by Kate MacLeod
17
Scout pushed off from the floor, sailing smoothly until her fingertips grasped the back of her seat and she pulled herself into the correct configuration to fasten the restraints.
Daisy managed the same with the smallest of finger-flicks away from the ramp, sliding into her own seat with an easy grace Scout envied.
Tucker, on the other hand, was tumbling end over end in the back of the ship, unable to catch hold of anything.
“Can you push him towards the front?” Tom Tom asked. “His joining me was a bit of a last-minute decision, and I didn’t have a chance to explain anything about free fall to him.”
“Got it,” Daisy said, unbuckling from her seat and catching hold of one of Tucker’s feet. “Just lay still,” she told him as she towed him to the front of the ship and pushed him down on the seat next to Tom Tom. He tried to fumble with the restraints himself, but she brushed his hands away, making short work of buckling him in before drifting back to her own seat.
“Okay,” Tom Tom said. “We’re all set. Okay. We’re just going to fire the engines and move away from the ship.”
“He seems nervous,” Daisy murmured to Scout.
“Sparrow’s friend is still on duty, right?” Scout asked.
“Oh sure,” Tom Tom said. “Sure. Why not?”
Scout double-checked her restraints. It was all she could do.
Tom Tom fired the engine, and they were all pressed back into their chairs. He kept the engine firing, the acceleration building until the icon for the Months’ ship was a tiny speck on his navigation screen. Then Tom Tom gave a whoop that contained so much relief she wanted to retroactively be more worried about their chances of escape.
“How did you get past the barricade?” Scout asked.
“Just flew through it, there and now back again,” Tom Tom said.
“The tribunal enforcers must have dropped it,” Daisy guessed. “The court case is done. They’ve found in favor of somebody, and now that person will be in charge of the protection of Amatheon.”
“Bo,” Scout said. “It had to have been Bo. Otherwise, why are the Months still hanging out beyond the barricade line?”
“Why would they either way?” Daisy wondered. “They’re here to make trouble. Why not do it from a closer orbit?”
“They don’t want to risk getting tapped by the gun,” Tucker guessed. “They can send messages to all parties from anywhere. I’m guessing they only chose to be this close so they could watch.”
“Okay, I’m bringing us down through the atmosphere now,” Tom Tom said, and Scout saw the black of the sky outside the cockpit take on a lighter edge close to the bottom. The ship began to bump and shake, but nothing like what she had experienced leaving Schneeheim on a rocket-powered airship.
Not that it was pleasant. Scout gripped the arms of her chair and waited for it to end.
At last Tom Tom leveled the ship out, sailing almost soundlessly through the tops of the clouds.
“Are we nearly there?” she asked.
Tucker unbuckled his belt to turn and talk to her. “This is the other continent. A few more minutes. But this part of flying I’ve done before. We’re back in gravity, so you can unbuckle if you want.”
“But don’t let the dogs out,” Tom Tom said. “I don’t need that chaos in my cabin.”
“My dogs are very well behaved,” Scout said but left them inside their crate.
“Where exactly are we landing?” Daisy asked.
“And do we have a way to get from there to the gun as quickly as possible?” Scout added.
Tucker rested his chin on the hands folded over the headrest of his seat. “We’re not landing where we were when I met you,” he said. “There’s another place that’s our actual headquarters, deeper in the mountains. A lot closer to the gun. It’s where everyone is. That’s where we’re going.”
“Remote from the cities, I’m guessing,” Daisy said.
“Yes, that sort of follows from being in the mountains,” Tucker said.
“Daisy was born in the capital,” Scout said, although Daisy didn’t seem bothered at all by the condescending tone Tucker was giving her.
“Another war orphan?” he guessed.
“Yes, we have that in common,” Daisy said.
“You’ll fit right in,” he said with a grin.
“I’m not joining the rebellion,” Daisy said. “I’m here to help Scout stop all that.”
“Me too,” Tucker said. He didn’t seem to mind that hitting Daisy with both barrels of his considerable charm was having no effect on her whatsoever.
“Joelle will be there, then?” Scout asked.
“And Ken and Bente,” Tucker said. He was more guarded when looking at her, smiling less and speaking in a more serious tone. “Not Reggie, though. He’s been living in the capital lately. Joelle found a distant cousin who would take him in, get him away from all this craziness. Last I heard, he had adopted a pack of dogs and was trying to teach them tricks.”
“Good for him,” Scout said.
“We should drop in and see him when this is all over,” Tucker said. “I mean all of us, of course. Not just you and me. Of course.”
“Final approach,” Tom Tom said as he started bringing them down over the vast ocean. Scout could just make out the smudge of a land mass ahead of them. They were flying too fast for her to make out details as water became beach became prairie.
Then they reached the mountains, and Scout knew they had to be much farther to the north than she had ever been. Nothing below them was remotely familiar, and she had never seen mountains so big this close up. Not on her home world, anyway.
“Where are we landing?” Daisy asked as Tom Tom guided the ship into a lazy spiral that seemed to center on nothing much at all.
“You’ll see it,” Tucker said with a grin, “but only when we’re right on it. Best we can tell, the Space Farers can’t even see us with their best scopes. Not that they’d have any reason to even be looking this way.”
“They know about the gun,” Scout said.
“Yes, but they only have a vague sense of where it might be,” Tucker said. “If they knew exactly where it was, surely they would have dropped a rock on it by now.”
“Not necessarily,” Scout said, then found herself grasping her armrests again as the ship made a sudden swooping dive that ended so abruptly she thought they must have struck a cliff face.
But Tom Tom was as calm as ever, looking from instruments and screens to what little could be seen through the windows. He was coordinating an entire system of directional rockets with an unconcerned ease. Maybe he was as good as he bragged he was.
Scout felt the landing gear settling on solid ground, but all the windows showed nothing but bare rock. Then he taxied forward until the rock brightly reflecting the noonday sun was replaced by the interior of a cave that had never felt the sun’s touch.
“Nice work,” Tucker said as Tom Tom killed the engine and unbuckled his own restraints.
“Nothing to it,” Tom Tom said.
Scout stood up and looked through the window, but the space beyond was impenetrable darkness.
How she missed her glasses.
“Oh no,” she said, suddenly realizing just how much she had lost. “Warrior.”
“I don’t think they can harm her,” Daisy said.
“But I need her,” Scout said. “I need my belt and my glasses, but I really, really need her.”
“We’ll get her back,” Daisy promised.
“Not until it’s too late,” Scout said.
“What are you two talking about?” Tucker asked.
Daisy looked at Scout, who gave a little shake of her head.
“Nothing,” Daisy said.
“Suit yourself,” he said. “Shall we?”
Tom Tom lowered the ramp, and they stepped out onto the cave floor. It was perfectly level. As Scout’s eyes adjusted, she saw that it was bare directly beneath the sun-filled hole in the ceiling, but e
verywhere more than a few meters from the circle of light looked like a hangar deck. There were a few other ships and shuttles, maintenance and fueling vehicles, equipment stacked against every wall.
“They can’t see you from space,” Scout said.
“We keep the traffic in and out to a minimum, so there’s no reason to think they’re noticing any ships going missing over the mountains,” Tom Tom said.
Shadow made a plaintive whine and pawed at the sides of the crate. Scout went back up the ramp and lifted her dogs out, catching hold of their leashes.
“Where is everybody?” Daisy asked.
“That’s actually a good question,” Tucker said. “This isn’t the most populous part of the compound by a long shot, but there’s usually someone around keeping an eye on things.”
“I’m guessing no one was expecting you,” Scout said. “Super-secret mission.”
“We logged our anticipated arrival time,” Tucker said. “We just fudged what the point of the trip was a little bit.”
“But only a little,” Tom Tom said. “We also picked up another delivery at the same time. I’m going to take care of that; then I’m out of here.”
“Sure thing,” Tucker said. “And thanks again for letting me ride along, Tom Tom.”
Tom Tom sketched a sloppy salute. “Sparrow said she’d be shorthanded up there, and it seems like you did help. Almost got left behind, but I guess before that you helped.”
Tucker made a sound of protest, but Tom Tom just laughed and went back up the ramp into his ship.
“So what now?” Daisy asked. Scout shared her impatience to get to work stopping the impending battle from happening.
“Let’s find Joelle first,” Tucker said. “She’s probably in the communications room. She doesn’t stray far from that most days. Especially now that her brother is gone.”
Tucker led the way out of the hanger to a dimly lit corridor. This corridor took a turn, and the next was larger and better lit now that they were far from that hole in the ceiling of the cave.
There was still no sign of other people, but Scout could hear a voice speaking. Then there was a roar of other voices shouting all together, although whatever words they were saying were obscured.
“What’s going on?” she asked Tucker in a low whisper.
“I don’t know,” he whispered back.
“It sounds like someone is making a speech and people are eating it up,” Daisy said. Then a darker look spread over her face. “They’re talking about the gun. They’re going to fire it. Today.”
“Today?” Scout repeated.
“How do you know that?” Tucker asked.
Daisy tapped one of her ears. “Enhanced, remember? We better find your friend in a hurry. We’re running out of time to stop this.”
“Come on,” Tucker said, leading the way further down the corridor and down a narrower side passage.
Scout paused before turning down that passage, listening intently to whatever was going on at some point at the end of the wide corridor. She still couldn’t make out any words, but the voice sounded familiar.
But that didn’t make any sense. Because it sounded like Malcolm Haley giving one of his vicious, fiery speeches—and yet she knew he had descended into even greater madness after the supply of the mood-altering drug he had been taking had been cut off. He couldn’t possibly still be in charge. Scout had heard him being removed from command.
But a lot could change in a short amount of time. It had barely been more than a month since she had left, but she felt like an entirely different person now herself.
“Scout,” Daisy called, waving for Scout to follow. Tucker had stopped a few meters further on, also waiting for her.
“It’s Malcolm, isn’t it?” Scout said to him.
“It’s complicated,” Tucker said.
“Is he better? Now that you don’t have drugs to poison him with? Is he getting better?”
Tucker sighed, then walked back to stand in front of her.
“No,” he said. “He’s not better. And he wasn’t supposed to be in charge, but he refused to step down. Since then, he’s even gotten worse.”
“There’s a reason Joelle sent Reggie away,” Scout guessed.
“I tried to get her to leave too, but she wouldn’t do it. She still thinks she can reach her father, somehow.”
“Tucker, I’m going to ask you one question, and by all of the stars in the sky, you better not lie to me,” Scout said.
“Scout Shannon, I swore I would never lie to you again, and I meant it. I still mean it. I will always mean it,” he said with an earnestness that for the life of her she couldn’t tell if it was genuine or not.
She glanced at Daisy. Daisy looked at Tucker. Scout wondered what her enhanced eyes could see. Microexpressions, like the tribunal enforcers? Changes in perspiration or skin temperature or heart rate?
Whatever it was, she had faith that if he were lying, Daisy would know.
“Tucker Hawke,” Scout said. “Are you still bringing pharmaceuticals of any kind through any channel to Malcolm?”
“No, I swear it,” Tucker said. “And you don’t have to trust in my honor to believe that. Because you know me, don’t you? You know the only reason I was doing anything like that was because I thought somehow it would lead to me getting off this backwater planet and out to where the real action is.
“I know now that Malcolm is never going to be my path to that. But you might. That’s why I’m not lying now. And that’s why you can rely on me to do whatever I have to for you.”
Scout looked at Daisy, who was still watching Tucker as he waited for Scout’s answer. At last, Daisy made the smallest of nods.
“Okay,” Scout said. “I believe you. But Tucker, however you get off this planet, it’s never going to be because you’re traveling with me. We’re not friends.”
“I know, I know,” Tucker said and resumed leading the way.
Scout didn’t need to see the little smirk at the corner of Daisy’s mouth to know that last bit had been a lie.
18
The sound of the rally dimmed a bit as they proceeded down the side corridor, but the roar of approval at whatever Malcolm had just said was like an ocean wave crashing on the shore.
Scout shivered. It was a horrid sound, that many people that excited about killing a bunch of other people. However they were dressing it up, that’s what it really was.
“Joelle,” Tucker called as he stepped through a doorway into a long, narrow room lined with computer equipment. It looked like it had just been unpacked and set up, crates and spare cables strewn everywhere.
Joelle was sitting at the console directly across from the door. She held up a finger without turning around, speaking in a low voice into the mouthpiece of her headset. Tucker turned to grin at Daisy and Scout; hands buried deep in his pockets as he bounced on his toes.
“Scout!”
Scout looked up to see Ken and Bente crossing the room to see her. Ken caught her hand in both of his and pumped it up and down as he grinned at her. When he stepped back, Scout found herself enfolded in a surprisingly gentle hug from Bente. Bente was built like a bear, and Scout knew from experience what those arms felt like when they weren’t being so friendly.
“Tucker said he was bringing you here, but I wasn’t quite sure if I believed it,” Ken said. “Last we heard, you were heading to Galactic Central.”
“I did, but I’m back,” Scout said. “This is my friend Daisy. Daisy, this is Ken and Bente, and of course, that’s Joelle.”
Ken suddenly started whispering, like he hadn’t realized Joelle was on a call until just that minute. “She just got a call from Amatheon Orbiter 1. I think it’s your friends?”
“Really?” Scout said. If that was true, they had gotten set up fast.
Joelle turned halfway around in her seat, but one hand resting on the phone over her ear said she was still listening to whoever was on the line. She gave Scout a nod of greeting.
&
nbsp; “Roger that,” she said into her microphone. “Contact me again when you know more. I’ll keep the line open.”
Then she took off the headset and got to her feet.
“Scout Shannon,” she said as she walked over. “Tucker said he was going to get you, but I’m not sure I believed him.”
“That’s what Ken said,” Scout said.
“I wasn’t lying,” Tucker said. “Why does everyone think I’m lying?”
Daisy smirked but covered it with a hand before he noticed.
“It seemed unlikely that if she wanted to get back to us, she’d use you to do it,” Joelle said, then raised a questioning eyebrow at Scout.
“The plan had been to come down from Amatheon Orbiter 1 on Tom Tom’s ship,” Scout said. “But we got nabbed by the Months on the way. Our friend Sparrow who works for the Months got word to Tom Tom and Tucker somehow. I never did hear the story.”
“There’s not much more to it than that,” Tucker said. “Tom Tom got the call while unloading his ship here and I talked my way into going along.”
“Before I left, Ken told me he had no idea who was calling your father and giving orders. There was voice and image scrambling. Have you dug into that at all? Any idea who’s calling the shots?”
“We can tell it’s a woman, that’s about it,” Joelle said. “Ken has spent a lot of hours digging through the transmissions, but the encryption is too good.”
“It could be Mai Tajaki, or it could be Shi Jian,” Daisy said. “I’m not sure at this point it matters which.”
“At some point it will,” Scout said, then sighed. “But you’re right. Not now. What’s the situation here?”
Joelle groaned aloud and looked up at the ceiling. “It might be easier to start with what you already know?”
“I ran into Governor Smith at Galactic Central. He said he had tried to shut down the gun program some time ago, but that one of the members of his council had continued the work in secret. He didn’t discover this until they lost control of the gun. To you all, presumably. The rogue council members are taking orders from . . . the Months?” She looked at Daisy.
