The Water Wars

by Cameron Stracher

  I ran my fingers over its smooth black surface. I was amazed that such a small device had so much power. But there was only enough charge for one shock wave, so I would have just one chance. Sula gripped my arm as if she was going to say something more, but all she said was, “Hurry now.”

  I hugged Ulysses and Will. Will gave me one last chance to change my mind, then made me promise I wouldn’t take any foolish risks.

  “At least none you wouldn’t,” I said. Despite himself, he grinned back at me.

  I stole one last look at the destabilizer, memorizing the location of the buttons, then I stepped from the hiding place out into the open. The guards turned to me in surprise, as if they had just seen a phantom.

  “Kai!” I waved.

  Sights raised, the guns bristled at me. I held my breath.

  “Vera?” Kai’s face was as confused as the men’s around him.

  The gun of the leading guard lowered slightly, and the man peered at me over his barrel. “Identify yourself!” he called.

  “I’m a friend of Kai’s,” I said.

  “The pirate’s daughter.” Torq pushed to the front of the group, his brown head glistening in the sun. “But where is your father? He can’t have gotten far.”

  “You have him in your prison.”

  “He’s gone. But I think you know that.” He turned to the nearest guard. “Search her.”

  One of the guards swiftly approached and checked me for weapons, but he was young and nervous, and I could tell he felt uncomfortable running his hands over my body. He didn’t even think to inspect the timepiece on my wrist. The other guards lowered their guns. I’m sure they didn’t think I posed any threat. Torq signaled to two of them, and they escorted me back inside their circle.

  “Hi, Kai,” I said, as if we were meeting on the road after school again.

  “Hi, Vera.”

  We grinned at each other like idiots. I couldn’t have been happier if someone had handed me a real orange with a glass of fresh water.

  “This is not a game,” said Torq. “Whatever your father’s planned, it won’t succeed. We’ll be in the air before he or anyone else can stop us.”

  The circle of guards pressed more tightly around me. Torq gave them their orders, and they marched us toward three waiting helicopters.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “Silence!” thundered Torq.

  My right hand touched my left wrist. I felt strangely calm. Even though I was surrounded, I felt no fear. “It’s going to be okay,” I said to Kai. “We’re here to rescue you.”

  Torq turned to me at that moment, his arm raised as if to strike. His sudden motion caused me to stumble slightly backward, so that when I pressed the buttons on the destabilizer, my left foot was barely touching the ground. I felt a blow to my solar plexus like someone had tossed a hundred-kilo bag of sand at my stomach. My vision went wobbly, the way a wi-cast lost its rectangular shape and became blobbish when the transmission was interrupted. At first I didn’t even see the men crumpling around me, falling like their bones were broken. My feet went out from under me, and I collapsed too.

  I was barely conscious when Ulysses lifted me to his shoulder and carried me at a full run toward the jets. This was a man with a piece of metal in his upper thigh, several cracked ribs, and contusions across his back and neck. But he ran like a pan-republic champion, hunched low and aerodynamic, his body shielding me while he emptied Nasri’s gun at the phalanx of guards by the runway. At his side Sula loosed a volley of harpoons while she kept Will safely behind her.

  Although outnumbered, Ulysses and Sula had the advantage of surprise, speed, and deadly accuracy. The guards were soft from a life of easy water, while Ulysses and Sula were tempered by hardship and thirst. A half-dozen men were dead or wounded before the remaining guards even knew they were being attacked. The others scattered quickly, and only a few managed to return fire before they were shot down. One guard blocked the doorway to the nearest jet, but Sula quickly felled him with a second knife she kept sheathed at her ankle. Another guard stepped from behind a walkway, but Ulysses knocked him unconscious with the butt of the gun.

  All this happened in a flash. The images of violence, explosions, and scattered gunshots barely registered. Later Will filled in the missing details. I was alert enough, however, to realize that we had left Kai and his father with Torq and his men.

  “Kai!” I cried.

  “We’re not done yet,” growled Ulysses.

  Torq and his men twitched on the ground, but Sula had already climbed into the cockpit of the jet and started the engines. Ulysses lay me down in the small compartment meant for the pilot’s gear, and Will squeezed in next to me. Then Ulysses climbed into the copilot’s seat. The plane shook violently as Sula increased the power to the engines.

  “You sure you know how to fly one of these?” Ulysses asked.

  Sula glared at him. “Sure you know how to fasten your seat belt?”

  The ping of bullets striking the wings cut short their spat. One hit the windshield, leaving an irregular star on the glass. Ulysses pulled the safety strap across his shoulder and buckled himself into his seat.

  Sula maneuvered the jet across the runway. The engines roared loudly as she increased the thrust. Outside Torq had risen unsteadily to his feet; I could see him shouting orders at his men. Sula drove the plane directly toward him, accelerating quickly as his men scrambled for their weapons. She could have mowed them down or fired a rocket into their midst, but Kai was still unconscious on the ground, and his father stood shakily over him.

  The end of the runway was just one hundred meters distant. Sula braked and swung the jet around. The engines sprayed hot exhaust at Torq and his men, and they dropped to the ground to avoid the burning fuel. Sula kept the engines roaring at full blast. The inferno of gas set the roof ablaze. “Thirty seconds,” she said to Ulysses.

  “You better cover me.” He unlatched the door.

  “I’m wasting fuel,” said Sula.

  “I’m not kidding.” He stepped from the plane onto the concrete runway. The air crinkled around him, hot and dry, all the oxygen burned out of it. There was no way he could breathe in the heat. But he hunkered low and ran for the soldiers, as if he might try to take them all at once. The men struggled to grasp their weapons. Their arms tensed and flexed as they tried to make their muscles respond in their weakened state.

  Driesen Smith rose to one knee, while Kai remained unconscious. Ulysses reached the father and slung the boy over one shoulder. Driesen could barely move, so Ulysses lifted him with one arm and half-dragged, half-carried him across the runway. The guards shouted for him to stop, but they couldn’t manage to squeeze off any shots. Several tried to run after him, staggering and weaving, buckling and then rising again. But Ulysses kept going, relentless and indestructible. At the door of the jet, Driesen Smith hesitated. His long blond lashes fluttered rapidly, and his jaw hung open. He seemed to be weighing the risks of jumping into a plane with a crazed pirate against staying on the ground with corporate assassins. Probable death versus certain death.

  “Move it!” Ulysses yelled and tossed him in the jet like a sack of dry-crete. Then he tossed Kai on top of him.

  “Careful!” I said.

  “No time for careful. Fly,” Ulysses commanded.

  Sula didn’t hesitate. She threw the engines into gear and blasted toward the edge of the runway. Bullets sang out harmlessly in the vapor trail behind us. In a moment we were airborne, with only the ocean and the sky between us and home.

  CHAPTER 20

  We flew fast and silently. With our faces pressed to the window, we could barely feel the vibration from the powerful engines. Thin wisps of clouds spidered below us, delicate and fragile. The glass was cold to our cheeks. Inside the temperature dropped rapidly, but at least we had oxygen and blankets. Sula explained we were traveling at nearly twice the speed of sound, beyond the barrier where words could catch us.

  “We’re safe�
�for now,” she added.

  Kai leaned against me, conscious but unable to speak. His head rested on my shoulder. I glanced at his father, whose left arm hung useless at his side. Sula told us it could be several hours before the effects of the destabilizer completely wore off.

  “Sula rescued us from the fortress,” I told Kai. “And Ulysses saved us from the mines.”

  “You escaped from the fortress on your own,” said Sula.

  “And it was you who saved me from Bluewater,” said Ulysses.

  “But we never could have rescued them without your help,” I said.

  I told Kai the entire story then: about finding Martin the bodyguard dead and Kai’s insulin abandoned in the bath, about following the clues to the old well, about traveling with the pirates to the dam, being captured by PELA, escaping, and then falling into the hands of Bluewater.

  “But now we’re safe,” I said. “And soon we’ll be home.”

  Kai squeezed my hand.

  “They’ll come after you,” said Driesen—his first words since boarding the jet.

  “Ha! I’d like to see Torq show his face in Basin,” said Ulysses.

  “Bluewater owns Basin,” said Driesen.

  “A company can’t own a city,” I said.

  Driesen grimaced. “You’re just a child. You don’t know anything about the world. Bluewater owns the water; it owns the land; it owns the cities and republics.”

  “It doesn’t own Canada,” I protested.

  “It owns the people who own Canada.”

  “And what about the war?”

  “This war is nothing. An inconvenience.”

  I assumed Driesen was joking. I had seen the jets screaming across the sky and the tanks lumbering north. I had witnessed the boys who returned from the front lines with limbs missing, minds gone. The war was not an inconvenience. It was a shroud that covered the sun. It darkened our lives like the dust that settled on our hands and lips, making everything we tasted and touched dry, bitter, and fruitless.

  “There’s a bigger war about to happen,” Driesen continued. “A world war. These other wars are skirmishes, police actions. Fights over borders and boundaries. But soon there will only be two sides: people with water, and those without. The next battle—the final battle—will be about who controls the spigot.”

  “And Bluewater?” I asked.

  “It plays both sides. But it needs a sponsor to protect its operations. So it aligns itself with the water-powerful and keeps knowledge of new supplies from the waterless.”

  No one spoke. What Driesen said made sense. The republics’ water started in Canada, and the Canadians’ water started in the Arctic, and the Arctic’s water started as rain from the clouds. But the Canadians had dammed the rivers, the Europeans had drained the polar cap, and the Chinese had sucked the storm clouds from the sky. To survive it was not enough to hoard water; it had to be stolen from one’s enemies. Small wars turned into larger wars, and the large wars would become one war. If the Canadians weren’t fighting the Australians yet, it was just a matter of time.

  “We have to stop them,” I said.

  “You can’t defeat them,” said Driesen. “They have too much money and too many resources.”

  “But we have Kai!” I said.

  “And they won’t stop until they have him back.”

  “How can you say that about your son?”

  Driesen grimaced again. “Don’t you think I’ve tried to protect him? I’ve done everything I could. Hired bodyguards. Disguised our identities. Made secret deals with other republics. But Bluewater is different. What it doesn’t own, it buys.”

  “Kai said there was a river.”

  Driesen’s laugh was like a half-formed cough. “There is no river.”

  I looked at him but saw nothing funny. Kai raised his head from my shoulder, as if he wanted to say something but he didn’t have the strength.

  “Kai said he would take me there.”

  “That was just a story.”

  “A story?” I managed.

  “We told it to keep people away.”

  “From what?”

  The jet banked hard, and my stomach rose into my chest. Kai clenched my arm, and at first I thought he was frightened; then I realized he was holding me because he thought I was.

  “Idiots are shooting at us,” said Sula.

  Hundred of tracer bullets lit the sky around the jet. I peered out the window. We were thousands of meters above a ruined city that was no doubt controlled by vigilantes or mercenaries. A downed jet would be a real prize, its captured crew a treasure in ransom. Sula banked hard again, then climbed swiftly. The tracers disappeared, and my stomach settled. Kai let go of my arm; his fingers left fine red marks on my skin.

  Driesen was watching as Kai settled back against my shoulder. Then his expression softened, and he looked merely quizzical. “We were drilling for water in a virgin aquifer,” he said.

  “The aquifers have all been tapped,” said Ulysses gruffly.

  “No,” said Driesen. “Not all of them. There’s confined aquifers sit below a surface aquifer. Men drain the water they see but don’t realize there’s more water below. It takes real skill to find the water. It takes a gift—like Rikkai’s.”

  “And where is this geological marvel?” Ulysses demanded. He sounded as if he thought Driesen’s tale was just driller hocus-pocus. Drillers were notorious for their tall tales and dreams of wealth. Yet most died without a credit chip to their names.

  “It can only be reached with special drilling equipment that Tinker and I developed. But there’s water, billions of liters, never been touched. More than enough for all of Illinowa.”

  Could it be? It was as if Driesen had said there were diamonds, free for the taking, polished and cut, gleaming in a pile like tomorrow’s promise. Everyone in that plane was silent, imagining the riches.

  Kai’s lips were chapped and cracked, and his voice was harsh and raspy. He lifted his head and looked at me. “Water,” he said. “To start again.”

  With all the talk about aquifers, we had forgotten that Kai and Driesen might be thirsty. I grabbed Sula’s canteen and helped Kai drink a long mouthful. Then I gave the rest to his father. I recalled that Kai had told me the symptoms of his diabetes began with a great thirst, a desire for water he couldn’t quench. It was as if his disease became his gift, his illness the cure for all of our sickness.

  “We’ll need that equipment,” said Ulysses.

  “It’s still at the dam PELA blew, I expect. Bluewater wasn’t interested in the water. They just wanted Kai.”

  “Sula,” said Ulysses.

  “Give me the coordinates,” she responded, and then she punched them into the onboard navigator.

  “It’s the first place they’ll look,” said Driesen.

  “We’ll not stay long enough for them to find us,” she said.

  “And then what?” Driesen said bitterly. “You’ll have the entire Minnesota Water Guard looking for us. To say nothing of Bluewater.”

  Ulysses sniffed. “Maybe we’ll just leave you at the dam.”

  “Ulysses!” I scolded him.

  “Without me, you can’t work the equipment,” Driesen said. “Without Rikkai, you won’t know where to drill.”

  “We’re not leaving you anywhere,” I said. “Ulysses is just cranky.”

  The pirate gritted his teeth. “You’d be cranky too if you had shrapnel in your hip.”

  “What good will it do?” asked Will. “The dam’s in Minnesota. We’ll never get the water home.”

  “The aquifer runs below most of the republic, and Minnesota too. It runs all the way up to Canada,” said Driesen. “We were drilling in Minnesota, because that’s where Tinker lived, and the barrier was shallow. We could drill right below Basin. But that won’t solve your problem.”

  “Bluewater,” I said.

  “They won’t let anyone drill,” agreed Driesen. “We tried, and look what happened. They won’t let anyone access f
ree water if it threatens their hold.”

  “Unless they don’t have a choice,” I said.

  “How so?” asked Ulysses.

  “We make them an offer they can’t refuse.”

  “Ha! You sound like a pirate now!”

  I felt like a pirate, suddenly enthused by a wily and implausible plan. “Listen,” I said.

  The others fell silent as the jet flew northwest into the setting sun.

  We had only one-third of a tank of fuel, but Sula said it would be enough. The jet could fly on one engine if needed, and the wind would do the rest. Driesen had everything he needed at the drilling site, I explained. We didn’t need a lot of water, just enough to fill several cisterns. There were cameras everywhere, and it was only a short flight home. Torq and his men would find us—it was impossible to escape—but by then it would be too late. At least that was the plan.

  “It’s a good plan,” Ulysses acknowledged.

  More important, it was our only plan. Bluewater would surely never stop until it recaptured Kai, and the rest of us might be killed if we got in its way. We couldn’t keep running. Not when we were so close to home.

  “Vera?” Kai managed.

  I leaned close to his lips.

  He spoke with a deep rasp, but I could understand him. He told me then about the mercs who had come looking for them, the gun battle in which Martin was killed, how they had been forced to disclose Dr. Tinker’s location. The mercs flew them to Bluewater, where Torq refused to give Kai insulin until Driesen revealed the site of the aquifer. Kai didn’t know PELA had killed Dr. Tinker, and the news came as a blow. He and Driesen had worked together for years, and Kai considered him to be like an uncle.

  “He could be crabby,” said Kai, “but he was a good man.”

  I didn’t disagree, although my memory of Dr. Tinker was less kind.