by Karen Bao
“To this end,” the Committee choruses, “we will establish an independent Shelter Assistance Program, or SAP.”
Around me, people chorus, “No!” and “Lies!”
The Committee is making an effort, but can they scrape the dirt off the Shelter dome or dredge up the people from its pitted floor?
I smile dimly at Wes, and he smiles back.
“Now that you have witnessed our oaths,” says Janus, “we command you to return to Shelter. And quietly.”
Grumbling, prodded by Militia, the Shelter residents turn in the direction of their department.
The Committee hates me, no doubt. But no matter what they do to me, they are going to set up elections and a SAP. The population of the base, which has witnessed their promises, will hopefully keep them in line. Perhaps Mom’s sacrifice wasn’t purposeless. I hope that wherever she is, she knows there’s a chance that things will get better.
The Militia stands guard as the Shelter crowd files out of the Atrium in a ragtag line—even the victims of laughing gas and Electrostuns are back on their feet. Soldiers using truncheons thwack the Shelter residents who shout or spit at their feet.
A small black figure sprinting across the floor disturbs what peace of mind I have left. As it approaches, I’m relieved to see that it’s Eri, waving her helmet like a warning flag.
“Hey! The rest of my unit’s coming after you. I had to run to tell you,” she says, her eyes fixed on Wes, “because some juvenile hacker tanked our headsets—fizz! They’re here!” Eri darts down a hallway, shouting over her shoulder. “Go, go, go!”
Wes grabs my arm as two Pygmette speeders zip toward us.
“Wezn Kappa and Phaet Theta,” drones a mechanical voice. “Stop. You are under arrest.”
As if we hadn’t figured that out. We increase the frequency of our steps and stretch our legs until our hamstrings threaten to snap, but it’s futile. On foot, we can never match the indoor top speed of a Pygmette, which is 120 kilometers per hour—especially with Wes staring downward while sprinting.
“Why haven’t they given up yet?!” Eyes still on the floor, he digs inside his jacket pocket and throws a grenade over his shoulder. The explosion leaves my ears ringing.
The voice addresses us from the remaining speeder, closer than before. “I repeat: stop or we will use tranquilizers.”
Wes responds by flinging himself to the floor. I follow. The Pygmette passes over our backs, its pilot shouting obscenities. Wes jams his thumb downward into a nearly invisible groove, and the floor beneath plummets us into a smelly abyss.
Back into the Sanitation lanes we go.
I yelp as we land in the dank tunnel. With smarting muscles that can’t possibly tolerate any more mitochondrial activity, we pull ourselves up and run. As I shuffle along, swinging only one arm, Wes races ahead. “Sorry, don’t mean to leave you behind! I’ve got to open the next manhole!”
The ceiling is thin, so we can hear the buzzing of the speeders above, pushing us on. My usually reliable legs cooperate less with my brain; my body’s resources have been allocated to my wounds, which throb with every pump of my arms.
“Getting close now!” Wes hollers.
As we round a curve, a black-clad figure appears in the distance. We move closer, and another soldier appears behind the first—then two more. Their clothing looks bulky; they’ve been fitted with body armor. Although Wes and I recognize the danger, we barrel forward. He readies his Lazy and throws his tranquilizing gun to me. The tunnel is narrow, so the soldiers guarding the final manhole into Defense can only approach us one at a time.
Violet light zips from the end of Wes’s weapon. It blinds the first private, who throws her arms in front of her visor. Wes collides with her, using a free hand to lift her chin and knock her head into the wall with a clang. I lean my head around Wes and fire a tranquilizing dart into the thinly gloved hand of the second private. My victim crumples to the ground as Wes traps the third private’s arm between his free hand and Lazy; he twists hard, snapping it.
The fourth soldier, a corporal, has begun running, desperate to evade the fate of her underlings. We pursue her—until she throws herself on the floor over what must be the manhole to the Defense hangar. She rips off one glove and holds her thumb over the invisible groove that’ll activate the elevator.
“My other soldiers are stationed right below us.” A helmet obscures her face, but there’s no mistaking those saccharine tones. “And I’m willing to bring them in.”
Callisto Chi stands between us and escape.
I wish I had more than a tranquilizing gun in my hand—my fingers itch to close around the hilt of a dagger and send it through her visor, into her smirking mouth.
“Don’t think I’m lying,” Callisto says. “My mom had my fingerprint programmed into every access point on the base.”
“I believe you.” Wes aims his Lazy at her ungloved hand. “But put your thumb on that sensor, and I’ll zap your hand off.”
Callisto cackles and flips up her visor with her other hand. “You won’t, sissy Med. Not while you’re looking into my eyes.”
But as she stares us down, her eyes grow watery with tears. Wes’s jaw muscles tense; he taps the trigger of his Lazy without pulling it, then double-checks his aim. Callisto spoke too soon. He’s going to shoot.
“Don’t!” Callisto screeches. “Or Andromeda Chi will leave Operation Dovetail!”
What?
Wes and I pitch forward, utterly stunned.
“You have to believe me. Mom told me that she’s a member—their best mole. Didn’t want me to go along with Militia and kill you today, she said.”
“Liar,” I mutter. She’s trying to trick us so that we’ll drop our weapons. Then she’ll bring us down. If that’s not her plan, she’s gone crazy, crazier than me.
“That’s what I called her when she said it. She’s insane. This whole place is insane. My mom, a gritty rebel? No. But here’s what confuses me: she helped your mom get into Medical; she tried to get the Committee to take your bribe, to save Mir—”
I double over with grief, clutching my stomach.
“Quiet, Callisto. Don’t mention any of it,” Wes snaps.
“But she did! She asked the other Committee people to disable their handscreen messages before the trial, remember? And it was her idea to poison Mira to make her look sick, give them an excuse to cart her off instead of just . . .”
Hydrus said the same during the trial. I remember Mom’s pink skin and quick breath the day Wes came for her—she must have suffered some kind of food poisoning.
I may be indebted to a Committee member for the last two months of my mother’s life.
Callisto rambles on, increasingly hysterical. She must be telling the truth; she begins gesturing with both hands, and her thumb leaves the sensor. I ready my finger on the trigger of my tranquilizing gun.
“. . . but Mom’s never been . . . that’s why I’m confused! So confused . . .”
Callisto’s arm motions are cyclic; her ungloved hand rises when her voice crescendos and plummets as she emphasizes certain syllables.
“What does all this make me—”
I pull the trigger. The dart burrows into her palm. Within two seconds, her head and hands slump.
“Nice job.” Wes squats and rolls Callisto off the manhole cover. “Listen, the soldiers downstairs don’t know we’re here. When we get into the hangar, we’ve got to run.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Please don’t do anything loud or stupid.”
As if I weren’t the antithesis of loud and stupid.
Wes presses Callisto’s bare thumb to a tiny groove. The circular patch of floor beneath us drops away, and we land with a recurring echo in the familiar hangar from which my team has conducted trial flights. This time when I leave, I’ll wait indefinite days to return.
“Is there another way?” I whisper.
“Are you saying that you want to stay here?”
“We coul
d hide, fix my arm. . . .”
He points at my handscreen. “Not while that’s still functioning.”
He steps off the elevator and onto the floor of the hangar. The lights switch on, accompanied by a blaring alarm. Black-clad figures stationed along the perimeter rush toward us.
Wes’s calm shatters. “God damn!”
He takes my arm—the uninjured one—and runs.
I keep up, my head spinning from the burning in my arm. I picture the soldiers coming after my brother and sister next. “We have to go back!”
“We’ll come back for your family later! Remember, the Committee can find you at any moment with the LPS! Do you want to get captured? Do you want to die?”
We’ve almost reached the gates that lead to nothingness. I nearly turn back—because of Cygnus and Anka. There must be a way to keep them safe, to keep the Committee’s slithering fingers off them. I repeatedly glance over my shoulder, trying to find a way out of the hangar.
“You’ve got to run faster!” Wes hollers. “Your family can fend for themselves!”
I remember Cygnus’s feats of digital manipulation and Anka pulling Umbriel out of harm’s way. “You sure you can get us to Base I?”
“Well, I certainly could.” He lobs another grenade at a cluster of soldiers that are gaining on us. The familiar odor of burning flesh hits my nose. I could pummel him to make him stop all this, but I continue to interrogate him instead.
“We’re going to Base I, right?”
We reach a standard destroyer. Wes pulls himself through the hatch and reaches his hand back for me. After looking over my shoulder, I clasp his fingers, using the leverage to hoist myself up and tumble into the ship.
“Not exactly.”
As the door seals, he elaborates.
“My dear Miss Theta, we’re going to Earth.”
41
I REACH OVER THE JOYSTICK AND SLAP HIM in the face.
“Ow! What? We’re only going home.”
Wes Kappa is one of the Earthbound, the reason the Bases even need a Militia. He’s also a pathological liar who’s taken me from the only family I have left.
Yet he defended my freedom and my life at the risk of his own. If he were my enemy, I would be imprisoned or dead by now. After that realization, I’m feeling sane enough to turn on the engine and check systems for liftoff.
Wes rubs his reddened cheek. “Honestly, if you think about it—Earth is safer for you, because there’s zero chance the LPS will find you there. I’m not sure why you believed for a second that we were going to Base I, where people could report us. Guess you weren’t thinking off the Moon quite enough. . . .”
“Shh!”
“Oh, all right.”
As my hands cradle the familiar joysticks, preparing for liftoff, Wes taps furiously at his handscreen. The white gate before us opens. I thought only Cygnus was able to do that! How did Wes break into the Defense system?
As our pursuers pile into ships and fire them up, he closes the gate.
Another set of doors opens behind the first. Beyond, there’s nothing but deep space and the sliver of blue Earth I have observed for years. I push everything to full throttle, and the ship zips out of the hangar with such force that Wes and I are slammed back in our seats.
By again tapping like a fiend on his handscreen, Wes closes the gates before anyone can follow. “Looks like our superiors are busy elsewhere. No one overrode my command.”
He must have illegally transferred flight-leader capabilities to his handscreen. How did he manage to do that undetected, if not through Earthbound sorcery?
As my mind whirls, uncomprehending, Wes launches a missile that crushes the metal of the gates, making it impossible for them to slide open again. Faithless phony though he is, I grudgingly admire his work.
We steer for altitude rather than longitude, moving almost directly upward. As I fall into the familiar motion of the ship, tension drains from my clenched muscles; my wounded arm spasms, and I let out an involuntary hiss. Wes’s attuned ears don’t miss it.
“Are you . . .”
“Fine.”
He sighs, knowing I’m lying, and leans over. Adept fingers sort through bloody cloth, skin, and muscle. “That looks agonizing. Once we get to Saint Oda, Murray can stuff some herbs in it.”
Murray, his sister. Saint Oda? That must be his home.
“I’m so sorry I never told you where I came from, but it was necessary, don’t you see?”
I feel his hand stroking my forearm and jerk away. “When I met you, my first instinct was to get away.”
“Well, you didn’t follow it, and look where that got you.”
“On a ship, breaking the sound barrier, with a sneaky Earthbound parasite as my copilot.”
“Sound doesn’t travel in vacuums,” Wes reminds me.
I struggle to think of a comeback. “Vacuums—like your amygdalae? Did you hear the rest of what I said?”
This time, he can’t find the words. He deserves the verbal lashing, but it’s shameful to say to the person who’s saved my life many times over. Before I can decide whether to apologize, Wes speaks again, all acerbity gone.
“The year I turned nine . . .”
Some of the lilt I’ve detected before creeps back into his voice.
“There was an attack on my city. Our freshwater was stolen. Our grain stores. Some of our precious metal objects.” Wes’s accent grows stronger and the speed of his words increases. “And some of our lives.”
My heart seizes up, but I continue steering, eyes forward.
“They waited until nightfall to land their spaceships so their black clothes could hide them. All I remember is rushing home and hiding in the cellar . . . the explosions and screams, right over my family’s heads. My mum told me it was a thunderstorm, but I knew better. The soldiers burned our gardens, wrecked our buildings, destroyed whatever they didn’t take. The First Priest, our leader, didn’t want us to be that vulnerable ever again. So my parents told me I would conduct an intelligence mission. I didn’t like the idea, not for the first few years of prep, but then I started looking forward to . . . to getting away from them. And, obviously, there’s something satisfying about fulfilling a duty.
“Now it’s time to head back. I did my job; I found out about Dovetail by poking through some correspondence between jailbroken handscreens—did you know that they were transmitting at a wavelength outside the monitors’ detection capabilities? Seeing as Dovetail has started a revolt . . . The best defense is knowledge, my parents said, and I certainly have enough of that now, enough to make me ill.”
I, too, feel sick with unwelcome revelations. Militia ransacked his city in a lethal treasure hunt and labeled the ordeal “Earth recon.” What else has the Committee commanded people to do? What else are they capable of? My knucklebones might just poke through my skin because I’m squeezing the controls so hard.
“I thought the Bases were sustainable. We don’t need to steal.”
“That’s what they tell you. Also, Sanitation dumps poisonous waste into Earth’s oceans. They don’t leave it floating in space, because it would ruin their image, so they pass it on to us. You really didn’t know, did you?”
He takes my stunned silence as a no.
The ruined carcass of the ISS comes to mind—its metal plates and solar panels ripped away for some unknown purpose. Shaken, I change the subject.
“How did you get up here?”
“I got hold of a handscreen, then reverse-engineered it into my skin—badly, yes, but passably. Left home when I was fifteen. Went to Pacifia, stole a uniform, waited until one of the Base ships landed on some kind of diplomatic mission, boarded, and stowed myself in cargo.”
“Diplomatic mission?” The Bases and Pacifia have been enemies for decades.
“A conference about an alliance against Battery Bay; I don’t know the details. The Committee does an impressive job faking ‘invasions’ and such from the Pacifians, telling only their most trusted
Militia officers. But I’m not sure how much longer they can hide the collaboration.”
“What are they working on?”
“We’ve got to figure that out later. Anyway, I got off the Pacifian ship on Base IV and entered myself as a transfer from Base I, so no one would question my origins.” He glares at his handscreen. “Then, because this thing started oozing rainbow pus, I went to InfoTech and got them to rewire it.”
Everything I thought I knew about the Bases is being overturned. The Committee—who are predators, not the protectors I believed they were—make me sick. The Earthbound aren’t all savages as I’d assumed: while some civilizations, like Pacifia, crave power and blood, others, like Wes’s city, merely try to survive. I scrunch my face into an Umbriel-like scowl, suppressing the need to vomit.
“Did they send you by yourself?” I ask.
“There were six of us, each one on a different base. We all faked transfers.”
“So few.”
“Really, the population of Saint Oda is small enough without us sacrificing more than six young men to spy on the Loonies—I mean, Lunars.”
“Your little name for us?”
“Exactly.”
I decide that the term fits.
“I used to hate Loonies. All Odans do. But in my opinion, only the Jupiters and generals and Committee members are truly awful. The rest of you are . . . tolerable. And you? Definitely more than tolerable.”
I give a surprised hiccup of a laugh, wondering if there’s something sentimental in his voice. But I recover quickly.
“Now I see why you wanted first place. A higher rank means more information.”
“Quite right.”
“Those clunky infrared glasses. Your sister’s funny name. The way you talked to hide your accent, like your cheeks were stuffed with cotton . . .”
“I let myself get too close to you.” He shakes his head, embarrassed, and twists his upper lip between thumb and forefinger. Both of us stop talking for long, stuffy minutes while I concentrate on steering.
“Why?” I finally ask.
