Atlas Fallen
Page 30
THE HEAT OF THE COFFEE scorched her palms through the cup. If she let it sit long enough, the liquid became as placid as a mirror, but Tesla didn’t recognize the bruised and beaten girl staring back at her with tired eyes. As the ripples smoothed and her face came back into focus, she swirled the mug once more, distorting the image into unrecognizable waves.
She’d let Theopoenne speak without interruption for the last hour. Jasmeen had first insisted she come along for Tesla’s protection. She’d eyed Theopoenne warily, twirling the daggers between her fingers, her hooded gaze meeting Tesla’s, silently asking her if she was comfortable being alone with the singer. Tesla had given her a halfhearted shrug, causing Jasmeen to frown, but the girl had retreated back to the med-bay.
Tesla’s temples throbbed from everything: the Sec-Bots, Kyrartine’s betrayal, the sight of Daxton sprawled lifeless on the floor, and now the knowledge that her father had been passing along information to the Restoration rebels her entire life.
“So Kyrartine and someone else—someone powerful—hacked the Sec-Bots and killed the royal family, to start a war?”
“In short, yes. We started becoming suspicious a decade ago when records and prototypes of weapons began disappearing. Then, our Restoration scouts heard rumors of mysterious hackings. Pilots reported malfunctions with delicate equipment, as if someone were taking over the controls.”
Daxton had described a similar occurrence the day that Liam had died. Tesla remembered Freiter’s words about Kyrartine being responsible for Liam’s death. The thought was too outrageous, like one of Lind Fuhr’s absurd holodramas. And yet... the idea of Collux Sec-Bots turning against their safety programming seemed just as unlikely, though she’d just seen them annihilate an entire space station. “How do you know Kyrantine isn’t acting alone?”
Theopoenne poured herself another cup of coffee. “Kyrartine is powerful, but even he doesn’t have the money or resources to execute an operation of this magnitude. Whoever is helping him has connections to the Collux Corporation. Our guess is that they want to squash the Restoration and take control of the monarchy.”
“And that’s why you were on board the Atlas?” Tesla asked after a moment. “Because you thought Kyrartine might be making a move?”
“Actually, no,” Theopoenne admitted. “Our intelligence indicated the negotiations might be where Kyrartine planned to meet with his mysterious benefactor. But then the advisor, Doyle, went missing, and my instincts told me something was very wrong. When Madame Aldera recognized you and commed me, I wanted to offer you a way out in case my hunch was right. I owed the daughter of Nevik Petrov that much.”
“According to the crown, my father was a traitor,” Tesla said flatly.
Across the miniscule dining table, Theopoenne sighed. “To the monarchy, he’s a traitor,” she said softly. “To us, he’s a hero. The plans he stole and transmitted tipped us off to a possible attack in the first place. It was also the way you were able to save so many people tonight. If that tower hadn’t been disabled, who knows if we would have made it out alive.”
“None of that brings him back.”
Theopoenne’s beautiful features became filled with sadness. “You have your father’s intelligence, but your mother’s sharpness. She has quite the iron spine.”
“Had,” Tesla corrected, swirling the coffee again.
“Has.”
Tesla’s eyes flashed to Theopoenne’s face. “My mother died of Dark Lung when I was ten. They burned her body in the incinerator.”
Theopoenne cleared her throat. “Your mother was smuggled from the Atlas seven years ago. Her disappearance was explained by illness, and the documents were forged to match. We tried to bring you and your father, but the station’s security forces would have become suspicious, which would have endangered our other informants onboard.”
Tesla was stunned, her mind struggling to make sense of Theopoenne’s words. Clara Petrov was alive? The news should have brought her a spark of joy at not being alone, but the thought of her mother being safe all this time made her tense with a raw, unbridled fury. If her father had really loved her and not meant to get caught, how much worse was it that her mother had chosen to leave?
Her fingers clenched the cup, and the heat emanating from the coffee warmed the bandage around her burned hand. “Where is my moth—where is Clara Petrov now?”
“At our main headquarters on Earth. We have a hidden training camp built beneath the science colonies on the moon. I’m taking you there now. Your mother wanted to meet you when you arrived, but our recent raid against a factory on Earth has proven more complicated than expected. She’ll join us as soon as possible, but it may be a few weeks before her team can leave the surface, especially now that planetary security will likely be increased. A handful of escape pods managed to launch before the Atlas lost power. No doubt Kyrartine plans to issue a kill order for any survivors.”
In a way, Tesla was grateful Clara Petrov was trapped on Earth until further notice. The thought of seeing her mother tonight made the air in her lungs thin, like she was once again trapped in the Hull Walker suit.
Theopoenne leaned back in her chair. “Your mother has been looking out for you since she left, you know. Our contacts on board have been helping her keep you as safe as possible, though I admit there were times when they failed. She loves you, and though it breaks her heart that she couldn’t be there for you, she’s done her best to bear witness to your life. She watched you pin on your first set of flight wings, and she watched your father die—”
“I watched my father die!” Tesla screamed, hurling the mug against the wall. Shards of ceramic exploded like a supernova as the coffee painted the bulkhead a muddy brown. “You say she’s tried to be there any way she can? How about actually being there when I needed her the most?”
Theopoenne’s mouth pursed into a thin line. “The cause we’re fighting for—”
“I don’t give a damn about your cause or the mucking Restoration!”
Tesla stormed out, slamming the kitchen door behind her. She briefly turned toward the med-bay, but the thought of staring at Daxton’s limp body any longer made her queasy. He thinks you’re a traitor, too, her heart reminded her. She gritted her teeth, turning her slippers toward the cockpit.
Eamon sat alone at the controls, his filthy boots propped up on the console once again. She dropped into the co-pilot’s seat and sank deep within its plush sheepskin cover.
The light of his bioNexus cast a cold, blue glare across her face. Eamon’s hands danced lightly over the controls the same way her own had piloted the mechs in Minko’s fight rings. “Bad day?”
Tesla snorted. “What gave it away?”
He brushed the hair from his eyes and took a drink from a flask retrieved from a compartment within his mechanical leg. “Don’t be too hard on Thee. She’s lost people, too, you know.”
Tesla felt too tired to argue. Instead, she reached for the co-pilot controls, connected her bioNexus, and disengaged the navigation lock.
Eamon whistled. “Someone knows how to fly.”
“Your tin can isn’t exactly advanced. An ape could pilot this thing.”
Eamon shot her a sideways glance. “Some apes happen to be very good at flying this thing. I plucked you out of thin space, didn’t I? The Rumbler is trickier than she looks.”
Eamon dipped the transport’s nose, and Tesla gazed in wonder as the bright, cratered surface of the moon came into view. As the starcraft flew farther, the sun’s light suddenly vanished, immersing the cockpit in a pitch-black shadow.
“T-minus three minutes past the termination line,” Eamon said, toggling a switch to zoom in on the change between light and dark, bringing the image into sharp focus.
“My father went to the moon once,” Tesla said quietly.
The flask tipped against his lips again. “Your father went to the moon plenty of times.”
Lights winked in the cockpit as they flew deeper into the inky dark. She watc
hed Eamon’s rhythm, the way he paused just before switching gears and how he pulled back ever so slightly before pushing the transport harder. Despite her reluctance to admit it, the pilot was good.
A massive, opalescent bubble rose in the distance. Inside loomed a sharply angled structure, its lights shining brightly against the moon’s shadows. Four towers rose from each corner, each topped with oscillating satellites. It was more like a fortress than a science outpost. A circling spotlight illuminated rows and rows of aging military starfighters sitting in the middle of the compound.
“What’s that?” asked Tesla, gesturing toward the nebulous membrane covering the outpost.
Eamon grunted as he turned a dial overhead. “Domeshield. Mimics a gravity field and makes it so we can breathe inside.”
“I’ve never read about any tech like that.”
“That’s what happens when a thousand of Earth’s best scientists defect to the rebel side,” the boy said with a wink. Outside the domeshield, six heavy turrets swiveled in their direction. “To the First World Union, we’re just a bunch of moon jockeys getting drunk on lunarshine and looking at space rocks. They never thought to look deeper.”
“Incoming transport, identify,” a voice commanded over Eamon’s comm system.
The pilot grabbed a headset off the control panel. “Faraday returning with Canary. Beggar Prince on board. Request full emergency medical team on tarmac.”
“Confirmed.”
The controls vibrated softly between Tesla’s hands. The domeshield’s edges converged at a vertical point, blinking like a great reptilian eye. The moon’s surface rose quickly in the viewscreen, and Eamon’s fingers flittered across the controls, easing the acceleration until they were almost floating. Tesla started when her stomach gave a sudden lurch, jerked downward by the shift of gravity brought about when the domeshield activated.
With a pneumatic groan, the landing gear engaged. Just beyond the viewscreen, Tesla spied a medical team sprinting out of the cargo door, rushing the new Imperator to a med-bay with the others close in tow. The domeshield shimmered, casting a watery reflection over every surface in the Rumbler.
“Tesla Petrov,” Eamon said with a grin, cutting power to the ship’s engine, “welcome to the Restoration.”
She stared at the mottled grey surface of the moon, picturing her father as he came here, ready to serve a cause he felt was worth dying for. If what Theopoenne had said was true, he’d done his best to protect as many lives as possible. His memory hardened something deep inside Tesla's marrow.
Sometimes you have to break something to fit the pieces back together.
The Atlas had fallen.
But Earth didn’t have to.
She closed her eyes, but she couldn’t wipe away the memory of finding Daxton barely alive, bathed in his own blood, or Blitz as he’d died in her arms—couldn’t shut out the screams of Lind, and Kiyo, and all the others as they fought to their deaths, protecting the only home they’d ever known.
Minko had called her a ghost. That was exactly what she had to become: a deadly specter, a phantom haunting Kyrartine until he was made to answer for his crimes.
Tesla wouldn’t stop until his reign of terror was ended.
No matter the cost.
THE END
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About the Author
The daughter of a Navy Corpsman and a librarian, Jessica Pierce has traveled the entire span of the United States–from the lush, tropical volcanos of Hawai’i to the eerie romance of the Smoky Mountains. She is an alumna of Middle Tennessee State University where she studied English Literature with a focus in Adolescent Fiction. Currently, she can be found in Arizona with her Air Force husband, murderous devil cat, and three not-so-murderous goldfish. Atlas Fallen is her YA debut.
Read more at Jessica Pierce’s site.