Marked

by Jenny Martin

  “How do I brake this thing?!” I pump the foot pedal to no avail. “These only work in drive mode!”

  “Landing brakes!” Miyu shouts.

  Fahra lunges for the stick just right of the yoke. Gasping, he struggles to get it moving, but it’s lock-jam stuck. Miyu fumbles to unfasten her restraint, but I scream at her. “Stay buckled or you’re dead!”

  And if I let go of the yoke, we’ll all be.

  Fahra pulls, straining at the brake until sweat runs into his eyes and his arms look ready to rip out of their sockets. One last growling effort and . . .

  The metallic whine of brakes taking hold slices through the air. Triumphant, Fahra lets go and collapses against his seat. We hurtle down the runway like a dying meteor, grinding hard after meeting atmosphere. Two tons of flaming tin can tossed at a twenty-ton space freighter, its rear doors an open mouth.

  Here it comes, my brain screams, here it comes. We roll on. The ramp. The loading rim. The empty hold. I hold my breath as we skid to a wheel-smoking, gear-grinding, teeth-rattling stop, coming at last to a violent rest.

  “Destination alert,” the system chirps. “You have arrived.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  WE’VE ARRIVED, ALL RIGHT, JUST A WHISPER FROM THE BACK wall. Couldn’t squeeze even a runt like me between it and this rig. All three of us? We let out a breath.

  But no time to thank our Lucky Star or jump out to kiss the ground. The first thing I hear is the freighter’s boosters firing up. As the cargo bay doors close behind us, the sound quakes through every surface, and we’re shaken so hard I fear we’ll fall apart, leaving so many bags of bones on the bolt-bitten floor. Only when the doors finally seal is the roar less than paralyzing.

  We stumble out of the skybrid, crippled by the gut-swoop lift of vertical takeoff. Hands reach out to help, and it’s only then I realize that Larken’s guards are gathered in the hold of Miyu’s vac. They get us on our feet and start hustling us toward the aft end of her tough little freighter. On the stairs, at the cockpit door, I notice how the guards flank Fahra. They’ve pinioned his arms, their eyes alert and suspicious.

  “Hold on,” I tell them. “He’s with me.”

  They don’t back off, but they let his arms fall to his sides before escorting us into the roomy cockpit. Miyu’s vac’s got more screens than most pilots would know what to do with, and every bit of loose gear is still perfectly racked, labeled, and stowed. Girl runs a tight ship. I swear, she’d make an excellent crew chief. Forget my old boss, Benny Eno. Give Miyu a garage.

  The pilot’s chair swivels our way as Larken greets us. “Glad you could make it.”

  “Yeah. Me too.” I scan the wide windows, then the defensive grid. A small army’s still on our exhaust.

  “Strap in,” Miyu orders. “Get ready to blast.” There’s a long row of jump seats behind the pilot’s platform. While the guards stand by, Fahra and I take our places there.

  “I’m guessing you’d like your spot back,” Larken says to Miyu.

  “Yes, but I could use an experienced hand by the com.”

  He takes the hint, rising to claim the copilot’s chair at her side, and Miyu sinks into her own throne. Reflexively, she guides the controls, smoothly shifting us out of auto-ascend. We pick up a hair-raising burst of speed as she shoots us into an evasive bullet arc.

  We all watch the grid, bracing for a last-ditch barrage of IP fire. But it doesn’t come. Instead, the enemy vacs fall back, one by one, tucking tail and turning toward the harbor. The sight should wash over me like relief, but now I’m even more uneasy.

  I gape. “They’re all . . .”

  “Not all.” Miyu points at the grid. “Look there. Three LF-35s at four o’clock. They’re still following. Steady position. They’re keeping their distance.”

  “They’re tracking us,” I say.

  Miyu nods.

  “Got any weapons?” I pause, prepared to stretch the truth. “I’m a half-decent gunner.”

  “Yes and no. I’m running a light freighter here, not a battle vac,” she says. “I’ve modified the system and racked two barrels for pulse fire, but a lot of good that’s going to do us now.”

  Larken answers her thoughtful frown. “I’m guessing you’ve diverted all power to the accelerant, just to keep up this pace. So pulse fire’s out. Not enough juice for that.”

  Miyu sighs. “I can give you firepower or I can give you speed, but I cannot give you both.”

  “We’re no match for those fighters,” I say. “Are we?”

  “Nope,” she says, as if putting a lid on any wild ideas I might have had. “Lucky for us, they aren’t firing.”

  “But we can’t go back to base like this. We can’t just lead them there.”

  “That’s exactly what we must do,” Larken says. “There is nowhere else for us to run. Besides, it’s not as if your friends aren’t prepared. Captain Nandan can deal with a few rogue fighters.”

  “I won’t compromise the rebellion again,” I say.

  “The commmander is correct. Pray they follow us,” Captain Fahra offers. “Better they follow than shoot us down on the way.”

  “How can you say that when it will betray our position? Benroyal will know exactly where we’re hiding in the Strand.”

  “I guarantee he already knows,” Fahra says. “And these fighters are likely ordered to merely follow and scout. They will not engage at the border. The Strand is too sacred. Attacking there would mean war.”

  “But you don’t understand,” I counter. “Benroyal would cross any line. He’d do anything to get what he wants.”

  “With respect,” Fahra interrupts. “Perhaps it is you who does not understand. I do not mean such an attack would bring the usual conflict—skirmishes in the Gap or common riots. I mean it would beget real war, rivers of blood shed across two planets, such as your people have never seen or would ever see again. That is what burning the Strand would bring to Benroyal’s door.”

  “That’s enough,” Larken says icily. Blue eyes lit, he glares at Fahra, then turns his back. He sighs, glancing at me. “What kind of trouble’s followed you, Phee? Why did you bring this—”

  Fahra straightens, unafraid. “I am Fahra, captain of the Queen’s Guard, servant to Her Majesty, assigned and at oath to protect—”

  “I know who you are, Captain,” Larken says, freezing out the familiar litany. “I’m just wondering what you’re doing here.”

  “About that . . .” I interject, anxious to dial back the tension.

  “Guards, please escort our unexpected guest to the hold,” Larken commands his guards, then casts us the side-eye. “If you’d be so kind as to excuse us, Captain. Phee owes me a mission debriefing.”

  “As you say, Commander,” Fahra replies. Silent, he allows Larken’s men to lead him away.

  The moment the cockpit door closes behind them, Larken starts in. “You’d better have a stellar explanation, my friend. Why is Queen Napoor’s personal bodyguard on this vac?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  WITH MIYU’S HELP, I TELL LARKEN EVERYTHING. ABOUT JAMES and Cash and the queen’s bargain. When we’re done, he’s quiet. No fussing at me for getting myself into trouble, no warnings or advice. Nothing.

  “Aren’t you going to yell at me or something?” I ask him.

  “Why would I yell at you?”

  “Because that’s what old people do when you pull something stupid.”

  At first, he’s taken aback. Then, thoughtful, he sighs. “You are not a child to be scolded. And I am not so old, Miss Van Zant.”

  We laugh, but only for a bitter second.

  “Even if you’re not going to scold me,” I say to him, “I want your advice.”

  He takes a breath, and as always, mulls over his response. “Do what you have to,” he says at last. “Plan your rescue. Take this bargain, but
. . . as you’d likely put it, you should also—”

  “Watch your exhaust,” Miyu finishes for him.

  Larken nods. “Queen Napoor is smart, and it seems her most exceptional talent lies in always landing on her feet. So I would not put it past her to leverage Prince Cashoman in some way.”

  “I know she’s calculating. But . . . I think she’s afraid. As afraid as I am. She’s desperate to see Cash safe and alive.”

  “You say this after she had you kidnapped. And what of Fahra?”

  “What of him?” Miyu asks, still focused on the controls.

  Larken swivels her way. “Captain Fahra. His own people cut those marks into his face, and now call him Fahrat. You know the word? The meaning of the nickname?”

  She thinks for a moment. “Fah-rat, the Biseran word for an animal. Small and agile, the black-eared predator. Oh. Wait . . . Fah-rat—accent on the second syllable,” she says, her gaze finally drawn from the screen. “I see.”

  Larken nods.

  “What?” I ask. “What does it mean?”

  Larken shifts in his seat, then tilts his gaze to me. “He was there the night Cash’s father was slaughtered, the very one who allowed assassins to slip into the royal chamber. Fahrat means ‘dishonor.’”

  I’m quiet for a long time.

  “You’ve lived in that kind of shadow,” I say to him at last. “You know what it’s like to be branded a traitor and written off, Larken. There’s more to your story than gossip and talk, so maybe there’s more to his. Besides, the queen trusts him. Please trust me to give him a chance.”

  Larken doesn’t answer at all. Instead, he looks me straight in the eye. Right fist over his heart, he makes the rebel’s salute.

  It happens in the last hour of flight. At dawn. Less than a thousand miles from base.

  Miyu looks up from the controls. “We’ve lost contact with Hank at HQ,” she says. “I got through an hour ago, but I just tried sending an updated transmission, and the feed blacked out. There’s nothing, not even a static beacon.”

  Larken reaches for a diagnostic screen, but Miyu shakes her head. “I already checked. It’s not a glitch in our system. We’re transmitting fine. There’s just nowhere for the feed to go. The channel no longer exists. It’s just . . . gone.”

  Even as I tense up, she speaks what I’m thinking. “Something’s wrong.”

  “Keep trying,” Larken orders. “But keep one eye on the grid. We might need that pulse fire after all.”

  “Already on it,” Miyu replies. “Guns out at a second’s notice.”

  I watch the defensive grid, the backlit web of airspace and enemy movement. The three fighters on our heels haven’t advanced. They still trail, distant but locked into battle formation, a drawn arrow, aimed in the sky.

  Until we’re just shy of the Strand.

  They break apart. Near the border’s edge, over the first sweep of high-climbing blooms, they swarm us, surrounding us at the fore.

  Miyu cranks down our speed, and the clank of locking cannons echoes like a one-two punch against the hull. We drop beneath the fighters, easing back, but they’re too quick on the jump. Wheeling, they break. A breath later, they’re behind us again. A proximity alarm blasts through the cockpit as they move in, closer than ever before.

  Still, no enemy fire.

  “I can’t shake them,” Miyu yells over the blare. “Even if I swivel barrels, they’re too close. If I shoot at this range, it’d knock us all out of the air.”

  Captain Fahra and the guards burst into the cockpit, quick to buckle in beside me.

  Fahra turns to me. He’s eerily calm.

  Larken runs a defensive check. “No weapons signature. No heat in their barrels or any sign of target lock; they aren’t even trying to fire. What are they playing at?”

  On the grid, the outlines of the fighters overlap with our ship, and it’s like watching a parasitic attack. They’ve become an extension of us, a cloak, a . . . “They’re a shield,” I spit. “They’re herding us all the way to the border.”

  “That makes no sense,” Miyu answers, frantic. “Why would they—oh my god.”

  I look up, at the horizon, to see what’s drained the color from her face.

  Ahead, the highest ridge. We’ve reached the Pearl Strand.

  Behind it, the first hint of black sky. A hundred columns of rising smoke.

  The poppy fields are burning.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE GRID LIGHTS UP, BUT I DON’T HAVE TO SEE THE ICONS to know there’s an armada of vacs ahead. Blue and black ships, locked in combat. I flinch at the magma sizzle of whistling torpedoes. BOOM . . . BOOM . . . BOOM.

  In and out, in and out come the shallow breaths, until I’m strangled, betrayed by my own lungs. I bite down on a sharp gulp of air, too big to swallow. No, no, no. It’s happening. It’s happening again.

  Behind us, Benroyal’s fighters stick to our tail. Before us, dozens of rebel and Cyanese and IP vacs crisscross the sky, wheeling and falling and turning in endless, interlocking loops.

  Like a hapless bird, a rebel fighter’s hurled against the hull of an enemy gunship. Stricken, it flames in descent.

  I snap, shaking off shock and paralysis. I fumble out of my restraint. One of Larken’s men swings an arm across my chest, but I bat it away.

  “Sit down, Phee,” Larken orders.

  Disobedient, I stagger. At Miyu’s side, I stare through the cockpit windshields, straining to see over the next ridge. Our camp. Our precious, protected little valley.

  I was right: There’s no line Benroyal won’t cross.

  “Can you get through to base?” I ask. “Is anyone down there? Is anyone left alive?”

  Miyu touches the communications screen, swiping through all channels. There’s still nothing on the ground-to-air feeds, but the rebel vac-to-vac feeds hum with aftershock screams and panicked squawks.

  A sudden blast knocks me on my exhaust, sending me skidding against the back of the cockpit. An explosion in my skull as my head lashes the wall. A second of blindness, then bursts of light—harsh as lens flare—assault my eyes. Voices, muddled and fuzzy, rushing like stale wind in my ears.

  “Landlan lellah.”

  “Lellah, lellah.”

  A hand at my cheek. I blink. Fahra’s hovering over me, speaking in Biseran. “Lellah, are you okay?” he asks. “Are you injured?”

  “I don’t know.” My words loll and drag. “Are we hit?”

  He shakes his head. “No. But one of our escorts was. Someone shot it down. We caught the aftershock.”

  Fahra helps get me back on my feet. Nothing’s broken, I think, but everything’s bruised. We tilt to balance as the ship maneuvers. A parade of seconds crawl by, and I’m disoriented, content to let Fahra guide me back to my seat. The fog in my brain begins to clear, and my hand curls at my chest. There I feel the small roar in my heart, at my fingertips. That voice, the girl I used to be . . . she snaps into rust-flight, let’s-fight mode. “Larken, gimme seat number two. I’ll man the pulse cannons while you transmit. We have to get through to Hank. Where are the Larssens? Where is—”

  Miyu swipes up the volume on a vac-to-vac channel. She’s made contact with someone in the air. “Roger, Talon One,” she says. “Go ahead.”

  Talon One. I know that call sign.

  And then I hear his voice, coming through loud and clear. “Break low on my signal,” he commands. “Broadsword will cover your drop. Keep your nose down, and I will blow them off your exhaust.”

  “This is Broadsword, copy that,” a second voice replies. Hank.

  A third rebel. “Target is a go,” she says. “Ready in three . . . two . . .”

  We sink in a gut-check fall, and I watch the skies. Two friendlies—rebel Tandaemo fighters—split in approach, tag teaming our remaining escorts.

  Whi
le Hank shields our drop, Bear aims high and fires. Three hits, and the last two parasites are gone.

  “Targets dispatched,” he says. “Break-break. Broadsword, requesting to provide close air support. Yamada needs cover to fallback position.”

  “Negative,” Hank replies. “I need you back on the offensive. Yamada, get out of here. Break wide, and flank the hot zone. Get behind the Hill of Kings. Rendezvous with remaining forces.”

  “Yamada?” Bear says.

  “Come in, Talon One,” she answers.

  “Keep her safe,” he says.

  “Roger that.”

  We turn, and both Tandaemo peel off, heading back into the fray.

  Silent, Miyu threads past the battlefront, and we slip over the burning fields. In the valley, I stand between her seat and Larken’s. We scan the terrain and what’s left of our camp. No neat little squares or marching patrols. Instead, smoking rubble and the crackle of scattered fire. It’s a quiet, burning disorder.

  I squint for signs of life, or of death, but there’s not much to see. On the ground, only a few bodies. I’m ashamed to feel so relieved, that corpses spell reassurance.

  “Where are they?” I ask aloud. “What happened to—”

  I glance past my old barracks tent, which, oddly, still stands. But not the infirmary. No, it’s gone. The notion lands invisible, a hammer fall at the center of my chest. Hal and Mary . . . no.

  “Try every channel,” Larken says to Miyu. “Hank mentioned remaining forces. They must have retreated.”

  I don’t like the way he has to convince himself. I don’t know where my foster parents are, and Bear is caught at the front. Everything’s falling apart in a way I can’t manage. Helpless, I watch the daybreak burn.

  Miyu picks up a signal. No voices, only the bleating noise of a primitive coded exchange. I toss my flex to Larken, and he runs the hum through my card. The message spools onto my tiny screen. Coordinates, then one word.

  Underground.

  “Not far,” Miyu says. “No time at all if I could pick up speed. Running low on fuel.”