Breeze threw his arms up. “Wait a minute, it can’t end this way. Not after everything we saw.”
Sally whirled on him. “Why don’t you want to go home? Is it because you have nothing to go back to?”
Breeze felt the elation he experienced from her kiss fade to despair. “Sally, why would you say something like that?”
“Are you happy here? Wake up, this is a scam! Our parents were talked into sending us here, but for what? Nothing happens! Where are the other students? The other instructors? I mean, look around you. This place is a tomb!”
Breeze took a halfhearted look around. She was right. He thought he was coming here to learn something and to see new things. Instead, he felt he more miserable here than at home. It was time to call it quits.
“Okay, what’s your plan?” Breeze said as he stuffed his hands into his jacket’s pockets.
Ray nodded. “Okay partner, good thinking. I have a plan, and you can help us.”
Sally looked at Ray with admiration as he spoke.
Breeze could see just how beautiful she was in the moonlight, and then shook his head. Get over yourself. “What do you want me to do, Ray?”
Sally jumped in. “Don’t let him help us, he might run to Oslo and say something.”
Ray put a hand up to silence her, then faced Breeze. “You say you spent some time at the hangars watching those robots work on the aerocraft, could you get them to prep one to take us back home?”
Breeze took a long hard look at Ray. “Yeah, I could try, but I could do you one better.”
“Oh?” Ray smiled.
An hour later, the trio were in a hover that Breeze commandeered from the motor pool next to the hangars. He piloted it through the palm forest first before bursting out onto the wide open tarmac of the landing facility where he whooshed by row upon row of old and dilapidated transports until he brought the hover to a stop.
He jumped out and the others followed him as he walked up to one transport in particular. “When I first arrived here, I saw these ships from the air spread out on the tarmac. Then we landed and I was really dizzy along with the feeling that I’d seen these types before, but couldn’t remember. Turns out I was right. We have similar ones piled up in our scrap yard back home. Those use air turbines, but these,” he pointed at the transport before him, “are different. They’re using the same hover tech you find with everything else around here. Oslo probably uses these for the recruiters to travel around and bring people and supplies here. It would be easy for me to jump inside and look at the avionics in the cockpit. I’m betting they’re pre-programmed to fly in and out of this place on auto pilot.”
Sally spoke up. “What about that fog you told me about? You said this place is covered by something that makes it hard to find.”
“So you really don’t remember coming here at all?”
“Breeze, I told you, Ray and I fell asleep on the way here and woke up as we were landing. You told me you passed through some kind of tunnel before you passed out. Is that going to happen again? Can we make it out of here?”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Ray said.
Breeze arched an eyebrow at him. “What do you mean?”
Ray grinned. “Well, you know I’ve been a real pain about wanting to get in contact with my father.”
Breeze rolled his eyes. “It seems like that was your big thing. Yeah, couldn’t forget it.”
Ray ignored him and turned to Sally. “So I’ve been poking around in the Science and Engineering Building and was able figure out why we couldn’t get a signal out to the mainland. The fog that Breeze mentioned to you; he wasn’t kidding. It really exists and it interferes with the signal.”
Sally looked at him blankly. “So this means...?”
Ray sighed. “C’mon Sally, it’s so obvious.” He cupped his hands. “Picture my hands as a bowl.” He then inverted his hands. “Now we put a lid on the bowl. Lid off, you can send signals anywhere. Lid on, no signal, no outside contact. It’s that simple.”
She sighed with exasperation. “Raymond Verhesen, I just want to leave this place and go home to see my parents and sleep in my own bed. I’m not asking for much.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m very tired. I’ve dealt with too much weirdness. And that man in the chamber,” she shuddered with her eyes closed, “is something I want to get very far away from.” When her eyes opened, they shined fiercely. “So please, get to the point,” she said and placed her hands on his chest. “How do we get out of here?”
The words tumbled out of Ray’s mouth. “I found a control room. It controls the shielding around this island. I figured out how to drop it, and then I sent a signal to my father that I’m coming home. It will make it very easy for us to leave. Hell, it makes it easy for anyone to find this place,” he said with a sly grin, then quickly sobered up.
Sally smiled. “The greatest news I’ve heard in a long time.” She swiveled toward Breeze. “Will you be a sweetie and help us get off this rock?” she said and batted her eyes at him.
Breeze nodded. “Yeah, sure, just one thing though. Ray, what do you mean you told your father you’re coming home? You came here with Sally, were you planning on leaving without her? And why the rush to leave? I thought your father and Oslo were on the level, you know, on the same team?”
Ray shifted his weight looked away. “Breeze, look, you wouldn’t understand. For you,” he waved his hand, “all of this is a really big deal. It’s your first time far away from home and you get to feel a little bit special being here. But things are not really going your way, yet you don’t want this to end too soon. For Sally and me,” he shrugged, “this is not for us. Greenbrier is our school and we were doing just fine there. Whatever was going on that made our parents send us here for the summer seems to have been a misunderstanding. My father told me so in a message he sent back. I just didn’t want to say anything to you, because, well, I feel kind of sorry for you.” He held up his hands. “Look, don’t take that as an insult, but we have nothing in common with you. This was all just a big mistake and it’s time to call it quits.” He clamped a hand on Breeze’s shoulder. “Come on, you told me you were a team player,” he said with a grin, “so are you going to help us get a ship?”
Breeze brushed the hand off his shoulder. “You know, you don’t have to be so condescending. I’m not dumb, I know when I’m being talked down to.”
“C’mon Breeze, don’t be like that. We’re friends here!” Ray’s grin seemed to widen by the second.
Breeze looked away. He was getting the same feeling from Ray just before the sailing accident. He knew better than to escalate the situation.
He walked to the stern of the ship, then opened a panel cover under the hull and flipped a switch. The sound of hydraulics whining pierced the humid night air as a cargo ramp lowered from the aft section.
“Follow me,” Breeze said and stepped up the ramp and into the transport.
Ray gestured toward Sally. “Ladies first.”
She shook her head and crossed her arms. “You don’t have to be such a jerk about things. Can’t you just be a little more subtle?”
“Sally, don’t be like that. I’m getting us out of this place, am I not?”
“Yes. Finally.” She stepped up the ramp.
Ray took a few steps up, then stopped and looked behind him. Satisfied, he turned and disappeared into the ship.
A woman in a white flowing dress materialized where the three once stood. She looked down at the tarmac where she could still see the heat of their footprints leading up to the ship. She looked up at the star filled sky and scanned the heavens, then turned her gaze to the campus off in the distance. She placed her hands to her chest and disappeared.
Inside the transport, Breeze was sitting in the pilot’s seat and explaining the ship’s systems while Ray stood behind h
im and listened. “From what I’ve been able to pick up watching the RF work, this screen right here,” Breeze tapped it with his finger, and it immediately came alive with a series of numbers and symbols scrolling across, “is where you input your destination. This is the same transport you two arrived in, so reversing the coordinates is easy.” He punched in a series of codes onto a keypad and the screen bleeped, and then went dark.
Ray barked out. “What’s the matter with it? Are you doing this right—”
Breeze held up a hand. “Relax, it has to digest the data before it can plot your route. Hold onto to your pants already.”
Ray gripped the headrest of Breeze’s seat. When the screen came alive again, he relaxed.
Breeze pointed at it. “There, now you’re set.” He swiveled to look Ray in the eye. “And don’t touch anything. You think you know a lot about aerocraft and boats, but you really don’t. Just let the ship fly itself.”
Ray gritted his teeth and seethed. “Fine, got it. You need to get your last digs in on me before we leave. But are you sure you did this right?”
Breeze shrugged. “Just don’t touch anything. I’m going to say goodbye to Sally.” He marched out of the pilot house and down the short steps that led directly into the passenger cabin.
Sally was sitting in a window seat on the starboard side of the ship. She was unfolding some blankets she found in the storage bins above when she saw Breeze coming down the aisle.
Breeze stopped at her row. “Well, goodbye for now?”
She turned to look at him with a forced smile. “Yes, I suppose. Are you going to stay here or...?” she said weakly while trying to hide her lack of interest.
The ship shuddered as the engines began to spool up. Breeze saw Ray exit the pilot house and head toward them down the aisle. Sally smiled upon seeing him.
Breeze knew when he wasn’t wanted, and didn’t need to see anymore body language from Sally to sense otherwise. “Guess I’ll go home, too. I’m going to stop by Oslo’s office later this morning to let him know what happened. It’s the least we...I can do.”
She looked up at him. “Sure, you do that,” she said, then turned her head slightly away. “Good luck to you, Breeze. I really do hope things go well for you. We’ll try to stay in touch?”
Breeze grunted and turned to look out the stern cargo ramp where he could see the sun beginning to rise.
“Safe journey, Sally.” He walked away.
He shook his head as he marched down the ramp and onto the tarmac. Safe journey? Couldn’t think of anything better to say?
Sally twisted in her seat and watched him fade from view, then started to get up when Ray arrived.
“What’s his hurry, he’s that eager to get home? Well, can’t say I blame him. Doesn’t really fit in anywhere I bet,” he said as he plopped down into the seat next to her. “Where are you going? Did you forget something?”
She looked at him, then back towards the ramp. “No. I mean, yes. We never did pack our things from our room—”
“Forget about it. My father will just have Oslo ship it all back to us. Sit down and put on your harness, the ship is about to lift off.”
“Why the rush, Raymond Verhesen?” She only called him by his full name when she wanted to get the truth out of him.
But Ray was aware of this and would use it to his advantage. “Do you really want to stick around any longer after what we’ve been through?”
She shook her head meekly. “No, not really,” she said and looked down at her hands on her lap.
“Exactly. So let’s just go.” He put a finger under her chin and gently raised it so her eyes were level with his. “Trust me.”
She smiled faintly, and then looked back at the cargo ramp as it sealed shut.
“You’re not thinking about Breeze, are you?” he asked earnestly.
“No, of course not,” she said.
He closed his eyes as his head sunk into the headrest. “Good. Real good. It’s going to be nice to be rid of him and get back home. Things will be so much better.” He reached over and squeezed her hand.
They felt cold to her. “Of course.” She forced another smile as she settled back into her seat and looked out the window.
The transport lifted off and drifted across the tarmac for a moment, when a sudden surge from the engines sent the ship hurtling into the sky and through the red stained clouds colored by the rising sun.
ELEVEN
BREEZE BROUGHT THE HOVER to a stop and turned to watch the transport carrying Ray and Sally lift off into the morning sky, keeping his eyes on it until it disappeared into the red tinted clouds. Far off to the west, he could see a thick line of thunderstorms brewing over the ocean.
He settled back into his seat, threw the gear lever into drive and sped off. He grinned as he thought about the role reversal he was experiencing. When he arrived first at Perihelion, it was Excort doing the driving as he fearfully sat in the passenger seat as they sped through the palm forest. Now, he was calmly piloting a hover without a care in the world after helping fellow students leave without permission. I’m a bad guy now, I suppose.
He whisked through the palm forest and never once did he flinch as the trees bent themselves to make way. He burst out of the forest and onto the main boulevard, gliding the vehicle to a stop in front of the dormitories.
He leapt out and bounded up the steps and into the building. He walked past the coral pool in the rotunda and headed straight down the breezeway to his room where Kera and Oslo, along with Excort, were standing outside his door.
“Breeze!” Oslo strode over with gigantic steps and loomed over him. “Explain yourself young man, what has transpired?”
“We’re leaving,” he said as he sidestepped him and reached for the door handle.
“Wait!” Oslo called out.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and he whipped around to confront the tall man. “I’m not really sure what sort of plans you had for us. We’ve been here for weeks and nothing has happened. Sally just said something to me earlier about you that got me thinking. She said that you’re keeping us in storage. For what, I don’t know, but ever since we arrived here, we’ve had nothing but strange experience after strange experience. Toss in the fact that one of us almost got killed. Twice.” He flung open his door and stepped inside where he grabbed his backpack and began stuffing it with his meager possessions.
Kera stood outside with Excort as Oslo stepped in.
“A little privacy please?” Breeze said.
Oslo ignored him. “Excort came rushing into my office, and told me that the fog has been lowered, and that a transport departed soon after. I became alarmed and immediately searched the grounds for all of you. Now, Kera tells me she watched as you helped your fellow students abscond with a ship. Is this true?”
Breeze pointed at Kera out in the hallway. “Well, ask her yourself. If she saw it, why didn’t she try to stop us?”
Kera glided into the room with her white dress swirling around her.
Breeze stepped back as she came to a stop before him.
“It was for the best. This charade must come to an end before any more harm befalls us,” Kera said as she stared at Breeze for a moment, then turned to Oslo.
Oslo gently took her hands, which made her body crackle with energy for a brief second. “My dear lady, what are you trying to say?”
“Let them fly away, Ole Auken, it is for the best.” She place a hand over his heart. “You know this to be true.”
“No!” he roared as he threw her hands off and the room trembled.
Breeze inched back toward his backpack, and then continued packing with great haste.
“It was not supposed to be this way.” Oslo said. “I made a promise to their parents to guarantee their safety, and that I would not let them be tak
en by the Elephim like they did in the past. Not again.”
“My dear man, wake up. This is a fight you must walk away from. Take your daughter—” she shook her head, ”—take Nina with you and go to Raza. Be whole again. Let the inevitable take place.”
Breeze stopped packing. “Is Nina that girl I saw when I first came here?”
Oslo and Kera both turned to face him.
He immediately regretted speaking up. “Forget it, I could care less. I have enough problems at home and I don’t need any more.” He slung his backpack over his shoulder. “I don’t know what this place is supposed to be about. I just know I’m going home. I shouldn’t have let my father talk me into this.”
He brushed past the two instructors and out into the breezeway.
Excort was standing by the door and glared at him as he stepped out of his room. “How did you manage to drop the fog?”
Breeze shrugged. “I didn’t. Go ask Ray, he figured it out. Oh, wait, he’s gone. Guess you can’t.”
He marched away, only stopping when Oslo called out to him.
“Breeze, just a moment. Give me chance to clarify.”
Breeze pivoted around and strode up to him. “What is there to say? This isn’t a school and you are no instructor. That Kera lady over there? Don’t have a clue as to what she’s supposed to be about. And that?” He pointed at Excort. “Never saw a dwarf before. Let alone one that looks like that even in a storybook.”
Excort snarled at him.
Oslo held up a hand. “Please, there has been enough backbiting and dissent already, ja? I shall take the blame for everything, just allow me to explain.” There was a sense of desperation in his voice as he spoke.
Breeze shrugged. “There’s not much more to say. You falsely told our parents that we were going to spend a summer session here to learn more about our powers. Instead, you had us fixing up this old and crappy place and doing training exercises that led to nothing. And the question that has been bothering us all? Where are the other students?”
Oslo nodded. “Yes, yes. All good questions, and reasonable concerns that I have been remiss in addressing.”
Breeze Corinth (Book 1): Sky Shatter Page 23