by Karen Bao
With careful strides, I sprint toward the trip wire. Relaxing all my leg muscles, I leap over it and take shelter behind a tree, then stamp my feet as if I’m still running, creating a racket in the carpet of dry leaves covering the ground.
Both soldiers’ helmets swivel in my direction.
Get over here.
One sprints toward me; the other continues firing toward Finley. Blast. I reach into my boot, pull out a knife, and estimate the revolutions it’ll take to reach my target. Holding the dull end of the blade, I throw the knife at the second soldier’s helmeted head. It clunks against his helmet, knocking him off balance. He continues staggering forward, but Finley, shaking off his fear, takes him down with a blow dart to the neck.
Without warning, someone’s helmet lamp blinds me. The other soldier is sprinting in my direction, an incredulous expression on his face.
“Hey! Your hair!” he yells, stumbling.
Finley runs after him, but it’s too late: the Lunar soldier’s recognized me. The unmistakable silver strands on my head have been growing in aggressively of late. If he continues talking, whoever’s listening to his headset feed will find out exactly where Phaet Theta’s hiding. If they do, it’s all over.
I hear strangely heavy footsteps behind him. Reinforcements? How could the Militia have found us already?
“Bear!” Finley shouts. “Watch out, Fay!”
I dive behind a nearby spruce without a second thought and then look back, unable to believe Finley’s words. The stomping grows louder, a rumble in my ears, and in the next instant a huge, furry mass barrels into view. The animal is two and a half meters long, and must weigh as much as seven or eight adult humans. Dark blood drips onto the snow from a wound on one of its hind legs; it probably sustained an injury from a trap set by the Sanctuarists for the Militia. The Lunar soldier twists around and, with a shout of surprise, shoots the bear in the jaw.
Looks like we won’t need the trip wire after all.
Roaring in anger, the wounded animal rears up on its hind legs, standing twice as tall as its attacker. I’m rooted to the spot, stunned by the spectacle. This is why Odans stay inside at night.
The soldier fires Electrostun pellets into the bear’s belly—he’s probably too frightened to think of switching to his Lazy. There’s nothing like this creature on the Moon. Still roaring, the bear charges. Paws the size of Sanitation manhole covers, topped with pointed claws, swipe at the lone soldier, and powerful jaws close around the back of his head.
“C’mon!” Finley dashes toward me from the side of the tree opposite the bear. He pulls me up and leads me away from the scene, but I can’t tear my eyes away from the beast, which is stomping across its enemy’s body, snapping ribs and flattening organs. Only when the soldier lies limp does the bear flee back uphill, whimpering in pain.
The quiet that falls means we’re safe. I exhale slowly, relishing the sound of my breath, the thump of my still-beating heart. Then, after triple-checking the area, Finley and I move back in and collect three soldiers’ worth of clothing, gear, and weapons. We don’t touch the dead body of the soldier mangled by the bear.
Our treasures are damp with blood—blood we drew. I can’t stomach the idea of putting on the uniform or handling the blasters as if they were my own. But within the next hour, I’ll have to.
Arms laden, Finley and I tread back toward our hideout.
17
IN THE OBSERVATORY, THE BOYS AND I TURN our backs to one another to put on the stolen Militia uniforms. It feels good to wear the getup again, if only because I know I can fight in it. Elara had a larger frame than mine, so extra fabric bunches around my shoulders and hips. But the uniform isn’t riddled with holes or soaked in blood, since Finley got her with one dart to the forehead.
We wear the Lazies on the left side of our utility belts, rather than the customary right. The Sanctuarists agreed beforehand that this would distinguish enemy from undercover friend.
I’m helping Finley buckle down the last piece of his stolen chest armor when we hear the explosion—from behind us. Wes pokes his head out the window and immediately retracts it, cursing. “A red flare at the top of the mountain.”
Finley gasps. “You mean, the emergency signal—”
“Exactly.” Wes jams a helmet over his head and flips the visor down. “The civilian shelter’s about to be attacked.”
Blast. Pacifian and Lunar forces have already neared the mountain’s peak?
The next sounds we hear confirm our worst suspicions.
“We are about to breach your caverns,” a deep male voice booms from Pacifia—and from Koré Island. All the foot soldiers have cranked their audio devices to the maximum, the better to broadcast their commanders’ threats. “We will show you mercy if two conditions, and only these two, are met. One, surrender your island. Two, give us all your information and evidence concerning Lunar fugitives Wezn Kappa and Phaet Theta. Both were 1.67 meters tall, plus or minus half a centimeter. The male had red-brown hair. The female’s was black and gray. Generous compensation will be given for any revelations. . . .”
They can’t ask the Odans to turn Wes and me in without revealing to the Militia that we’re still alive. But they can ask for clues.
“Gray hair. Phaet.” Finley scrunches his face. “. . . Fay?” His body lurches backward. “She’s . . . she . . . Wes, you knew she wasn’t Pacifian, didn’t you?”
Wes and I look at each other helplessly. We must tell yet another person my secret—and risk the consequences if Finley is captured.
“They committed treason and espionage, among other crimes. Investigation is continuing,” the announcement blares.
“Fay, you’re a demon?” Finley’s face shifts from horror to awe and back again. “A demon criminal. What did you do?”
Wes looks at me expectantly; this explanation is mine to give. “The demon government killed my mother.” The words feel like another language in my mouth, and yet the Committee are demons, more than any other Lunars I’ve met—save only the General.
Finley’s face settles into a confused expression. “But—”
Wes interrupts him. “Fin, listen to me. When I was feeling most hopeless on the Moon, I met Phaet, a girl who’d do anything for her family, who’d never hurt anyone or anything in her entire life. I’ve defended her to the death, and I’ll continue as long as I’m able. If my thoughts and feelings mean anything to you, Fin, treat her like she’s come from heaven. Not hell.”
I don’t understand the last bit, about those supernatural realms, but it doesn’t matter. This is how he feels about me? I make eye contact with Wes and smile, unveiling my happiness—happiness that has no place in this battle.
“I believe you, Wes.” Finley turns back to me, tilts his head sideways. “Why would they go through all this trouble to find you?”
“They can’t wait to tell the Lunars that we’re dead,” I say.
The announcement resumes: “Hand over the fugitives, or their remains, and you will be shown mercy.”
Then a thought strikes me: If the soldiers capture me and Wes, then maybe the Lunar forces will retreat. Odans shouldn’t have to die for us.
“We should turn ourselves in,” I blurt.
Wes freezes in the midst of buckling his new utility belt and looks at me as if I’m a total stranger. He, Finley, and I have formed a triangle with our bodies. A three-way standoff.
“Surrendering won’t do any good,” he says. “The Pacifians are here for our territory, and the Lunars have to fight for them until Saint Oda’s in their possession. Even if they got us, the invasion would go on.”
He’s right. Guilt has made me stupid.
“Let’s head out,” Finley says. His determined expression ages him. “Wes, your father told us to go straight for the enemy’s command center if things got bad. That’s where their spacecraft are, right?”
“Yes.” In Wes’s voice, I hear the itch for action. “Look, Lunars—maybe Pacifians too—can’t function without directions from their headsets. I’ve seen it. They stampede around like a herd of bulls surrounded by red flags.”
He’s right. I’ve seen Militia organization implode only once, but it was memorable. After the hundreds of impoverished Base IV residents living in Shelter witnessed my mother’s death, they stormed the Atrium. In the ensuing chaos, a little girl from Shelter, Belinda, was killed. The violence escalated, and Beetles moved in to put the Shelter residents down. But through a hacking masterstroke, Cygnus disconnected their headsets. The soldiers went from mitigating mayhem to causing it: officers struggled to keep their units together, and dozens of soldiers dropped their weapons and fled the scene.
Can we achieve something like that now?
“All right, then,” Finley says, as if sifting through my thoughts. “Let’s cut some transmissions.”
I slide the visor of my helmet down over my eyes. It’s time to board Pacifia.
18
PACIFIANS TRAVEL IN HORDES. ALTHOUGH THE gray-clad soldiers move more slowly than the small squads of Lunar Militia, they raze the land as they go. The battalion advancing toward us covers an entire wheat field. Rather than wade through the crop, they spray fire, systematically burning it down. The orange flames oscillate with the wind, and smoke clouds hover over the land like a specter of death.
I’ve looked at wheat stalks under a microscope and harvested kernels in the Base IV greenhouses—it’s a beautifully complex organism. Witnessing its annihilation hurts me, makes it difficult to keep walking downhill.
In the corner of my vision, I see a wild boar and her offspring fleeing the flames; their path takes them along the edge of the enemy line, and my stomach clenches as I watch a Pacifian soldier shoot the mother boar down. Some of the piglets scatter; some hover by their parent’s body. Tormented by the sight, I turn away, and we press onward, slipping through the snow, ducking behind foliage every few seconds to blow poison darts at nearby troops. To keep Lunars from hearing our sporadic conversation, we keep the microphones inside our helmets turned off, but we leave reception on so we can hear their orders.
A hundred meters across the field, violet light zips across my field of vision. Though far away, the sight is enough to toss me back into the past.
I’m at my mother’s trial, unable to shut my eyes before they fire the fatal shot. The snow falling around me seems to materialize into a white cylindrical wall, and it’s coming closer, closer—
“No!” I cry, falling backward. “Stop! Mom—”
My voice is muffled. Someone’s got an arm around my mouth, someone strong, now dragging me to the ground.
“Shh! Fay!” Wes hisses. “That’s a Lunar unit a couple dozen meters away.”
His voice reorients me. That was the first laser fire I’ve seen since leaving Base IV. I open my eyes and press my forehead against Wes’s shoulder. Then I raise my gaze to see Finley looking unnerved. I wriggle away from Wes, my head lowered in shame. I could have given away our position and gotten all three of us killed.
“Look at this,” Wes says. He brushes some snow off the ground, revealing a patch of tiny white flowers. They have three petals each, all pointing downward, a row of mourners bowing their heads. Snowdrops—the first I’ve ever seen in bloom. “These flower in the dead of winter. The colder it gets, the harder they fight.”
Without speaking, I nod. Then I get my feet under me and brush the snow off my pants.
* * *
Low-ranked Pacifian foot soldiers lack anything comparable to the Lunar troops’ expensive body armor, and this makes them significantly easier to hit. They’re not defenseless, though: they clutch guns the length of an arm and twice as thick. I once read that Earthbound soldiers train with elaborate firearms for so long that they prefer not to use unfamiliar weapons; that’s probably why the Pacifians aren’t carrying Lazies.
Their loss. Their rigid hands almost invite my aim. When I score a hit, the wolfsbane in the blow dart works quickly, and the soldier drops before I can count to four.
They won’t detect us, because we’ve taken down only the occasional soldier. Other gaps in the ranks have begun to appear too, as soldiers collapse from Punji holes, trip wires, and grenade attacks. Even so, healthy troops cover the field as thoroughly as the Odan farmers’ wheat once did.
A loud whoosh fills the air; I look to the right and see flames engulfing a nearby farmhouse. “That was Alex and Ive’s place,” Finley whimpers. The two upstairs windows light up like eyes. A moment later, the first floor caves in, adding the snap of cracking timber to the fire’s roar.
Wes observes the spectacle, face twisted in a grimace. “Don’t dwell on it, Fin. As long as there are trees and people here, there’s the possibility of rebuilding.”
I clutch my dagger in my hand, wishing I could throw it and stop one more soldier from reaching the Odan hideout. But we’ve agreed to rush to the Pacifian submarines and board the city, not to try and kill hundreds of enemy troops. That would be a suicide mission. Saint Oda has sent me on enough of those.
Voice commands from the Lunar officers rattle through our stolen helmets. “Remember this, and don’t make me say it again,” snaps a cold voice. “The natives sneak around. And they’re quick. If it moves and it’s not wearing a gray or black suit, shoot it. But the original order holds. If you see really good fighters, hand them over to me.”
Her tone spurs something in me—recognition, perhaps? The Committee wants Wes so they can question him about the spy teammates he’s sure to have on the Moon. I imagine they want to interrogate me about Dovetail, and about Mom, though I know next to nothing about the former topic and have slowly realized how ignorant I was about the latter. They’ll torture me anyway, before they kill me in front of the few people I love.
Seeing my despairing expression, Wes lifts his chin and shakes his head: No, we don’t have to suffer that fate.
He’s too optimistic sometimes.
As we near the shoreline, we move behind the Pacifian battalion. In a desperate attempt to stop the soldiers from reaching the Odan hideout, Finley has taken shelter behind a tree. He blows darts into the seats of the Pacifians’ unarmored pants as they pass. The victims swat at and scratch their behinds. Wes and I turn to each other and smile through our visors.
Wes beckons to his cousin. “C’mon, Fin.”
We run to the beach. The snow isn’t sticking here; the sand is too salty. But soon I’ll need to adjust my movements to achieve greater traction.
Ahead of us, the Pacifians have tethered their submarines, ranging in size from three to thirty meters long, to large rocks. Half the vessels are being washed by waves, while half flounder in the sand. I watch the Pacifian soldiers guarding the area with narrowed eyes, wondering if we should simply board the submarines like true Lunar soldiers or take out the Pacifians first.
“Phaet, you handle this,” Wes tells me, and I know from his tone that we’ll try the first option. “I’ll pretend to have a sprained ankle.”
In my Lunar accent, I shout to the Pacifians, making my voice as deep as possible. “Hey! Injured soldier here!”
My shout is just a few decibels louder than a normal person’s conversational voice, so I’m not surprised when only one soldier looks our way—a girl of average height. Supported by Finley, Wes walks forward, faking a limp.
“Three Lunar soldiers running back to Pacifia? That’s not part of the plan,” says the girl, clicking her tongue.
Her cloying voice turns my blood to ice. Callisto Chi. When we were in Militia together, her voice seemed friendly, even sweet—until the first time she tried to kill me. She would’ve finished the job on the day of Mom’s trial if her mother, Base IV representative Andromeda Chi, hadn’t revealed her secret Dovetail allegiance to her horrified daughter.<
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When I look down, I see that even though she’s wearing a Pacifian uniform—maybe to mask her identity?—a Lunar utility belt cinches her middle. She lifts a small handheld detector to her face. “Three Militia troops, and no handscreens emitting a signal. Why would that be?”
Fuse, fizz, blast, and damn.
“Please, I need a Medic!” Wes begs in his fake Lunar accent. Because he’s out of practice, every word is a struggle. “My arm’s hurt, and the circulation’s cut off—”
“Team! I’ve got a treat for you,” Callisto calls, ignoring Wes. Her glee alarms me, as treachery is one of the few things that make her happy. “Get over here and take a look at this. Ready your Downers.”
A massive male advances toward us, leading five more soldiers, who also wear Pacifian uniforms but carry Lunar weaponry. He holds his arms out stiffly to the side and carries two Lazies, as if one didn’t have enough homicidal power. The weapons look comically small in his fists, each of which is the size of a baby’s head. There’s no question who this is: Jupiter, the privileged son of the General, and Callisto’s sadistic boyfriend.
He’s uncannily like his father; he liked to call me “little birdy,” even as he slammed his massive fists into my body. Even as he tried to kill me during a practice fight. One night during Militia training, he and Callisto cornered me in a dark hallway and cut my legs to the bone with scimitars. And that was before I burned the General with his own laser blast.
Callisto cackles like she’s never seen anything funnier. Her hand moves to her belt and closes around the grip of her Lazy.
“Look, team. Wes and Phaet brought a sidekick!”
I never expected high-ranking Militia officers like Callisto and Jupiter to cower on the shoreline while other Lunar and Pacifian soldiers did the real work of attacking Saint Oda. Now my old enemies and their cronies will capture Wes and me and kill Finley—unless we can take them out.
It’s not likely; there are seven of them, only three of us. But I want to fight, want to hurt Callisto and Jupiter, the Committee’s twisted darlings, as badly as they’ve hurt me. I feel my arms and legs itching for revenge. If I get my way, they’ll never laugh at me and mine again.
