“Yes, I understand that.” Cadan’s voice was full of bitten-down frustration. “But why wouldn’t IPL allow said teenagers to volunteer the power they control? No one’s been using Lin. We’re not talking child soldiers here—or Humane Treatment Act violations. This is voluntary. All along, this has been voluntary.”
Except for me. Elissa pushed the thought away. That was over. Lin had promised not to do it again. And that wasn’t what Cadan was talking about, anyway.
The commander was looking at him as if it were he who was the stinking and decayed thing. “IPL isn’t allowing it for the same reason IPL doesn’t allow child soldiers, even when they are—supposedly—voluntary.” There was an edge to her voice now. “You’re talking about a seventeen-year-old destroying two flyers—taking lives—as if that’s acceptable. As if, as long as you were happy to let that happen, we should be too. IPL finds nothing acceptable, Captain Greythorn, in you permitting—encouraging—a teenager to kill.”
“Oh for God’s sake,” snapped Cadan. “When did you start your combat training, then? Did IPL hold off training you till you turned twenty?”
“That will do! It’s not your place to put personal questions to an IPL official—”
But Cadan hadn’t finished. “Because I know I was in combat training when I was fourteen—just like I would have been if I’d joined the space force of half the planets in the star system.”
“Then you should also know you were being trained for defense—”
“And that’s what Lin was doing! That’s what I was doing. I killed people in those fights too. Is that okay just because I’m not a teenager anymore, or because I did it with my ship’s firepower rather than with electrokinesis?”
“Captain Greythorn, I said that’s enough. This is not a classroom debate. If you’re frustrated by IPL’s code of ethics, perhaps I should remind you that maybe it’s a little more stringent than the government you’re used to.”
“Whoa,” said Samuel, sotto voce. “Scorch.”
Sofia giggled, muffled but still audible. And something rippled through the room, an eddy of half-hidden rebellion that reminded Elissa of being back at school. No, not through the whole room—just through the nine twins and Spares.
The grown-ups, too, might be angry and frustrated, but in the glances they shot Samuel’s way there was nothing but distracted irritation. Not the delighted, covert amusement that Elissa saw flicker across Lin’s, Ady’s, Cassiopeia’s faces.
What happens if we say we won’t go? If we really do rebel, if we force the commander to listen to us? If the IPL forces were so overstretched, how could they stop them? And with a million more important things to focus on, how much effort were they going to put into trying? Mr. and Mrs. Greythorn might think they should leave—even Ivan and Markus and Felicia might, when they’d been told and told how dangerous it was for her and Lin to stay. Could they really make them leave, though? Did they have enough power to do that?
Cadan was starting to say something else when Commander Dacre put her hand up, a peremptory demand for silence. There was a distracted line between her eyebrows.
After a split second of confusion, Elissa registered the almost imperceptible tilt of the commander’s head and realized she was listening to the earpiece fastened through her ear.
“What? What? Yes, I’m here— You’re not coming through.” Her voice rose. “I’m not getting you. Try another ch— Hell.” She put her finger to the earpiece, her eyebrows now slanting close together, then clicked twice, three times, on the side of her wrist-unit. “Greythorn, are you running masking?”
It was Cadan’s father who answered. “No. You are—IPL is.”
“I’m not talking about the standard blackout!” She shot him a look like a razor. “Anything extra, I’m asking. There’s interference on every channel.”
“Then no. No masking. The interference isn’t coming from us.”
The commander swore again, threw what looked like a glance of fury at the whole room, and flicked something on her wrist-unit.
The voice exploded into the room at top volume. Several people clapped their hands to their ears.
“Commander Dacre, do you read? Come in, Commander Dacre. Emergency in the immediate vicinity. Commander Dacre—”
“Yes.” The commander still had her finger on the wrist-unit, and after a second the voice fell to a bearable volume. “I’m hearing you, Control. Go ahead.”
“There’s unauthorized activity heading toward the tower you’re in. A group of twelve, on foot, three different directions, and all the street-corner cams are detecting concealed weapons—”
“Give me the coordinates.”
The voice obeyed. The commander tipped her head to hear, eyes crinkling in concentration.
Unauthorized activity? Concealed weapons? No. No! This is meant to be a safe house.
Lin had gone very still next to her. Across the room, Zee was suddenly shivering, and El’s lips were white.
“We’ll need an extraction,” Commander Dacre said. “Send a team in. I’ll get the occupants to the roof for a pickup in five minutes—”
“We don’t have a team.” The voice crackled across hers. For the first time Elissa realized it was a man’s voice, harsh with something more than urgency, something closer to panic. “There’s no other team close enough. Yours is the only one in the area—”
“They’re not.” There was no interference scrunching at the commander’s voice, but all at once it sounded equally harsh. “I’m here solo. I logged it all in before I came out—I assigned my team to the fire in Sector C. It’s on the records in front of you, for God’s sake!”
“You—” The man sounded blank, shocked. “You don’t have your team with you?”
“Check your records! This isn’t my negligence. Get me another team. I don’t care where you get them from. Pull them out and send them here.”
“Commander, I don’t have anyone.” It was definitely panic in his voice now. “I don’t have anyone. They’re all in three-bar emergencies—I can’t pull anyone out. If you’re there solo, you’re the sole personnel in the whole area. Commander—”
The commander bit out an expression Elissa’s mother had told her no nice woman would ever say, and cut the connection.
She began dialing through names on her wrist-unit. Within seconds it was blinking amber, the speed of the flashes indicating the number of people she was calling. But that was all. It didn’t flash green; no voice broke through the charged silence in the room.
The commander swore again, but Elissa wasn’t listening anymore. There were people coming to attack them. People with weapons, who must have found out that there was a safe house here—a safe house filled with vulnerable, hated Spares, and their twins, and the people protecting them.
There was an ear-crackling burst of interference, then the voice came through once more. “Commander, your ground-level exits are no-go. They’re at both sides of the tower block. They’re hacking into the entrance codes—they’ll be in the tower within five minutes.”
“Then you’ll have to find an extraction team,” the commander snapped.
“We don’t have one. The nearest one is twenty minutes away—”
“Then tell them to get here as soon as they can! We’ll panic-room the pairs. I’ve got armed personnel here—we’ll hold them off until your damn team can reach us.”
The voice was saying something else, but the words broke up into electronic squeaks and burbles, and the commander cut the connection again. Her gaze swept to Mr. Greythorn.
“Panic room,” she said. “We can hold out until the rescue team gets here.”
Panic room? Since when does low-income housing have panic rooms?
The next moment Elissa and Lin, as well as the other Spares and their twins, found themselves being hustled into the corridor Ady and Zee’s room led off, then through the first door. It was just a bedroom—Cassiopeia’s bedroom, Elissa guessed, when she saw that only the bottom bun
k had been used. The bed in the top bunk was still as perfectly made as if it had slid that moment from the pressing rollers of a housekeeper-bot.
Mrs. Greythorn hit a button by the little window, and a steel shutter rattled down to clunk into the slot at the bottom of the window. A metallic scrape and slither told Elissa that bolts had shot out to secure it.
The twins were pressed against the bunk bed and against the opposite wall. There was room for all nine of them, but only just.
And this isn’t a real panic room. There’s no food and water supply, there’s no washroom, the air-conditioning isn’t separate from the rest of the apartment.
Commander Dacre swept them all with a look. “The code word is ‘morello.’ You need to remember it. Use the internal door locks. Don’t open them for anything other than the code word, you understand?” Her gaze included Mrs. Greythorn and Ivan.
They’re staying in here as well? But what about the others? What about Cadan?
The next moment she had the answer. Mr. Greythorn’s, Felicia’s, and Markus’s hands were on their holsters, and Cadan was zipping up his uniform jacket. It was blaster-proof, she knew that much from the fight with the pirates who’d gotten on board the Phoenix. But the people coming to attack us—they won’t be using just blasters, they’ll be using real guns.
“What are you doing?” said Lin, her voice higher than normal. “What’s going on?”
Elissa reached for her hand. “They’re leaving us in here, where it’s safest. They’re going to go fight off the—the attack.”
“Markus and Felicia and Cadan?” Lin’s voice went even higher. She looked incredulously at the commander. “They’re not IPL. They’re not supposed to have to fight, not with people!”
It sounded crazy, the way she said it, but her voice revealed all the outrage Elissa was feeling. Fighting with a ship, the way Cadan had back at the base, that seemed fair—scary, but fair. It was what he was trained for. But this awful, cornered, rats-in-a-trap last-stand defense . . .
The commander gave Lin an impatient look as she turned to go back out. “Do I have time for this? They’re all experienced with combat. I have no team here, and eleven civilians to protect.”
And so now they’re good enough for you? Elissa thought furiously, knowing it was unfair, not caring. So the commander would talk to Cadan like he was a fool, but then she’d ask—no, not even ask—expect him to risk his life to help her with the job she was supposed to do? Without even—does he even have a real gun? And his jacket—is it bullet-proof, too? Oh God, it has to be.
She couldn’t freak out now. She couldn’t. It wouldn’t help anyone, least of all Cadan. He’d dealt with a million things like this—okay, he was primarily trained for space and air combat, but he was trained for hand-to-hand, too, and she knew he was more than competent at it. She didn’t need to start panicking.
She clenched her hands so tight she felt her nails jab points of pain into her palms, bit the inside of her cheek to keep her face steady, and looked across the room at him.
His eyes met hers, but this time there was no private little smile in them, no look that told her that no matter what she feared, he was sure he was going to be okay.
He’s not sure. He knows this is stupidly dangerous, but he’s doing it anyway.
Cadan’s mother was looking at him too, from him to his father. Her face was white. “No,” she said. “No. Twelve of them. Twelve. You’ll get yourselves killed.”
“Emily—” Mr. Greythorn came toward her, tried to put his arm around her, but she jerked away and turned on Commander Dacre.
“What are you doing? This is halfway to a suicide mission. What’s wrong with you?”
The commander’s gaze seemed to skim over Cadan’s mother rather than rest on her. “I’m left with eleven civilians here—nine of them underage. Would you like me to leave you all to be killed?”
“I’d like you to save us more intelligently!” snapped Mrs. Greythorn. “Rather than forcing my husband and son to get killed along with them. For God’s sake, there must be someone else nearby.”
Commander Dacre’s hand went up, a gesture that, in less than an hour, had become all too familiar. Elissa thought that anytime she saw someone make it in the future she would be filled with the same frustrated anger she felt now. She’s not listening. She didn’t listen to what we could do, and now she’s not listening to what we can’t. Cadan’s mother is right—this is too high risk. They’ll get killed. The man at Control—he said there was a team only twenty minutes away. We should all lock ourselves in the panic room. We should all just wait.
But the man hadn’t exactly sounded definite about the team. And the “panic room”—it wasn’t a real panic room. The approaching attackers, if their weapons were good enough, could be inside it within minutes.
It was an animal’s terrified instinct, she knew, that made her want to bolt into the smallest, most secure-feeling place, lock herself in with the people she loved best, shut her eyes, put her hands over her ears, and wait for rescue.
Rescue that might never come.
Cadan had been fastening the collar of his jacket. Now he took his hands down, leaving his collar unfastened.
“She’s right,” he said. “It’s a suicide mission.”
The commander swung around on him. “What did you come here for? What did you think we were dealing with? You’ve been burning my ears off with your demands to help, and now you have the opportunity—”
“Hey.” Cadan put his hands up. “We’re going to help. But we’re going to help in a way that makes sense.” He looked across at Lin. His eyes had the flat blue blaze Elissa had seen before.
“The fire escape goes to the roof,” he said. “All the buildings near us, they’ve got external fire escapes as well as internal. If we get up there, can you get us across?”
Lin was squeezing past the bodies in front of her while Elissa was still working out what he meant. “Easy.”
“Then let’s go. Commander, we can get to the roof, get across to the next-door building then down to the ground. It’ll buy us some time before the extraction team can get here. Lis”—his eyes went to her, and now there was a tiny smile, like a spark, within them—“you coming?”
Excitement burned suddenly through her as what he meant came clear in her mind. The metal fire escapes that jutted above every roof, the narrowness of the alleys between the tower blocks. If they had time and tools, they could bridge the gap even without Lin’s help. But with her help, with her electrokinesis, it would take minutes.
They were at the door when the commander stepped in front of them. She put her arm out to stop them going out into the corridor where Cadan waited. “No,” she said, not to them but to Cadan. “For God’s sake, did you hear nothing I said, you stupid boy? You can’t do this.”
Elissa could almost hear the clash as Cadan’s eyes met hers. “Move out of the way,” he said.
“Don’t even consider it, Captain.” The commander’s gun was in her hand. Elissa would have thought it was in preparation for an attack, except it was pointing at them. At her and Lin. “You’re not in control here.”
“Seems like you’re not much in control either,” said Cadan. “Like you said, time is tight. Let us through.”
The commander didn’t move. “I said no.”
The back of Lin’s hand brushed Elissa’s. Heat rose all at once through her, a haze like vapor lifting over water. But a haze that seemed to blur only part of the room, leaving other bits very clear. The look on Commander Dacre’s face, the set of Cadan’s head.
She’s not listening. She’s not listening to Cadan, or anyone else. She’s not paying attention to the fact that Lin and I can move a spaceship. This isn’t even her world, it’s ours, and she’s not letting us make any attempt to save it.
“And we’re saying yes.”
For a moment Elissa thought it was she who’d spoken, then she realized it wasn’t. It was Lin.
LIN WAS staring at th
e commander, her chin up and her eyes bright with a look that made Elissa automatically think danger.
“We’re saying yes,” she repeated. “We came here to help and you’re not going to stop us.”
Commander Dacre gave her a look that almost seemed like one of hatred. “Oh, for God’s sake. Do you think I take orders from teenagers?”
Lin narrowed her eyes. “Too many.”
“What? Too many what?”
“Too many times you’ve said ‘teenagers.’ ” Lin smiled at her, a look that would have been almost kind had it not been for the flat gleam in her eyes. “Maybe you’d understand stuff better if you stopped being so worried about our age?”
Out of place though it was, a ripple went through the room. A ripple of not-quite-audible amusement.
“That’s enough! I’m not here to argue with—” The commander broke off.
“Teenagers?” said Lin, her smile wide and bright.
“Civilians. I’m warning you, girl, step away.”
A sudden prickle, a feeling of the hairs lifting, ran along Elissa’s arms, up the back of her neck. She shot a look at Lin and saw her sister’s eyes still fixed on Commander Dacre, her hands whitening as they clenched.
“No,” said Lin.
“Who do you think you are? You don’t get to say no to IPL.”
“I do. I get to say no to anyone.” Something edged Lin’s voice. Not quite a tremble, more like the prickling shiver that had run over Elissa’s skin. The haze rose further through her head. There was heat in her chest now, burning, and in her hands, too, making them tremble.
Attacking the ships back at the base . . . that was something she hadn’t consented to and hadn’t wanted. But this was different. Elissa reached out, curled her hand around Lin’s. Make her stop. She didn’t know which of them the thought came from, but she did know that the sudden flare of energy came from both. It sprang from their joined hands, licking up Elissa’s arm like invisible fire, burning in her throat like strong alcohol, in her face as if she’d thrown open an oven door.
Unravel Page 17
