“Take your time,” she said, hitching a thumb toward the spaceport window. “I love the view from up here.” To make it easier on him, she turned and strode away.
Once she reached the window, she darted a glance over her shoulder and found Troy making his way to the transportation official, orders in hand. Aloit had joined two other middle-age guards in browsing goods for sale along the vendors’ corridor.
“Huh,” Cara said to herself. “Shopping.” She hadn’t considered that. Maybe she should send home some presents with the credits she’d earned from all those nights sanitizing the kitchen. If she hurried, Troy could stuff the gifts in his bag and deliver them once he arrived on Earth. But just when she’d taken two steps in the other direction, her com-sphere buzzed to life. She rushed to a quiet corner to answer it, careful to keep Troy in sight so she could wave him over when he was done.
After whispering her password, she set her sphere on the floor and sat cross-legged facing it. The floor’s steely panels chilled her bottom, so she pushed to her feet and crouched low, hugging her knees.
Tori’s upper torso appeared in miniature from Mom’s kitchen table. Cara smiled so widely it hurt. If anything could make this day bearable, it was a call from her best friend.
Tori’s ebony eyes beamed against skin the precise shade of toasted caramel, her jet-black hair cut in a meticulous bob that followed her jawline. She still had that familiar spitfire in her gaze, the kind that warned a zinger was coming. “You’re in the fetal position,” Tori quipped. “I would be, too, if I were on Planet Freak.”
Cara laughed, drawing a few glances from nearby crew members. “I was literally freezing my ass off. I’m at the spaceport saying good-bye to Troy.”
“Good,” Tori said. “Now get on board with him.”
Cara figured her friend couldn’t talk long, and she didn’t want to waste one minute arguing for the hundredth time about the exchange or listening to a litany of complaints about L’eihrs. “You know I can’t do that, so drop it and tell me how much you miss me.”
Tori answered with her middle finger, a strangely welcome sight.
“Are you okay?” Cara asked. “Is it safe to be at my house?” Tori and Eric had joined HALO before they’d understood the Patriots’ violent nature. Since then, they’d had to pretend not to associate with Cara’s family or face the same “accidents” that had befallen those who openly supported the Sweeneys.
“Safe and sound.” Tori’s face broke into a grin. “You’re not gonna believe this.”
Cara noticed Troy scanning the room for her, so she stood and waved to get his attention, then crouched low again. “Believe what?”
“Isaac Richards is backing the alliance.”
“Right,” Cara said with a snort. “And I’ll ride a unicorn back to my gingerbread dorm.”
“I swear it on my abuela’s grave.” Tori raised one hand in oath. “He said the L’assholes have more to offer than he thought. We should still be careful, but no more protests or he’ll disband our chapters.”
“You’re serious?”
“As cancer.” Tori bit her lip and considered for a moment. “Guess that’s not really serious anymore, since the L’eihrs cured it, but still. Yeah, totes serious.”
“Huh.” Maybe someone had filled in Isaac on the water crisis. “Did he say what?”
Tori shrugged. “Technology, cures for more diseases. Stuff like that.” When Troy approached and took a knee by Cara’s side, Tori offered a quick wave. “Anyway, after Aelyx confessed to that stuff with the crops—”
The silvery band around Troy’s wrist buzzed loudly, startling them all. “What the hell?” he asked as he stared into his palms.
Cara understood what it meant—she had less than five minutes with her brother. “We’ve got to go,” she told Tori. “Try back tomorrow, okay?”
When Tori’s image vanished, Cara took her brother’s wrist and explained the boarding notification system. “You get two warnings. After the third buzz, it’ll start to burn, and it won’t stop until you cross the gate around that corner.” She nodded into the distance at the metal ramp that led to the main transport. “It’s sadistic, but you’re guaranteed not to miss your flight.”
He glared at his wrist and then back at her. “Another example of why we don’t belong here.”
Instead of arguing, Cara used a method of redirection she’d learned in the nursery: linking their arms, towing him toward the gate, and changing the subject. “Thanks for staying the extra couple of weeks. I hope I didn’t get you in too much trouble.”
He eyed her suspiciously but played along. “I’ll live.”
“Do you know where you’re stationed next?” She hoped the military would keep him stateside this year. Mom missed Troy something fierce when he was away, and a German-Malty-Doodle-Poo was no substitute for a son. Or a daughter, she thought with a pang of guilt.
“No.” He steered them around a cart of luggage. “My orders are to report to the L’eihr guard unit in Manhattan. No telling where they’ll send me after that.”
“Manhattan?” Cara squeezed his arm and bounced on her toes. “You might get to see Aelyx when he’s done with his tour.”
Troy rolled his eyes and faked a giddy voice. “I’m all tingly in my pants just thinking about it.”
She laughed and poked at him some more. “Make sure you give him a big hug from me.”
“Okay, shut up.” They’d reached the base of the boarding ramp, so Troy dropped his duffel and shook free of Cara’s grasp.
Her shoulder cooled at the hasty separation, so she rubbed her upper arms, resisting the urge to force a hug on her brother. She knew what he was doing—pulling away and preparing for the inevitable.
“When will I see you again?” she asked.
He dropped his gaze to the tips of his boots, which meant he didn’t know.
Maybe in April, when she returned home for the big signing. “They have to let you come to the alliance ceremony, right?”
“The Marines don’t have to let me do anything, Pepper. That’s not how it works.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know what else to say. This was it—the end of the line. The tears she’d fought so hard to block started to push back. A slow pressure built inside her chest while her eyes began to tingle, but she dug a thumbnail into her palm. No crying! She would not leave her brother with a depressing mental image to replay while he sat alone inside his ship’s chamber.
Troy looked as if he was struggling for the right words, too. He opened and closed his mouth three times before offering a broken, “Uh, listen…I just wanna—”
The travel band cut him short with a threatening buzz.
“That’s your last warning.” Cara straightened her spine and faked her best smile, not too bright but warm enough to seem genuine. “You should go.”
Troy didn’t move.
“Really,” she said. “If you see Mom and Dad, tell them I’m fine and I’m having fun. Don’t mention the electric shock thing I wear for PE. They won’t understand.” She nudged him and joked, “And tell our baby brother, Linus, I can’t wait to meet him.”
Troy still didn’t move. Instead, he swallowed hard, his body rigid and his feet glued to the platform.
Cara had to focus like mad to keep her voice steady. “It’s okay. I’ll be fine, promise.”
He gave a slow nod but remained in place. “You’re tough. I know that. But it’s not—”
Before he could get another word out, his eyes flew wide and he shook his wrist while howling in pain. “Son of a bitch!” He jumped in place, then turned and bolted toward the transport without another glance in her direction. His boots rattled the metal grating, obscenities trailing behind him like a noxious cloud as he turned the corner and ran out of sight.
Leave it to Troy to say good-bye in style.
Cara’s chest heaved with silent giggles. The burns weren’t lasting—it was more of a mind trick than anything—but she’d never seen her brother m
ore motivated to board a flight. He’d even left behind his duffel. She picked it up and hauled it to a nearby crew member who was sorting crates by the cargo hold.
“Excuse me,” she said in L’eihr. “My brother left his bag. Can you take it to him?”
The man said yes but told her to wait a moment, then dug through bins and boxes until he pulled a large padded envelope from the pile. He handed it to her. “This is for you.”
Cara’s heart fluttered when she glimpsed Aelyx’s name above the return address. She hugged the soft package to her chest, torn between ripping it open right there and waiting for the privacy of her room at the Aegis.
In the end, impulsivity won the battle.
She crossed the spaceport, back to the spot where she’d answered Tori’s call. There, she leaned against the wall and ran her finger beneath the envelope seam. When she peeked inside, she found a gallon-size Ziploc bag filled with something dark. She spotted a scrap of paper and pulled it free.
Wear me.
“Wear me?” she mumbled, separating the Ziploc seal. Why had Aelyx sent clothes from Earth? He knew she couldn’t wear anything but the standard uniform. She removed an extra-large gray T-shirt, puzzled until a familiar scent reached her—warm and sweet and spicy. Like a drug, it rushed her senses and made her go fizzy all over. She would recognize that luscious smell anywhere. It was his. She dropped the envelope and brought the shirt directly to her nose, then huffed it like the junkie she was.
Oh, man, it was better than chocolate.
She sucked in breath after breath, closing her eyes and pretending Aelyx was there with her. She could almost feel his lips at her throat and the satiny tickle of his hair against her cheek. It was a nice fantasy until she opened her eyes and found Aloit and the other guards staring at her in disbelief.
Cara didn’t bother trying to explain. She rubbed the shirt over her neck and chest like a perfume stick, then stuffed it back inside the Ziploc bag and sealed it tight to hold in the eau de Aelyx. She was so sleeping in that shirt tonight.
Two hours later, Cara stepped inside the Aegis and hung a left toward her room. The headmaster had given her a day-long reprieve from classes for “emotional distress” in the wake of Troy’s departure. She planned to bang out a quick blog post, then spend the rest of the day outside, maybe practicing the spinners, the trickiest obstacle on the intermediate course.
She’d just opened her door when Vero padded by and skidded to a halt, doing the animal version of a double take. He peered at her in silence, wide black eyes boring into her skull while his nose twitched like a rabbit’s. He didn’t screech gibberish or dart inside her room to pee on her pillow.
That wasn’t like him.
Intrigued, Cara waited to see what he’d do next.
Vero crept an inch toward her and paused, crept forward again and paused, repeating the dance until he reached Cara’s boots. Nose twitching, he sniffed her pants in rapid huffs, moving up to her knee and then across to the package in her right hand. He took in the scent and pulled back, then released the most heartrending whine Cara had ever heard, exactly like a dog that missed his master.
“Aww,” Cara said, putting it together. “You smell Aelyx on me, don’t you?”
Vero eyed the envelope as if he thought Aelyx were inside it. To dispel any doubt, she pulled out the clear bag so the animal could see there was nothing to fear.
“See?” she said. “It’s just a shirt.”
He backed toward the lobby, darting glances between Cara and the T-shirt, his tiny face contorted in confusion. His whine turned into a deep, throaty ah-woo of despair.
Poor Vero. She’d totally mindfreaked the little bugger with Aelyx’s scent.
“Sorry, hon. I know how you feel. I miss him, too.”
After Vero hightailed it to the cafeteria for his ritual post-lunch scavenging mission, Cara walked into her room and stopped short. Troy’s bunk looked so empty stripped of its linens that she had to avert her gaze before the tears started falling.
Forget the blog post; she needed to get out of here.
After tucking Aelyx’s envelope beneath her pillow, she grabbed a towel so she could make it to the intermediate course between PE classes. She didn’t want an audience, and she especially didn’t want Satan to spot her practicing. She hoped to impress him by mastering the spinners on her own.
Slinging the towel around her neck, she jogged across the courtyard to the courses, then slowed her steps and peered through the trees, making sure to stay hidden. She crept within view of the spinners and ducked behind a tree, disappointed to find them already populated by a class of freshman-age clones.
“Sh’ot,” she muttered under her breath. She hadn’t gotten here in time. But maybe if she hung out for a while, she’d have fifteen or twenty minutes to herself when the classes changed. She might even learn a new technique by observing the group of students racing toward the rotating disks. Cara knelt in the underbrush and studied the clones’ tactics.
Just as the first one broke into a sprint, a shriek sounded from the sky.
Cara’s pulse quickened. She didn’t have to gaze into the heavens to know a fiery orb was about to rain down upon them. The clones noticed, too, stopping on the track and pointing toward the flames. Satan jogged into sight and produced his com-sphere, probably to report the occurrence to the capital. Cara tried to estimate the orb’s trajectory. If she was right, it should land in the woods, about a quarter of a mile from her current position.
A delicious idea came to mind.
Nobody knew she was here. If she snuck away and got a head start, she might be able to reach the object before The Way sent a shuttle to retrieve it. She didn’t waste another second pondering her next move.
After tiptoeing out of sight, she sprinted in the direction of the burning trail, hurtling over fallen logs and ducking beneath low branches. The whistle grew louder as she ran onward, and soon a crash boomed in the distance, followed by a thin plume of smoke. She increased her speed, barreling toward the black wisps that clouded the air.
In minutes, she’d reached the source of the impact—a slight crater in the forest floor with steam wafting up from within, smelling slightly of sulfur. Cara made her way to the site with tentative steps, then crouched down to peer inside the hole.
That thing was man-made, all right.
It was slightly smaller than she remembered, more like a baseball than a softball, but she recognized the twinkling lights scattered in haphazard increments across the orb’s brassy surface. Each light flashed independently of the others in no discernible pattern. Cara couldn’t imagine what the sphere could be. Maybe an intergalactic message in a bottle?
“What are you?” she asked the object.
That’s when it replied.
Cara gasped and scrambled backward, flailing to remain on her feet. Holy crap, had that thing actually beeped at her? She neared the crater and peered inside again just in time to watch the orb wriggle free from the ground and drift slowly upward until it hovered in the air with a barely perceptible hum. Another sound caught her attention, coming from the sky. The shuttle was almost here.
Cara acted quickly, reaching behind her neck to see if she still had her towel. Luckily, she hadn’t lost it during the sprint. She inched forward and threw her towel over the twinkling orb, then wrapped it up to protect her hands from its heat and jogged back the way she’d come. If the capital guards had any sense—which they did—it was only a matter of time before they saw her boot prints and tracked them to the Aegis. Then they’d sweep the building and she’d have to surrender her prize.
She had an hour, maybe two, to figure out what this thing was.
Chapter Thirteen
Aelyx had never seen anything like it. The golden orb didn’t appear L’eihr-made, but perhaps The Way had invented something new and was testing its functionality above the atmosphere. If that were the case, maybe a few defective units had fallen to the ground.
“Speak to it in L�
��eihr,” Aelyx suggested. “Give it a command and let’s see if it responds.”
“Good idea.” Cara cupped one hand around the floating sphere and drew it nearer to her face. “Reveal your message.” She spoke with a heavy American accent, but clearly enough to understand.
Lights flashed once in unison, and after an audible hum, a distorted computerized voice responded in a series of garbled words Aelyx didn’t recognize. Cara’s wide eyes reflected his own shock. Neither of them had expected the gadget to attempt verbal communication. He wondered what it meant.
“What are you trying to tell me?” Cara asked it in L’eihr. “I don’t understand.”
The voice slowed and took on a feminine tone, then spoke another series of words. Aelyx still didn’t recognize the language, but it was obviously different from the first. When Cara didn’t answer it, a series of clicks emanated from the orb, followed by a few guttural utterances that sounded like bastardized Latin. It seemed the sphere was going through a database of languages in an effort to connect with Cara.
Only one kind of device would do that.
A lump of dread rose in Aelyx’s throat, but he maintained a calm facade. “I think I know what it is.”
“Really?” she asked over the sphere’s increasingly rapid discourse. “What?”
“Before I say, I want to get a second opinion from Syrine. Be right back.”
He found Syrine sitting cross-legged on the living room rug playing a game of backgammon with David, who lay stretched out on his side, propped on one elbow. They both wore easy smiles as they baited each other with what David referred to as “trash talk.” Aelyx had to call Syrine’s name twice before she noticed him. When she threw a quick glance in his direction, he waved her over.
“Just a minute,” Syrine said. “I’ve almost got him beat.”
“In your dreams.” David rolled the dice and gave a victory whoop. “I’m catching up.”
“Not quickly enough,” she taunted.
“Sy-rine!” Aelyx shouted.
Invaded Page 15