Rebellion (3 page)

There’s the clang of a door opening and closing to my right. Beechy appears at the top of the spiral staircase leading to the command center—the room housing the main security computers and power generators, which sits above the flight port.

“Perfect timing,” Skylar says, adjusting her helmet under her arm and moving toward the staircase. “Commander!”

“I’d prefer if you wouldn’t call me that,” Beechy says as he walks down. He sounds tired, and there are dark circles underneath his eyes, even darker than mine. “Did you need something?”

“I need your permission to take these newbies out in one of the pods,” Skylar says.

Beechy glances at me and Logan. “Go ahead. I’ll let Sandy know so she can open the security doors. Just don’t take them out too far.”

“Copy that, sir.” Skylar pulls on her helmet. “Newbies, suit up. We leave in five.”

Beechy’s eyes stray back to me with a question as Skylar hurries away from us to prep one of the flight pods.

“We have names, don’t we?” Logan mutters. He turns toward the locker room on the right side of the port, but pauses when he notices I’m not following him.

“Can you grab me a suit?” I ask. “I’ll be right there.”

“Sure,” he says, understanding I want to talk to Beechy alone. I give him a grateful smile before he turns to go.

When I look back at Beechy, he smiles too, but it’s weary. “How’ve you been?” he asks.

I hesitate, trying to figure out how to answer. I remember how I woke up in a cold sweat, how I got dressed and went to breakfast with Logan as if nothing had happened, because I didn’t want him to worry about me.

Part of me wants to tell Beechy I’m not entirely okay. He was with me in the Core and on the spaceship. He would understand my nightmares better than anyone. But now isn’t the time to lay my burdens on him.

“Okay,” I say. “You?”

“I’ve been better. I could use an extra twenty-four hours to catch up on sleep.” He rubs a spot between his eyebrows. “Didn’t get to bed until four last night, thanks to a situation in the command center.”

“What happened?”

“One of the main circuits shorted and the security computers went offline.”

I gape at him. The security computers control all the compound’s defenses; they let us keep an eye out for unidentified ships in the entrance tunnels. If the circuit shorted and the computers shut off, our radar screens went dark. Anyone could’ve broken in without us knowing.

“It wasn’t difficult to fix,” Beechy says, since I’m still staring at him. “A couple wires came loose. Nothing to worry about.”

He smiles to reassure me. But I can’t help thinking of the things Buck said earlier. How he doesn’t think it matters whether or not we leave the compound; how he doesn’t think we can overthrow the Developers. Would he go so far as to screw up things here at headquarters, so we’d have no choice but to stay where we are?

“You’re sure no one loosened the wires, right?” I ask.

I hate to think someone in the compound would betray us like that, but I have to consider the possibility. Maybe Buck had nothing to do with this. But there could be someone else here who’s only pretending to be on our side, who really wants to lower our defenses. Someone who is still allegiant to Commander Charlie.

“There were no signs of foul play,” Beechy says. He sets a hand on my shoulder. “I have things under control. Trust me.”

I take a deep breath. I trust him, don’t I? Of course I do.

I keep forgetting: I am safe here. I am with people who are on my side.

“Clementine!” Logan waves at me from over by one of the flight pods. He changed into his safety suit, and he’s holding the one he grabbed for me. “We’re almost ready to go.”

“Have fun,” Beechy says, dropping his hand from my shoulder.

“Thanks,” I say.

I get my safety suit from Logan and pull it on over my clothes, letting him help me zip up the back. The suit is big and bulky, but I’m not stupid enough to go without it. If anything happened while we were flying out in the tunnels, moonshine could leak inside the flight pod and fry me alive. I had to experience what that felt like during a simulation for my Extraction test, and I don’t need to go through it again.

Skylar calls for us to board the pod we’ll be flying today as I’m snapping my helmet into place. Logan and I follow her up the ramp.

“Who wants to pilot first?” she asks.

I’m eager for something that will keep my hands and my thoughts busy, so I volunteer. Logan doesn’t argue.

“Buckle in,” Skylar says. “Make sure your helmet comm is on, and remember the preflight checklist.”

I slip into the seat in front of the control panel, pull the strap over my waist, and flip the switch on my helmet to turn on the speaker. Skylar takes the copilot chair, and Logan buckles into a passenger seat behind us.

I focus my thoughts on what I’ve learned in the training sessions I’ve had these past few days. The checklist comes back easily.

I turn on the master power switch. The panel screens flicker on.

“Fuel levels are high,” I say, glancing at the gauges. “The cooling fans sound normal. All exterior hatches are shut.”

“Good,” Skylar says. “What next?”

“Fire up the engines.”

I press a button and flip three switches in succession. The engines roar to life.

“Engines are a go.”

“Take the bird out,” Skylar says, her eyes shining in anticipation.

I slide my fingers around the control clutch and ease it back. We lift off the ground, hovering higher and higher until we’re above the other pods.

Without hesitation, I turn us in the direction of the tunnels leading out of the compound. I push the clutch forward and we speed up.

It’s an exhilarating feeling, being in control of something. It makes me feel like I can do anything.

*   *   *

Flight practice lasts almost an hour. Logan and I take turns maneuvering through the tunnels at various speeds, and then we practice using the ship guns—not firing real ammunition, just going through the motions. Afterwards, I am exhausted, so I nap until lunchtime.

When I get to the mess hall, Logan isn’t there, and I’m not really hungry yet anyway. So I look for him instead. I find him in one of the training rooms, soaked with sweat and smacking punching bags.

“Hey,” he says, pushing some stray hairs out of his eyes.

“Did you even take a break?” I ask, walking across the mat.

“A short one.” He shrugs and smiles. “But I got bored, and you were still asleep.”

“So naturally you decided to hit things.”

“I figured it wouldn’t hurt to practice.”

He steps around to the other side of the punching bag, fixing his stance. But he winces with the movement, drawing my attention to the limp in his bad leg. He’s had a deformity since birth, but his leg has seemed to cause him more pain ever since we were reunited in Karum. I don’t know whether to blame the officials who transported him to the prison under Commander Charlie’s orders, or the prison doctors who tortured Logan so I would finally stop fighting them.

I tease my lower lip with my teeth, wondering if I should ask him about something I’ve been waiting for him to bring up.

He smacks the punching bag with his knuckles.

“You never told me how it happened,” I say.

“How what happened?”

“How the officials captured you in the work camp, to take you to Karum.”

Logan falters in his next punch, and doesn’t hit the bag as hard as before. He pauses and rubs the cuts that are forming on his knuckles. “They did it the usual way. Dragged me into a hov-pod on my way home, knocked me out when I tried to fight them.” He rubs his nose with the back of his hand and reassumes his punching stance. “I figured they were taking me to quarantine, replacing me early. Though waking up on an electrocution table wasn’t much better.”

A shiver crawls across my skin at the memory of him on that table, his body convulsing every time the nurse pressed the red button on the wall. No, it couldn’t have been much better than waking up in a gas chamber.

But at least the nurse stopped before she killed him. No one ever escapes quarantine alive.

“I’m sorry,” I say softly. “I know it was my fault they took you there.”

“Of course it wasn’t your fault. Nothing bad that’s ever happened to me was your fault. It was the Developers’. Don’t you forget that.”

Dropping my eyes, I rub my arm. “I know. But I did leave you behind.”

“I don’t blame you, so you don’t need to blame yourself. I’m the one who couldn’t pass the stupid test. Couldn’t save you from Charlie or anyone, either.” Logan hits the bag again. He barely recovers before going in for another punch, but he stops halfway, his face contorting in pain. He leans over and puts both hands on his knees. His leg must be giving him trouble.

“You okay?” I ask, moving closer and touching his back to steady him.

“Yeah,” Logan says. He closes his eyes and inhales, exhales slowly.

Straightening, he turns to me. The slight creases around his eyes make me think he must still be in pain, and he could use a distraction.

I rise onto my tiptoes and press my lips against his. Taking my face in his hands, he kisses me back harder. I put my palm against his chest, feeling his fast heartbeat through his tank top as his hands move into my hair. His lips coax the worries out of me until all of them slip from my fingers.

I hope I am making him less afraid too.

We’re still pressed together when the alarm blares from the ceiling. A loud
whir-oooom whir-oooom whir-oooom
that grates at my eardrums.

I pull away from Logan, my body flooding with tension. There’s a red light flashing above the door. The emergency light that’s supposed to go off only if we need to evacuate the base because the air has become contaminated with moonshine.

“What’s going on?” Logan yells.

“We need to get our safety suits on,” I say, grasping at the threads of what I remember Beechy telling us we should do if this happened. “We need to get to the flight port.”

I turn to run for the door, but as suddenly as it started, the alarm shuts off. The emergency light stops flashing.

This can’t have been an accident. Something is wrong.

Logan opens his mouth to speak, but he’s cut off by Beechy’s voice erupting through the ceiling speaker: “I need everyone’s attention. This is not a drill. An unidentified ship has been sighted near the entrance tunnel.”

Oh, vrux.

“All hands, report to the flight deck with safety gear. Head pilots, prep weapons and ships. There may be a full-fledged attack at hand. I repeat:
This is not a drill
.”

An unidentified ship. Core officials might be here.

I can’t move at first. My body refuses to function normally until Logan grabs my hand.

“Come on,” he says. “We have to go.”

There’s no time.

I force my feet to move.

3

The flight port stinks of exhaust fumes, and there are red lights flashing everywhere. People race up ramps into the flight pods.

Logan helps me zip up my safety suit as quickly as he can, but we’re not moving fast enough. Every second we don’t get our ships in the air, the likelier we won’t be able to hold off an attack. We could get trapped in here if enemy ships overtake the entrance tunnels; there’s not another way out.

Beechy shouts flight assignments from the center of the port. But I can’t hear him call my name over the roar of the engines already turning on.

But Skylar grabs my arm as she runs past. “You’re with me,” she says. “Logan, get on Buck’s pod.”

“Be careful,” I tell him.

“You too,” he says.

“Let’s move out!” Beechy yells to my left, boarding his own ship.

I pull my helmet on as I run after Skylar. It takes me a couple of seconds to realize she’s leading me to one of the Davara jets.

I can’t help panicking. I might feel comfortable using the flight controls in the pods, but I’ve only been practicing for a week. This is a two-person fighter jet, which I’ve never flown in before. And she expects me to be her copilot?

“We’re taking this one?” I ask.

“Sure are,” Skylar says, scurrying up the ladder. She climbs into the pilot seat. Her cheeks are bright red from excitement. “My bird will get us back safe and sound, don’t worry.”

The golden paint is peeling off the wings of the rusty red jet. The ship creaks loudly as I climb up into the seat behind her.

I’m not sure I believe her.

“I hardly think I’m the most qualified copilot you could’ve picked,” I say.

“You’re a natural at flying the pods,” Skylar says. “Anyway, all you need to do right now is control the ship guns. I have complete faith you can handle it.”

I’d argue with her, but that wouldn’t do me any good. We might be under attack. I need to pull myself together and do what I can to defend our headquarters.

I strap myself in and make sure oxygen is flowing through my helmet, then skim the gauges before me to familiarize myself with the mechanics. The control panel is rearranged differently from the one in the flight pod I practiced in earlier, but I can still tell where all the gauges are. Hopefully I can still work the gun controls.

On the ground below, Fiona moves the ladder away. “Good luck!” she calls.

The jet cover lowers over us and seals, drowning out the deck noise. Skylar initiates the launch sequence.

“This is Skylar,” she says. “Engines are go.”

The comm inside my helmet isn’t turned on yet, so I flip the switch. The voice of Sandy, Beechy’s wife, crackles through the speaker inside my helmet. She must be in charge in the command center. Beechy doesn’t want her out on any attack missions unless it’s absolutely necessary, since she’s pregnant.

“There’s still just the one ship on the radar,” Sandy says. “It’s entering the tunnel from the south side. We’ve identified the signal. It’s definitely a Core ship, not one of ours. Slight damage to the hull, by the look of it.”

Damage? Did the ship crash on its way here?

“We’ll have to capture it,” Beechy says. “Can’t risk it getting away and coming back with friends. Buck, Harriet, and Jensen, I want you coming at the ship from behind in case it tries to get away. Exit via the north tunnel entrance. Circle back around to the south side. Watch for more incoming ships on your radar.”