Tesla: A Teen Steampunk/Cyberpunk Adventure (Tesla Evolution Book 1) (20 page)

Gavin stooped over Melanie and mumbled something.

“What?” shouted Sebastian.
 

Melanie nudged him with her elbow. “He wasn’t mumbling to you,” she hissed. She looked up into Gavin’ young innocent face, which was full of uncertainty and embarrassment. “What did you say?”

“I said, do you want to, er …”

“I’d love to er. It’s what being a human is all about. And with you it could be a very big er.”

Gavin looked confused.
 

“Yes, I would,” she clarified. She stood up and led an uncertain Gavin to the dancing area. She presented her arms. “Lead away.”

He awkwardly led her around the floor, occasionally stepping on her feet. She smiled through it all. But in the end she had to say something.
 

“You’re not very good.”

“It would help if you stopped trying to lead.”

“It would help if you started trying to lead.”

“I’m sorry, it’s all new to me.”

“Never mind. Dancing was one of those things that was expected of me, along with other pointless tasks.”
 

“Like what?”

“Playing piano. Smiling and waving.”

“What a dull life.”

“You don’t need to tell me that. It drove me nuts. I had to leave. My sister was into all that stuff, stupid vain creature that she was.” She paused. Her mother wouldn’t have been impressed. She’d been trained in small talk, and this wasn’t it. “Are you looking forward to getting out … there?” She pointed in a westerly direction.

“Part of me is. But it’s war. I’m not sure I want to die.”

“I thought the teslas were going to be tracking, not attacking.”

“The teslas will be at the front, tracking the location of the cyborg base. The soldiers will be at the back, waiting to pounce. Who’s going to be attacked first? The ones at the front or the back?”

“I see your point, but I’m sure you’ll be all right. You could be home by Christmas. Maybe you’re destined to save us all. I hear women like that kind of thing.”

“Do they?”

“We’ll see.” She smiled coyly and looked away. Then trod heavily on his toes to distract him.

The music played and they twirled until she was ready to let him go, even though he’d tried to disengage several times before as the songs got steadily slower. Melanie floated back to her chair, barely noticing the chairs and glasses she knocked over.

“He’s just amazing,” she said as she sat down. She was so distracted she hadn’t even waited for someone to push in her chair.

“Who? Gavin?” said Sebastian.

“Oh, yes.”

“You haven’t met another Gavin, have you?”

“He’s such a gentleman. So courteous. And such a great dancer.”

“Gavin?”

“You’re just jealous because you don’t understand him.
He
understands
me
.”

“Why? What did he say?”

“He doesn’t need to say anything. He just understands.”

“That’s it, you’ve seriously lost it. I’m out of here.”
 

Sebastian got up and stormed out of the ballroom. He took the stairs to the roof terrace and sat on the ledge with his legs dangling over the edge. He sighed. He felt upset, but he couldn’t have explained why.
 

A minute later he heard the door open. Melanie sat down next to him and looked out at the gas-lit fortress.

“I thought you’d want to be sitting with Gavin,” Sebastian said.

“He can wait. I wanted to make sure you were okay. You don’t run away very often.”

“I’ve been running ever since I lost my home. And my mother. My life. I don’t know what’s happening. Why is everything so messed up?”

She leaned over to him. “Want to know a secret?”

He nodded.

“I feel the same way.” She looked up at the forbidding horizon. “I think it’s part of growing up, part of life. If it makes you feel any better, it does get better. One day.”

“When?”

“About twenty minutes ago.” She laughed then stopped when he didn’t join in.

“I wish I was going with them.”

“So do I. I mean I wish
I
was going with them, not you. I don’t know why they won’t let us. They’re sending off younger ones than us.”

“I wish they’d tell us what’s going on.”

*

“Do you think we should tell them what’s going on?” said Oliver.

“I’d love to,” replied Nikola, “but now is not the time. You know we can’t send him. And she needs to stay with him until …”

“Yes,
until
! We all know the
until
. But we can’t wait forever. Time ticks down and leaves us with fewer and fewer choices. If we wait too long we’ll be nothing but forgotten footnotes in your decrepit, ancient books, of even less interest to people than they are now.”

“What’s the point of fighting a war for a future that isn’t worth saving?”

“Any future where we’re alive is worth fighting for.”

“You wouldn’t be saying that if you saw the assimilated ones.”

“You know that if he stays here, they will come.”

Nikola shook his head. “You’d prefer it if he walked the deserts alone to be taken on the first night he sleeps?”

26

MELANIE STORMED INTO Nikola’s office. She hadn’t been paying attention at the ball and it had just sunk in that she would not be going with Gavin. And the reason? Sebastian. She had to nursemaid him.
 

Nikola was standing behind his desk leafing through a thick book. “I know,” he said, “we could really use someone of his power, but he’s too young. You’ll need to look after him.”

“But why me? Why do I have to do it?” She closed her eyes, but was haunted by the vision of Gavin cheerily smiling as he left, but returning in a zipped-up canvas bag.
 

Nikola put the book down on the table and focused his attention on her. “Because you’re developing into a great fighter. Sometimes the strongest people need to be around that which needs to be protected the most.”

“Huh?”

“Because I said so.”

“You’re not the boss of me.”

“Well, technically I am. That’s what ‘guardian’ means. And ‘commander.’” He leaned forward on the desk, resting on his hands. “This is something you’ll have to trust me on.”

“But what have I been training
for
? And with Gavin … it’s so …” She folded her arms and looked down at her feet, lost in her emotions.

“You’ll have to trust me.”

“Why should I trust you when you’re being so secretive?”

“
Because
I’m so secretive. In the same way that I know your real name, yet I haven’t told the authorities that you’re here.”

She shut her mouth and thought heavily about that statement.

“You need to trust me. And to do the adult thing, you
will
trust me. I hope one day to repay you for that trust. You will learn, you will see and you will understand. But not today.”

“What happens now?”

“We prepare for war.”

*

“Have you ever been out the back of the city to the dumping grounds?” said Isaac.
 

The general consensus among the boys was that the ball had been a success, and the opposite gender were not the most disgusting and dull things on the planet, although they should probably stay at arm’s length for the moment. Many had considered the upcoming excursion into enemy territory with quiet optimism. After all, they would have the element of surprise for the first time. And most had woken the morning after the ball feeling upbeat. Most, except for Sebastian.

“No, I haven’t,” he said. “What’s out there?”

“Garbage and stuff.”

“Sounds like a blast. How come we’ve been avoiding it all this time? Garbage and stuff. Sounds like an awesome day out.”

“No need to be like that. It was just an idea.”

“Pretty stupid idea.” Sebastian mulled over the other opportunities presenting themselves to the day, which numbered zero. “But since we’ve got nothing else to do, let’s go.”

They wound their way through the narrow cobbled streets that formed the complex maze of ad-hoc town planning until they came to the city’s rear gate. It was shut but the gatehouse next to it was open for daytime activities. During the day people were allowed through without too much scrutiny. The thin doorway allowed sufficient space for individuals to walk outside but it would block the chance of an army trying to squeeze in, especially an army with fat sergeants like the one sitting at the table.
 

He smiled thinly at the boys as they ran through, and watched them closely as they ran off into the wilds outside. He made a note in his Suspicious Movements notebook.

In minutes Isaac was halfway up the largest mound, which stuck up severely from the surrounding plain, indicating frantically for Sebastian to catch up. Sebastian could see bits of old metal scattered, buried, twisted and tortured by the sun and sand. Running up the mound was hard work, harder than he was expecting a sand dune to be.

“This isn’t an ordinary hill,” he said as he crested the top.

“Isn’t it?”

Sebastian scuffed around various spots, digging with his heel to see what he could unearth. The soil had been cooked hard over the years and failed to budge. He closed his eyes and tilted his head.
 

“This hill has a power source,” he whispered more to himself than Isaac.
 

He noted the curve of the path they had just come up. It meandered around gently then turned back on itself. He wandered over to the other side of the hilltop. That pathway down curved to one side, then ended abruptly. He started to walk down the path, but ended up running as his momentum picked up. His legs started to go faster than he could control and he ended up running off the end, into the air, and tumbling down into the sand.
 

He got up and dusted himself down. “Planned to do that,” he shouted back at Isaac.

As he continued to empty sand out of his pockets he noticed that the curve of the pathway seemed peculiar. He ran his hand over the wall closest to him. It was hard. He picked up a rock and chipped away at the sand until some of it started to fall away. He continued to pound into the hardened sand until it suddenly clanged. He rubbed his hand over the surface. Over the metal was a strange cloth.

A couple of minutes later Isaac had joined him. “What are you doing?”
 

“There’s metal under here,” replied Sebastian.

“Yeah, well, there’s a lot of junk in this hill, bits and pieces, old derelict stuff dumped over the years. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were a few pieces of metal buried here.”

“No, it’s
all
metal. The whole hill is metal. At least whatever is below this strange material is metal.”

“No way.”

“Yes, way.”

Isaac ran his eyes over the huge scale of the mound. “Nah. Hey, look, I can see some old hydrolifts.” He pointed at some half-buried pieces of rusted metal a hundred yards away. He left Sebastian examining the mound.
 

The sound of Isaac cursing and kicking the bits of old metal came floating to Sebastian from the distance. “It’s no good,” he muttered to himself. “I can’t tell what it is from here. I need to be further away.”

He ran back over the sand for several minutes and then turned. He closed his eyes and reached toward the buried shape. It was still too big. He turned and ran further until sweat rolled down his face and he was out of breath. He turned. He could sense the huge device within his field of perception, but it was too weak to make out any definite shape.
 

He started to walk toward it again with his eyes closed, hoping he wouldn’t trip. With each step, definition grew stronger, but the device was growing too quickly. He knew he only had a few steps before he was going to be too close again. Then it
was
too close.
 

A large eye was staring straight at him.
 

There was a very big metal animal lying under that pile of sand, and it had been there for centuries.
 

He wondered who else knew about it.

“Hey, Sebastian, check this out.”
 

Isaac’s voice came from the other side of the hill. Sebastian made his way toward him, thinking about what he had unearthed. There were many questions he wanted to ask, and he knew only one person who could help.
 

As he rounded the hill he was surprised to see a dozen airships being dragged out of the city gates by SUVs. The huge metal pods, each the size of a small hut, were on the back of carts with wheels bigger than a horse. In turn, they supported half-inflated balloons. Zeppelins. Sebastian couldn’t believe his eyes. The armored pods beneath the huge balloons looked ominous, with huge sheets of metal pierced and held together by large rivets. Each had four cannons protruding from each side. Scores of men ran around the slow-moving vehicles, shouting and pointing in various directions.
 

Sebastian recognized Captain Hawk from the ball and sidled up to him.

“This looks intense. Are you expecting trouble?”

“
We
are the trouble. And the cyborgs won’t be expecting us.”

“How can you be so sure? I know from when they were chasing me that they have some pretty advanced equipment.”

“We’ve never attacked before. They think they’re totally hidden and undetectable. It’ll be the ultimate surprise.”

“If you haven’t attacked before, and you’re going into an unknown place, how can you be so confident? I’ve seen the cyborgs, and they take some beating.” Sebastian couldn’t shake the image of the cyborgs chasing him through the forest. He thought they were almost unstoppable, unless you had a Merv on hand to protect you.

“We have keener minds than the cyborgs,” the captain said. “They have an army that can only follow one instruction. We have trained soldiers who can think and react on their feet. We assess our circumstances and adapt. We have superior military knowhow.”

Sebastian wasn’t sure how far superior knowhow could get you against a great scary army of dragons and laser guns, but he knew he wasn’t a military expert so he left it to those who said they knew better. He wandered off to look for Isaac.