by Jake Elwood
The waiting was tedious, Lark had to admit. There was nothing to alleviate the boredom but nagging from the adults and petty humiliations from the Skylanders. Elly took out a PAD and thumbed it to life. When Miss Grimsby didn't react, Lark brought out her own PAD.
By now, she realized, the search she had started the night before should have finished. The offworld results would be in. Anticipation tingled in her stomach as she opened the search tool.
The grim round face of the cleaner stared out at her from the screen and she shivered in spite of herself. Maybe I should forget it. He's scary. I don't want to make him mad. She pushed the thought away firmly. Cassie would never let herself be intimidated by some thug who wasn't even there with her, and neither would Lark.
Match found, the PAD said, and Lark felt her pulse quicken. She brought up a summary of the search results. Manan Soresh, age fifty, convicted of assault five years earlier, served six months in prison. Arrested for assault one year ago. Acquitted. Suspected membership in the Plateau Society. No current outstanding criminal warrants.
"Ridiculous," she muttered. All of his crimes were on Zemoth. There was no sign he'd ever left the planet. But she'd had to go to off-world databases to learn about him. It was a dumb galaxy she lived in, she decided.
There was more, information about family members and so on. She ignored that part and ran a quick search on the Plateau Society.
Plateau Society, a terrorist organization based on the planet Zemoth.
Lark felt her skin go cold. Well, maybe all they did was throw eggs at politicians. She kept reading, and the chill got worse. The Plateau Society, founded and led by Hiram Hearne, was dedicated to opposing the Skyland civilization that orbited the planet. In the view of Hearne and his followers, the Skylanders were the unacknowledged leaders of Zemoth, and the groundside population would never truly be free until Skyland had been destroyed.
She rolled her eyes. If the people of Zemoth weren't free, she certainly couldn't tell. This Hearne guy sounded like he was full of hot air. She continued reading.
"Oh, you're learning about your history. Good. Carry on."
Lark looked up, startled, to see Miss Grimsby standing over her. The teacher beamed and moved toward Elly Doctorson, who flashed her a guilty look as she feverishly closed whatever screen was on her PAD. Lark smirked and returned to her research.
Hearne had a son who was in prison on Skyland. Well, that would help explain the bug in his ear, she supposed. Young Jacob Hearne was scheduled for execution in three or four months.
She scratched her head. Was this about Jacob Hearne? Did his father want revenge? Was that why he had people spying in government buildings? Lark shrugged and closed the article. Another button caught her eye in the search results for Soresh.
Known associates.
She tapped the button and smiled at the rogues' gallery that appeared. There were pictures of Hiram and Jacob Hearne. Hiram was scary-looking in an out-of-date picture that showed him glowering at the camera. He had a long, stern face and a mouth that turned down at the corners, and broad shoulders that made him look alarmingly competent.
Jacob looked soft by comparison. He wore a vivid pink prison uniform in his picture, and it accentuated his narrow shoulders and soft cheeks. He looked more sullen than mean. His picture was much more recent, which meant he barely looked younger than his father.
Four more members of the Plateau Society came next, sour-faced men and women, one in street clothes and three in prison uniforms. These uniforms were different, lime green and baggy. They were in the custody of the Zemoth correctional system, not Skyland. Hiram Hearne would no doubt think it was all the same.
Five more faces rounded out the gallery, three men and two women. Lark scanned them quickly, losing interest. There was a former neighbor, a co-worker, a nephew and a couple of friends. No one interesting. She was reaching out with one finger to close the search results when her hand froze.
She stared at last picture in the gallery, a woman with rosy cheeks and a hint of a smile. Something about her was familiar. Lark stared at the picture. The woman was in her twenties, plump and ordinary, with curly dark hair in a cloud around her ears. Her name was Clarita Barstow, and she was apparently a bartender and a friend of Soresh.
Lark wrinkled her nose, perplexed. At ten years of age she didn't meet a lot of bartenders. So why was that face so familiar?
Her eyes seemed to rise of their own volition. The security officer with the scanner had passed her while she was reading. The soldiers had their eyes on the people lining the wall while the officer waved the scanner at a group of clerks. Lark peered left and right, gazing up and down the line. She sensed, though, that she wouldn't see the woman among the invited guests. They had undergone too much scrutiny. No, a known associate of a suspected Society member would never be on this guest list.
Besides, that wasn't how these people operated. She thought of the cleaner, wandering unnoticed through the halls of the government building yesterday and shifted her attention away from the line of guests to the rest of the room.
Another security officer circled each statue, waving a scanner. Checking for bombs, Lark supposed. A man in a business suit strode down the length of the room, a PAD in his hand, looking so purposeful that the alert security forces ignored him completely.
Lark bit her lip. Had she seen Clarita Barstow go past, only half noticing? If so, it was too late. The woman was gone now.
She wouldn't be here to gather information, though, like Soresh. This was it. Kaia Highstar and her father would be arriving in a matter of minutes. Maybe seconds. If the Society was here, it meant they were going to try something.
A memory popped into her head. Millie had been entranced by the Hall of Heroes. She'd scanned the room with her PAD, going from the ceiling to the lavish decorations along the walls to the statues and back to the ceiling. She must have spent five minutes waving the PAD around before Miss Grimsby had told her to put it away.
"Psst." Lark nudged Millie. "Send me that vid you took."
"Huh?" Millie wrinkled her forehead. "What for?"
"I want to see it."
Millie waved her hand around the room. "It's just the hall. You can still see it."
"There was a guard. A really cute one. I want a picture of him."
Millie giggled, then turned on her PAD. A few moments later, Lark's PAD beeped. She busied herself trying to get the PAD to scan the vid for a match to the picture of Barstow.
It should have been easy, but she gave up in frustration after a couple of minutes and just watched the vid herself, slowing and zooming in every time someone walked by in the background.
She saw cleaning staff and office workers and tour guides in bright yellow blazers. There were three types of security, not counting the plainclothes officers who never quite managed to blend in with the civilians. Skyland security wore body armor and dark uniforms. Zemoth security forces wore dark uniforms too, but not quite as dark. Most of them were in simple uniforms without armor. Then there were security guards working for the Hall of Heroes. Unarmed, in gray shirts and dark trousers, they tended to slouch, and paid more attention to the armed security officers than the guests along the wall.
All in all they were remarkably easy to ignore, and Lark almost missed the thick-bodied woman who skulked along the far wall. When she froze the vid and zoomed in, though, she felt her breath freeze in her throat.
Clarita Barstow gazed sullenly out of the screen.
Lark lowered the PAD and stepped out of the line, craning her neck to look up and down the hall. There was only one security guard in sight, a fat man hovering near the entrance.
"Back in line, please." A bored young man in Skyland body armor made a shooing gesture at Lark.
"She's here!" Lark protested.
"Miss Highstar will be here soon. In the meantime, I need you to move back along the wall."
Miss Grimsby came marching toward Lark. Lark ignored her. "Not Kaia," she said u
rgently. "What's her name. Barstow. Clarita Barstow."
"Back in line. Now."
"She's with the Plateau Society!"
That got his attention. He touched his throat and whispered something, then led Lark several steps away, leaving Miss Grimsby gaping at her from the line of students. Another Skylander joined them, an Asian woman in an officer's uniform, without body armor or a visible weapon. A nametag on her chest read "Sumi". She fixed Lark with a gimlet eye and said, "What do you know about the Plateau Society?"
Lark opened and closed her mouth several times, then gave up and held up the PAD. "That's from ten minutes ago."
The woman nodded, looking impatient. Lark tapped at the PAD, bringing up her search results on Soresh. "Here she is again. She's a friend of this guy. Soresh." She brought up his biography. "He's with the Society."
The woman plucked the PAD from Lark's hands, stared at it, tapped the screen a few times, then tucked the PAD under her arm. "Come with me."
They went to a meeting room just off the hall. Lark felt goosebumps spring up all over her back. Miss Grimsby and the other kids would all be staring at her, she knew, wondering what was going on. She yearned to be back with them, oblivious, without this sudden and terrifying sense of responsibility.
Three more Skylanders crowded into the meeting room, two men and a woman, all of them armed and armored. Lark felt tiny and alone, and she shivered when all four sets of eyes focussed on her.
The Asian woman spoke, glancing at Lark's PAD. "How do you know this Barstow woman?"
Lark shrugged. "I just read about her. When I looked up that Soresh guy."
That earned her a scowl. "What is your connection to Soresh?"
"We're not connected!" Lark could feel blood rushing to her face. Her voice sounded a bit shrill, and she fought for calm. "I took his picture yesterday. I thought he was creepy, and I wanted to know who he was." More words came welling up, and she bit them back. With all those stern faces staring at her the urge to keep talking was almost overpowering. She'd end up telling them about her plan to steal the stupid orb, though. She wouldn't be able to help herself. So she ground her teeth together and didn't say another word.
"Do you have the security vids yet?" Sumi said, and the others looked at her. Lark breathed a quiet sigh of relief.
"She disappears right after she leaves the Hall," a soldier reported, peering into a PAD. "There's only four cameras in this entire building, can you believe it? And no face-matching AI at all."
"Where's the girl? Can we abort her visit?"
A clicking sound came from a door at the back of the room, and Sumi said, "Too late." The door slid open and an armored soldier came through, followed by a woman in a business suit and a teenage girl. Another soldier brought up the rear, and the door slid shut.
The room was distinctly crowded now, the adults all talking at once. Lark turned her attention to the girl.
Kaia Highstar.
She was smaller than Lark had expected, barely taller than Lark herself, dressed in an absurd blue coat that nearly brushed the floor. The sleeves were long enough to get in the way of her fingers, the tail snug enough to make it difficult to walk. The fabric was beautiful, though, textured and intricate, clearly expensive.
Kaia herself was surprisingly ordinary, a round-faced girl with a hint of cosmetics around her eyes, straight brown hair drawn up under a hat made from the same fabric as the coat. She looked up at the adults around her, who were discussing her as if she wasn't there, and rolled her eyes.
"The First Minister is still ten minutes out," Sumi said. "Head him off."
"Done," said the man beside her. "That just leaves Kaia."
"We should clear the building," a woman said. "Could be a bomb."
Sumi frowned. "If we call an evacuation they might detonate early." She scrubbed a hand through her hair, a quick, frustrated gesture. "If there's a bomb. We're guessing here."
"Well, we need to get Kaia out," said the first man. "Same way she came in?"
"Sure, unless that's where they plan to hit her," said Sumi. "Let's take her straight out through the front door. Roll away in a ground car. No one would expect that."
"They'll hit her as she crosses the Hall," a man objected.
That set off a fresh round of argument. Around and around it went, until there was a momentary lull and Lark said, "I have an idea."
Half a dozen heads swivelled around to look at her.
The key, she knew, was to speak quickly, before they could shush her and go back to ignoring her. "I'll put on her coat and hat," she said, gesturing at Kaia. "March me out with guards all around. If anyone attacks me, I'll just take off the hat. When they see I'm not her, they won't bother hurting me. Meanwhile, you can sneak her out another door." She fingered her school jacket. "She can wear this. No one will look twice."
That set off a fresh round of debate. Lark didn't expect them to go for it. After all, adults never wanted to put a kid in danger. It was with a mix of glee, shock, and worry that she saw Sumi start to nod. "It could work."
"It's a crazy idea," someone interrupted.
Sumi shook her head. "It's the best way to keep Kaia safe."
Lark felt her eyebrows rise. Maybe it's true. Maybe they do see groundsiders as inferior. They think it's okay if one of us dies, so long as their precious princess is safe. She wanted to complain, but it had been her idea, after all. The last thing she wanted was to be sent back to Miss Grimsby like one more unimportant little kid. So she shrugged off her jacket before Sumi could change her mind.
Kaia was skinnier than she looked. The blue coat was tight enough on Lark to be uncomfortable and long enough to brush the tops of her shoes. The cuffs completely covered her hands. She had to let a couple of soldiers tie her hair back and wedge the hat in place. Kaia leaned in close to help with a coat button, and whispered, "Thank you." She looked funny in a school jacket that was a little too small, and her long blue skirt didn't match the school colors, but at least she looked nothing like a princess.
Sumi took Lark by the shoulders and turned her toward the door to the Hall of Heroes. "Keep your head up and your shoulders back. Don’t look around too much. Stay right beside me, and don't dawdle. We're going to march you through this door, left, and into the offices at the back. All you have to do is walk along with us and keep quiet. Got it?"
It WAS my idea, Lark thought, but she kept her mouth shut and nodded.
"Afterward we'll have a long chat about how you came to know so many suspected terrorists." On that ominous note she gestured to a couple of soldiers. The door slid open, two armored men went through, and Sumi gave Lark a nudge.
They walked into the Hall, two more soldiers on their heels. An immediate buzz of conversation rose from the crowd lined up along the far wall. Lark made herself ignore them all, turning to follow the soldiers in front as they walked briskly toward the back of the building. When she passed Miss Grimsby and the class, however, she gave in to temptation and took a quick peek.
The teacher had her back to Lark, all her attention focussed on the students. As for the children, every one of them had their eyes glued to Lark. Elly gaped, eyebrows in high arches of disbelief. The look of astonishment turned to outraged disbelief when Lark stuck out her tongue.
An impatient hand landed on Lark's shoulder and pushed her forward, a timely reminder that she was playing for much higher stakes than scoring points on Elly Doctorson. Somewhere behind Lark, Kaia, completely unnoticed, would be strolling out the front door with a couple of plainclothes officers. Lark smirked to herself. It was working!
Her smug sense of satisfaction lasted until she was half a dozen paces from the doors at the back of the hall. That was when the wall ahead of her exploded and the concussion blew her off her feet.
Chapter 16
The ceiling filled her vision. Lark gazed up at it, telling herself that she ought to be leaping to her feet. Everything seemed distant and dream-like, though, so she lay still.
; Something moved in her peripheral vision, dark shapes that resolved themselves into men and women with pale helmets that obscured their faces. They wore street clothes, which meant they weren't some branch of Skyland security she hadn't seen before. A laser beam sizzled through the air and Lark's sense of dreamy unreality vanished in an instant. She was starting to sit up when white light filled her vision and her muscles went slack.
Opening her eyes seemed to take all the strength Lark could muster. The rest of her body was paralyzed. Stun grenade, she realized.
A figure loomed above her, a burly man in a jumpsuit. He reached down for her, and his gloved hands seemed too thin for the thickness of his arms. There was some kind of stun-resistant padding, Lark decided dully, as the room spun around her. Blood rushed into her face, and she found herself staring past the man's buttocks at his feet. He put me over his shoulder. He's running. I'm being kidnapped!
For several steps she bounced helplessly, her nose banging against the thick fabric of the padded jumpsuit. The fact that she was conscious at all told her that she hadn't caught the full force of the stun blast, and a fiery tingle in her arms and legs revealed that full use of her muscles was returning. She clenched her fists and drew her arms back, about to hammer on the man's back.
Lark hesitated. What could she achieve by hitting him? Nothing, though she hated to admit it. But if she hid the fact that she could move, maybe she could choose her moment and make an escape. He had to set her down sometime.
She let her arms go limp.
Screams and shouts filled the air around her. She could see almost nothing, but by the sounds of things, a small war was raging. Lark heard a metallic rumble that sounded like a wall collapsing, and only a heroic effort of will kept her from turning her head to look. She smelled dust and smoke and a faint plastic aroma from the jumpsuit in front of her nose. I hope Milly is getting a vid of this, she thought.
Then the front doors swung open on either side of her and she squinted in the sudden sunlight. The man carrying her took three more running steps, his shoulder digging into her stomach with each bounce. He heaved, Lark felt herself fly through the air, and only a breathless terror kept her from screaming and giving herself away. She crashed on her back on a padded seat, stared for an instant into a clear blue sky, then slitted her eyes.
