by Day Leitao
“She reminds me of Sylvia.”
Right. She had nothing to do with their friend except maybe the hair color and length.
“I’m brokenhearted, you know?” Dess whispered.
Marcus frowned. “Why?”
“Doesn’t the guy remind you of me?”
“No eyeliner.”
Dess rolled his eyes. They picked up the darts quickly and proceeded to carry the guy. Damn Marcus. Why did they have to carry such a heavy person? They were each carrying one side, and it was clumsy and slow, not to mention that he didn’t know how they would erase their footprints once they reached the dunes if they had to use their hands to carry the guy.
When they were almost there, a siren blasted from the base. Of course. That was the reason it had to be one person only. If they found the girl unconscious, they’d know they had been attacked. So stupid. So much work for nothing. And to make matters worse, day was breaking.
Marcus turned to him. “Let’s leave him and run.”
That would be the appropriate solution, but Dess didn’t want to waste all their effort. “Go first and get the ship ready.”
Dess slung the soldier over his soldier and almost collapsed. He had physical training in the academy, but not any kind of weight lifting.
Marcus frowned. “You can’t…”
“Go.”
Marcus set off on a dash. Dess tried to run. Was he being stupid? He then had a better idea. He lay the unconscious soldier on the floor, ran back and threw a smoke bomb in the opposite direction from where they were. It would have little to no effect out in the open, but maybe it could distract the Mainland soldiers. He got back to his charge. This time he seemed even heavier. Dess moved as fast as he could to his ship, hoping Marcus had gotten it ready, but all he saw was his friend moving back and forth. Dess reached him. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t find it.”
“Press your control. It will light up.”
“Indeed.” Marcus pressed the button. “Where?”
The sand disguise ended up being too good, and the sun was coming up, so they couldn’t see a faint light. Dess looked around and saw no sign of Vera anywhere.
12
Goodbye
Dess tried to think. One solution would be to hide, then wait for when things were calmer to find Vera. But lots of things could go wrong. Dess put the soldier on the sand and tried to recall the moment when he stepped out of the ship and looked around, and recall the angle everything was. “That way.”
It looked wrong, as it was too flat, and the ship had been on a little hill when they’d left. This time Dess dragged the soldier over the sand, carrying him by his arms. It required a lot less effort. Marcus erased their footprints as fast as he could, or at least the footprints from a certain point. Vera was indeed in that flat area, and Dess finally saw through its imperfect disguise.
When they got in, Dess’s arms were shaking from the effort. All he did was fly low then hide underwater. They had to wait for some heavy clouds to disguise their escape, and give the soldiers in the base time to get tired and not so much on alert. He put the soldier on the back, on a chair especially made for prisoners. Next time they’d better have two chairs, just in case, and they had to prepare a lot better. Still, despite all the mistakes, they had their prisoner.
Even isolated in her room and the hangar, Saytera noticed that there was something different in the energy of the other students that morning. She got her breakfast and ran to ask Nick.
She rarely approached him, but this time she found him sitting by an old TT. “Is there anything special today?”
He was startled and yelled, “What are you doing here?”
Funny. Saytera thought he’d changed his “good morning” routine. Apparently not. “What’s happening in the academy?” she insisted.
He waved a hand. “Same. Different. Same. Nothing. You stay here and they won’t find you. And they postpone. I think they’ll postpone. Still, you’re safe. These kids, though, they think it’s funny to fight a war, they want to go to Citarella, fancy places, they think it’s fancy, until it starts for real.”
“What do you mean Citarella?”
“Or some place else. Today some of the cadets leave. They leave happy, proud, smiles on their faces. Let’s see how long they last.”
Leave. That was promising. Saytera thanked him and ran to the eating hall, where a man she’d never seen before was talking.
“…this gives a chance to strengthen our defenses and pressure Sapphirlune some more. They are blocked, and they can’t come down. They’ll have to declare defeat.”
The truce. The truce would be renewed, or cancelled, in three months. There was something unpleasant about what the man said, almost as if they were expecting something to happen. Mainland had been extending this truce for five years now, and yet nothing had changed. There was the fear that this war would never stop. But then there was the fear that war would start—for real. The man changed the topic then, talking about the students.
“Your value, your skills, and your dedication will determine your future.”
Future. Right. Nobody would remain here forever. This was just preparation for the real thing, or almost real, if the truce kept being renewed. This man was showing them a way out of this academy.
The man then was going on and on about honor and dedication. “The elite guard takes very few from isolated ground troop academies, like this, but it doesn’t mean you don’t have a chance. There are also the shore bases. Being a sentinel is honorable, too.”
There would be a test in the training room, the place Kiki went in the evening. At least one person there had good chances.
Saytera walked back to the hangar. It didn’t matter that she had no chance of going anywhere. Perhaps she should just sit tight and wait for Yansin. But then, waiting and learning very little wasn’t taking her anywhere. She wished she could leave, go somewhere else. Instead, she would probably be stuck in that place for a long time. That was a dark thought. The lights in the hallway went down. The electricity outages were a rather common occurrence now and nobody panicked anymore. It probably looked bad for the academy when they had the recruiting team inspecting its cadets. Their fault for not fixing it.
Reading didn’t help Saytera quiet her mind. She wanted to go back and watch the tests, see what they were like, who had been chosen, but then she remembered how she didn’t belong in any of that. At dinner time, she went to the line when the bell rang instead of passing by earlier and getting her food from the back. The mood was different, as if a cloud had settled there.
Kiki sat by a table and looked down, disappointed. Saytera felt vindicated. No, not really. She knew how hard the girl had worked and hoped she’d get the deserved recognition. In a way, she’d been the only one who’d at least tried to be nice to Saytera. Could have tried a little harder.
When Saytera went to her room, she was surprised to find someone there. The blond girl—her roommate, who had never set foot in that room other than in the first night. She was sitting on the floor and crying, then raised her eyes when Saytera saw her. “Oh. You.”
It was Saytera’s room, but she felt bad for the girl. “I can leave you alone if you want.”
The girl got up. “It’s fine. It’s your bedroom. I shouldn’t even be here. I just came to…” Her sobbing was loud now. “I won’t bother you anymore. Again. Ever.”
Saytera stood in front of her and took her hands. “Do you want to talk?”
The girl collapsed on Saytera's shoulder, which quickly got wet with her tears. That was awkward. Here was a girl whose name Saytera didn’t even know—despite having lived in the same complex for months—resting her face on her shoulder. But crying was good. Saytera knew it. It washed away the pain. It was just something that she didn’t particularly like.
The girl seemed to realize how odd that was, then stepped back and dried her eyes with the back of her hand. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
“I didn’t want them to see me crying.”
“I understand. Do you want to tell me what’s happening?”
The girl snorted. “I was selected. Remote shore base. Middle of nowhere. I know that they just ditch recruits there, don’t even give them any support, nothing. It’s going to be the end of my life, the end of everything. No chance of ever getting a promotion, plus the risk of being killed for nothing.”
A word kept ringing in Saytera’s mind. A hope. A glimmer of her long lost home. “Shore. You mean by the ocean?”
She gestured frantically. “Exactly. The ocean. Where they’ll attack us from.”
“Is there any way someone else could go there?”
“I placed fourth-to-last among the qualified cadets.” The girl shook her head. “A stupid mistake. I’m not that bad.”
An idea was reaching Saytera’s mind. “Could someone…” She paused and took a breath. “Volunteer to take your place?”
She shrugged. “I guess. ”
Saytera perked. “Is there any criteria? Let’s say, if the worst qualified cadet wanted to take your place, could they go?”
“As long as they’re over sixteen, yes. Do you happen to know any wacko who would be willing to go nowhere?”
It was like a wave washing away all her troubles. “I do. Very well.”
This was Dess and Marcus’ fourth kidnapping mission. It never got any easier. They’d spent days trying to locate a base. Then had to find a safe place to land. The worst part was immobilizing and bringing the Mainland soldiers. Yes, they were enemies and wouldn’t hesitate to blow them to pieces, and still… They were so young. It was just by fate that they had been born on the planet. They could well have been their colleagues in the academy had life been different. And yet, it wasn’t. If Dess wanted to end this war, end the need to send teens to blow up ships with other teens, he had to do something. Perhaps it was a lot to take on his own, but then, it was something that few people could do.
As they submerged in the water, Marcus let out a sigh.
“What?” Dess asked.
“I don’t know, I thought we’d get shot or something.” Marcus was edgier than usual.
Dess felt odd too, but perhaps it was just his friend influencing him. “We have a shield. There’s something I haven’t told you yet, do you know what Sophie and Tara do?”
“No idea.”
“Check it out: when they get shot they turn off the anti-gravity.”
Marcus paused for a moment. “So they fall.”
“They turn it on again when they are low, near the water, but whoever shot them thinks they fell.”
“Quite risky. I mean, depending on the velocity they reach in the fall, they won’t be able to avoid impact.” He frowned. “How did you find that out?”
Dess smiled. “I checked their flight reports.”
“Why?”
Dess shrugged. “I wanted to know what they do.”
“Yeah, still sounds weird to me, though. Just turning the anti-gravity again is not going to slow the descent enough.”
To be fair, Dess also thought it was weird. “It’s been working for them. Maybe they have amazing thrusters, and they probably turn them on, too.”
They were underwater now, waiting for an opportunity to come out. There were no dunes near this base, and this was the first time Dess would try to leave the ship by a forest. Perhaps this was what was bothering him. Perhaps it had been the latest mission, when the soldier had awoken on the back and kept banging and screaming to them. Dess had quickly tazed him, but the memory still left a bitter taste in his mouth.
They left the ship by a lake. The sun was just about to rise. They’d found that the early morning was the best time to slip in and out of the planet. In theory, Mainlanders should keep watch twenty-four hours, but in practice, they were likely late sleepers. Dess didn’t know until how long, though. The communication in Mainland was encrypted and hard to reach, and it didn’t seem like they were on alert against intruders. But once that happened, Dess’s luck would probably change. So far it had been fairly good, though.
His apprehension proved to be pointless when, from the forest, he saw a young man walking on the beach alone, wearing the unmistakable red Mainland uniform. Alone, unarmed, unaware. Everything they needed.
Marcus and Dess shared a look, then Dess’s friend made his way to the beach and shot the young man. Thankfully it was a guy, or else his friend would start with the “reminds me of Sylvia” nonsense. They now had a type of stretcher with small wheels to drag their victims. Victims. What a thought. It almost made Dess feel like a criminal. But then, nobody was getting hurt, and the people in Sapphirlune were starving and could potentially have even bigger problems if Mainland strengthened its defenses against private contractors like Dess and Marcus or Tara and Sophie.
A loud bang interrupted his thoughts. It was coming from the forest, from the opposite side of the beach. In less than one second, Dess saw blood on Marcus’s arm, took his own zapper, and shot back in the direction where the sound had come from, where he saw a red shape moving. He ran in that direction and found a Mainland soldier lying on the ground. Dess’s vision went blurry and he almost fell when he noticed the black mark and a whole in the young man’s chest, then his unfocused, glassy eyes. Dead. It was as if time stopped, slowed down, and an abyss opened beneath him. Dead. He’d been trained to kill, and yet, it was as if a bit of his own fire had dimmed together with the one he’d quenched. But this was no time to mourn. He looked up, searching for other enemies. Nobody yet, but the sound would attract attention. The dead young man had a cracker pistol. Made to kill. This was a reminder that they weren’t joking. Dess ran back towards Marcus.
He was holding his wound and asked, “What happened?”
“Let’s leave this one. I… injured the other.” The true word wouldn’t come out of his mouth. “Are you hurt?”
“Just a scratch. Let’s take both. Or they’ll have evidence.”
Dess sighed. “True.”
There was a dark hole where Dess’s heart should be. He dragged the fallen soldier’s body and put him on top of the unconscious one.
Marcus stared at him. “He’s—”
“I know!” He yelled. That was stupid. “We need to take him.”
The journey back to Vera took forever as Dess dragged the stretcher on his own. He didn’t feel the extra effort, taken by a feeling of numbness.
Vera. What would Dess’s mother think about him? Think about this? But then with the memory of his mother came the memory of running back to the shuttle, Anise’s doll in hand, to be greeted with a loud boom and an explosion.
“Dess, Dess!”
Marcus was calling him. He’d been frozen, staring at the ship.
“Hey,” his friend continued. “He could have killed me. They would have shot our ship without even blinking. It happens.”
Dess nodded. He knew all that. And yet, the feeling…
It was a sad flight away from that base, then up above the storm clouds, from where they threw the body. That felt wrong, too. So many wrong things. He was trying to fix them. At that moment, though, it just felt that he was making everything worse.
Kia shook her head. “It’s a no, Saytera.”
She closed her eyes and decided to be honest. “I can’t stand it here. Everyone hates me—”
“They don’t hate you. You just have to give these kids a chance. Plus, you might be assigned a better place next year, once you learn more about mechanics.”
Saytera almost replied that she wasn’t learning that much, having to figure out everything by herself, but she didn’t want to out Nick.
The woman added, “And it’s dangerous for you. I know you’re not good with pistols. How do you intend to survive out there? Things are not as calm as they seem. I need you to be safe.”
Safe. Kept safe. She looked right into the woman’s eyes. “Who do you answer to?”
“My superiors.” Kia narr
owed her eyes. “What kind of question is that?”
“I mean about me.” How silly that only now Saytera considered that. “What was in that information stick I gave you?”
“I thought you knew.” Kia sighed.
“I don’t. I was separated from my family, from everything. I need to know if someone will come back for me. I need to know what’s happening.”
The woman nodded. “I understand. I understand you want to know more, but I can’t help you. I received an anonymous communication, together with a large deposit. I was to receive you, a girl with mismatched eyes. If you were safe at the end of one year, I’d receive another deposit again.”
Saytera wondered if it had been Yansin or even Carla, the woman who’d helped her. She never thought Yansin could have access to money, but perhaps she had been wrong.
She had to try to convince Kia. “Fine. They said I had to be safe, they didn’t say I had to be here. If it’s a remote base, I’ll be even more hidden, even safer.”
The woman shook her head. “If the Lunars attack, the shore bases are our first line of defense. It means they’ll be the first to fall.”
“Except that there’s a truce. And those bases have powerful anti-aerial cannons, don’t they?”
The woman sighed. “Some people have disappeared from these bases, Saytera. Some of it might be desertion, then some of it… Many things. There are sea creatures, too.”
“I grew up by the beach. I know how to deal with them.”
The woman had a smirk, as if Saytera’s words were funny.
Saytera had an idea on how to convince Kia. If she could make the woman understand how she was different, how she faced unique threats… “I have a secret to tell you. Watch.”
The woman’s desk had many objects; a datapad, a pointer, an old pen. This had to work. Saytera closed her eyes and focused on the pen. She imagined it floating slowly. Saytera’s levitating skills were terrible, and without much practice, without time to focus, she wasn’t sure she would achieve it. A loud crashing sound startled her. Saytera opened her eyes to see the glasses in the office cracked. The light was down, too, illumination coming from a tiny window by the ceiling.
