Lainie pointed behind me. In the wall just at the water level, a circular opening had appeared. At first I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, afraid it was just some sort of illusion from the shadows cast by the flashmark.
“That’s it!” Lainie said. “The skele handles below opened this.” She reached the opening first, but when she tried to pull herself up into it, her arms were trembling so much, she fell back in the water. “I can’t do it,” she said.
“If I can get up, maybe I can pull you in. My arms aren’t as tired as my legs.” It took two tries and only the overwhelming desire to get out of the water gave me the will to pull myself up. Once out, I wanted to just lie there, but forced myself to get up to help Lainie.
“Lift your arms up,” I said, kneeling on the damp floor of the tunnel. It was a good thing she was light, because I could barely manage to pull at all. Between the two of us it was enough. Once she was up, we both just sat huddled on the floor.
Lainie crawled a few meters away from the opening. “It’s a tunnel,” she said. “I can see it curving up and away.”
I put my shirt back on, even though it did nothing to stop me from shivering. Right now I’d welcome the scalding heat of the beach.
I managed to stand, finding the tunnel just slightly taller than my head. It was made of the same dull black material as the inner room. It twisted around and up and I couldn’t see an end. I also realized something strange about my left eye. There was a black spot in the center of my vision. I couldn’t see whatever was right in the middle of my view. Rubbing it didn’t help. The black spot remained. I suspected it was an aftereffect of the shock I’d received.
“Are you all right, Quinn?” Lainie asked. “You’re just standing there.”
“I was thinking that I hope this doesn’t take us right to Ansun’s door.” I wasn’t going to tell Lainie about the eye.
“We’ll be careful,” she said, “when we get to the end.”
We hadn’t gone far when the black walls of the tunnel turned into red stone walls. “I can’t believe it,” I said, examining the perfectly formed tunnel in front of us. “The builders tied their tunnel into an existing lava tube.”
“Interesting, I suppose,” Lainie said, “but I’m really too worn out to care right now. Let’s just get out of here.”
We moved forward and at times even though I had to duck my head, I couldn’t get over the size of the tunnel.
“Do you know what happened to Decker?” Lainie asked. “I slept so soundly I didn’t hear anything.” Her voice broke a little and she didn’t look at me
“I didn’t either. I thought I heard him moving around in the night, but I might have been dreaming. He must still be free, or they would have thrown him in too.”
“If he is still free, he’ll be close to the beach. There’s nowhere else to go.”
I thought she was probably right. Given the way Decker hated the jungle, I couldn’t imagine him being anywhere else.
The tunnel ended in a dense tangle of vines in the jungle, and I saw why none of the Fosaanians knew it was there. The entrance was completely covered. We were in a part of the jungle I didn’t recognize, but I could tell from the sun which way we needed to go to get to the beach.
“I’m really tired, Quinn,” Lainie said. “I may have to stop for a rest.”
“You did good, diving all those times. No wonder you’re worn out. I wouldn’t have made it without you.” I put my arm around her and felt her shaking. “We need to keep moving though. Once we get to the beach we can rest.” She nodded her head and took a step, so I kept up with her, catching her when she stumbled. Luckily, we didn’t run into anything dangerous or too dense to pass through, and soon enough I could smell the ocean.
At the edge of the jungle, I said, “Wait, let me figure out where we are before we go out in the open. I don’t want to just walk right out in view of the station.” I pushed aside some of the foliage to get a better view of the beach. It took me some time to orient myself, until I finally realized we were north of the living quarters, further up the beach than I usually ventured. At least that was a good thing. If Decker had gotten away, he would have to head north as well. South was the station, the cliffs and then the Fosaanian village. Hoping we wouldn’t run right into a Fosaanian, I stepped out onto the sand.
Chapter 13
Even with the knowledge Decker would go north, we wouldn’t have found him at all if Mags hadn’t heard us approaching. The bird swooped down from a tree and landed on my shoulder, brushing my face with her beak. “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” she squawked. “Mag’s person. Beautiful person.”
“Hi Mags,” I said, so done in I could barely make my voice loud enough to be heard.
“Lainie!” Decker appeared from behind an outcropping of the rocks and ran over to us, grabbing Lainie away from me and hugging her.
“How did you get away?” I asked him.
“I was on the beach when I heard the Fosaanians coming and I tried to get in to warn you, there wasn’t any time,” Decker said. “I’ve been searching the jungle ever since the Fosaanians left without you. What happened?” Lainie shook her head, like she wasn’t able to talk.
“It’s a long story.” I told him. I didn’t have the energy to explain about the Passage. I didn’t even want to think about it, ever again. “We need to sit down. Lainie’s really tired and I’m starving,” I said. “I don’t suppose we have any food?”
Decker motioned up the beach. “I collected some solger from the nets this morning before the Fosaanians showed up.”
It figured that would be the only food. “Okay, I’m that starving. Where is it?”
He led us to a small flat rock and picked up a slimy handful. “I’ve been trying to dry it out, but it’s still sort of wet.”
“Great.” I took what Decker held out to me and sat down, Mags still clinging to my shoulder. I managed to swallow a few bites without gagging.
“I saw Mira with the rest of the Fosaanians,” Decker said. I tensed, waiting for Decker to make some remark about how stupid I had been for trusting her, but instead he just added, “I think she was forced to tell them where we were. I bet Tasim made her do it.”
“Maybe,” I mumbled, not convinced. Decker hadn’t seen her complete nonreaction to Ansun throwing us to our expected death.
“I’ve been trying to come up with a plan,” Decker said, “and now that there are three of us, it will be a lot easier to carry it out. I think we should steal the shuttle, take it up and out close to the shipping lane. We can wait until your father’s supply ship comes along and hail it.”
I tried to concentrate on what Decker was saying, but the exhaustion was hard to fight off. Finally, I said, “Except I don’t think Ansun and the raiders are going to let us hang around in space waiting for help.” Ansun wasn’t going to let us get away with anything. “Once they realize we have the shuttle, the raider ship will come looking for us, and just blast us to bits. There are no weapons on the shuttle at all.”
“If we time it just right, we can meet up with your father’s ship before they can do that.” Decker sounded so convinced his idea would work, I was almost convinced too, until I thought about how we’d carry it out.
“And if we don’t time it right?” I asked. “They’ll blast both us and my father. His ship doesn’t have much more fighting capability than the shuttle.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
I shook my head and took another bite of solger, forcing it down. I ran through all sorts of plans in my head, all of which were too impossible to carry out. If only we could disable the bots, we’d be better able to deal with the Fosaanians. There was something on the edge of my mind, an idea that I couldn’t quite form. It came from something Mira had said, but I couldn’t pick out which of her statements linked up to the idea.
Trying to form a plan was tough without knowing how many Fosaanians were up on the station. The station was huge, eve
n though it took only a few people to keep it operational. It must seem like a strange world to the Fosaanians, given the simple way they lived. I remembered how even one small piece of Earth technology like the scene setter has seemed unimaginable to Mira.
“I still can’t believe Ansun thinks he’s going to get away with this,” Decker said. “No matter how much he’s trained the Fosaanians, they’ve never had any military experience and they know nothing about modern technology. My father always says you have to train for everything because soldiers aren’t good at reacting to the unknown.”
Mags hopped around next to me. “Beautiful cage? Beautiful cage?” she said.
“I’m sorry, Mags.” I held out a bit of the solger to her but the bird refused it. “We’ll get you a new beautiful cage soon.” I paused, thinking about Mags and Decker’s last statement. A cage. I snapped my fingers. “Mags just gave me an idea,” I said, picturing the layout of the station in my head. “Lainie, how familiar are you with the control room on the station? Can you work the systems there, like the lights and the door seals and the feeds to the information slips?”
“Sure, it’s not that complicated,” she said. “I’ve been in there watching the operators. It’s so easy, even Piper could do it.”
“If we can get up there and get you in the control room, can you do something to lock the entrance to the room so no one else can get in? Like putting yourself in a cage?” I asked.
Lainie examined the ground like she was envisioning the control room. “I don’t know. My father never showed me, but a room lock should be fairly obviously. There will probably be a Fosaanian or a bot in there though. It’s manned all the time. Do I lock myself in with one of them?”
“I have an idea about that too,” I said, “but I’ll need some supplies from the living quarters. You and Decker both have scene setters in your places, don’t you?”
“What good are they going to do?” Decker asked.
“Hold on. I’ll explain it all. First I need to know what Lainie can manage to do. Once you’re in and can see all the security slips showing the whole station, can you lock down certain rooms and trap the Fosaanians in them?”
“Fosaanians are hard to trap,” Mira said as she walked out of the jungle, her knife pointed at us. All of us leaped to our feet, and Decker grabbed the same stick he had been carrying around since the night before. I strained to see if there were other Fosaanians behind the girl, but nothing moved in the foliage.
“Water person!” Mags squawked.
Mira looked as exhausted as I felt. She had dark circles under her eyes, vivid against the paleness of her skin. A purple bruise on her jaw marred the lower part of her face. “I don’t suppose you will believe me when I tell you how happy I am you are alive,” she said, looking right at me.
I was astounded to see tears running down her face. “I don’t believe you,” I said. “You led Ansun right to us and let him try to kill us.”
“And you just stood there!” Lainie shouted. “You just stood there.”
Mira dropped her knife. “You may not believe me, but I didn’t lead Ansun to you. It was Sato. He was spying on me.” She touched the bruise on her face. “He’s the one who told Ansun.”
“I don’t care who told Ansun,” Decker said. “You aren’t going to stand in our way.”
“I don’t want to stand in your way. I’ll help you if I can.” She held her hands out as if to show us she wasn’t a danger.
“Don’t try to tell us you came here just because you thought Quinn and I might have survived,” Lainie said. “We’re not that stupid.”
“I didn’t think that. I’ve been sick with sorrow ever since I knew what Ansun was planning. I came because I wanted to find Decker. I thought you were the only one left,” she said to him. “And I wanted to show you a safer place to hide. I knew it wouldn’t make up for the loss of your friends, but I had to do something.” Her lips were trembling. I really wanted to believe her.
“You said you would help us. Why now when you didn’t before?” I asked, trying to ignore the blind spot in my eye. I thought it might be getting bigger. At least the shaking in my arm had stopped for the moment, though I suspected it would return.
“Ansun forced me to go along with him by threatening Cadia. He said he would order her be put out in the jungle if I didn’t act like I supported him in front of the clan. I had to choose between my sister and you. Can’t you understand what I did?” Her voice was pleading now.
“So what’s changed?” Decker said. “As soon as he finds out you are helping us, he’ll just threaten her again.”
“He won’t find out, or at least when he does, I hope it will be too late.” she said. “He thinks Lainie and Quinn are dead and he’s busy with his plans. My grandfather has said he would look out for Cadia. He’s starting to doubt Ansun.” Her voice got less shaky. “I don’t know if he can stand up to Ansun, but now with you, there might be a chance to stop all this, not only for my sister’s sake, but for the rest of the clan. You were right,” she said to Decker. “Ansun will never manage to succeed, but the more quickly he is stopped, the less damage to the clan. If we go to war with Earth, I don’t think I can keep my sister alive no matter what I do. If the noncombatants of the clan are forced to move and go into hiding, as Ansun plans, she is not strong enough to survive that.”
“Look, I believe Mira,” I said to the others. I didn’t know if my own feelings for her were making me gullible, but she did sound like she was telling the truth. “And if she’s going to help us, she won’t have a chance to tell anyone anyway. I think we should get on with the plans.” I was afraid if we didn’t do something soon, I’d completely lose the sight in my eye. I didn’t know how much use I’d be then.
“Quinn’s right,” Lainie sank back down on the ground. “Let’s just figure out what we need to do and do it. None of us will survive otherwise. Now, how are we going to get the Fosaanians into different rooms? Some will probably be walking around in the corridors.”
“I’m still working on that,” I sat down as well, acting as if it was all decided. Mira didn’t move any closer to us, but when Decker joined me on the rocks, she found herself a place a little distance away from us, close enough to hear.
“I think it will be my job to get them into rooms,” I said, “and I’ll get some of the researchers to help. There can’t be that many Fosaanians up there. Decker’s going to need to stay close to the shuttle, because if things go wrong, we’ll have to use it to get away. I can show you the schematics of the whole station on my datapatch and we can go over the plan.”
“How did you get the schematics?” Decker asked, frowning. “It’s supposed to be a big secret, remember? The government doesn’t just hand out the plans.”
“I copied them from Gregor’s data,” I said. “It was such a boring trip from Earth to Fosaan and he was studying the schematics all the time, so I wanted to take a look at the data too.”
“Did he just let you have all that information?” Decker snapped. “He’d lose his clearance if anyone found out. And he’d be demoted, though I don’t know how much lower than janitor you can go.”
“He’s a maintenance specialist, not a janitor. And he knows every part of the station, which is good for us. It doesn’t matter how I got it.” I was annoyed that Decker was still thinking about rules. I powered up the datapatch and commanded it to project the layout of the space station. “Lainie, we just have to get you from the landing bay through this corridor and then around here to the control room. That part’s the easy part. There are still some others I don’t know how to manage though.”
Decker and Lainie began to throw out ideas and between the three of us, we came up with a plan, though none of us seemed very confident it would work.
“It’s a really crazy idea,” Decker said, “but maybe that’s an advantage. It will take them by surprise.”
“I wish I had my pack,” I said. “It would have been useful,
but it’s back in the ruin, or if a Fosaanian found it, it could be anywhere.”
“I have your pack,” Decker said, pointing to the spot where he had been hiding. “I took it because I wanted to practice with your tribow, and I was making too much noise trying to get it out while you were sleeping. The impak is gone though.”
I went over to pick up the pack, relieved to have it, though I wasn’t quite sure what we could use.
“You’ve left out an important detail,” Lainie said. “How are we going to get to the space station? Are we stealing the shuttle?”
I looked at all of them, one by one. “We’re going to let ourselves be captured.”
Chapter 14
“You’re joking, right?” Decker stood up and moved away from me like my idea was contagious. “There’s no way I’m putting myself in the hands of the Fosaanians.”
I tried to keep my temper in check. I should have known Decker would immediately reject any idea that wasn’t his own. Tempting as it was to just go ahead without him, I knew for the plan to work, I needed Decker. Taking a deep breath, I tried to speak in a reasonable tone. “It’s the best way. They think Earthers are weak, and they especially don’t think much of us, though they are going to be a little shocked when Lainie and I appear. It’s the best way to get on the station and really take them by surprise. Besides, if it all works out, we won’t be in the hands of the Fosaanians for long.”
Decker didn’t say anything, but I could tell he was at least considering the scheme.
“How are we going to get Mira on the shuttle?” Lainie said. “They won’t let her just go with us.”
I looked over at Mira. She hadn’t said anything for a long time. “Mira is going to have to stay here. It wouldn’t be safe for her to go with us. I know you want to help us,” I said to her, “but I don’t know how you can.”
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