The Covert Academy (14 page)

Sarah finally caught on to Joshua’s plan. She pushed Richard out of the pilot’s seat. He fell roughly to the deck with a cry, confused by the sudden shove from out of nowhere. Sarah had no time to explain. She put all her weight on the stick, and the ship dropped out of the sky.

Joshua was pinned against the inside of the outer hull as the ship fell. The temperature rose as it sped to the ground. He was out of time.

‘Hit the hull switch!’ he yelled through the wall. Sarah or Richard must have heard him somehow, because pieces of the hull began to punch up into the area around him. It was far too soon to safely transform the hulls. He was going to fry and he couldn’t even move to save himself.
He was already sweating in his suit, and his face went red. He would have died then if the section of the inner hull in front of him hadn’t decided to move at that moment. It slid away, and Ryan crashed up next to him, the G-forces of the ship’s descent pinning him to the hull as well.

Ryan
twisted around, pointing his weapon at Joshua.

‘Watch out!’ Dr. Prewett called. He was hanging from his seat’s restraint, reaching for Richard who had landed on the inside of the inner hull wall.

Joshua shoved Ryan’s gun away from him with his forearm. The shot went off harmlessly, absorbed by the two hulls. Joshua rolled over onto him, putting the weight of his knee on the gun. The added G-forces crushed Ryan’s fingers against the scorching hot outer hull. He screamed and let go.

Richard dangled down through the hulls, creating a human ladder with Dr. Prewett. Joshua grabbed
Ryan’s weapon out of his charred hand and stood up on top of him. Ryan’s burning torso provided a buffer from the heat of the hull. Joshua jumped, and caught Richard’s leg.

He climbed up into the cockpit and forced himself to look back down at
Ryan. His clothes burst into flame and his skin had blackened with third degree burns. The smell was abhorrent, and Ryan’s screams were horrific, pleading for a swift end. Joshua aimed the gun. He hesitated, unable to pull the trigger.

‘I... I
can’t.’ He lowered the weapon.

A deafening shot rang through the hull, and
Ryan’s head exploded. The hull panels shifted out from under him, and he slipped out into the atmosphere. His body tumbled off the hull and was sucked into the portside jet engine. He streamed out as mulch from the other end.

The hulls finished the transformation and closed up, resealing the ship. Sarah handed Richard’s gun back to him, one bullet lighter. She eased off the yoke and levelled off their approach.

Joshua sat on the floor, panting from the heat. ‘I always knew his fans would chew him up and spit him out one day.’

Dr. Prewett, though his specialty was something closer to neurology, consented to check over their wounds. Aside from some burns on Joshua’s back, and a slight knock on the head for Richard, everyone was in great shape. Richard took the controls back from Sarah with a sour look.

‘So where are we?’ Joshua put to the group. ‘I didn’t get much of a view from inside the hull.’

Sarah tried to look embarrassed and cleared her throat.

‘We’re, uh, over Lake Michigan.
Ryan was headed for the Colonnade. We flew past it.’

Joshua figured that was the closest he was going to get to an apology for sending him into the hulls. At least his plan had
worked; they had control of the ship now. He turned to the doctor.

‘This could actually work in our favour... is your buddy Brock in the Colonnade?’ he asked.

‘I think so, possibly, yes,’ Dr. Prewett said, nodding. ‘He was instrumental in coming up with the neural interface with brain mapping techniques for the iPC implants. They would have kept him close at hand.’

‘
Ryan mentioned someone else,’ Richard added. ‘He spoke to someone called Mr. Meyrick. I think they were going to meet. He had me lock co-ordinates into the nav system. Here, look.’ Richard brought up a satellite map with the flick of his wrist over
Nicky
’s control board. The image projected up from the control panel as a hologram and they crowded around to see.

Joshua pointed at the icon marked. ‘That’s not on the surface. Where is it?’

Richard looked a little ashamed. ‘Our satellites are ancient relics, the drones don’t even know they’re still in working order so they haven’t bothered to shoot’em down. So we can’t scan what’s underneath the surface. But Ryan knew where he was going. There’s an entry point here, see?’ Richard had the projection zoom in and follow a projected flight path from high altitude to the subterranean landing platform deep in the Colonnade.

‘I know where that is,’ said Dr. Prewett. ‘That’s my
old lab.’

The more Joshua thought about it, the crazier it seemed. But he couldn’t think of any way to talk himself out of it. Sarah was the one who had come up with the plan, but she wasn’t the one who had just spent the last couple of hours jumping around outside the hull of the ship.

They were going to zoom low over the Colonnade with the ship cloaked, and jump out at just a hundred metres up. She and Joshua would be inside within a few seconds, before the Confederacy could scan and fire on them.

The ship's cloaking ability, not to mention their jumpsuits’, was invaluable. Joshua made a mental note to properly thank the company of turncoat scientists who toiled away in the Academy's research department. If they hadn't deserted, the Academy would have been destroyed long ago when the Confederacy eventually made their own versions of these toys.

Once inside
, however, their body’s small radiation emissions would give them away, cloak or no. Everything was scanned and logged within the Colonnade. But if they moved fast, they could be in and out before the Confederates knew what was happening.

It was the “jumping out” part that had Joshua worried. A hundred metres wasn’t
quite enough for a parachute, which would be spotted instantly anyway. Once again, they would rely on those wonderfully magical jumpsuits to keep them alive and breathing.

Sarah had outfitted them both with wingsuit attachments from the ship’s armoury. They would glide in like flying squirrels and try to find a soft landing spot with the help of the suit’s anti-gravity.

She’d also selected a blowgun for herself, and strapped it to her thigh, her sword tucked neatly away on the other. She holstered a set of deadly looking darts on her belt to go with it. Lastly she added a set of plastic handcuffs, intended for their mission objective, if he wouldn’t come willingly.

Ryan
had been taking them to Dr. Prewett’s lab, presumably to meet this Meyrick person, though why Joshua couldn’t fathom.

But Prewett claimed they would find Brock there. It was as good a chance as any, and i
f it meant unlocking the bio-ID, maybe Casey would forgive them for commandeering his ship on an unauthorised mission. Joshua would be one step closer to getting some answers, and finding his sister.

He
chose for himself some smoke bombs and a distraction disc. Non-lethal. He couldn’t afford to freeze up again.

‘You’ll need something stronger
in case we run into any drones,’ Sarah warned.

Joshua flashed his knife. ‘I’ve got this... But if a drone sees us in the Colonnade, we’re already dead,’ he said.

Sarah didn’t argue.

The Nyctalopia soared down through the clouds like a hawk striking at its prey. Richard engaged the active camouflage on the hull. The ship seemed to disappear at first, but the hulls had been transformed too early during the fight with Ryan. The jumpsuit material that lined the inner hull had been exposed to the extreme temperatures of re-entry from near orbit, and been torn and burnt.

The ragged people in the streets around the Colonnade pointed upward, as a set of splotches against the sky that was the Nyctalopia swooped down as fast as possible. It was no use. The Confederacy had seen them.

Anti-aircraft weaponry opened up on the ship. Flak cannons, rail guns and missile launchers streaked towards them. The sky exploded as Richard dodged and weaved with the skill and experience of a seasoned pro. But even he would be overwhelmed in seconds. He opened a comm channel to the cargo bay where Joshua and Sarah waited.

‘I can’t stay here! Jump!’

Joshua looked down the ramp into the Colonnade. This was an entirely new perspective of the place he had been skulking around all those years, vainly searching for his sister. She was down there somewhere. Tortured, possibly. Locked in a cage and forgotten, perhaps, or forced into menial labour. No one knew how deep the Colonnade went, but
someone
had to have dug it out.

He watched Sarah jump out into space. She leaped backwards and spread her arms and legs, letting the wind snatch the flying squirrel-like wings and carry her away.

Defensive fire from the ground exploded all around, creating a beautiful but deadly display. He wished he’d had more time to train for this. All his exercises so far had been on the ground. He took a step, then another, and suddenly he was falling after Sarah, down into the unknown depths of the Colonnade.

Joshua streaked out of the sky, aiming for the hole in the ground that Sarah was making for. He couldn’t hear anything over the pandemonium of the deadly fireworks exploding around him. He hoped Richard and the doctor could make it out in one piece.

Sarah was flying head-first at the ground and hadn’t shown any sign of slowing. Was she having problems with her suit? She was going to crash.

Joshua watched from above, too far behind to help. He caught his
breath, but at the last moment she swerved off to the left in a graceful arc, dodging a building, and vanished into a hole in the ground. He couldn’t help but smile in admiration. He was lucky she had come with him. Joshua preferred to navigate by landmarks, and the only one around here was the Tower, falling off into the distance. Sarah studied the map of the Colonnade from the island’s coral representation far more than Joshua had.

He pulled his arms and legs in to his body to increase his speed, hoping to catch up. He buzzed past the building, and saw people in the windows staring back at him in amazement.

The hole in the ground was closer than he expected. It was small, only slightly wider than the Nyctalopia. Even if they had risked coming down past the air defences in the ship, he doubted even Richard could thread that needle.

Joshua was coming in too steep. He spread his arms and kicked his legs forward, angling his body up to the sky. His momentum carried him up so he was over the hole, then he kicked back, pointing straight down. It was just like driving one of those silver buggies back at the Academy. You had to pull away from the parking spot before turning in. Except if he made a mistake now he wouldn’t just ding the fender.

The ground rushed up to meet him, and then he was in. The tunnel went down perfectly straight, but there were connecting walkways spanning the gap. Joshua twisted his body, dodging for his life as they came at him.

Suddenly he realised he was about to run out of tunnel. A dead end? He was going to splatter
head-first at the bottom of the hole. He activated the jumpsuit’s anti gravity, hoping to merely break every bone in his body instead.

A
sudden light caught his attention, and he swerved at the last second to travel through a connecting tunnel. It had been an L-bend!

Sarah waited ahead of him on the landing platform. Joshua briefly wondered how
Ryan had intended to land the ship here. Joshua spread his limbs to slow down as much as possible. It wasn’t quite enough, but he tumbled harmlessly into Sarah’s arms. She’d had her suit on strength mode, anchoring her to the spot.

She let him go, and they quickly stripped off the wingsuit attachments. It would just restrict their movement while on solid ground.

‘Let’s go again!’ Joshua grinned, and watched as Sarah wiggled out of the wingsuit. Alarms suddenly sounded all around them.

He dropped the grin.

‘Someone must have seen us topside,’ Sarah said. ‘You didn’t
wave to people in the buildings did you?’

Joshua pulled his hood down and activated the suit’s active camo, hiding his red face. Sarah sighed, exasperated, and did likewise, just in time. A squad of eight guards rushed in, sweeping the landing pad with their guns.

No regular Stunners any more
, thought Joshua. They were packing the same weapon Ryan had used on Sarah. She had been lucky to survive it. Two shots would have killed her outright. Joshua decided that’s what they should call the new guns from now on.

‘Two-Shot
,’ he whispered. ‘One to knock you out, one to kill.’

Sarah had already vanished. She really wasn’t much of a team player. Joshua cursed his decision not to have his own iPC installed. The lack of it made keeping track of cloaked teammates incredibly difficult.

He looked around to take in this new environment. The landing pad rested on stilts on the uneven rock tunnel. There was a maze of air ducting running above his head, the most likely place Sarah had run off to.