As important as ritual was the people on your team. She took a breath and bit her lip. During the System 6 campaign, she’d piloted a six-person bomber. Like everyone, she was expected to fly thirty-two missions. But during mission seven, she’d sustained a third-degree burn that melted her skin and locked her elbow. While she’d recovered, her first crew continued to fly. They’d been shot down during the first mission without her. Her next crew was fresher than Noa. When she’d finished her thirty-two missions, they still had seven more to do. They begged her to stay on because she was their “lucky credit.” She’d been so afraid … but she stayed on as their pilot. Tim had been furious.
Her eyes slid to James. He’d been part of her crew for a while now. Mentally, she’d begun to depend on him being there. She took another deep breath that felt shallow and sounded weak. She’d been depending on him physically as well. She remembered every time he’d literally pulled her out of a jam. She was afraid ... but she had to do this alone.
Carefully pushing aside her blanket, she grabbed the small bag she was using as a pillow, and padded to the doorway and out into the hall. She was wearing the clothing she’d worn when she’d arrived at the Manuels’ house, so there was no need to change. She slipped to the bookshelf door, opened it silently, and crept into the claustrophobic closet-like room beyond. Opening her backpack, she pulled out a flashlight she’d brought along, flipped it on to the lowest setting, and found the rope ladder and coil of rope. Hoisting it over her shoulder, she began to climb the stairs. At the top she found herself winded and silently cursing the camp. She’d once been so fit. Gritting her teeth, she undid the lock. Turning off her flashlight, she opened the door, slipped out onto the roof, and waited for her vision to adjust. The night was warmer than the townhome and she found herself almost sighing with pleasure. Luddeccea’s satellites may not have been connecting the ethernet to the planet’s denizens, but their glowing forms did give light to the rooftops. She gazed upward. She thought she could make out Time Gate 8 …
Light to the east caught her eye, and she saw what looked like a meteorite falling to earth. Noa’s jaw hardened. A ship that had tried to leave? A Guard vessel shot down by Time Gate 8’s defenses? Gritting her teeth, she focused on the mission at hand. In her mind, she pulled up her map to Kenji’s house and let it flicker behind her eyes—it was in a building across from this very townhome complex. There were four streets she’d have to cross between there and here, but she could make it. She carefully began making her way across the roof. It had a slight grade to let the winter rains drain off, and between each unit in the complex there was a short wall as high as her hip. The Manuels had toys still strewn across their roof and a hammock. Treading lightly, she climbed over the first wall. The Manuels’ neighbors had small potted trees in giant planters, and a vegetable garden in neat boxes. She skirted between the plants, hopped over the next wall, and loped toward the next, her breathing getting ragged and fast too quickly. She was approaching the next wall between townhomes when a familiar voice whispered behind her, “What are you doing?”
The voice might have been familiar, but she was on a mission and her instincts were hardwired. She spun, and would have delivered a kick to James’s lower legs—a kick that she could have followed with a rapid-fire kick to his chin as he fell—if James hadn’t jumped half a meter in the air and missed the first pass. By that time Noa’s brain caught up with her feet.
Nearly falling over, she panted, “Sorry.”
Landing lightly despite his size, James said again, “What are you doing?” His face was as expressive as it was during sleep—which was to say, not very. Remembering his avatar’s smile was like remembering a surreal but happy dream.
“It doesn’t concern you. Don’t worry about it,” Noa said.
James’s gaze shifted in what was exactly the direction of Kenji’s house as the ptery flew. “You’re going to Kenji’s home, aren’t you?” he said.
Straightening, Noa silently cursed the fact that he’d seen her little brother’s location when they were at Ghost’s.
“It doesn’t concern you,” she said again.
James took a step closer. “Of course it concerns me. You could be caught.” His head did that ticky thing. “And then I’d have to find a way to get you out.”
Noa actually laughed; fortunately, almost silently. The camaraderie she sensed between them was real. “Yeah, I’d do the same for you,” she said. “But you don’t have to come with me.”
“Of course I do,” he muttered. His hands clenched at his sides. “I have to. I don’t know why … I wish I did. Then I could kill that part of me, and probably live a lot longer.” He said it in that deadpan voice of his, and Noa had to fight to keep from laughing out loud.
“You’re funny,” she said, turning back to hop over the wall.
“I wasn’t joking,” he retorted.
Which made Noa giggle softly despite herself. “I can hear your eyes rolling,” she said as she slipped along the next rooftop. She felt her spirits lifting. These things were easier when you had someone to crack jokes with.
“My eyes do not make a sound when—” Breathing heavily as she loped along, she flashed a grin at him. He did roll his eyes. “Everything is a joke to you.” He couldn’t smile in the physical world, but his eyes were much more expressive. Maybe making up for the things his mouth couldn’t do? The exaggerated eye rolls and brow lifts were funnier on his too-perfect features. Some esthetic augments wouldn’t be so expressive for fear of wrinkles—not that there weren’t cures for such things—but the barest hint of a wrinkle that came with a frown, a scowl, or a smile was considered a blemish. His candid expressions showed a lack of vanity that was refreshing.
Panting, she came to the next wall between roofs.
“Noa,” James said, not appearing even slightly winded, “I am not well versed in tactics … but I have watched a lot of twenty-first century crime dramas.”
Noa contained a snort at that, but only barely.
“Even if Kenji would never turn you in … won’t the authorities have people waiting for you at Kenji’s house?”
“Of course they will,” said Noa. “We’ll have to figure out a way to sneak in when we get closer.”
They reached the corner of the next wall, and she gestured with her head in the direction of his building. “He lives on the third floor of the mid-rise you can’t see, but is just beyond the fern trees.” She paused to catch her breath.
James was silent. When she looked up at him, he said softly, “Noa, you are not well.”
Quickly returning to a lope, Noa waved a hand. “I know. Still recovering from the camp.” She panted. “You’d think, being so much lighter, it would make it easier.” Without her volition, her feet slowed to a walk.
“No, you’re not recovering. You’re getting worse,” James said, putting a hand on her arm.
Noa jerked her arm away and broke into a lope again. A moment later, they reached the end of the block of townhomes. She attached the top of the ladder to a rooftop behind some enormous fern trees. She half-slid, half-climbed to the bottom, and then peered down the street. “I don’t hear any patrols,” she said.
“Nor do I,” said James.
Noa looked back at the ladder. “Might as well leave it … can probably walk through the rest of the complex.” She inclined her head toward a wall of fern trees that demarcated the edge of the townhome development. Perhaps twice as tall as the townhomes, they obstructed the view of her brother’s buildings.
“Let’s continue on the ground,” she said, heading in the direction of the trees. The street had lamps, but it was an older section of the neighborhood, and there were plenty of trees and ferns to hide among … and truthfully, she didn’t want to scale another roof right now; she was tired. She needed to conserve her strength. She bit the inside of her lip. Was she sick, as James had said? So many women had gotten sick in the camp. Of course, she had to have been exposed to something. She shook her head. I
llness had a mental component. She would will herself through this; she could have her breakdown later, on the Ark, once they got past the blockade. Ducking her chin, she broke into a lope again, but she was grateful that she needed to stop and check to see if the coast was clear between clumps of vegetation and shadow.
A few minutes later, they reached the fern trees. The trees were part of a narrow stretch of “urban forest.” Civic planners had put a path down the center of it. Skirting the path, Noa led James toward Kenji’s building.
After long minutes of silence, James said softly, “Who will fly the Ark if you are caught?”
“I don’t know.” Noa panted, and her gut constricted. “Maybe Ghost could share the engineering designs of the ship, and one of the Fleet personnel could fly it?”
“Do you think a pilot could be prepared in less than forty-eight hours?” James asked.
“Maybe,” said Noa, panting heavily.
James continued, his breathing regular, his lope easy, “I’m not a tactical expert … but it seems once the protests take place, it will be difficult to stage them again. At least some of the leaders will be captured.”
Noa only grunted. She tasted bile on her tongue.
James was mercifully silent for a few more minutes, but then he asked in a light voice, “Is it standard military procedure to rescue a single individual at the possible expense of the mission?”
“If that person is of strategic importance, yes. Starmen don’t leave Starmen behind.” Noa said it to herself, to James, and to the universe at large. She could barely hear her own words over the sound of her panting.
“But he is working for the other side,” said James.
“They’ve deceived him,” Noa hissed. “You don’t understand how vulnerable he is!”
She drew to a stop, her locator app telling her they were in the correct place. She went to the edge of the trees. Kenji’s building was across a field of open parkland the size of one city block. She didn’t need an app to know the distance. The city was built on a plan. A block was 500 meters. Between her location and Kenji’s building, there was a playground, a dog walk area, plenty of trees and shrubs, and a “nature walk” that cut a circuitous route through the field. He’d chosen the home so he could be close to nature even in the city; he hated crowds. Now, for Noa, it meant plenty of places to hide.
Her eyes scanned the building and she picked out his unit. Noa’s breath caught in her throat. “I see him!” she said. She didn’t think she’d ever really believe in God, but she did at that moment. She felt so much relief swell in her chest that it was almost physically painful. A part of her hadn’t believed Ghost when he’d said Kenji was still free—she thought it was false data to lead her astray. To lead her here to be captured …
“I see him, too,” James said.
Noa scanned the park. She didn’t see any Guards on the trails. She looked to the roof of the building, and didn’t see any snipers, but James was right. They would be waiting for her inside. So she had to keep her time within the building limited. She scanned the balconies. Maybe she could climb up on the outside; she still had her coil of rope. She remembered James jumping half a meter in the air. If they could just reach the second level, between the rope and his augments, they could make it. She took a deep breath and felt fear turn her limbs to cold lead. Maybe James could make it ... Her hands and limbs were shaking, not with fear, but with exhaustion. She gritted her teeth. She’d made a career of taking action despite her fear. She crept closer to the edge of the field. They’d thought they’d catch her—but she’d steal him out from beneath their noses.
She took another step forward.
“Noa,” James whispered.
She took another step.
“Noa,” James whispered again.
She opened her mouth, about to tell him her plans, when he hit her from the side and behind, knocking her flat to the ground behind a small cluster of ferns just before the forest edge.
She lay in the damp earth, without protest, certain he’d knocked her down for good reason. Her heart beat in her ears, she could see nothing and hear nothing. His weight made her ribs and her lungs ache.
“What are you doing?” James whispered, his voice urgent. “You almost walked into the spotlights!”
Noa peered out over the dark field. “What spotlights?”
“You don’t see them?” James whispered, shifting his weight and allowing her to breathe a little more.
“No, I don’t, get off me!” Noa said, trying to pull herself out from beneath his hovering body to the edge of the cluster of ferns to get a better look. James knocked her flat again.
“What are you doing?” Noa snapped.
He didn’t answer, but she felt his hand at her temple—or his fist, rather—and heard the click of a hard link being inserted, and suddenly the scene before her transformed. Spotlights were sweeping through every inch of the park. They were mounted on the roof of Kenji’s building. Noa’s eyes widened. In the physical world she saw only darkness, but superimposed over the shadows were men in camouflage wearing elaborate eye gear—a lot like night vision goggles from the old military museum. A team of four was moving in James’s and Noa’s direction. They stopped and dropped below a low embankment about 400 meters away. She made out the shapes of rifles on their backs. Noa’s shock raced across the hard link before she could stop it.
James’s voice came in her mind. “You did not see?”
Noa trembled with rage and helplessness. She projected the dark park she did see. She looked up at the spotlights, and mentally cursed in every language and dialect she knew. James was still on top of her, but his avatar appeared just in front of her. “Well, that language was colorful,” he said. She felt nothing when he said it, no flash of amusement, nothing, but his avatar did raise a brow.
Noa let her avatar stand beside his.
“What is your plan?” he said.
Scanning the balconies with James’s eyes, Noa saw Guards there as well. Her dismay slipped across the hard link before she realized she still hadn’t battened down the apps that hid her emotions. “I’ll figure something out,” her avatar said. She hadn’t thought it would be easy.
James’s avatar turned to hers. She didn’t feel any emotion over the link; but his avatar’s brows were drawn, and his lips were turned down. It was strange how alien a frown looked on his usually stoic face. Noa’s avatar looked away quickly and back to the scene before her and the spotlights she hadn’t seen. “It’s light just outside of the visual spectrum,” she mused through her avatar.
In the periphery of her vision she could see his avatar blinking. “Ah … you’re right,” James murmured. “Ultraviolet. I didn’t know I could do that.”
“How well can you see my brother?” Noa’s avatar asked. “Do you have telescopic vision as well?”
The perspective changed so quickly, it was like watching the zoom on a hologlobe. Suddenly, she was sitting down on Kenji’s balcony looking up at him through the glass doors. To her immense relief, Kenji didn’t look harmed, or even nervous. He held a cup of tea; his hand wasn’t even shaking. His clothing was neat and pressed, he’d gained a little weight, in a good way, and his hair didn’t show the telltale signs of fidgeting it always revealed when he was nervous. “He looks good, at least,” she breathed.
“He looks very well,” James said.
Noa’s heart pounded in her chest. “They didn’t incarcerate him because they wanted to use him as bait,” she said into his mind.
“But they thought you were incarcerated—why would they need to do that if you were already locked up?”
“They must have just released him.”
“Then why doesn’t he look half-starved like you do?” James’s avatar said, and she was shocked by the anger in his voice.
Noa couldn’t answer. In the physical world, she struggled to get up, to crawl closer, but James grabbed her, and like the devil on the shoulder in a Luddeccean holo he said, “He never went
to the camps, Noa.”
Noa frowned. As though that meant anything. Her mind spun … “Because he’s brilliant … they’d still find a use for him. Especially since they don’t rely on the ethernet, they’d find his mind indispensable. They probably threatened him … said they’d hurt me if he didn’t cooperate. I’ve got to get him out of there, I can’t let them use him!”
“He doesn’t look like someone who is worried about his sister dying,” James said, as Kenji took a neat sip of tea. Before she could retort, James said, “He seems quite safe. By trying to save him you’d be putting his life at risk, wouldn’t you? The men we saw in the field were armed.” He didn’t look at her when he said it. His voice was light, almost curious, as though it weren’t a question of life or death but a mental exercise. “Noa?”
“Of course I have to save him!” she shouted over the mental link, though she remained silent where they hid behind the shrubs. “He’d do anything for me—anything for this planet and his people!”
James’s avatar tilted his head. She felt nothing from him, but his avatar looked doubtful. “If he would do anything for his people … would he want you to risk your life and the mission to save him?”
“He … he … ” Noa’s avatar crumbled to the floor of her brother’s apartment. Behind the ferns, in the physical world, her head fell to the damp earth. She locked down all her emotions before they rose in a deluge.
Kenji had his arm through Noa’s. He guided her through the penthouse apartment on Luddeccea, threading them past the party guests. It wasn’t his apartment; that was below in the same building. This one belonged to someone from the First Families. Noa noted that the furnishings were simple and tasteful, the carpeting below her feet was as soft as her bunk, and there was a prayer room off to one side. A crucifix was prominently displayed on the wall, flower vases and three books directly below it. Noa knew without looking that the book directly below the crucifix was a Bible, to the left would be the Torah, and the right would be a Koran. The owner of the apartment was Christian, obviously, but all of Luddecceans gave respect to the Three Books. The room was empty. It would be in bad taste to step inside a prayer room during a party … which begged the question of why put the prayer room in a central location in the home, and leave the double doors wide open—but First Families always made sure the prayer room was in a prominent location.
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