Take Back the Skies

by Lucy Saxon

  ‘Here, both of you,’ Harry said as Cat and Fox approached him, pulling two sets of binocular attachments from his coat pockets, handing them one each. Cat needed Fox to clip hers on to her goggles, having no idea how to do so herself, then flipped them up to rest against her forehead so she could see normally.

  ‘Have you got everything?’ Harry asked Fox, who nodded, patting his satchel.

  ‘Recording devices are in here, as are guns, the zip-line brace, and a few … extras,’ he assured them. Cat decided instantly that she had no desire to know what those ‘extras’ were.

  Harry nodded in approval, clapping Fox on both shoulders.

  ‘Get up there with Matt. He’ll have the swing-ropes ready for you when we find the ship. Be careful and look after yourselves. Don’t do anything stupid.’

  Before Cat and Harry could head for the rigging, however, the trap opened, and James’s head popped up, clad in a fur-lined cap. When he saw them, he scrambled the rest of the way out of the trap, toppling to his knees almost as soon as he got to his feet. Not letting it faze him, he pulled himself up once more, walking with unsteady steps towards them.

  ‘What in storms do you think you’re doing?’ Fox snapped. ‘The deck isn’t the safest place at the best of times, let alone this close to the Stormlands!’

  ‘We got a message,’ James panted, ignoring Fox’s rant. ‘I don’t know how, but the Mericans managed to hijack the frequency of the loudspeaker and transmit a message through to the control room.’

  Harry let out a low whistle.

  ‘I’d heard they were working on technology that could do that, but I didn’t think they’d actually got it running yet. What did they have to say?’ he queried.

  ‘They’re on their way! They’re sending a ship out to meet us, and another two are headed to Anglya as we speak. They’ll be with us before nightfall, they said. Ben’s speaking to them now to direct them to us. Same with the Erovans – two ships to Anglya, and they’ve both opened their shipyards to the trade ships coming in with the children. Apparently all routes to and from Siberene are closed because of storm difficulties, so any ships we had sent that way have been redirected to either Mericus or Erova. They’ll talk more about the long-term details when we’re all back in Anglya and have the government in custody.’

  Cat beamed, whooping with happiness and hugging Fox.

  ‘That’s fantastic!’ she exclaimed. The Mericans must have already had a ship in the area, to be able to reach them so quickly – it would have taken them days to arrive from Mericus itself. It made her wonder if they’d been monitoring Anglya already.

  ‘Isn’t it just?’ Harry agreed, patting James on the shoulder. ‘Good work, lad. Now, go back below deck before you get blown right overboard.’

  James paled, unsure whether to take Harry seriously or not.

  ‘Be careful,’ he said to Cat, belatedly shifting his gaze to include Fox as well. ‘We’re so close, don’t cock this up.’

  Cat laughed, shoving his shoulder gently.

  ‘Get below deck. We’ll see you in a few hours,’ she urged.

  James saluted them all with a smile, before retreating back to the trap, looking relieved.

  ‘Either way, we need to get moving,’ said Fox. ‘The Mericans won’t be able to do a thing if we haven’t found the government ship before they get here. Come on, Cat, we need to get up there with Matt.’

  Fox grasped Cat’s hand and led her towards the bottom of the rigging. The pair climbed up with lightning speed, meeting Matt at the top, where he had two swing-ropes ready for use.

  ‘Hello, troublemakers,’ he said as they joined him, sitting astride the upper mast beam. ‘Cat, how do you feel about doing this? I know you’ve not done a rigging swing before, and, well … these are hardly the ideal conditions to make your first.’

  She smiled at him, hoping to disguise the fear racing through her at the prospect of swinging from one ship to another, so very close to the Stormlands, hundreds of feet above raging waters, with nothing to support her but a length of rope.

  ‘Can’t be too hard, right?’ she replied, making Matt snort.

  ‘Always the optimist,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll tie you in nice and safe. There’s a reason you’ve got so many buckles and straps on that flight coat of yours. Not all of them are for decoration.’

  ‘But some of them are?’ she asked with a grin, and Fox snickered.

  ‘Well, as you mention it, a good deal of thought went into how dashing I’d look in that coat. I loved that coat,’ he informed her.

  ‘Get your binoculars on and start looking,’ Matt interrupted them, flipping his own binoculars down and wrapping his arms tightly into the rigging nets to keep himself balanced. Cat copied him, yelping in surprise as the ship began to rock and lurch more violently the closer they got to the Stormlands. How on Tellus were they meant to stay out here for any length of time?

  ‘Should be there any minute now, according to the coordinates!’ Harry yelled up to them, and Matt gave him a thumbs up to show they’d heard.

  Cat squinted through the haze of cloud that swirled viciously around them, trying to look for any shape or shadow that could possibly be a skyship.

  By the gradually increasing tilt of the ship, Cat realised Ben was flying them in slowly decreasing circles; he obviously expected the government ship to be somewhere in the centre.

  ‘There!’ Fox cried out suddenly, throwing an arm in an eastwards direction.

  Cat turned to see a dark shape half-hidden in the clouds, a rippling scrap of purple fabric at the top of the mast giving it away as an Anglyan government ship. Its base propellers were about four times bigger than its tail propeller, which probably explained how it had managed to stay put, despite the weather.

  ‘Due east!’ Matt shouted, and Harry’s head whipped around. Nodding when he saw what they were looking at, he shouted down the hatch to Ben.

  The ship began to turn, heading in the direction of the shadow in the clouds. Cat could only hope they were approaching the back of the other ship.

  Flipping up her binoculars, she wiped the frost off her goggles, feeling herself crunch and crack whenever she moved as a thin layer of ice formed on her coat. Glancing down, her eyebrows shot up when she saw James steadily making his way up the rigging, wearing one of Fox’s old flight coats.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she exclaimed when he was close enough to hear her.

  ‘Coming with you. I can’t stand the thought of sitting around and letting you two do everything. I can help, I swear,’ the prince insisted. There was a steely determination in his eyes that told Cat he’d be coming with them whether she liked it or not.

  ‘If you two keep arguing, we’ll miss our chance to jump,’ Fox interrupted, already securing his swing-rope around his waist and torso. Cat looked past him to see Matt securing a third swing-rope to the rigging, and sighed; obviously the decision had been made for her. James held on to the rigging, letting Matt tie his swing-rope while Fox wound Cat’s through the buckle loops in her coat.

  ‘Just jump when Matt tells you to jump, and hold on to your rope. He’ll untie them at the top so we can land, and don’t lock your knees or you’ll break your leg. If you think you’re going off course, don’t worry – Matt won’t cut you loose unless he knows you’ll land safely.’

  He spoke to both of them, but his eyes were fixed firmly on Cat. Leaning forward, he kissed her hard, their goggles clicking together.

  ‘Trust Matt, and trust the rope. Everything will be fine.’

  Cat nodded, poised on the beam, ready to jump. They were nearing the government ship at a higher level than its deck so they would have the height advantage when jumping. It didn’t look like the deck was manned.

  As they drew closer, she gripped Fox’s hand, and he turned briefly to shoot her a reassuring smile. James’s expression was stony on her other side, the panic obvious in his eyes, and she reached out to him, taking his hand too.

 
; He looked up at her, and she gave him a stern warning look of ‘Don’t read into this any more than it is’, which he returned with a shy smile.

  ‘Get ready,’ Matt murmured, eyes fixed on the ship. ‘On three. One … two … three!’

  As he shouted the last number, Fox jumped, half dragging both Cat and James with him. Cat heard screaming, and it took her several moments to realise the sound was coming from her own mouth. Shutting it tightly, she swallowed, feeling her stomach clench with nausea as they fell.

  Abruptly, the rope pulled taut and she was jerked outwards towards the government ship. Letting go of both boys, she gripped her own rope, practically hugging the thick material as she soared over the bottomless gap between the two ships. Frantically repeating ‘Trust the rope, trust Matt’ in her mind, she forgot how to breathe as she waited, feeling that any minute now she would reach the apex of her swing and start going backwards, falling into the endless chasm of cloud and sky.

  There was another sudden jerk, and then her fall had a distinct downward motion, the deck of the government ship rising to meet her. Letting her knees loosen, she dropped into a crouch and rolled forward when she hit the metal, hearing two thumps that signalled James’s and Fox’s safe landings.

  Standing up and looking to her left, she saw Fox winding his rope into loops on his arm. She copied him, allowing him to untie the end from her body, coiling it with the rest of her rope and moving to untie James, ignoring the way her fingers shook.

  She glanced over her shoulder, able to see the clouds raging and the sea swirling beneath them. She imagined herself tumbling into the depths below, and shuddered.

  She jumped when fingers touched her hand, glancing up with panicked eyes into Fox’s steady gaze. His hand closed briefly over hers, and she smiled, the contact helping to slow her racing heart. Setting aside her fears, she turned her attention to her task.

  Chapter 27

  They left the three ropes in a pile on the deck, tying them around one of the shorter mast beams. When the trap began to open several feet away from them, they dived behind a pair of bolted-down crates, Cat peering around the side. The guard who had opened the trap didn’t get out fully, merely sticking his head through the gap and looking around, no doubt to see what had caused the noise. Obviously deciding it was just hailstones, he ducked back down into the ship and shut the trap behind him.

  ‘That seemed too easy,’ Fox muttered.

  ‘They probably feel pretty secure in the knowledge that no one would find them all the way out here. I know I would be,’ Cat pointed out, following Fox to the other end of the ship, where there was a second trapdoor.

  James and Cat stood back while Fox unlocked it, pulling it open by the handle and ushering them both inside. The cold metal corridor was deserted and they searched quickly for an empty room.

  It happened to be a storage room, filled with crates. Fox dropped his satchel and dug out the recording devices, passing Cat both of hers.

  ‘I’ve only got two of each so, James, you’re just going to have to keep your eyes and ears peeled and be our lookout while we’re recording.’

  ‘We should find the main laboratory. The more footage we can get before the Mericans arrive to shut it down the better,’ Cat said. They needed to get the faces of government workers on record, or they’d worm their way out of punishment.

  ‘But if the Mericans are coming, do we really need footage? Surely the experiments themselves are evidence enough?’ James asked.

  Cat shared a look with Fox.

  ‘The government lot are a sneaky bunch. If we don’t have footage of them personally involved with the experiments, it’s entirely likely that some of them will claim innocence and escape scot-free,’ she explained.

  ‘Which we definitely don’t want,’ said James. ‘OK, so how do we find this main lab? I don’t think we’ve got time to search every level of the ship methodically.’

  Fox shouldered his satchel.

  ‘We follow the crowd,’ he declared, looking quite excited.

  ‘We … follow the people who want to kill us,’ James said slowly, checking he’d heard correctly. Both Cat and Fox nodded. ‘Right. Because in your world, that makes sense,’ he muttered under his breath.

  ‘We do it without getting caught obviously,’ Cat told him. ‘But the main lab is likely to have the most workers. So we need to go where most people seem to be heading.’

  James’s lips pursed in nervous disapproval, but he nodded regardless.

  Fox looked through the window of the door, checking the corridor was clear. He ducked out of sight as two men walked past, then waited several long moments before nudging the heavy door open.

  ‘Quickly,’ he breathed.

  Cat led the group out of the room and they followed the two men at a distance, ducking around a corner when they entered a room. Before they could decide their next move, the door opened once more and the two men emerged with a metal stretcher on wheels, a sheet-covered body lying limply on it. Cat let out a silent gasp as she saw the unconscious teen; most of the body was covered by the white sheet, but there were large patches of blood soaking through, and the part of the body that was visible looked more machine than human.

  ‘Oh, that’s disgusting,’ James said under his breath.

  They watched as the two men wheeled the stretcher down the corridor until they came to a gated room. One of the men pushed the gate aside, allowing the other to wheel the stretcher into the small room. Shutting the gate behind them, one of the men began to wind a large crank handle set in the wall. Cat’s eyes widened as the room itself sank below the floor, until the two men were gone from view.

  ‘They’ve got a pulley-lift,’ Fox breathed, sounding impressed. ‘That’ll make it harder for us to follow. But presumably, there’s a manhole around here somewhere too.’

  Walking past the lift, they ignored the few doors along the corridor and turned a corner. Cat grinned when she saw the manhole at the end of a short corridor. Fox insisted on going first, and lay flat on his belly to peer below, checking the corridor was clear before climbing down.

  The corridor looked exactly the same as the one above it; plain steel walls and floors, spaced with numbered steel doors, each with a small window. Lamps hung from overhead, swinging with the motion of the ship.

  ‘How far do you think it goes down?’ Cat asked in a whisper, and Fox shrugged.

  ‘I’d imagine three levels of labs and workshops, one of sleeping and communal quarters, and one of storage.’

  Neither of them needed to voice aloud that in this case ‘storage’ meant children.

  ‘The main lab is likely to be somewhere on this floor, then. It’ll be in the middle of everything,’ Cat reasoned.

  James tugged on her sleeve, and she turned, eyes widening when she saw three mechanics in overalls and lab coats emerge from a room in front of them. Noticing, Fox held a finger to his lips, gesturing for Cat and James to follow him.

  They stayed a good fifteen feet away from the men, and when the mechanics entered a door, it was Fox who rushed forward to peer through the window.

  He ducked back down. ‘Bingo!’ he whispered, beckoning Cat and James closer. He reached into his coat and removed his video recorder, lifting it to record through the window.

  Curious, Cat stood on tiptoe to look into the room, and immediately wished she hadn’t. The lab was tightly packed with machinery and the two children in the room were barely human any more. One of them – Cat thought it was a boy – had a green and brown camouflage-patterned mask over his face, like a grotesque mecha. His enhancements didn’t quite fit his skin, making Cat realise he must have grown a fair amount since having them implanted. She felt sick: how long had he been there?

  There were eight mechanics, four for each child, and two aristocrats whom Cat recognised by face, but not name.

  ‘We need audio,’ she said quietly.

  ‘We won’t be able to get the door open without being noticed,’ Fox said flatly.r />
  ‘I know. I just wish we could.’ She kept watching, wincing as sparks flew from the chest plate as one of the mechanics lowered a drill to it. Suddenly, she squeaked in alarm, ducking down and pulling Fox with her.

  Without explaining to James, she dragged both boys around the corner, then peeped round it as the door opened. A man walked out and thankfully turned the opposite way, but before she or Fox could hold him back, James flew round the corner, making straight for the slowly closing door. Cat held her breath as the prince reached out and stuck his fingers in the doorway, keeping it open just a fraction.

  They crept back towards the lab, Cat removing her audio recorder from her coat, flicking it on and slipping it in the gap above James’s fingers.

  ‘Thomas is coming to inspect the stock this afternoon,’ said an aristocratic voice. ‘Wants to know if we’re ready for war after what happened in the city.’

  His companion snorted. ‘Ready for war? You’ve got to be joking! We’ve barely got enough for a single regiment! And we don’t even know if they’re fully functioning yet! The man’s mad. We would be better off not Collecting in Anglya for a while and kidnapping foreign kids instead. They’ll find these saboteurs – there’s been no more action since the explosions in the city so I doubt it’s an uprising. We should let things calm down for a bit. We’ve taken too many children and people are getting suspicious, wondering why their kids never come home. It’s war, I tell them. People don’t come home from war! But I can see that they don’t really believe me – they’re not as stupid as they look!’

  Both men laughed, making Cat feel sick to her stomach. On the upside, it sounded as if they had yet to catch wind of her little newscast appearance, or the danger they were in. She went over her mental list of names, thinking of all the possible men called Thomas who could be running the ship. One sprung to mind immediately.

  ‘Thomas said he wants to bring his younger son out here, soon,’ the first speaker said, and the other man chuckled as Cat stood up to peer through the glass in the door.