Equinox (4 page)

He’d done the right thing, he had to believe that. She was safer without him. Too many terrible things had happened up there on Mars, and Helios would never leave her alone if they knew he was around. He had to believe that.

They were all up before dawn the next day and, as expected, Cassie acted as if the argument hadn’t happened. She was all smiles and enthusiasm as she zipped the food heaters up in her pack, talking about how they were only a few clicks from their target and should make it most of the way back before nightfall. It irritated Pip that she called kilometres clicks, as if she was in the Senate elite or something.

“Just like sunshine over a swamp of crocs,” Kev said quietly as Cassie disappeared behind some bushes to relieve herself. He grinned and Pip snorted a laugh and shoved his blanket into his pack.

“What are you two grinning about?” Cassie came back and picked up her pack.

“Nothing.” Pip shouldered his bag. “You ready, Kev?”

“I’m always ready.” He took the lead, heading out of the small clearing to the open grasslands. Kev was twenty-five, with a stocky chest and thin ankles. He was the son of one of the Nation councillors and knew the land like the lines on his own palm. He could walk all day without complaint and never got lost. Not even when the land was as treacherous as it was now, in what Kev called the rump of the wet season. He was a contact of Riley’s and had offered Pip a bed in his house.

“Careful, razor grass on the right.” Kev indicated a thick tussock of chest-high grass.

Thankfully, it hadn’t rained overnight, but Pip expected it might pour at any moment. The sky was dark blue with cloud, the first sun rays barely able to penetrate. The line of rocky escarpment ahead of them was nothing more than a dark shadow. Helios’s suspected new base was over that ridge, and they were walking instead of taking a jumper in case the noise of it alerted anyone in the base.

They walked in silence, winding around boulders and palms. The air was still and no birds sang – a bad sign, Kev said. It was likely the rain would start soon.

Just as Pip thought it, he felt the first drops hit his head, and a few seconds later the downpour came. He pulled the hood of his jacket up. The rain sounded even louder, spattering against the waterproof material. He kept his head down and followed Kev’s boots. The ground became muddy quickly, red sludge splashing up his jeans, and when they reached the bottom of the escarpment Kev had to shout to be heard.

“Leave the packs here.” He pointed to a crack between some boulders.

Pip took his off, handing it over, then took Cassie’s.

The escarpment was nearly twenty vertical metres of sharp-edged rock ledges. Narrow channels of water ran down it, following courses eroded over thousands of years and making it a bitch to climb.

Kev hoisted himself up on the first ledge. Pip stepped back for Cassie, giving her a boost up, then brought up the rear. Twice, he just missed getting booted in the head by Cassie as rock or dirt skidded out from under her feet, and by the time they made it to the top they were all breathing hard and their hands were covered in cuts.

The summit was a narrow stretch of gravel and scraggly grass that sloped away on either side to a deep drop before rising again to another hump. They lay side by side, their heads low, staring down at the Helios base.

“Holy shit,” Kev said.

“More like holy jackpot,” Cassie replied.

Pip didn’t speak. He could hardly believe what they were seeing.

Rosie squinted against the hard sunlight and wished it was winter, or at least below thirty-five degrees. Across the street, groups of returning students, Centrals mostly, were streaming through the gates of Orbitcorp Academy for the first day of school. She might have been turning seventeen this year, but she felt decades older than all of them.

She bet that few of those students gave much thought to what Helios had done. What was it about living in the richest part of the city that made them like that? Too much money? Few of them even glanced at the beggars clustered in ragged groups near the school gates hoping for handouts.

“Oi, Rosie, are you listening?” Aunt Essie said.

Rosie blinked. “What? Yeah, sure.” She hadn’t heard a word.

“I said, just be normal – you know, a kid.”

“Yeah, normal, right.”

“And keep your head down.” Her aunt scanned the crowded streets with suspicion. She was wearing her Orbitcorp flight uniform, but the three white vertical stripes that used to be over one shoulder had been reduced to two. It hurt Rosie to see how Essie pretended she was okay with it. They’d had a huge row this morning about school. Essie had disagreed with Riley and hadn’t wanted her to go anywhere at all now Helios knew he was alive. But Rosie had won. Just. She’d played the “Blacks don’t back down” card and her aunt had grudgingly relented.

Aunt Essie nudged her. “Just keep your focus. Don’t be nervous, all right? The security here is tight.”

“Yeah, I remember saying that this morning.” Rosie looked at her sideways and Essie frowned.

“Smart arse.”

“Learned from the best.” Rosie looked again at the rich Centrals strolling through the gates. “Now I just have to pretend like I care about what they care about.”

“Hey, this is one place where money counts for squat. Nothing levels in the Academy like ability.”

“Is that how you got through?”

“That and lying.” Aunt Essie grinned. “Had people convinced I had a rich daddy in Sino city, but I don’t recommend you try it. You’re a bad liar.”

“Right, good job on the pep talk.” Essie was full of compliments today.

“You never know,” Aunt Essie said, “maybe you’ll make some friends.”

Friends? She didn’t have friends any more. Not since Helios had put a target on her back. The last friend she’d had had been Juli, and they’d killed her. She touched the twin pendants under her shirt. The green biostone circles were engraved with Helios’s symbol: a horse and rider over a rising sun. One bore Riley’s initials. He’d left it in their apartment to let them know he was alive when they escaped from Mars. The other had belonged to Riley’s parents and contained the secret files that proved Helios had invented the MalX. She wore them to remember Juli and to remind herself what it had cost them all to defeat Helios.

This morning her eyes were aching with lack of sleep. Night after night she found herself hounded by nightmares. She was back in the Enclave, her dad and aunt lying there, dying from the MalX. Yuang threatening her. Pip holding the gun. The sound it had made when he’d fired, and Yuang fell. She was haunted by the look in Pip’s eyes – and that last kiss before he’d disappeared.

She squeezed her hands hard so her nails stabbed into the flesh of her palms.

Stop thinking about Pip
.

She glanced at her aunt. “You coming to visit Dad today?”

Aunt Essie’s grin faded. “Don’t know; there’s a lot going on. Lots of fallout after that Oceanus fiasco.”

Noncommittal again. Rosie was getting tired of visiting her father alone. Essie had been too busy last time as well. Her aunt could deal with people trying to kill her, but a brother that didn’t recognise her was something else.

“Fine then. I’m going in; wish me luck.”

“You don’t need it. Your name’s Black, remember?” Essie gave her a quick hug.

“So I keep hearing.”

“Be careful. I’ll see you tonight.” Aunt Essie strode away and Rosie looked at the Academy gates. Time to go. She took a deep breath, then crossed the street and fell in behind a group of chattering girls whose white-blond hair shimmered with holo-shine glitter.

The Academy was spread over sixty hectares in Central South-West. There was a complex of buildings for each of the six educational departments, a main administration block, a solar farm to generate power, and a massive building called the Apollo Dome that housed the flight simulators. The Dome was also used by Orbitcorp’s accredited pilots for trialling mission plans. Rosie had been there with Aunt Essie before her mother had died. The rest of the Academy she’d seen only when she’d visited on orientation day the week before. Now she was struggling to remember her way around as she followed the blond girls into the main building.

The lobby was dominated by a curving staircase bookended by two transporter elevators. Large hallways filled with students stretched away on either side and, in front of the staircase, a six-metre high bronze statue of the school’s founder divided more streams of students heading for the lifts and stairs.

Rosie stopped in front of the statue. She couldn’t remember where her house room was. She checked her com, loading the grounds map. Other students bumped and shuffled around her and she heard snickers as a group of girls wafted past in a miasma of perfume.

“Who let her in?” one of them said.

“I know. Look, she doesn’t even have a temple patch for her com.”

More giggles followed, which Rosie ignored. Patches were tiny circles you stuck on your temples. They relayed information from your com to your visual cortex so you could see it on a semi-transparent window in front of your eye. Most students had them, but Riley had killed the idea. Patches were far from secure.

She found where she was supposed to be and headed off. She was used to being the pariah in high school. Who said the Academy would be any different?

Perseus was her house and her first-year group had fifty students, almost all of whom had got there before her. Groups were sitting on backless lounges facing a raised lectern and an enormous holo screen. Rosie found an empty seat in the back row. A heavy-set man with a beard came in behind her and the door beeped shut.

“Greetings, Earthlings!” His voice boomed across the chatter. “Kindly shut up and listen to me or face the consequences.”

Nervous giggling wafted through the room and the chatter slowly died away.

“Good, thank you. I am Commander Stryker.” The teacher swept his gaze across the room. “And we shall–”

The beep of the door opening interrupted him and he turned to glare as a tall boy entered.

“Sorry I’m late.” The boy smiled. “My driver is useless.”

Commander Stryker’s smile was thin as he checked his attendance com. “The last to arrive. I assume you are Mr Dalton Curtis.”

“Correct.” The boy grinned but Stryker wasn’t impressed.

“So glad you’ve honoured us with your presence. I’ll be sure to tell your father you deigned to join us.”

“That would be so good of you.” Dalton Curtis gave him a slight bow, sparking a giddy twittering from some of the girls, then he sauntered along the row of lounges looking for a seat.

“Over here,” a dark-haired boy sitting on the lounge across from Rosie called out. Dalton made his way over to him.

He was so good looking he could have been a cosmetic enhancer’s model. He had golden brown hair that curled against his neck, hazel eyes and the body of an athlete, and most of the girls in the room were pretending they weren’t checking him out. He winked at a chubby brown-haired girl sitting near him and she turned bright red.

“Thank you, Mr Curtis.” The commander’s tone was dry. “If we could all calm down, we have a list of things to get through before your classes start, beginning with a run-through of how your first year will be structured and what Perseus can do to help you through it.”

“Throw a party,” someone shouted.

“Yeah, Dalton, when’s the orgy?”

Laughter rang out.

“Quiet!” the commander bellowed. “As is tradition, Mr Curtis’s father will hold a welcome party for first years this weekend, but an invitation is not going to ensure you pass, so eyes on me, if you please.”

There was a general groaning and excited whispering. Rosie pulled her computer tablet from her bag and scrolled through, checking her schedule while the commander went over the list of house rules she’d read the day before.

“Hey, can you do me a favour?”

She looked up to see Dalton Curtis leaning across the aisle towards her.

“What?”

“Can you pass this to that guy?” He held out a disposable com and pointed to a boy on the lounge in front of her.

“Do I look like a messenger?”

He smiled. “No, I think you look like a girl, but you’d be doing me a favour. If I don’t do it now, I’ll forget and it’s kind of important.”

“Fine.” Rosie took the com.

“Thanks.” He smiled again. Rosie whacked the target of Dalton’s message on the shoulder with the com. The boy wheeled around with an annoyed expression on his face.

“From Dalton,” she said.

His face cleared. “Thanks.”

Dalton gave her a thumbs up and she turned back to her tablet. Parties and messages. Centrals were all the same. It felt like she was back in high school again.

The rest of the morning passed quickly and it seemed every class Rosie had, Dalton Curtis had as well. He arrived late and always made charming but cheeky comments to the professors. She suspected he did it for the attention. Although from the whispers she’d been unable not to hear, it seemed he had enough attention already. Hover hockey champion, top of the class in his previous school’s flight simulators and son of one of the Academy’s wealthiest patrons, Dalton Curtis seemed to be the name on every girl’s lips.