Skyhunter

by Marie Lu

  I look past the forest to where a clearing slopes down into the valley that leads into unfamiliar land. This is what finally makes me slow to a stop. My ears ring with a high-pitched buzz, and my breaths come in labored gasps. The look on Pira’s face still hovers in my mind, haunting me, and I realize that I’m so unused to her acting on our side that her help frightens me. It means she knows just how desperate our mission is, and how much we need it to succeed.

  I should feel some sense of relief that we’ve escaped the Strikers chasing us, but all I feel is the unfamiliar dirt under my feet and the chill in the wind that whips through the clearing. Jeran and Adena halt beside me too, shivering, neither uttering a word, their faces turned down toward the valley, where the oncoming evening stretches long shadows across the land. Red comes last to stand on my other side. In him churns an old fear, a terror borne from firsthand knowledge of the kind of darkness that we’ve just entered.

  We have officially stepped into the Federation.

  THE

  WARFRONT

  THE KARENSA FEDERATION

  22

  It doesn’t take long before we stumble across the first evidence of enemy soldiers making their rounds through this newly acquired territory.

  Prominent on the forest floor are the telltale signs of soldier tracks, the shape distinctly different from ours, the toes rounded while Maran boots come to a sharper point. There are few at first, one here and another twenty yards away, but gradually they become more regular until there’s a solid path through the woods, made by soldiers clearly confident that no one is using the prints to track them.

  We move invisibly in the lengthening twilight. Jeran and I stay in the trees, scouting ahead, while Adena makes her way on the ground, blending in so well with the tall, thick ferns crowded beside tree trunks that sometimes I completely lose her. Red moves with her, the most conspicuous by far, his muscled form a dark shape in the shadows of the trees. I keep a constant eye on his surroundings, ready to throw a warning if there are any signs of soldiers nearby.

  We must have traveled for several miles by the time we come across tracks more regular and numerous. Here, the trees grow more sparsely too, and we find ourselves approaching the section of the valley that I’d glimpsed from the top of the hill as we crossed the warfront.

  Red is the one who stops us first. He halts abruptly, then narrows his eyes in the direction of the clearing. I feel a tug in my mind from him, as if he’s calling out for me to slow down. I look down at him from my vantage point in the branches to see him nod at me.

  Careful, he tells me before looking ahead. Then he says a Karenese word that I’ve never heard before, for which there’s no equivalent in Maran. Trains incoming.

  I frown down at him at that. Trains? A thought in his mind spills into mine, flooding me with the image of a black engine billowing smoke into a blue sky, giant metal wheels churning in sync with one another, and a series of dozens and dozens of metal carriages chugging one after the other into oblivion.

  Now I know the word trains. I’ve seen wreckage of them before, part of the Early Ones’ ruins. We assume that they were once a mode of transportation, when there were things like ships in the sky as surely as in the water. But I hadn’t thought the Federation had them, functioning ones, these enormous monsters that belched ash and soot as they roared across the land.

  But Red says it again. Train station, he tells me, nodding at the clearing up ahead.

  I sign the same to Jeran, struggling to explain what it is, and then down at Adena. We pause, listening for sounds of soldiers, before slowing our pace and inching forward.

  Then I do hear it. The sound of soldiers’ voices, speaking Karenese, coming and going as if busy with something or other. From several trees away, Jeran crouches low in the branches and points in one direction, through the trees and into the clearing.

  I move along my branch until it crisscrosses with that of another tree, make my way onto it, and then peer toward where Jeran’s pointing.

  There, before me, is a sprawling sight. Several Federation campsites dot the space where the trees thin out, and then, a short distance from them, is a building with lanterns twinkling against its walls, built in front of a long metal track that snakes far off into the valley until it disappears over a hill. Sitting in front of this building, partially obscured by a curtain of steam, is a great black engine lined with silver paint, its enormous wheels extending back to a second compartment, its trail of carriages running far down the track.

  A train station.

  Soldiers bustle everywhere there, and from this distance, they appear like a swarm of black ants—their uniforms and shadows melting into one another—as they load boxes and crates onto carts and then head back to the station, unload, and then head out to the campsites scattered across the land. Elsewhere on the land are plots already churned into dirt by workers, upon which are unfinished buildings with long fences coming up around them. Defense compounds, I realize with a sickening start at the sight of half-constructed watchtowers. The Federation is already beginning to strengthen their presence here in the new land along the warfront.

  Jeran glances questioningly at me, then points down at the nearest campsite, where a small patrol of Federation soldiers have set up their tents within the last few lines of trees. They’re perfect for what we need.

  Red, I say through our link. When he looks up at me, I nod through the trees. This close, the link between us tugs sharply at my mind, and I can feel the rapid rhythm of his heart and the rumble of breath in his throat.

  We’ll be watching you, I remind him.

  He nods. Keep close as you can when you trail me, he responds. The train will lead us back into the capital. All the trains converge there.

  The capital of the Federation. My heart squeezes tight. I can no longer tell if it’s anxiety from Red, for having to return to the darkness he’d emerged from, or if it’s my own, for venturing in for the first time.

  Good luck, he says. I startle at the final words from Red through our link, and when I look down at him, he’s pressed his hand to his chest in a Striker’s salute.

  And in this instance, I am overwhelmed with the fear that I’m going to lose my Shield again, just like I’d failed to protect Corian. I’m about to let Red walk back into the Federation that had twisted him into this half-man, half-machine weapon.

  How strange that, not long ago, I’d been facing him in the training arena, staring at him in shock as the Firstblade named him my Shield. I’d hated his every step then, loathed being tethered to him. Had been terrified of what he could do. And now here I am, entirely capable of betraying him and leaving him behind, and I cannot imagine doing it.

  I find myself tapping a fist against my chest in return. I’m not going to leave you behind, I tell him quietly.

  Red looks away from me and down toward the train station. There’s something in the link that tells me he doesn’t quite believe me, but he nods anyway without responding. Then he turns away from us, and we watch as he walks into the woods in the direction of the tents until he’s lost among the trees.

  I straighten and force my eyes away. Time to get into position. My boots find their footing against the edges of broken bark on trees, and in a few seconds, I’m crouched among the gnarled branches that almost overlook the campsite. Adena has disappeared into the brush, while Jeran perches on light feet in a tree opposite me. There, we wait.

  From here I can make out laughter echoing from below. There must be a dozen soldiers down there, all sharing a bite of lunch as they clap one another on their backs and stamp their feet in an attempt to warm up cold toes. One of them points and laughs at a mate struggling to load a heavy crate onto the train at the station. The fury rises in me from somewhere deep. Karensan soldiers, able to laugh even after all they’ve done. What had they been doing before this? Were they torturing hostages? Killing Strikers at the warfront?

  Then I remember Red’s story of how he’d been punished by the
Federation for failing to shoot me during the Basea invasion. I think of how his family had been separated and then individually destroyed, how he was made to participate in it. And I wonder how many of these soldiers have been trained into their cruelty, whether or not they’re like Red, out here laughing around a fire at the warfront because if they don’t, their families will be torn apart.

  Crack.

  All of us freeze at the sound. Down below, Red had purposely stepped on a twig and made the sound. It echoes from where he’s hiding, crouched in the ferns.

  The noise around the campfire pauses. There’s silence, followed by murmurs. Then I see a scarlet uniform making its way down the path through the trees. One of his friends calls out at him, looking exasperated, but the first soldier waves him off and keeps walking in the direction of Red’s hiding place.

  In the trees, I rise into my fighter’s stance.

  Red shifts just enough to catch his attention. The soldier freezes at the sight of him, then jumps back instinctively with a shout. Immediately, the others at the campsite hop to their feet. The first soldier pulls out a gun and points it at Red. With his other hand, he frantically waves the others over.

  Red avoids looking in our direction, but I can hear his thoughts. There’s some confusion among them, he tells me as he glares at the first soldier. The troops are wary around him. Like we’d been when we first saw him in the arena, they can tell that he’s built strongly, like a horse, muscled in the chest and arms, lean in his torso, as if he’d trained as someone who can fight. But he doesn’t look like a Maran, and his silence unnerves them. I look on as they mill about before forcing him to get to his feet by waving their guns at him.

  Then a call goes up among them, echoing from one soldier to the next, each repeating the same word as the next.

  It’s the Skyhunter, Red translates for me in his mind. They know who I am now.

  They must have been briefed on how Red looks on the chance that they stumbled across him in the wilds. I wonder if they’ll relay word of this back to the capital immediately.

  Below us, Red turns around and feigns an escape. If I didn’t know our plan, I would have believed him. Maybe it’s not all false, either—the fear in his eyes is tense and sharp, the same that I’d seen on him during the siege at our compound. He starts retreating down the path that leads back into the forest, away from the soldiers—but his movements are purposely slow, a pretense that he’s been injured or weakened by exhaustion.

  They fire something at him. In an instant, Red collapses.

  My every instinct screams at me to leap from the tree and attack the soldiers. I’m a better fighter than any of them, even with their more advanced guns and weapons, and if I take them by surprise, I could kill every single one before they could figure out where I’d come from.

  It takes all my strength to hold myself back—to recall that Red reminded me that the Federation has no intention of killing him when they’ve invested so much in him, that they would bring him back to their lab complex and continue their work on him.

  Through our link, I feel his consciousness shudder, his heart slow, and his body suddenly cool. He tries to reach out to me through our bond, and I grasp for him, but he’s gone before I can, and on the path below us, I see him go limp against the forest floor, surrounded by soldiers.

  I watch in silence, trembling from the act of keeping myself still and hidden, as the soldiers approach to capture him. Underneath the steel mesh of their nets, Red looks surprisingly vulnerable, not a war machine but a human caught in their trap.

  The soldiers exchange rapid words before one of them goes running back to the train station. Two of the remaining clap each other on their backs with a laugh, while several others point at one another, arguing. They look shocked, shaken, and even elated by their find. Their movements remind me of when prizes are won during Midwinter celebrations back in Mara, and I wonder if maybe there was a bounty put on Red, some reward for the capture of him alive. Perhaps these soldiers are arguing about how to split it, or imagining what they’ll do next with it. It must have been a significant prize. Each new thing they do sets my teeth on edge.

  Only one of them looks up at the trees in our general direction. I still myself into invisibility, barely daring to blink. Several branches away, Jeran slowly inches farther into his hiding place so that even I can’t tell he’s there. The soldier frowns thoughtfully to herself, but she doesn’t seem like she wants to interrupt the others. And who would? They act like they just won the jackpot of their lives. Why question how it happened?

  I hold my breath as her eyes wander from one tree to the next. But we’ve given her nothing to see except shadows and bark.

  Finally, one of the others shoves her arm slightly and gestures toward the train station. More soldiers are coming now, bringing with them some kind of sled to pull Red back with them. They struggle to get his dead weight onto the sled, and then they’re dragging him away toward the train. The woman who had been searching the trees goes with them, whatever concern she might have had disappearing as she keeps pace with the others. Their excited shouts fade into the distance as they go.

  I don’t move a muscle until they’re well out of earshot. Then I shift forward in the branch and survey our surroundings one more time. The other campsites are farther away, and there are no signs of Ghosts nearby. It seems like Red’s capture has gotten everyone at the station worked up, with soldiers swarming back and forth to the train as Red is loaded into one of the metal carriages.

  Still, I wait a few more minutes before I finally drop to the ground, making no sound more than a soft hush against the dirt.

  Jeran’s already down, his figure barely perceptible among the ferns. I don’t even notice him until I see his hands moving in the darkness. “For a second, I didn’t think they’d take him back,” he signs as he brushes leaves from his shoulders. Behind him, Adena emerges from the shadows without a sound.

  “They would have,” Adena answers, her fingers moving rapidly. “I’ve seen them carefully load up Ghost corpses to take back with them. No Karensan patrol would be instructed to leave behind something that can be studied.”

  Something that can be studied. I think of the vision of the glass chamber I’d seen in Red’s thoughts. When they get him back to the lab complex, the first thing they’ll want to do is find a way to establish the link between him and the Federation. Make sure he obeys the right people and never tries to escape again.

  “I don’t know how that train works,” I tell them, nodding in the direction of the station, “but smoke is starting to pour from its front.”

  Jeran nods at me. “Do you still feel his pull?” he signs.

  Even unconscious, Red’s mind sends a faint, steady pulse that touches my thoughts, just as when he’s asleep or dreaming.

  “Yes,” I sign.

  Jeran looks off toward the train station. “Let’s go, then.”

  The night has set in fully now, so that the only light floods from the station lanterns and the train itself. Steam pouring from its chimney drowns it in a fog that hides the silhouettes bustling around its base. Good. It’ll help us hide too.

  We steal closer to the station under the cover of darkness until we’ve reached the long line of carriages sitting on the tracks, and then slide underneath them to wait for soldiers to hurry past. They must be in the process of laying down more tracks, I realize, given the steel and wood piled high on the side of the station. And then it occurs to me that they’re doing this because they’re preparing for the day when Mara falls, so they can continue expanding their world into ours without interruption. The realization leaves me cold.

  Finally, we see an opening as soldiers step away from the train. A whistle blisters the air with its shrill shriek, and for an instant, my heart jumps in the way it does when a Ghost is near. Then Adena is tapping my shoulder quietly and gesturing at the carriage nearest us, now loaded with wooden crates.

  “They’re about to move,” she sign
s, before we steal out into the shadow cast by the train on the side facing away from the station. Through the sea of steam obscuring the ground, we make our way along the side of the train until we find the nearest carriage with its door slid open. Jeran pulls himself up into it without missing a beat, then reaches down to grab Adena’s arm. He hoists her up. When he reaches to help me up, the train jerks forward. The movement makes me stumble as I land inside with them. We readjust our footing as the train begins to pick up speed, then push ourselves back into the darker recesses of the carriage, where the scent of wood and pine and metal fill the space.

  I’ve been in wagons and on horseback. But seeing this enormous contraption of steel move from a crawl to a steady roll to a roar is like something out of a bad dream. The stench of black smoke makes my eyes water. The train station behind us vanishes rapidly as we speed into our enemy’s land. Jeran curls up beside Adena in an attempt to keep warm, while Adena reaches into her canvas bag to hone some of her blades.

  I settle near the edge of the carriage, partly shielded from the cold night by crates in front of the door, and let myself lean against the wall, feeling the sway and jostle of this strange machine. I have no idea how many times or where it will stop, if at all—and at this pace, I have no idea how quickly we’ll arrive in the capital. The night swallows everything outside the door, swathing it all in black. Now and then, I see a flicker of light in the darkness from some cluster of lonely country settlements. What kind of technology will we find once we arrive deeper into the Federation?

  I hold my trembling hands out in front of me, turning them this way and that, missing the warmth of my Striker coat and gloves. Suddenly, home feels achingly far away. Is it even home now? If we return, will we be imprisoned or executed?

  The only thing that steadies me is the constant, quiet pull of Red on the other end of my link, a sure sign that he’s in another carriage on this train.