by Karen Bao
We reach the site where we’ll plant the explosives. Only a few blue dots illuminate the north island; I see its ragged rock formations in silhouette. Wes turns away from me, shrugging off his wool jacket.
“When Pacifia gets close, they’ll start sending submarines to the islands. If we can hijack one, we can get you aboard the city and hide you in Moon-bound cargo before they make landfall on Oda.”
I hear him shiver on the last word. It’s probably less a reaction to the cold than an anticipation of it. He has to jump into the wintertime Atlantic to complete our task.
“But I want to help fight,” I say, my throat constricting with frustration. Running away while the Odans struggle against Pacifia seems unfair to Wes. “It’s my fault that your city needs defending at all.”
“Phaet, you’ve done more than enough for us.” Wes stands, causing the boat to buck and nearly throw me overboard. I shrink back, and he lowers his voice. “Don’t make yourself crazy. I’m as accountable as you are.”
He kicks off his tough leather shoes and stands at the stern in his socks.
“But . . .”
“I wish I’d made different decisions, Phaet. Every waking hour, I wonder at least once if I could’ve kept you alive without bringing you to Earth and blowing my cover.”
He leaps from the boat. His body forms a magnificent arc and makes a neat splash when he enters the cold water, fingertips first. A long moment later, he surfaces, shaking wet hair out of his eyes.
“But that’s months in the past. What matters is the near future. Several hours from now, Pacifia will invade. You’ll head to the Moon and keep as many innocents alive as you can. I’ll do the same here. I’m sure we’ll find a way to communicate after things settle.”
Something within me goes brittle. Over the past three seasons, some of the steel in Wes’s eyes has passed into my spirit. I can only hope it will linger when he’s not around.
“Let’s start the future today. With this.” Hands heavy with sorrow, I pass him the end of a string of explosives, and we begin our work in earnest. After I hand Wes the short cords, he submerges himself and ties sections of the explosives chain to the fishing nets. He gasps for air every time he comes up, his lips going purple from the cold.
As he progresses, I tether the boat to the net conglomerate near him and feed him more of the chain, ensuring it doesn’t tangle. Why can’t I swim? I’d join him in an instant to speed up his progress. Helpless and swallowing frustration, I watch his movements grow stiffer.
“It’s okay,” he calls, teeth chattering. “Before I left for the Moon, Father made all of us swim in cold water. Once a week, every winter!”
That’s why he and the other Sanctuarist spies are so tough. Someone who can spend twenty minutes in the wintry ocean knows how to endure. I’d be hypothermic in five.
Days seem to pass before we’re done. Finally, I take Wes’s icy hand and help him back onto the rowboat, patting the water off his torso with the empty cloth satchel we used to carry our supplies. As Wes shifts into a sitting position, his movements are slow, his limbs rigid. Panicking, I pick up the wool jacket and slide his arms into the sleeves, one by one. My own hands shake as I fasten the three buttons up the front, and not entirely because of the cold.
“You’re so warm,” he says.
I wrap my arms around him in an off-kilter half hug. He reciprocates. As he shudders from the cold, I feel the energy go up and down his spine. A moment passes, and neither of us releases the other.
“Phaet . . .”
“Hmm?”
“What are you thinking?”
If you don’t let go of me, I’ll never make it home. But my heart’s too full to say it.
“You tell me,” I mumble instead.
“I’m not so good at this,” he says, releasing me. “Serious talking, I mean.”
I raise an eyebrow. Really?
“Fine, you win.” Wes smiles queasily, and swallows. “I’m thinking that . . . that I’m going to miss you terribly. I can see it now, my life after you leave. It’ll be like going around barefaced after you’ve gotten used to wearing spectacles. Even if you try to forget it, the knowledge is there, the sense that things aren’t as good as they were. Everything will be blurrier without you, Phaet. Lonelier too.”
I take in his words, swirl them about in my mind, and then I wrap my arms around him again. Honored and joyful beyond expression, I hold his heartbeat in my hands. A steady but rapid ka-thump, ka-thump.
But then thoughts break through the euphoria. My arms slacken and a cold wind rakes across my skin. I don’t want to return home and agonize over an Earthbound boy, not while I’m trying to save my two siblings, help my lifelong friends. The more joy I feel now, the more it’ll hurt to lose Wes when I go.
“Miss me in a few hours,” I mumble, pulling away. In the distance, I see the demonic red light of a floating city—a star that’s fallen onto the ocean, damp but still glowing. “First, we have to make it through them.”
15
KORÉ ISLAND RISES BEHIND US, ONE SHADE blacker than the starless sky. There’s not a single bacterial light aglow. Blown by intense winds, sparse white grains careen through the air in every direction except straight down, a snowfall that’s more like a dust storm.
From a small watchtower built into a rock outcropping, we see Pacifia looming larger and larger on the horizon. I can discern its oblong outline and block-shaped towers rising out of a woolly blanket of smog. Only a few sections of the city are lit, at the prow and the stern. Pacifian citizens probably don’t go out much at night; I learned in my studies that law enforcement in the massive floating city is underfunded and corrupt. I don’t want to imagine what dangers await unwary Pacifians in the darkness.
Wes and Finley have been assigned watch at the big island’s north shore, where the mountain meets the pastures. The boys hunch over a paper printout of Pacifia’s floor plan; one of the Lunar spies accessed it in the Militia databases and sent it over digitally. Wes, Finley, and I will oversee the booby traps that activate automatically, set off those that need triggering, and take down what foot soldiers we can. Then Wes and Finley will board Pacifia with a group of other Sanctuarists and try to shut down the command center—if there is one; the Batterers aren’t sure—and I’ll look for a spaceship to carry me home.
Mrs. Carlyle couldn’t fathom a girl working alongside young men in a war zone, but Wesley Sr. convinced her that my departure was for the best. Most Odans, including almost all of the Sanctuarists, still don’t know that I’m a Lunar, and Wesley Sr. didn’t want to suffer the consequences if they were to find out.
The Carlyle women have taken shelter with the other civilians in the upper levels of Koré Island. Though several dozen Odans have fled to distant islands or to other cities, most resolved to stay until the end.
In the darkness, I shudder at every sound: the tumble of a pebble, the keening of a hawk. In my jacket pocket is a rubbery sleeve that fits over a forefinger, embossed with some Lunar Sanitation worker’s fingerprint. Wes used it to sneak around Base IV all those months ago. He passed it on to me—a gift for my trip home. I squeeze it to stay close to calm.
It’s not easy. I dread our first encounter with the enemy—especially the Militia contingent. Among the attackers, there’ll be Committee loyalists who hate me with every cell in their bodies. But there may also be my friends, who made Militia bearable for me. Will I have to fight Nash, Eri, or Io? What about Orion? I couldn’t extinguish his lazy smile and dry wit. Unless he . . . Would any of them attack me? As for the soldiers who are only following orders—can I bring myself to kill them, if the only other option is being killed?
Shaking, I call out in my thoughts to anyone who might listen—the Odan god, perhaps. Please, please, don’t let it come to that.
Finley’s holding up better than I am. Something in his expression reminds me
of my reedy, off-kilter brother. It’s his curiosity, I suppose: the curiosity to see things he’s been shielded from until now.
“Remember, lock the Lazy after you’ve snitched it,” Wes instructs him. “If you stow it unlocked, you’ll put a hole through your pants—if you’re lucky. If you’re not, it’ll go through your leg.”
We’ve gone over this before; Wes is repeating himself to calm us down. As one of our first moves, we’ll knock out some soldiers—preferably Lunar Militia, because they have the best, most familiar equipment—and steal their uniforms, armor, helmets, and weapons.
Finley nods, staring out the window. Hulking and angular, Pacifia plows through the water, wind, and snow. The churning waves in its wake reflect light from the crescent moon. If Tourmaline was big, Pacifia is a monstrosity, like Battery Bay. It must be as tall as Koré Island and twice as long from stern to prow. The smokestacks pumping waste gases into the air are rectangular prisms. Crooked monorail tracks snake between the buildings; some end in midair, the cutoff a lethal drop hundreds of feet down.
At the prow is a tower that spreads out into an expansive tabletop. It looks like a giant hand balancing toy planes in its open palm. The aerospace complex. If I’m to go home tonight, I’ll need to make it there.
Another, smaller tower points up from the hand’s center like a toothpick. That must be the command center, where people watch the runways and give orders so that ships don’t collide with each other.
As Pacifia enters the passage between the north and west islands, I catch my breath. The Sanctuarists watching the area, two old hands named Jean and Grenby, had better vacate before the chains of explosives go off.
Ba-ba-ba-BAM! Bright explosions distort the ocean’s surface, but Pacifia doesn’t shift from its course. The massive craft doesn’t even rock. What must we do to defeat them—sink the city? Blow a hole in the side? Both seem impossible. The Batterer stealth jets won’t join the battle until later. Based on Pacifia’s seeming impermeability, we’ll need the element of surprise.
“Don’t worry,” Wes whispers to Finley. “The Pacifians probably weren’t expecting that. I’ll wager they didn’t even know we’d prepared for an attack.”
I gulp, suddenly wishing I were in the Odan shelter with Wes’s mother and sisters. Pacifia will stop moving soon. When they reach shallower water, they’ll likely send out submarines.
“Amphibious warfare has proved difficult throughout history. We should be fine.” Wes used this tone when he told me his fake identity, back in training. He doesn’t think we’ll be fine at all.
“When’s Battery Bay coming?” Finley asks.
Wes sighs, apparently tired of ungrounded optimism. “I don’t think they will.” As he speaks, I imagine the Batterers’ antiwar protests spiraling out of control. “Whatever happens, Fin, keep your head up.”
Beside me, Finley swallows. He looks terrified.
“You ready?” Wes asks his cousin.
“Sure,” Finley says, but he doesn’t sound sure.
Wes’s eyes shift to mine. I pull up my pant leg, reach my hand into my battered Militia boot, and take out one of my three remaining daggers.
16
“WHY HAVEN’T THEY PULLED OUT THEIR BIG guns?” Finley loads another homemade grenade into our makeshift catapult.
The sun has set, but we wear simple infrared glasses—an outdated model Wes gave me long ago on Base IV, to ward off sneak attacks from jealous Militia trainees—and aim at large areas with a mean temperature of ninety-eight degrees Fahrenheit, the outdated temperature metric used by the Sanctuarists. Our attempts so far have all been misses; the grenades explode off target, causing the squads of soldiers to shift to one side. Invaders keep coming in an endless wave. It’s as if Pacifia is spilling its every able-bodied citizen onto Saint Oda’s shores.
Wes and I exchange a look. We can’t say what we’re thinking: the attackers haven’t used bomber aircraft or self-destructing drones because they hope to capture me alive.
“I’m not sure. But that’s first-rate aim, Finley,” Wes says, smoothly distracting his cousin. Finley beams. “Go ahead, chuck the thing.”
I light the fuse, Finley pulls the lever, and we watch the grenade sail through the air. I know it’ll hit its target, and the calculating, aggressive part of me gets a cold sort of satisfaction. It’s the part I’ve kept in check since I was a captain in Militia and I attacked a thief in the Atrium with an Electrostun. I’ve wanted to forget that it’s still in me.
Through my infrared glasses, the explosion below us appears in blinding white. It scatters the red dots in my modified vision like a spray of blood. We’ve hit the invaders dead-on, which means we didn’t waste ammunition like we did with our last few shots. A shivering thrill zips up the back of my neck. The Beater in me is rejoicing, and the rest of me hates it. Would I feel like this if I hadn’t undergone Militia training? Or did it not matter? Do all people, regardless of their experiences, enjoy watching their enemies burn?
Human beings are getting tossed into the air, and they’re dying—or sustaining horrific injuries—before they hit the ground. The carnage makes me feel as if someone’s frozen my insides. We’ve taken people’s lives, and we can never return them.
On the island and in the water, more explosions bring down the Pacifian attackers. Three of the Batterer jets have finally joined the fight; they twist, turn, and fire air-to-water missiles at the enemy. Broken submarines sink, sending up bubbles and smoke. But for every vessel that goes down, five more make it to shore. One Batterer jet flies too close to Pacifia, and some sort of electric cannon—probably connected to one of the power plants—sends it tumbling into the sea. The truth hits me like a slap: Saint Oda and eleven aircraft aren’t enough to fight this city. Unless Battery Bay decided that confronting Pacifia in these frigid waters is worth sacrificing their time and safety—which doesn’t seem to have happened—we’re doomed.
I need to move. If I keep watching grenades explode and souls leave the world, the Beater I was on the Moon might come back.
“A lot of soldiers have already landed,” I say. “Should we check the Punji holes?”
Wes loads another grenade into the catapult and fires. “Sure. Finley, go with her.”
I descend the spiral stone staircase, Finley behind me, and crawl out the half-meter-high door. We swerve to the right; in the path’s center is the first trap, which we’ve covered with a thin layer of sticks and leaves. About a meter and a half deep, so that a soldier will fall in past his shin armor, are sharpened sticks dipped in diseased manure, their tips pointing downward. If we trap an attacker, and he tries to pull his leg upward, the sticks will puncture his thigh, making escape from the hole impossible.
Finley and I duck into a copse of firs, counting as we go. The Sanctuarists have dug Punji holes on the far side of the third and sixth trees on our left, and installed trip wires between several pairs of trees in between. Dark shapes shift in the middle distance; frantic voices murmur. Our prey is closing in.
“Should we get Downers out?” a male voice whispers. In Militia lingo, “Downers” are tranquilizing guns that fire darts filled with sedatives.
“Obviously, fuzzbrain!” a woman replies. Foolish Lunar soldiers, talking with their visors up. “Didn’t you hear Alpha’s order back on Pacifia? We’re supposed to take any really good fighters prisoner. For questioning.”
In case a prisoner turns out to be me—or Wes. Do they suspect he’s here too?
Then the rest of the soldier’s words sink in, and for a second, I forget to breathe. Alpha’s order, back on Pacifia. That can only mean one thing: the General’s here—the head of Base IV Militia; father to Jupiter, my rival from Militia training; and the primary executor of the Committee’s orders. A hulking man with sharp eyes and a powerful, cruel body, he seems to have been selectively bred for devastation. I’d track him down and make him suffer—if
I weren’t petrified by the very notion of him.
“Hmph. The General’s clueless about how many natives are running around here.” The first soldier stands and adjusts his utility belt, which holds a spare Lazy, an Electrostun, a dagger, and what looks like sensor equipment. “I’ll take backup. Elara, Puck, Mayuri—go knock out whoever was screaming. Sounded like a little girl.”
Finley and I nod to each other. Three of these soldiers will head for Wes if we don’t take them out now. As one, we raise blowguns to our lips. Before the Militia soldiers can lower their visors, Finley puffs a dart at Elara. It burrows into her forehead, and she falls atop one of the males. His stumbling gives me an excellent shot at his unarmored thighs—a much larger surface area than the forehead. I puff once and manage to hit the side of the soldier’s leg.
“What the fuse!” one of the men cries. “We’re under attack!”
The two remaining soldiers flip down their visors, turn on their helmets’ headlamps, and fire their Electrostuns in our direction. Feeling the pounding of my heart down to my toe bones, I duck behind the nearest tree, angling my body sideways to make myself a smaller target. Nearby, a yellow beam illuminates Finley’s face, and I see his openmouthed expression of fear. Wesley Sr. and the other Sanctuarists must have lectured him about these weapons for years, but this is the first time he’s seen them in person.
We’ve lost the advantage of surprise; the soldiers know our locations, and their weapons make ours look like toys.
The other traps. Nearby stand two trees connected by a trip wire. When pulled, it will cause a looped rope on the ground to snag around the victim’s ankle and pull him or her four meters into the air. I face Finley, put a finger to my lips, and gesture toward the trip wire’s location. He only blinks at me. Fine. I’ll do this alone.