The Covert Academy

by Peter Laurent

Sarah stepped forward. ‘He would have seen our first meeting in Chicago, the Nyctalopia.... then you gave the iPC to Prewett...’

  ‘That’s why he asked me to get Brock?’ Joshua asked, confused. ‘Did Simeon have control over Prewett from day one at the Academy? No. No, That doesn’t make any sense...’

  In the Tower, Simeon sat back at his desk while the children tried to figure it all out. So typical of these rebels to be stuck thinking of the past. Simeon was more concerned with the future. His own destiny would be smooth sailing once the Academy’s future was wiped away, very soon.

  How lucky he had seen the iPC feed of Marcas the Latin-American boy, appear in his spreadsheet of infected subjects.

  He switched the monitors to a tactical view of the dropship’s flight over the Pacific ocean. The Confederacy had fielded all 52 of their military-grade dropships for this assault, after Simeon had informed the other High Council members that he had learned of the Academy’s location. They knew as well as he did the threat the Academy posed to their regime.

  What they didn’t know was that Simeon had placed one of the giant bio-ID computers that Brock had created on a dropship. Simeon couldn’t trust the maintenance men not to desert their jobs once they landed on the island paradise of O’ahu. It had just been a matter of time before the device infected every worker on board. Then he had complete control over them.

  He flicked the display through various areas in Chicago, as easily as leafing through a book. Every little corner of the city was uncovered to him. No one could hide now that the people from the pit had been unleashed. The bio-ID influence was spreading like a plague.

  My beautiful plague, Simeon thought with a wicked smile.

  He flicked the display back to the 52 dropships flying in a delta “V” formation over the ocean. A small blip of an energy signature flared for a moment on the far edge of the display, back at the refuelling station on O’ahu. Simeon ignored it. Too small to worry about.

  His victory was almost at hand. He concentrated on making sure the dropship with the stowaway kids on board led the charge from the front of the formation. They’d be the first to hit the Academy.

  Destroyed by their friends. How poetic, thought Simeon.

  They were almost to Wake Island now. It wouldn’t be much longer. He flicked the monitors back to the scene in the dropship, looking out through the Brazilian boy’s eyes.

  Joshua was mulling over the implications of the bio-ID having been active all those months.

  ‘Prewett must have been too strong for the bio-ID to take effect,’ he said.

  ‘That’s silly, no one with an iPC could resist it,’ Sarah argued. ‘But he was a smart guy, maybe he found a way to disable it.’

  Joshua nodded. ‘So Prewett had avoided the bio-ID effect, but before he gave it to-’ He stopped and looked at Sarah. She stared back. They had the same sinking thought.

  ‘Casey,’ they said in unison.

  ‘It was Casey who was being watched!’ Joshua said. ‘Simeon or... or, maybe even Meyrick could predict his every move. They knew exactly how to manipulate him for their own goals.’

  ‘That’s crazy,’ said Kayla.

  ‘He was the one who helped Ryan escape with Prewett on the Nyctalopia,’ Joshua said, turning to her.

  ‘He let Prewett into Brock’s cell just before they both died,’ Will added.

  ‘Could have mentioned that earlier,’ Kayla snapped. Will looked at his feet.

  ‘All this just to force Brock to find and betray our location in the Pacific,’ Sarah said, shaking her head.

  Joshua strode back to Marcas where he knew Simeon was listening. ‘It wasn’t Brock’s fault. Simeon had him possessed. Just like he has Marcas now. Like those men that killed Eddie.’ He waved a hand on front of Marcas’ eyes. ‘You bastard.’

  ‘Oh are you still there?’ Simeon said. ‘I wasn’t listening, honest.’ He made the disturbing laughing noise through Marcas’ throat again.

  ‘We’re still here,’ Joshua said, grinding his teeth. ‘Any time you want to come out to play, we’ll be waiting.’

  ‘Thank you kindly for the offer, but I think it’s past your bedtime young man,’ Simeon said condescendingly. ‘I’m sure you’d like to get home now. But where is the home of a street brat like you? Chicago? Or is it the Academy now?’

  Joshua didn’t reply. He just stared back into Marcas’ eyes, filling the walls of monitors in Simeon’s office.

  ‘Perhaps you’ll find someone special waiting for you there,’ Simeon said. ‘She’s been making great progress with the Fletchers. In fact you might say she is a natural leader. You two may already be familiar?’

  Joshua remained closed up.

  ‘Ah yes. Your sister,’ Simeon finished, driving the knife home.

  Joshua roared.

  Marcas came suddenly to life.

  He grabbed Joshua’s arm and twisted it to breaking point. Joshua squawked and twisted away. The Dangler gun was ripped from his forearm. Marcas swung a massive arm around and clipped Joshua over the ear, leaving him dazed.

  Sarah drew her sword and rushed in. Marcas had his back to her. She rotated her wrist backward and flicked her sword up his calf muscle. The sword bit through the jumpsuit into flesh and bone. Marcas roared in agony and dropped to one knee. But he kept attacking like an angry wounded bear. He swung a massive fist up into Sarah’s belly, winding her.

  Kayla stepped up to Marcas while he focussed on Sarah. She activated her suit’s strength mode and with one finger, punched down on his sternum between the collarbones. Marcas instantly doubled over, choking and coughing. Kayla followed up with a shot to the temple above his eye socket, whip-lashing his head around. Marcas fell unconscious to the deck. Simeon’s connection to him was now useless.

  In the Tower, Simeon slammed a hand down on his desk in a fury. He switched the now static filled monitors back to the tactical display of the dropships. He calmed down, but for only a second. As the ships closed to within ten kilometres of Wake Island, their energy signatures dropped off one by one. Simeon stared at the board. The Academy was jamming his connection. He was apoplectic with rage.

  The bulk of his forces had slipped out of his control. Now he had no idea what the drones were doing. He could still track their position, but he couldn’t command them until he entered the Academy’s signal jamming radius.

  Simeon quickly sent a general order throughout the Colonnade to assemble at his gigantic luxury cruiser. Every active drone and Confederate soldier in the region responded instantly and without question.

  Simeon marched out of his office, down his private elevator and along the landing platform to his luxury cruise ship, amassing the Colonnade’s entire contingent of soldiers and drones in his wake.

  A high girlish voice shrieked out of the depths of the dropship.

  Joshua, his head still buzzing, tried to focus on the direction it had come.

  ‘There’s someone else in here!’ Sarah warned. A pitter-patter of running feet reverberated all around them. ‘Where is that coming from?’

  It was closing in on them. Fast.

  ‘Fall back around the computer!’ Joshua ordered.

  Nursing their wounds, Joshua and Sarah dragged Marcas back to form a defensive circle with Kayla, Elayne, Will and Alara, who still clung to life.

  Without warning, the dropship’s giant inner gate opened. A blaze of moonlight seeped through. They could see the dark ocean whizzing by underneath, and Wake Island rushing to meet them in the distance.

  The dropship was preparing to live up to its name.

  The wind howled through the open gate, drowning the vibration of the running feet.

  ‘What is this?’ Kayla shouted over the turbulence.

  Joshua closed his eyes. He knew exactly who was coming. Simeon had sent her back to him. Who knew what he had done to her? Twisting her mind over the years in some vile reformatory.

  He was afraid of what he would he find. He forced his eyes open.

&n
bsp; Lucia ran out of the shadows.

  Chapter 36

  Lucia looked nothing like Joshua remembered. She looked older. Far more than the fifteen years she should be by now. She moved with the agility of youth, but her face was weathered by the intervening years. Her green eyes still sparkled, not with the cheeky playfulness he had known so well, but instead with a keen shrewdness. Outwardly she was built like a female version of Joshua. Not Joshua the street runt, but Joshua the lean, mean Academy-trained machine.

  But the detail that chilled Joshua to the bone was what she was wearing. It was a jumpsuit. It appeared similar in design to the Academy’s version, but slightly more bulky, as though they had had to trade off the extra mass for more features. He wondered what she was capable of now. He almost preferred the emaciated version of her he thought he had seen in the Colonnade.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he shouted over the wind, whipping at their faces from the open gate.

  ‘Hi there yourself, big brother,’ Lucia smirked and gestured to the dropship. ‘I’m driving this thing. Can you believe it?

  He couldn’t.

  ‘Lucy, listen to me,’ Joshua yelled, his voice straining. ‘You might think you’re in control, but you’re not. Simeon is about to attack us at any second!’

  ‘Simeon?’ Lucia smiled widely now. ‘Simeon is a fool. He thinks he’s in control of this invasion. That’ll be the last mistake he’ll ever make.’

  She pulled out a long weapon from behind her back. It was vaguely shaped like a Stunner, but much smaller and balanced with the heel of the stock. It had a short snub-nosed barrel, and a long sturdy blade balancing out the tip of the gun. It was essentially a sword/Stunner-shotgun hybrid.

  ‘Like it? I made it myself!’ Lucia said. She strode over to a nearby drone on a hanger and whipped the sword around, neatly cleaving the drone in two.

  Even Sarah looked impressed. Her own blade was no match for that kind of strength.

  The two halves of the drone clattered to the floor. A pile of flares tumbled out, but it was otherwise completely hollow. No ammo. No guns.

  ‘The Confederacy isn’t invading anything, the Fletchers are,’ Lucia gloated. ‘Simeon could never have filled the Great General Withers’ boots! Oh sure Simeon expanded his influence, but only because we allowed it.’

  Joshua circled around Lucia, keeping her away from the bio-ID computer. Sarah and Kayla stood guard around Will, who typed furiously on the keyboard.

  ‘I thought you hated the Confederacy,’ Joshua shouted.

  Lucia grinned. ‘People are too stupid to look after themselves, I know that now. They crave someone with authority to tell them what to do.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Of course not me,’ Lucia snapped. ‘But we’ll make sure someone suitable replaces Simeon. There are still seventeen more High Council members. We only need one.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Then I will produce an heir to the throne,’ Lucia stated calmly, as the first wave of the Academy’s defensive fire struck home.

  The din of battle faded away for Joshua. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The Lucia he had known would have said, “boys, ew!” if she had heard someone talk about producing heirs. Yet here she was at fifteen years old and she was planning the start of her own dynasty. Joshua didn’t know who she was any more.

  ‘You’re not in control of yourself!’ he yelled. ‘This isn’t you!’

  ‘I AM in control!’ Lucia shrieked.

  The dropship circled around the island, unloading empty drones. The anti aircraft gun emplacements hidden under the shallow water fired like underwater explosions. They hurled chunks of metal streaking through the air at incredible speeds. A few dropships ducked and weaved as best they could. They would be the ones with Lucia’s fellow Fletchers hidden on board. The rest of them followed the preprogrammed path that Simeon had given them. They flew in predictable patterns over the island, making it easy for the Academy defences to track them.

  Dropship after dropship erupted in a breath-taking display of fireworks. They careened down into the ocean around the island, and slowly filled with water. They dotted the ocean like drowning flies, but eventually they would sink beneath the waves.

  The ones that fell on the island itself seemed to hang in the air just metres above the ground before finishing their crash, as though some magnetic field slowed their descent at the last moment. Joshua vaguely remembered Sarah explaining the island’s many defences on his first day. This must be one of them.

  A few of the dropships that were more in control managed to sneak past the point defence fire. They slowly landed on the outskirts of the island and opened their ramps. Nothing seemed to appear, but Joshua now knew that it would be Fletcher assassins sneaking out in their own actively camouflaged suits.

  He eyed Lucia. She was grinning ear to ear.

  ‘Why all this trouble over the General’s iPC?’ Joshua struggled to be heard over the chaos. ‘The same bio-ID technology is right here with this computer.’

  ‘Not quite the same,’ Lucia said. ‘The General’s iPC is the only one that has seen all the members of the Confederacy together.’

  Of course, Joshua thought. She is looking for the other Confederate members too! The General’s iPC has their data stored in it. Casey has had it for weeks and he never even knew.

  Lucia had just unwittingly given them the key to destroying the Confederacy once and for all. But if she found it first it would be the key to a thousand years of enslavement under her grand dynasty.

  ‘I’ve got this computer now,’ Joshua said, pointing over his shoulder, ‘and the General’s iPC. You’re not in control.’

  ‘I. AM. IN. CONTROL.’

  Joshua ignored her and looked to Will.

  ‘Do you have control of the dropship?’ he asked.

  Will nodded, his eyes wide.

  ‘Then crash it,’ Joshua ordered.

  Lucia lunged for Will, but it was too late. He punched a button, and the dropship pitched far below the horizon.

  For a few seconds, their world turned sideways as the ship raced to the ground. Elayne grabbed Alara with one arm and held onto the computer terminal with the other. Will and Sarah held Marcas between them.

  But Joshua had nothing to grab and flew up to the roof, becoming entangled in loose wiring. Lucia tumbled around the room too, but she acted quickly, and pushed off with her powerful legs to an emergency escape hatch. She lifted the safety bar and hit the door with the palm of her hand. It exploded out into the air. Lucia leaped out of the crashing dropship, and fell into the ocean. She skimmed along the surface at first, but ended with an almighty splash and disappeared beneath the waves.

  Joshua watched her go. She may not be the sister he remembered, but he knew she was not stupid enough to jump without knowing whether she would survive.

  But what she didn’t know was that they would survive too. At least that’s what Joshua hoped.

  The dropship was just metres from the ground when it ran into the invisible force field covering the surface area of Wake Island. It caught the falling ship like a safety net, rapidly slowing their descent.

  It was enough to save their lives, but not enough to save the dropship. The front half crumpled into the disguised landing pad where the Nyctalopia used to dock. Inside the dropship, the kids were rattled around like peas in a can.

  The dropship teetered on its end for a moment before falling over and off the platform. They finally came to a halt. The dropship was a mess. Loose wiring was strewn everywhere.

  Joshua breathed a sigh of relief. The ordeal was over. He glanced over at Sarah and smiled. Rather than return it, Sarah’s mouth dropped open in horror.

  The dropship was filling with water like a sinking ship. When it had fallen over it had landed in the deep water that surrounded the landing platform.

  ‘Move! Move! Move!’ Joshua yelled. He whipped out his trusty old knife that Lucia had once made, and sliced at the wires he had b
ecome tangled in. The surging water was rushing up to meet him.

  He glanced around to see the others busy lifting Alara and Marcas up the sides of the dropship to open air.

  He still wasn’t free. There were far more wires than he had at first realised.

  He slashed again and again with the knife. The wires finally came free, but his foot had become jammed inside a metal alcove.

  He took a last gulp of air as the warm salt water gurgled up over his head.

  Chapter 37

  The air was thick with the smell of burning. Grass, trees, oil, even metal and flesh. But it was the best air Joshua had ever breathed. He gasped repeatedly, his chest heaving, then coughed and spluttered back to life. Frothy pink sputum bubbled from his lungs and gushed out all over him.

  Sarah was bending over him, smiling and talking. He sank back on the beach and exhaled cleanly with a sigh. The sun began to sink again over the horizon. They had been chasing it all the way from O’ahu.

  He almost wished he could stay there, with that view, forever.

  Then the ringing in his ears subsided and the pandemonium returned. Drones hummed overhead. The solid, bassy booms of the Academy’s rail guns fired at the invaders from every corner of the island, shaking his teeth. Dropships splashed down into the deep ocean like breaching whales, or else slammed into the shallows, showering them with metal and sand.

  Sarah was yelling at him over the noise, but he still couldn’t quite hear her voice. He got shakily to his feet and surveyed the carnage.

  The drones were as useless as Lucia had predicted. They merely soaked up bullets from the Academy defences.

  The gigantic drudges, however, were very effective. They stomped around the island, crushing anything in their path. Academy students attacked them from all angles. From the treetops above, two sailed down in partial grav mode. Several others ran through the jungle with enhanced strength, distracting the drudges. The first two wielded swords like Sarah, and they stabbed down into the guts of the drudge.