this PCF patroller to its limits. Probably doing serious damage to its engine, but it's worth it to see Livia practically hyperventilating.

Less than a day and the City of Indra has already changed. The glossy sheen has grown sinister. Even the light looks wrong now, like it's one spark from igniting. What we just saw, we can't unsee. Who's there left to trust? I can't even trust myself.

I pull up the High Council blueprints on the positioning monitor. The detainment center is just a few levels down from the High
Council halls. Cadets receive placements here. It's not an honor, but there are worse assignments.

“High security's a given,” I tell Livia, talking to her, but not really. Thinking my strategy out loud. She nods anyway.

We're about to infiltrate the most secure locale in all of Indra
, I think. We're defined by the impossible feats we attempt. Especially if they lead to our deaths.

“We have no other options if we want to find Kane,” Livia says.

I hate when she does that. Just full of herself, that's all. No mind reading in that. Girl thinks she's got all the answers.

“There's no
we
,” I tell her. “What do you care about Kane?” She doesn't respond. I'm having second thoughts. I could've booted her out at any passing island. “Look, you should back out. Right now. Before it's too late.” She won't look at me, but she'll hear me. “Tell them I held you captive. They'll buy it. I'll even hold one of these blasters to your head for the feed. You can make it to your island for evening rations. Be in your fancy sleeper by lights-out.”

“No,” she says intensely. Just like I knew she would. It's her pretty head, after all. Her right to part with it.

Of course, they'll go for my head first. But still.

“You had your little adventure, okay? But even with that rig chaos, it won't be long. They'll be onto us in—”

A high-pitched beep squeals through the cabin. “Craft 247 cleared for touchdown on IHC landing pad.”

“Too late,” she says. “Perhaps they don't know—”

“That we hijacked a craft? Of course they do. They've seen the feed by now and they'll be looking for answers.”

“Well,” she says calmly, “what do you suppose our next action shall be?”

She's gripping her new blaster before I even say the word.

“Give them what they want.”

I've always wanted to see the New Indra Gardens in all their magnificence atop the Independent High Council building. Only I never imagined seeing them quite like this.

We glide toward the landing area, and I can make out a dozen figures on the heliopad hovering beside it. With only a narrow walkway connecting them, the heliopad seems to float in the air.

“They figure we have nowhere else to go,” Lex says. “We land and they'll have us surrounded.”

We're even closer now. I can make out their blasters; definitely unfriendly.

“What shall we do?” I ask.

“Land, of course.” Lex is grossly determined. She takes a beating, literally, and pushes for more. She probably thinks it's her turn to hand one out. “Coming in now. Steady and smooth, just like I taught myself.”

“You taught yourself?”

“I know the rules. Far be it for me to break some.”

The engine squeals.

My head whips back as we accelerate forward. We slam down on the heliopad with a horrendous metal-on-metal screech, our bodies plastered against our seats.

The PCF scatter. It appears they're not prepared for the unexpected. We may have a shot yet.

We blow by them and keep going. Accelerating right into the New Indra Gardens.

◊  ◊  ◊

Gardens showcase the utter mastery of nature's true beauty—or as much as we've been able to replicate. The New Indra Gardens are for Indrithians of the Utmost Importance; those select few who make the Great Indra so very great. Waslo, I believe, sees them daily, as my father once did. A trained, high-level garden crew maintains them at all hours. They are like insects—fortunate, because there are none here to aid in growth and pollination, yet at all times the flowers are at the peak of their bloom, fragrant and vibrant and strong. They grow in concentric circles, and if you followed the pathway to the center you'd find an ancient marble fountain, caressed by lush vines, eternally flowing, upon which a winged victory perches as an exemplar of Indra's perfection.

“The gardens,” says
The Book of Indra
, “are the epitome of pristine, untouched beauty.”

We speed into the expanse of programmed vegetation—uprooting trees, slamming through sculpted bushes, exploding greenery and flowers all around us.

Next to me, Lex wrestles the controls, trying to break our momentum. I know, within moments, we will fly over the edge, plummeting from the very top of the tallest structure in the City of Indra.

This must be the end
, I think, just as my body heaves forward. We're caught in a violent roll. The metal hull groans as it's impacted and I fear at any moment we'll be crushed. My insides are shaken and I grip the armrests for some semblance of control in this violent, grinding landing.

I must have blacked out, because when I open my eyes I'm not quite sure how or when we stopped.

I sit there, unmoving, in the disconcerting silence. I look over and
Lex is clutching her seat, eyes wide, and I can feel every bit of her shock. I need not sense her, for these are also my feelings. For once, we're perfectly in synch.

“Did you feel that?” she asks.

“Are you attempting humor? Of course I felt my own death calling.”

“No . . . the drops.”

I don't answer, for the sudden pounding speaks volumes. We both look up, the sky visible through the newly ripped hole in the roof above us. A cascade of water greets us, the torrent quickly drenching us.

“Out! Now!” screams Lex, and we open our doors and scramble, falling onto the grass. Disoriented, I watch, awestruck, as the water keeps falling.

“The fountain,” says Lex next to me. “The fountain is all that stopped us.” Her voice is gravely serious, as though this is a great philosophical revelation.

Then she begins to laugh.

She shakes her wet hair, the spray flying everywhere, and laughs hysterically. I can't help joining her. We're being hunted, yet we laugh like truly demented people.
They will take us to Sunrise Retreat
, I think,
and that might well be the correct decision
.

Perhaps we laugh because we just destroyed a legendary fountain and garden, or because we're soaking and only growing wetter.

Perhaps we laugh simply because we're not dead.

A crowd of Indrithians stares at us with the maximum amount of shock they can display without breaking social contracts. I'm sure they would try to capture, restrain, or contain us if they didn't pay numerous PCF to do their dirty work for them. Oh, I'm sure these people loved their gardens, and my eyes scan over our path of wreckage, the laughter dying down.

“That felt good,” Lex says, holding up her blaster. She nods, seeing that mine is already in hand. “C'mon then. Let's go get Kane.”

We race through the ruined gardens as high-pitched alarms sound. Man, we—I, I guess—did some bad things. After we pass through the uprooted shrubs and fallen trees, petals and leaves left now to the mercy of Indra's artificial winds, I start to enjoy my first time in a real garden. I'm overwhelmed by its size and beauty, and if I looked back I'd start to feel bad for the devastation. My boots stick in the mud that's everywhere, thanks to the fountain. Beads dribble down my silitex. I have no reason to look back.