by Elin Wyn
“Yeah, but there won’t be any ships left to take,” I argued.
We crept out of the tunnels, emerging on the far side of the dormitory. Yelling and commotion erupted all around us, as people ran toward the collapsed lab.
The everpresent gleam of the security dome glinted above and I glared at it as we worked our way back across the open square of the Compound to the hall.
“You’re next,” I promised it under my breath. “One by one, we’re taking everything down.”
Geir flitted before me from one shadow to the next, when suddenly, his cloak flashed again from black to silver.
“There’s someone there!” Came a shout from above.
Oh no.
It wasn’t a fault in the goggles.
Geir’s cloak was shorting, running out of battery - whatever the cause, the result was the same.
He was exposed.
And a barrage of blaster fire rained down on us from the dormitory roof.
“Snipers,” Geir muttered. “He had snipers ready.”
“Analyze later, hide now!” I snapped.
The three of us huddled low in the shadows of a blown back pile of earth, unable to make a dash for safety while the malfunctioning cloak made us a target.
“We have to switch cloaks,” I decided.
“What? No.” I didn’t have to see him to imagine his face. “Not happening.”
“It’s the only way. You wear my cloak, and I’ll stay underneath.”
He grunted.
“You only want to carry me when it’s impractical? Is that it?”
He sighed. “Alright. How do you think we’re going to do this without both of us getting shot?”
Bit by bit we worked the edge of my cloak over him, while I loosened the face covering and ducked beneath the fabric.
Geir stayed crouched while I unfastened his clock and bundled it at my waist. Then in one motion, he stood, scooping me up to his chest, and thrusting his head through the neckhole.
“Let me help with that.” Blind now, I heard the rustle of fabric and guessed Tianna pulled the hood up.
“Ready to go?” he whispered.
“More than. Let’s do it.”
There could be no running, not without risking leaving Tianna behind; besides, the sound of his boots pounding would only give us away again.
I closed my eyes as he walked, tried to stay small and still, listening to whatever clues would tell me how much farther it was until we were safe.
Gradually the shouts faded away, the faint sound of footfalls changed, a slight echo that told me we'd entered the hall.
Our surroundings grew quieter and quieter and still I couldn't trust that another of the cloaks wouldn't fail.
I tangled my hands in the malfunctioning cloak in my lap, kneading and balling it in my anxiety.
It was wet.
It shouldn't be wet. There was nothing damp outside. Had Geir knelt in a puddle while we were hiding?
I brought my hand to my face, sniffed. Blood. Geir had been hit by the snipers.
Where, where was the wound?
I ran my hands over as much of his chest as I could reach. If he was bleeding, wasn’t I supposed to put pressure on it? Staunch the bleeding, something?
“Valrea,” he hissed, “what are you doing? Stop it.”
“You've been hit! You're bleeding.”
“Yeah, I know. You're not helping.”
The remainder of the journey to the warehouse stretched into hours. But surely it was no more than a few minutes before Geir stopped.
“All right,” he sounded tired. “get us in.”
I slid out from under the cloak, but when I put my hand to the palm lock I froze. His blood was smeared all over me. This was my fault.
“Valrea,” he whispered urgently.
I snapped out of it. This wasn't the time. With a click and hiss the three of us were inside, the door sealed firmly behind us.
“Doc!” I ran back to her makeshift workroom. “Geir’s been shot. You've got to help him.”
She put down her tools, brushed off her hands and headed back to the front. “Not the first time, doubt it’ll be the last.”
Geir leaned against the door, the cloak at his feet, bright blood staining the shoulder of his shirt crimson.
Tianna leaned against a workbench, her goggles off and hood pushed back but cloak still on. She looked as if the last few minutes had her rethinking the decision to join us. “I think I like being an engineer better.”
“Come on boy, let's get you patched up.”
Doc’s voice was rough, but her hands were gentle as she guided him to the cot.
She pulled the shirt away from his shoulder and I winced at the scorched flesh around the wound from the blaster impact.
“Sorry, no regen tanks here. We'll have to do it the old-fashioned way.”
Geir nodded, face pale.
A thunk behind me had me spinning, shattered nerves affray.
Tianna no longer leaned against the workbench but had slumped down to hit the floor.
I tore at the clock, frantic to find the invisible fastening, the switch, anything. Finally I grabbed her goggles. There.
“Set up another one of those cots,” Doc barked. “Get her on it, then get out there and clean up any blood. We don't want them tracing us here.”
Fingers fumbling and chest tight, I helped Tianna over to the cot.
She clutched her side and I saw where she'd been hit, low in her belly. I balled up her shirt, pressed it to the wound trying to staunch the bleeding.
Geir saw it, too.
“Doc, gut wound. Stop messing with me and get to her.”
Doc muttered but came over to inspect Tianna.
“You did good, now get out there and make sure they don't find us.”
Quickly I ransacked the shelves until I found something that burned my eyes when I smelled it. Close enough to a cleaner. I tore the remains of Tianna's shirt into rags and paused at the front door.
The cloaks had betrayed us. But there was no other way to safely go outside.
I'd have to trust them one more time.
Doc was right, Geir or Tianna or both had left sprinkles of blood clearly marking our hideout, as if someone had painted to the floor with a giant red arrow.
I began washing the floor, trying to remember everything I had heard about the cadre and their technology. Would they only be looking for the blood? Did they have something that could detect the proteins, smell the faintest traces, even when I scrubbed away the stains?
Don't know. No point in speculating. I just had to keep moving, doing what I could.
Task done, I fidgeted, watching Doc work on Tianna.
“Is there anything -”
“Stay out the of way,” she snapped.
Geir patted the cot next to him. “She doesn’t mean it, she’s just focused when she works.”
“I don’t care, as long as she saves her.”
He wrapped his good arm around me, and I couldn’t help but notice his wince.
“Don’t you need something, too?”
“I’ll wait. Doc cleaned it up. Chances are good I’ll be half healed by the time she finishes with Tianna. Gut wounds don’t wait.”
The band around my chest loosened, slightly. Last time I’d watched him slowly heal from the Devourer, he’d been a mystery. Maybe a sign of hope, a way out.
Now the thought of him being injured, in pain, made me frantic.
When had that happened?
We were so focused on Doc’s work that when the door opened on a black clad figure, it startled us.
Geir sprang forward, pushing me behind him, only to relax when we saw Rhea enter,
She paused, watching Doc. “Will Tianna recover?”
“I’ve done about all I can. But she’s not going anywhere anytime soon.” Doc stepped back, put the healing wand down among a pile of bloody gauze.
“Whatever your next move is, you’ll do it without her.”
My throat tight, I swallowed and nodded. “I’d never hoped to have her help to begin with. We’ll manage.”
“Sure we will.”
Doc noticed Geir still standing, and scowled. “What are you doing up?” Doc chided. “Get your behind on that cot until I’m done.”
“While you are completing his treatment, I have a report to make on the situation,” Rhea started. “If you intended chaos, you have succeeded.”
“So soon?” I gasped.
“Stanton’s order for Tianna’s execution was unpopular. I suspect that many people had already begun to complain to their friends. When she disappeared, the cadre began their usual response to anything untoward.”
“More arrests,” Geir guessed.
“Correct.”
Rhea’s stance, always so solid, seemed rigid, off-balance. Maybe it was because I was still getting used to seeing her as a person, rather than the faceless Companion. Nevertheless, I grabbed one of the chairs for her.
She looked at it, cocked her head to the side. “Thank you.” Slowly she sat down, resumed her report.
“This time, people fought back, pulled their friends away. The cadre couldn’t arrest them all. Then the disturbances began. Small things. The lifts not working, communication lines down. Inconveniences, but noticeable ones.”
Hope, anticipation, some wild unnamed emotion swelled in me.
“And in every instance, one word painted on the wall.”
I held my breath.
“Resist.”
I hugged myself tightly, the strange bubble of emotion almost too much to contain.
“Whatever you have done, it is working,” she concluded. “However, we have one complication. Father is anxious. He and Stanton have been holed up together for several hours.”
“They do that, though.” I tried to remember, but I’d always done my best to avoid Stanton and his meetings. “Don’t they?”
“Yes, but this time they ordered me to bring them Vicki. And just now, commanded me to leave, without her.”
“Oh no. No, no,” I murmured.
“I could not object without them knowing I was a part of the disruptions.” Rhea tilted her head. “Until we are certain that my presence among them is not needed, it seemed best for them not to suspect.”
She was right. Of course she was right, but still...“We have to get her back, immediately.”
Geir stood, either done with Doc’s treatment, or out of patience with the whole thing. “Do you think she’s safe with them?”
Rhea calculated. “For now.”
“Then we need to leave her, just for a bit.”
“What? No!”
“Keep to the plan. We’ve got to take down the dome, then we can get her and get out. Otherwise we’re bringing her into a battle zone, with us trapped and no way off the island.”
I looked at Tianna’s still face, watched her chest rise and fall.
Could I risk seeing tiny Vicki lay there in her place?
Geir
Without Tianna’s knowledge, we had to rely on Valrea's memory of the power grid.
She sat at the desk, tapping a stylus on a tablet while she sketched from memory sections of the mechanical systems.
“I've never seen the control system for the dome,” she mused. “But every building has its own power source directly below.”
“That's good, last thing we want to do is take down the dome and realize we can't open any of the doors to get out.”
“That would be annoying,” Doc agreed.
Valrea kept sketching. “I know this area fairly well and I'd swear it wasn't here.” She swiped off the section underneath the dormitory.
“And we know it's not by the labs, because, well,” she glanced at Doc, then looked carefully down at the tablet again, not needing to say anything further.
“The dome would already be down if the control systems were in the lab,” seemed the most tactful way I could put it.
She drew for a few more moments, flicking from one area to the next until she stopped.
“It's in the middle.”
“The middle of what?” Whatever she saw, I wasn’t getting it.
“The middle of the compound, of course. If the security field is broadcast in a dome, the simplest solution would be to put your power source and control at the exact center of that circle.”
She drew another circle, this time showing the area covered by the dome on the island. “You could modify it, sure but we'd be stupid not to check there first.”
I tapped her sketch. “That puts it right below the landing pad, doesn't it?”
She nodded.
“Then we'll want to go easy on the explosives.” I was only halfway joking. I didn't want to damage every ship on the planet. I’d never live that down.
We considered the scatter cloaks. They were handy to have, but it was too easy to rely on them, the consequences too great if they failed.
“You snuck through the hall without them before,” Valrea said. “You can get us to that control room.”
“I will come with you.” Rhea rose.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“I can do nothing to help Vicki now.” She moved towards the door. “With Tianna incapacitated, you may need another on the team.”
Valrea stood with her. “You could just stay here, rest,” she protested.
“I would like to take the dome down. It has been too long since I have seen the sky.”
I wasn't arguing. I'd seen how strong Rhea was when she ripped open the panel to get Valrea’s pills. Without the cloaks, the risk of us getting into combat increased exponentially. Rhea wouldn't let anything happen to Valrea, so that made her coming along good in my book.
We left the hidden warehouse and crept to the end of the passage. The entire building bustled, filled with scurrying guards.
“There's no way we can get through them,” Valrea said. “You might be able to,” she glanced at me. “And nobody will question the Companion. But I don’t have any super skills.”
“Are you sure they would question you?” I asked.
Rhea answered for her. “It has already been reported that she has been destroyed and her replacement created. They would notice.”
Lovely. Just when I thought I couldn’t hate Stanton and the General more.
“Maybe we don’t have to go this way.” Valrea pulled me away. Once we re-entered the warehouse, she headed toward the back.
“It's dark, they won't see us when we leave.” She shrugged. “Well, probably. We go out the back, find our original exit from the caves, and enter the maintenance tubes that way.”
I stared at her. “That’s brilliant.” I hurried to catch up.
“I'm not brilliant. Just very, very determined.”
Rhea joined us as we strode down the tunnel.
“Besides, we’ll get to see the stars that much sooner.”
As we exited the tunnel and emerged onto the side of the ridge, Rhea paused.
“Why did you never come out before,” Valrea asked.
“Until Doc began to modify the compulsion units, the radius of my movement was limited.” Rhea answered. “It did not extend through the entire length of the warehouse.”
“I'm sorry,” Valrea said, then hugged the stiff black form. “But it will be over soon. No one will control you, ever again.”
Rhea unfastened her helmet. “For just a moment, I want to see the sky with my own eyes.”
Every moment was a tick on the clock, a chance for someone to find us, find Doc, capture Abril and Caze.
But I wasn’t going to deny anyone a chance to see the stars.
Rhea raised her face to the sky, and said nothing until she refastened the helmet.
“I am ready.” She looked at me. “With my modifications, I am faster. If you would like to run, I can keep up.”
“I'm never going to argue with that.” I lifted a laughing Val.
“Let's go shake things up some more.”
The glowing rocks guided us to the tunnel entrance. As we jogged through the caverns Rhea looked around.
“I'm glad you were not trapped here alone, Valrea.”
Valrea shuddered. “Me too.”
Approaching the collapsed section of the maintenance tubes I paused, listening.
“Nothing. No one's there.”
“I will check.”
Rhea climbed up, then reached a hand down. “You are correct.”
As I boosted Valrea through the opening I tried not to roll my eyes. Of course, I was correct.
Valrea took a moment to orient herself. “All right, I know where we are. This way.”
At this point stealth wasn't our friend, speed was. We ended any attempt to sneak and simply moved through the tubes as quickly as possible, following Valrea’s directions.
Until we came to a door that wouldn’t open. There was no palm lock for Rhea to try, and the panel didn’t respond to Doc’s cracker, just whirred.
I set Valrea down. “It's got to have a weak point somewhere, give me a minute, I’ll get it open.”
“Wait!” Valrea cried. “I think it's just stuck.”
She examined the door and the wall surrounding it.
“Hit here,” she pointed to the lower corner. “Lightly,” she clarified.
One tap. She tried the code cracker again. It beeped as if it'd found the right sequence but still, nothing happened.
“Tap it again, twice more.”
Two more gentle blows, and the code beeped and the door slid open, with a groan.
“That should've been on Tianna's maintenance list years ago,” Valrea grumbled.
The high pitched whine assaulted my ears the instant we crossed into the new section of hall.
“What is that? “
Valrea looked at me questioningly and Rhea tilted her head.
“I do not hear anything out of the ordinary.”
“Neither do I,” Valrea agreed, looking worried.
The high pitched constant drone increased with every step down the hallway.
“Do you need to go back?” Valrea asked as I scrubbed at my ears.
“No, it's just really annoying. Let's just keep going.”
The next door opened more smoothly, leading into a small room filled with equipment.
A small room with only two pieces of equipment in it. A low squat box next to a wide console, lights flickering steadily across the top.
