The Always War (13 page)

Another question started growing in Tessa’s mind, but she held off asking it until everything was back in order on the plane.

“How did we manage to fly across the border without being shot down in the first place?” she asked, as she climbed back in the door. “When we flew into enemy territory, I mean?”

“The guards were only watching out for the other direction,” Gideon said. “And—I guess we got lucky.”

“We’ll get lucky again,” Tessa said. “We will.”

Neither Gideon nor Dek answered her.

They took off into a clear blue sky so achingly beautiful that Tessa wished they could just keep going up and up and up forever. But they had to level off; they had to turn toward the east.

Down below, Lake Mish sparkled in the late-afternoon sunlight. There was a flash of land, green and seemingly untouched, and then the water came back into sight.

“Lake Mish goes on
this far
?” Tessa gasped.

“No, that’s another lake,” Gideon said. “There are five of them: Mish, Perry Ore, Ree, Terry O, and You’re Wrong.”

“‘You’re Wrong’?” Tessa repeated. “Somebody named a lake You’re Wrong?”

“I think it might have had a different name a long time ago, before the war,” Gideon said. “But, you know, this is what we’re fighting over. The water. So this tradition started, whenever one side took the lake back from the other, they’d taunt, ‘You’re wrong. You’re wrong.’ The name stuck.”

“Back and forth,” Dek muttered, adjusting her seat belt. “Back and forth.”

Tessa just gaped at both of them. It had never occurred to her that there might be a reason behind the war, something the two sides were actually fighting over. The war just was.

“We’re fighting over
water
?” she asked weakly.

Gideon nodded, his eyes focused on the computer screen.

“Yeah. Westam ran out of water. Eastam still had a lot,” he
said. “So Westam attacked. And the war’s been going on ever since.”

“
I
heard the lakes and rivers in the war zone are probably all so contaminated now that they’re no good to anyone,” Dek murmured. “It’s crazy!”

Tessa sat back in her seat.

“Why didn’t I know this?” she asked. “Why don’t they teach this in school? Why am I so stupid?”

Dek glanced at her.

“Well, your school’s probably designed to make you stupid. Most of them are set up that way. They don’t want people asking questions,” she said.

“Sorry
I
wasn’t smart enough to qualify for the military academy,” Tessa muttered.

“Really … the military academy’s no better,” Gideon said, pacing behind her. “They didn’t want us asking questions there, either. They just wanted us following orders.”

His pacing was making Tessa nervous. She was already nervous enough.

“Aren’t you going to tie yourself to the column again when we get close to the border?” she asked.

“No,” Gideon said. “I need to be free to jump out the door if I have to.”

Tessa saw that he’d already strapped a parachute on his back.

“You and I have eject buttons on our seats,” Dek explained. “You hear anything hitting our plane, anything at all, you hit that button immediately. You and your seat will shoot up in the air and then the parachute will come out of your seat cushion.”

Tessa wondered if she’d be able to do that when the time
came. She’d never been good with her hands. Under pressure she’d probably hit the right side of her seat when the button was on the left, or the left side when it was on the right or—which side was it on again?

She looked down. The button glowed red on her right armrest, under a plastic cover that she’d have to slide back and out of the way.

“We should be able to see the border in five minutes,” Gideon announced behind her. “Four minutes thirty seconds. Four minutes …”

Tessa tensed, straining her eyes to see far into the distance on the computer screen. Then she looked back at the eject button, reassuring herself that it was still there.

I don’t want to die
echoed in her head.
I don’t want to die.

The words were still urgent, but there was something calmer now about her silent pleas. She’d had that moment of communion with Gideon, taking turns with him in danger. She hadn’t felt like his equal, exactly, but she’d felt … worthy. And she’d seen the grass waving in the wind; she’d seen lakes like glass gleaming in the sun.

Who was she kidding? None of that made her feel ready to die. It made her want to live
more.

“Three minutes to the border,” Gideon continued with his countdown. “Two minutes thirty seconds …”

Tessa went back to straining her eyes staring at the computer screen. Trees … trees … no planes yet … no missiles either …

“What?” Gideon said. “How could they have changed the boundaries of the border
today
?”

Tessa wanted to ask him if he thought they’d moved the border closer or farther away. But there was no time. Because the plane swerved suddenly, almost as if a giant hand had grabbed it and jerked it off its regular path.

Out of the corner of her eye Tessa saw Dek sliding back the plastic cover from her armrest and plunging her finger toward the red button beneath.

“Tessa, now! Eject!” Dek screamed. “Gideon! The door!”

Tessa fumbled, her hands clumsy and shaking. She had to use both hands to slide the plastic cover back; her finger slipped off the button the first time she tried to hit it. But she tried again, slamming the eject button down as hard as she possibly could.

Nothing happened.

Tessa thought she’d done something wrong—
Of course I’d mess up this, too
, she thought.
Can’t even press a button properly.

But then she noticed that Dek’s seat hadn’t budged either. Dek was hitting the eject button on her armrest again and again and again, and screaming out, “Come on! Come on! Eject!”

And Gideon was over by the door, pounding on the latch there just as doggedly—and failing just as completely.

“Alert!” a mechanical-sounding voice called from the computer. “You are hereby put on notice that all control of this plane has been transferred to the Eastam military. No system will function without our permission.”

Dek kept pounding on her eject button.

Gideon slumped against the wall.

“It’s no use,” he said in a dead voice. “They’re not going to let us escape.”

“Then—we hide!” Dek exclaimed. “Come on, Tessa! Into the closet!”

She already had her seat belt off and was halfway out of her chair when the mechanical voice sounded again.

“Lieutenant-Pilot Thrall!” the voice boomed. “Please confirm presence of two civilian passengers—Tessa Stilfin and Dekaterina Pratel. Is that correct?”

“Dekaterina?” Tessa repeated numbly. “Who’s … Oh—
Dek
?”

She stared at Dek’s spiky hair and ragged, oversized clothes, which were now filthy as well after all Dek’s work on the plane engine and with the fuel tanks. Applying the fancy name Dekaterina to Dek seemed so much like a mistake that Tessa almost forgot that her own name had been called out, too.

“Shh,” Dek whispered to Tessa. Then she turned to Gideon and commanded, “Lie.”

Gideon gave a minimal shrug, barely bothering to move his shoulders up and down.

“They already know,” he said. “They’ve got cameras. Out there.” He pointed toward the windows. “They can see in well enough to identify all of us. You think it’s going to matter if I tell the truth or a lie? They can hear us too.” He looked at the computer screen and muttered, “Yes. Presence of two civilians confirmed.”

Dek remained half up and half down, as if considering all of this.

“Please resume all seat belt usage,” the mechanical voice said. “Dekaterina Pratel, please return to your seat.”

Dek sat, a stunned look on her face.

“There are only two seat belts and three people,” Tessa said. “What are you going to do about that?”

Stupid, stupid, stupid,
she told herself. Why try to antagonize the military when even Dek was taking a sit-down-and-shut-up approach?

Because Gideon isn’t going to take care of himself,
she thought.
So someone else has to.

“Lieutenant-Pilot Thrall, you are instructed to tie yourself to the center column,” the mechanical voice said. “That is an order.”

Without a word Gideon pulled the parachute from his back and refashioned the straps into a makeshift belt, lashing himself to the center column.

Nobody spoke as the plane sped on.

They can see us. They can hear us. What good would talking do?
Tessa wondered.

Still, she started trying to catch the gaze of Dek or Gideon, hoping one of them could convey in a glance,
We’re going to be all right; I’ve got everything figured out,
or
I’ll watch out for you,
or even just,
At least we’re still alive; at least we’re in this together
. But Gideon had his eyes closed. And Dek was staring intently at the computer screen and the instrument panel, observing every change in altitude and velocity. Several times she even reached out for the controls, drawing back her hand only when the controls jerked themselves out of her grasp.

After the fifth or sixth time Dek tried this—proving yet again that she couldn’t change anything—the plane began to angle gently downward all by itself.

“We’re going to land?” Dek murmured. “Where?”

Behind her, tied to the column, Gideon answered without opening his eyes.

“Headquarters,” he said. “Military headquarters.”

“What will they do to us?” Tessa asked, and she was ashamed that her voice came out in a panicky squeak.

Gideon just shook his head. Dek went back to staring.

The plane began to drop out of the sky so rapidly that Tessa had to tell herself,
They wouldn’t crash us into the ground on purpose. If nothing else, they wouldn’t want to damage the plane. Would they?

“And I thought the autopilot emergency landing was rough!” Dek murmured. She raised her voice. “Hello, out there! Don’t you know you have to land planes differently with people on board?”

The plane seemed to hover in the air for a long moment before angling downward again. Now Tessa felt like a feather floating gently on a breeze.

“Thank you,” Dek muttered.

Gideon stayed silent, his face as pale and sweaty as when he’d run from receiving the medal of honor.

And then, before Tessa knew it, they were on the ground. The plane pulled up to a stop and the engine clicked off. The door sprang open.

Dek was looking back at Gideon.

“I always think there’s more dignity in walking out to meet
your fate under your own power, rather than being dragged off in chains,” she said. “Don’t you?”

For a moment Tessa thought Gideon hadn’t even heard Dek. But then he leaned forward and began doggedly picking at the knots in the rope tied around him.

Tessa eased her own seat belt off. She felt antsy and tense. What happened to people who stole airplanes from the military? What happened to people who sneaked out into enemy territory—and then came back?

Tessa didn’t have the slightest idea, because she’d never heard of anybody doing such a thing. Should she beg and plead and say,
Look, I never meant to do anything wrong. I didn’t know where we were going. I didn’t know the plane was stolen?

Or would that just make Gideon and Dek look guiltier?

Two men and two women in light blue uniforms stepped up to the door of the airplane.

“We will escort you to the general’s office,” one of the men said.

Tessa saw the contrast between their cheap-looking uniforms and the heavy, stiff cloth of Gideon’s uniform. She decided that these four were low-level flunkies, not anyone who would be making decisions. She tried to read in their faces some hint of what they thought was going to happen to her and Gideon and Dek, but their expressions were blank.

They probably don’t know any more than I do,
Tessa thought.

Gideon finished untying his knots and silently turned to follow one of the men. Dek and then Tessa trailed after him. The uniformed women walked on either side of them, and the other man walked behind them.

Like a walking cage,
Tessa thought.

She couldn’t see any sign that the four escorts were carrying weapons, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t. Anyway, she was sure that the hallway they stepped into had cameras and listening devices. If the military had been able to see and hear what Tessa, Gideon, and Dek were doing on the airplane, they could certainly see and hear everything in their own headquarters.

The hall led into another hall, and then another one. Tessa gave up trying to keep track of the pattern of intersections and corners and curves. Maybe Gideon and Dek were able to do that; maybe they were just as lost as she was. The halls seemed designed as a maze intended to confuse any outsiders. At one point Tessa was almost certain they’d turned to the right three times, possibly even bringing them back to the section they’d been in before. But maybe it just seemed that way because all the halls looked alike, gray and utilitarian.

And then the hallways started looking nicer, with carpet on the floor and lighter and lighter gray paint. The plaques on the doors they passed were fancier.

After a long stretch of no turns, the man leading the way turned to the right. Gideon froze, and Tessa and Dek almost ran into him.

“What?” Gideon asked. “General Walsh’s office is that way.”

He pointed straight ahead. So he had been keeping track; he did know where they were.

The blue-uniformed escorts looked impassively at him.

“We’re not taking you to General Walsh,” the man in the
front said, barely bothering to turn around. “Our orders are to take you to General Kantoff.”

“But—General Kantoff is in charge of the entire military! He’s the head commander!” Gideon protested. “This—this is just a pilots’ issue …”

“We have our orders,” the man in the front said. He kept walking.

Gideon stumbled going around the corner, and Dek and Tessa both reached out to catch him. He shook off their hands.