Rebellion (8 page)

“We should get something to eat,” Logan says, wincing as he flexes his wrist. “I bet everything’s almost ready for departure.”

“Hopefully,” I say, rubbing my own wrist. The skin is raw and red around my new citizenship tag: S88472. The two changed numbers are slightly thicker and darker than the rest, but hopefully most officials won’t look closely. The code just needs to fool their scanners.

As we approach the port entrance doors, an odd smell drifts into my nostrils. I sniff the air, unsure what it is or if I’m making it up. But it smells a lot worse than engine oil.

“Do you smell that?” I ask.

“I smell something,” Logan says, picking up his pace.

We walk through the open doors into the port. I freeze in my tracks.

Thick, black smoke billows from the open engine cover of one of the Davara jets. Figures run through the hazy air around the ship, smacking at the smoke with dirty rags.

Logan curses, hurrying forward. I follow him, looking frantically around for something we can use to help.

But by the time we reach the ship, the people already helping seem to be stopping. It looks like they have it under control. There are no flames in sight, only smoke.

Paley and Fiona are here, both of them looking exhausted. But they can’t have been working long to put out the fire, or one of them would’ve sounded an alarm and Beechy would be here.

Skylar steps around from the other side of the ship, her face and safety suit covered in grease. She throws her rag on the floor and screams in rage.

“What’s with the smoke?” a voice says behind me. I turn as Buck walks through the doors leading to the mess hall, waving the air in front of his nose. He’s holding a piece of bread in his hand.

Skylar storms at him. “You’ve got some nerve.”

He throws up his hands in defense. “’Scuse me?”

“Did you think I wouldn’t try another test run this morning? I knew you weren’t exactly on board with the mission, but I can’t believe you’d go this far.”

He looks from her to the smoking jet and back again, then barks a laugh. “You think I did this?”

“I don’t know anyone else who’s been having reservations. The fuel lines on my jet are completely busted—hell of a job you did there, buddy. Did you do it to all the ships? If you wasted even half our fuel supply, I swear I’ll carve your brains out with a knife.”

Skylar circles around Buck, forcing him to take a step backwards in the direction of the smoking jet.

We need a solid fuel supply to reach the Surface city in time. And we need enough left to be able to get back here, in case something goes wrong. Otherwise, we could be stranded.

“Skylar, how can you be sure this was his fault?” Paley asks nervously.

“Listen to her,” Buck says. “This wasn’t my doing, I swear.”

“It was your shift all night in the command center, wasn’t it?” Skylar asks.

He stutters. “Y-yes.”

“Show me the tapes from this morning, then. Show me who did this.”

“Well, now, the cameras went off for about an hour overnight due to a slight malfunction—”

Skylar shoves Buck hard into a ladder leaning against one of the jets. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”

Fiona takes a step forward, her nostrils flaring. “Sky, I think you need to calm down.”

“We should break them up,” I say to Logan.

But before either of us can move, Skylar slams her fist into Buck’s nose. His back hits the ladder again and he curses loudly, cupping a hand over his nose. She flexes the hand she used, wincing.

“What’s going on?” someone says behind me. Beechy hurries into the flight port, Sandy with him. “There was a small fire due to a fuel leak, thanks to Buck here,” Skylar says, her voice cool and her eyes narrowed, “but don’t worry, we’ve got it under control. Though we do need to do a thorough check of all the ship engines for part damage.”

“You’ve got no proof it was me,” Buck says. He moves his hand a little, and I see his nose is bloody, if not broken.

Beechy walks forward to examine the jet engine, which is still producing a thin stream of black smoke. “How did the fire start?” he asks.

“I went to do a last-minute test flight and discovered all the fuel lines were fried, leaking all over the parts,” Skylar says.

“They’d definitely been tampered with,” Fiona says, cutting in. “The engine sparked and the lines caught fire, but we helped her put it out.”

“Our bigger problem is that the jet’s fuel supply is less than half what it should be,” Skylar says. “And whoever tampered with this ship might’ve messed with all the others.”

“We need to examine them immediately,” Beechy says, moving around to the other side of the jet. “Fiona, Paley, if any fuel lines can be fixed, fix them. Sandy, if any mechanics are in the mess hall or the storage rooms, please inform them they’re needed here.”

Sandy nods, tucks a strand of her short dark hair behind her ear, and hurries away.

“Skylar, lock Buck inside your bunk room.”

“Captain, please, I swear I didn’t do this—,” Buck says.

Skylar grabs him roughly by the arm and hauls him across the floor, ignoring his protests.

Beechy reappears from the other side of the jet, frustration in his eyes.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Logan asks.

He shakes his head, seeming distracted. “Did Uma finish fixing your ID tags?” he asks.

I hold out my wrist for him to see.

“Good. I already dealt with both your citizen files. And there’s no need to worry about the fuel supply. We’ll take care of it. Just get your safety suits on and be ready to leave.”

He sounds calm enough, but I note the tension in his jaw as he walks past me.

“Well, we should probably get breakfast first,” Logan says.

“We’d better,” I say, “or we might not have time.”

“Come on.” He grabs my hand, and we head for the mess hall. I can’t shake off my uneasy feeling. Beechy is wrong; we should be worried. Not just because we might not have enough fuel to reach the Surface city, or make it back here if we need to, but also because whoever tampered with the equipment is still in this facility. Maybe Buck’s a liar and it really was him, or maybe he’s telling the truth and it wasn’t.

But there is someone among us who wants us to lose.

8

By the time inspections are completed and we’re ready to depart, there’s a buzz of nervousness in the air. We don’t know exactly when Charlie’s officials are transporting everyone out of the Surface settlement. We’re not sure we’ll reach the city in time.

My safety suit crinkles with every step as Logan and I head for the hovercraft we’re supposed to board. Underneath my suit, I’m wearing the clothes I wore when I first arrived at the compound: the dirty rags I was given in Karum. They smell like sweat and death, but they’ll help me blend into the work camp better than the army tank top and jacket I was wearing earlier.

Ahead of us, Fiona and Paley are hugging at the hovercraft’s cargo lift. One of them must be staying here. A third of the Alliance will remain behind to keep the headquarters running, but they’ll meet up with us again once we’re ready to infiltrate the Core. Beechy has arranged a method of contact with them.

“Do we know how much fuel leaked?” Logan asks. His arm brushes mine as he walks beside me.

“We can ask Beechy,” I say. He’s saying good-bye to Sandy under the wing of a Davara jet. Dropping to his knees, he plants a kiss on her belly, where their baby grows inside, still too small for a bump to be visible. It’s a sweet gesture, but it makes me sad.

Sandy found out she was pregnant not long ago, the week I was in the Core. She still must have several more months until she’ll give birth. I wonder where she’ll be, and if Beechy will be with her. The uprising might be over by then. There’s no way to know which side will have won, or who among us will come back here once we leave on the ships today.

Looking around at the steel walls, the ships, the lights, I wonder if I’ll come back. I’m not even sure if I want to. I might be better off not getting through the mission in one piece, if worse things are still to come. But I hope it will be my choice when the time comes.

“We’re all set for departure, sir,” a pilot calls from one of the two flight pods we’re taking.

“Good,” Beechy says, pulling away from Sandy. “Let’s get everyone on board.”

I linger near the cargo lift, to intercept Beechy before he boards the hovercraft.

“You talk to him,” Logan says, heading up the ramp. “I’ll save us seats.”

“Okay.”

When Beechy reaches the lift, I ask, “What happened about the fuel? Do you know how much we lost?”

“We have enough to reach the city,” he says, his voice oddly stiff. “It’ll be fine. Go take your seat.”

He didn’t answer my question.

“Do we have enough in case we need to get back?” I ask. “And the people staying behind, do they have enough for their ships?”

“Clementine, please let me deal with this. It’s not your concern.”

“It’s everyone’s concern.”

“We’re not backing out of this,” he says, almost snapping the words. “Is that what you want? Because it’s the only other option.”

I press my lips together. But he’s right. This is still the best plan we have—the
only
plan. It was always going to be a risk, every step of the way. Whatever Darren thinks he found out about Charlie’s plan could be false information. We might show up to an empty city, or one with ships poised and ready to blast our hulls with bullets. We might show up when everyone’s leaving and slip in among them just fine, only to be recognized once we’re on board their ships. We could be discovered any time.

But we have to take this chance. We have to try for an advantage.

“Fine,” I say.

Beechy’s expression softens. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you. But I really am confident we’ll be okay. If we run into problems, it won’t be because of fuel.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” I move past him to head up the cargo lift. “Let’s get out of here and get this over with.”

The clump of his boots tells me he’s following.

At the top of the lift, I walk through the small cargo bay into the aisle between the passenger seats. There are eight on either side of me, in rows of two. All the seats are taken. Paley’s sitting up front, looking a bit lost without her sister.

To my right, Mal’s settling into the front seat, struggling to pull the straps over his shoulders with one hand. He’s wearing his armor again.

“Let’s get buckled in, everyone,” Beechy says, moving past me in the aisle and through the door into the cockpit. He and Skylar are piloting the ship.

I slip into the window seat Logan was saving for me, in the row behind Mal.

“What did Beechy say?” Logan asks.

“He said not to worry,” I say, pulling the belt straps over my shoulders and clicking them into place. “So, I’m trying not to.”

There’s a rumble as the ship engines start. Behind us, the cargo lift slides up into the hovercraft, sealing the exit.

Skylar’s voice rings through the ship over the intercomm: “Hang tight, everyone. We are cleared for departure.”

Logan slips his fingers through mine, tightly. Like he’s afraid something could still separate us, making one of us leave while the other stayed behind.

Through the window, I see Sandy, Fiona, and the other rebels who aren’t coming with us standing near the entrance to the port. A couple of them wave as we lift off the ground. But their faces are tense, worried.

For an instant, I wish whoever messed with the fuel supply had leaked all of it, so that we wouldn’t be able to fly away. But staying here won’t save us. Charlie and the other Developers won’t stop killing for selfish motives, not until someone takes away their power, their voice, their weapons. As long as Charlie is still able to kill, I could lose friends again. I could lose Logan.

I might not care whether I survive, but I do care what happens to him.

*   *   *

Morning sunlight streams over the snow-topped mountains when we emerge from the compound tunnels. I half expected the world changed entirely in the past week. But the valley is exactly as I remember it from before, with crooked, gnarled trees along the riverbank, and the river full of rapids.

The sky looks the same too. The acid shield a thousand miles above us is faint in the daylight, a shimmering, pink bubble enclosing Kiel. Commander Charlie put it back up after he realized Beechy and I wouldn’t turn his ship around and bring back his bomb. But the shield can’t do much for us anymore; enough acid got into the atmosphere in the short amount of time the shield was down. Still, I’m relieved to see it shimmering up there.

As Skylar guides our ship higher, we rise above the mountain peaks. I feel exposed in the open sky. Maybe Charlie’s officials know where we’ve been hiding, and they’ve been waiting for us to emerge.

But no ships appear with guns firing. No one blasts our hull to bits, and Skylar makes no mention of contacts on our radar.

No one knows we’re on the move yet.

*   *   *

The KIMO facility sits deeper in the mountains than I realized. By the time we reach the ocean, the sun has moved behind us.

There’s a lot of turbulence; it must be windy outside. Some of the other passengers look nervous in their seats, gripping their armrests. Beside me, Logan dozes in his seat, his arm bumping against mine. I wish I could fall asleep as easily. The incessant rumbling of my seat makes me dizzy. I stare out the window so I won’t be sick.

Below, the water looks peaceful. The waves roll and I picture the animals swimming beneath them. I’ve never been in the ocean, but when I was in the Core having difficulty with Extraction training, Beechy distracted me from my worries by showing me some of the sea creatures scientists had captured on expeditions to the Surface. My favorite was the vul, which looked almost human, but had skin like gel and only three fingers on each hand. Beechy said it was the last of its species; it’s all alone in the universe. Unless there are creatures like it far, far away. If Marden’s existence was a secret, maybe there are more worlds not so different from this one.