by Kate MacLeod
The Months watched her approach without speaking. Mai appeared as amused as the rest of her court, although she only indulged in half of a smile herself. Jun’s face was as surly as ever.
“Where are my dogs?” Scout demanded. She had to shout to be heard over the crowd.
“You ask about them before you ask about your friends?” Mai said.
“Where are they?” Scout said.
“That’s not what we brought you here to discuss,” Mai said.
“You want a matter to discuss, how about your boss Shi Jian?”
“We don’t have a boss,” Mai said, her mouth twisting as if the very word was sour.
“She’s calling your shots,” Scout said.
“She’s an advisor only,” Mai said with a dismissive wave of her hand.
“But you’re holding me captive because she wants you to give me to her, doesn’t she?”
“We’re holding you captive because you stole from us,” Mai said.
“I did not,” Scout said.
“You did. You took three guests who were under our care and absconded with them,” Mai said.
“That’s not theft.”
“Where I come from it is,” Mai said.
“That’s . . . ” But Scout bit her tongue. Mai was trying to bait her into a pointless argument. Engaging in it wasn’t going to help Scout accomplish anything. “What do you know about Shi Jian?” Scout asked instead.
“More than you,” Mai said.
“Do you know what master she serves? What ends she is trying to accomplish? Where she even is right now? Are you prepared for the consequences when she turns on you like she turned on your cousin Bo?”
“We were part of the decision for her to part ways with him,” Mai said. “We’ve known her longer than he has.”
“Since you were kids?” Scout said disbelievingly.
“Since we were kids,” Mai said with a smile. “Would you like to hear all about our history together?”
Scout nodded.
“Well, too bad,” Mai said. “That’s not what we brought you out for.”
“Why did you bring me out?” Scout asked.
“Why, so you could apologize.”
“Apologize?”
“For trying to steal from us,” Mai said with a sidelong look at her sister, who seemed very eager for that apology.
“I’m not going to do that,” Scout said. Her mind was racing, and she looked around at the faces around her, desperate for a clue as to the real reason they had brought her here. It couldn’t just be for the theater of it all, could it?
“No apology?” Mai said, arching one brow. “Very well. Put her back in the hole. We’ll see if she changes her mind after another ten days.”
“Ten days!” Scout cried. “Wait, what do you mean ‘another’?”
Mai just smiled as the chief of the guards put a hand on her shoulder to lead her away.
“It hasn’t been ten days,” Scout said. “It couldn’t have been.”
But what if it had? What if she was too late to stop the war? What if the rebels had already fired the gun, and the Space Farers had retaliated by taking down the defensive shield and letting the solar radiation reach the surface?
No, it couldn’t have been ten days. People couldn’t last that long without water.
“Where are my dogs?” Scout said when she saw they were approaching the open door to her cell. The chief said nothing.
Scout planted her feet, refusing to be pushed into the cell. The chief ground to a halt, unable to pull Scout forward. She gave up with a sigh, heading back down the hall the way she’d come.
Then Scout was alone in the hall.
What had just happened?
She looked around, then started running past her cell door, further down the hall.
She was afraid it would be a dead end, but it took a turn, and she took the corner at full speed, running right into the back of a guard carrying a crate of food tubes. He spun away from her.
But not before she had his gun in her hands.
Was this a test? Why was this so easy?
Scout pushed the thoughts out of her mind, focusing on raising the weapon and pointing it at the guard. “Show me the way out of here,” she said.
“I can’t do that, Scout,” he said calmly, although he did raise his hands.
“Yes, you can,” Scout said. “Where are my friends?”
“In a different cell block,” he said.
“Where are my dogs?” she demanded.
“That I don’t know,” he said.
“Who does?”
He blinked as if surprised by the question.
“Does your boss know?” she asked.
“I don’t really have a boss . . .”
Scout growled in frustration and was tempted to shoot one of his knees to see if that got her better answers when she felt a heavy arm slam down over both of hers. The gun clattered to the ground, skittering off into a corner, and Scout found herself encased in a bear hug. She kicked and fought to free herself, but the bear wasn’t letting go.
She was carried back to her cell and thrust inside, but she managed to catch her balance and spin around before the door slammed shut.
“Please, my dogs!” she cried, before realizing the person she was pleading with wasn’t a guard or even the chief.
It was Jun.
“Please,” Scout said again more softly.
Jun hesitated with one hand on the door. Then she looked away as someone handed her something. She stepped into the cell to set a bottle of water and a bowl of steaming noodles on the edge of the raised platform.
Scout, remembering how immoveable that arm had felt when it had been wrapped around her, decided that trying to attack Jun was not a plan that was going to work.
Then Jun was gone, and Scout was once more alone in the dark.
She tried to be sparing with the water, only taking a sip, but she wolfed down the bowl of noodles.
She was running her fingertips over the interior of the bowl, looking for any last bits of noodle, when the door opened again. Jun looked in at her and gave a little nod as she saw the empty bowl in Scout’s hands.
Then she stepped back, and Scout’s dogs were charging into the room, leaping up onto the platform to jump all over her.
Scout laughed out loud and tried to hug them both, but they were too excited to sit still. It was several minutes before Scout noticed that the door was still open.
She looked up to see Jun watching her. There was a softness to her face that Scout had never seen before, but she couldn’t read the expression.
“Thank you,” Scout said.
Jun gave the smallest of nods, then closed the door.
Scout was more confused than ever. But at least she had her dogs.
16
The entire cell was starting to smell like the hole in the corner of the floor. The odor grew at a steady rate, her best way to measure the passage of time. Food tubes came at what she knew were irregular intervals, water even more sparingly.
At least the dogs loved the food tubes. Scout always waited far past the point of hunger and into actual lightheadedness before having any, and every time she regretted giving in. It was like her body could barely digest them.
She was afraid that was the real reason they kept giving them to her.
Scout was lying on the platform, not sleeping. The dogs were tussling together on the floor, and Scout tried to picture it in her head based on the sounds. That was Shadow catching at Gert’s ears, that was Gert spinning around and knocking him over with her back end.
The game ended abruptly with both dogs standing stock still, listening.
Then Shadow started to bark, over and over. Gert gave one deep whoof, and Scout was certain something was about to happen. They didn’t bark at food tube or water deliveries, so this must be something else.
Someone at the door?
“Come, dogs,” Scout called as she sat up on the platform. They lea
ped up to sit on either side of her, and she wrapped her arms around them, hugging them close.
Scout hadn’t heard a thing before the barking, and she didn’t hear anything now, but Shadow beside her was a tense mass of clenched muscles, and he was still growling low in his throat.
Then the door was flung open, and Scout turned her face away from the light. She narrowed her eyes to the smallest of slits and tried to look again. She only got a vague sense of a silhouette, someone about her height, probably a boy, wearing a brimmed hat.
Both of the dogs were barking again, and Scout had to catch hold of their collars to keep them up on the platform with her. She was afraid if they bit or just frightened a guard, someone would hurt them in return. But they didn’t know that.
The silhouette in the door took a step closer, head swiveling as if they couldn’t place her in the darkness of the cell.
“Scout?” he called softly. She knew that voice.
“Tucker,” she said.
Then she released her dogs. They both charged at Tucker, possibly only because he was in the doorway and they desperately wanted to be out of the cell. Tucker claimed to have a fear of dogs. Scout would bet anyone would take a step back if they saw Gert charging at them out of the darkness, especially when she had her hackles all raised up like that.
Tucker took more than one step back, but it wasn’t enough. Gert jumped and landed with her paws on his chest, knocking him to the floor and sending his hat flying.
Wait—that hat was familiar too.
Scout stepped over Tucker’s flailing legs, giving Gert a pat on the head, then bending to pick up the hat.
Her father’s bush hat. She had never expected to see that again.
She put it on. She remembered it being bigger.
“Call the dog off!” Tucker said in a furious whisper.
“She’s not hurting you,” Scout said. Which was technically true, but she was wreaking havoc on his jacket as she used it to drag him across the floor.
“Come on, Scout! How can you be mad? I’m here to rescue you!”
“Like I’m going to believe anything you have to tell me. Particularly here, locked in a cell, the exact same situation I was in the last time you lied to me!” Scout said.
“Keep your voice down!” Tucker hissed, then shrieked as Gert lunged towards his face. Scout caught her collar and dragged her back.
Gert had never bitten anyone who hadn’t been attacking Scout at the time. And Scout wasn’t entirely sure that the dog didn’t judge the mere presence of Tucker as being an attack. She probably sensed Scout’s feeling that maybe Tucker deserved to lose a nice chunk of flesh.
But she didn’t want that to be on Gert.
“What about the other one?” Tucker asked, slowly lowering the arm he had thrown across his face.
“It looks like he found your bribe,” Scout said when she had located Shadow, his head buried in a sack that was resting against the wall near the open door. She let Gert go, and she joined him in tearing the sack apart to better get at the kibble inside.
“I should have led with the bribe,” Tucker said, grunting as he sat up.
“Is this another crazy test?” Scout asked, looking up and down the hall. There was no sign of a guard.
“What?”
“You, being here. Mai Tajaki is baiting me again?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“Sure you don’t,” Scout scoffed.
“Honestly. I came here with Sparrow,” he said.
“Who told you to wait for me,” Sparrow said as she came around the corner. “The part where we have to do this quietly I didn’t think I even had to mention.”
“We should get out of here,” Tucker said, getting to his feet.
“Yes, we should,” Sparrow said. Then she looked down at the dogs finishing the last of the kibble. “I’m so glad the dogs were with you. No one knew where they were and I checked everywhere.”
“Jun Tajaki brought them to me,” Scout said.
Sparrow blinked in surprise at that information.
“Do you know where the others are?” Scout asked as Sparrow unzipped her red hoodie and let two coiled-up leashes spill out.
“Tom Tom is getting Emilie and the sisters now,” Sparrow said as Scout clipped the leashes onto the dogs’ collars. “Another friend is getting Daisy. We should get to the rendezvous point as quickly as we can. Tom Tom is flying you all out on his ship, but he has to launch before the shift change in navigation. I’ve bribed a guy not to notice his ship, but he’s only on duty for another half hour.”
Scout nodded and followed Sparrow’s lead through the maze of hallways. She kept to the smaller corridors, avoiding the busier parts of the ship by taking slower, more circuitous routes.
Then they ducked inside what looked like a cabinet but was actually the entrance to a maintenance space squeezed between two walls. When they emerged at the far end of that, they were on a hangar deck. Not the main hangar deck, though. This one was barely large enough for the two ships it contained.
One ship looked like a too-strong gust of wind would collapse it, little more than a cylinder of aluminum with an engine on one end. The other looked like it had been through a war and come out battered and scarred.
“Scout!” Emilie called, waving to her from where she sat with Geeta and Seeta on the ramp to the flimsy-looking ship. Scout let go of the dogs’ leashes to give them all a hug.
Then she looked up the ramp to the cramped interior of the ship. “This thing is spaceworthy?” she asked.
She thought she had kept her voice low, but a girl peeked over the back of the pilot’s seat said, “Perfectly sound, thanks for asking.”
“It’s not built for atmosphere,” Emilie explained. “But we’re just hopping over to Amatheon Orbiter 1, so it’ll be fine.”
“You’re coming with me,” Tom Tom said and pointed his chin at his own ship. “As soon as your friend gets here.”
“I’ll see what’s keeping them,” Tucker said and ducked back down the maintenance hall.
“You should get going,” Sparrow said to the pilot. “It’ll be less suspicious if you don’t both go at once.”
“Roger that,” the girl said, settling back into her seat.
“At least I got to see you before you left,” Scout said. “I’m glad you’re all okay.”
“We’ll be in touch once we’re back with our friends on the space station and you’re with the rebels,” Emilie said. “The pilot told me that our people have been in touch with someone on the surface, and I think it’s your friend Joelle.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Scout said. “Stay safe.”
“We will. Provided you make sure that gun never fires,” Emilie said with a grim smile.
Scout caught hold of both of her dogs and brought them to where Sparrow and Tom Tom were standing behind some sort of blast shield. She watched through a murky window in the shield as the little ship rolled forward towards an opening door.
Then, the very second the door was fully open, the ship started rolling down an infinitely long hallway. The door closed again before Scout could see what was on the other end. She could only assume it was open space.
“Where’s Daisy?” she asked Sparrow.
“I’m wondering the same thing,” Tom Tom said. “Time’s running out.”
“Prep the ship,” Sparrow said, glancing at a chronometer on her wrist. “If it comes down to it, you’ll have to leave without her.” She looked up at Scout. “I know you don’t want to, but we need at least one of you down there.”
“Are you coming too?”
“No, I’ll be more useful here with the Months,” Sparrow said. “If Daisy doesn’t get here in time, I’ll watch out for her. Try to keep her hidden, find another way to get her out.”
“Thank you, Sparrow,” Scout said. “For everything.”
“Get on the ship,” Sparrow said. “You’ve only got a minute left.”
Tom Tom had already gone on board. Scout led the dogs up the narrow ramp that started at the belly of the ship and ran to the base of the engine.
“There’s a crate,” Tom Tom said, not looking up from whatever he was doing at the controls but pointing a thumb back over his shoulder to where a crate was strapped down to the floor behind the second row of seats. Scout coaxed the dogs inside, then took the chair across from the crate in the back row where they could see her.
“Strap in,” Tom Tom said, and Scout saw the door in front of them starting to open.
“Daisy and Tucker—”
“We can’t wait,” he said, hand resting on a lever she was sure fired the engine.
The door was fully open and they were rolling forward when Scout heard a shout.
“They’re here!” she said, unstrapping from her seat to turn and look out the still-open ramp.
“They’ll have to run,” Tom Tom said. “The launch tube is moving us, not me. I have no control.”
“You can’t slow down or anything?”
He didn’t bother to answer, eyes on his instruments. Scout got up from her seat to crouch at the top of the ramp. Tucker was running full out, face beet red and shiny with sweat, but Scout could see that Daisy was pacing herself to not leave him behind.
“Come on!” Scout called, extending a hand out although they were several meters short of the ramp.
And that distance was growing as they picked up speed.
Daisy could see it too. She lunged at Tucker, throwing him over her shoulder as she kicked up to a full sprint. She was nearly close enough to reach the ramp when the distance started to grow again. The ship was moving too fast even for her.
Daisy rolled Tucker forward into her arms and tossed him up onto the ramp. Scout caught the back of his badly mangled jacket to keep him from rolling back out again, then jerked him out of the way as Daisy put on one last burst of speed, stumbling up onto the ramp.
Scout scrambled to reach the closing mechanism. The ramp snapped shut with an echoing clang and Scout dropped to her knees beside Daisy.
There was a window built into the ramp between them, and through it, Scout saw nothing but stars.
