An explosion erupted behind them, sending a rolling cloud of sand and soot. Blinded by the debris, they crouched down and rested. Each second that flew by made Nebula’s anxiety grow. What if the Gryphonites blocked all the entrances to the surface? She didn’t think she could fight holding Mora, and her sister seemed to be mentally slipping away.
When the dust settled, they made their way over to Kale’s chosen tunnel. The Frigian looked stern, as if he’d been waiting for hours. “We don’t have much time.”
Nebula shot him a gaze that could have leveled a building. “I will not leave her behind.”
“She’s as good as gone.” Although his words had no kindness in them, Kale’s eyes held a timeless sadness beyond his years.
Nebula stepped forward, her face inches from his. “I am the pilot. They are not going to leave without me.”
Kale stared for a moment before taking a step back. “All right, all right. Come on. Let’s hope Max can hold out.”
They followed Kale through a series of intersecting corridors that seemed to delve deeper into the earth. Nebula thought she’d never see the light of day again. Radian remained a constant shadow at her side, and Mora’s breath pulsed lightly against her hair.
Just as Nebula was about to ask where they were going, a beam of sunlight illuminated the path ahead. Kale looked over his shoulder and released a toothy grin. “Just what Max’s maps said.”
He led them up a steep incline to a plateau, across which mass slaves dashed in a last ditch attempt at freedom. For each one freed, another was plucked from the earth by a flying Gryphonite. Some prisoners shot lasers at the sky, but there were too many birdmen to hold them all back.
Kale adjusted his own laser. “We’re going to have to run fast. The ships are just beyond that ridge.”
Nebula gripped Mora’s arms against her chest. “I am ready.” With a longing look at Radian, she followed Kale in a mad sprint across the open plain.
Suddenly, a Gryphonite flew over head, casting a shadow on the burnt-red sand. Radian and Kale ducked. Nebula looked up, prepared to place Mora down and fight, but the birdman flew over them and dropped a metallic ball in front of their passage.
“Find cover!” Kale dragged Nebula as she hoisted Mora higher on her back.
“Radian?” Nebula shouted.
“I’m right here, Nebula.” In such a hectic moment, she took comfort from Radian’s voice.
Just as they jumped down a ridge, an explosion spewed rock salt and minerals over them. Kale and Radian coughed as Nebula turned her concern to Mora. She laid her sister in the shadow of a ledge and cradled her body like an infant against her breasts.
Kale jumped up to the ledge. “Stay here. I’ll scout another way around.” Before anyone could protest, he disappeared over the rocks.
Radian gave her a nod. “Nebula, tend to Mora. I’ll keep guard.” He squeezed her shoulder and ran to the rim, peering over with his laser ready to strike.
“Mora,” Nebula whispered in her ear. “Can you hear me?”
Mora’s eyelids flitted like dying butterflies. “I can’t help it. I’m fading away.”
“No, Mora. You must endure. We are almost to the rescue ship.”
But Mora’s will faded like a shadow at midday. Her head swayed. She craned her neck and opened her eyes. “I know now you are not Mirilee.” Her words were weak, but the intent strong.
Nebula could only hold her close. She had no idea how to respond. “I am sorry.”
“There is no need.” Mora coughed in ragged outbursts, her lips wet with blood. “You have a kindness to you and an innocence Mirilee never had.” She smiled, as if remembering. “She was bold and proud. I knew my sister well enough to assume she would rather kill herself than be captured.” Her eyes looked to the sky, “I remember now. I saw her jump into the waters of the lake.” Her gaze traveled back to Nebula. “Perhaps she was right.”
“No, we came to rescue you. There is so much for you to live for.”
“Not with this poisoned body.” Mora’s eyelids drooped. “The darkness presses in.”
“Do not surrender to it!” Nebula’s voice broke on her words. She clutched Mora to her chest. “I need you to live.”
“I heard Radian say your name.” Mora smiled as if picturing a bright sunny day. “Nebula.”
Nebula felt her check grow warm like the sun shining on them in the ditch. “That is right. I came for you, Mora. I want to be a sister to you, just like Mirilee was.”
Mora’s words were so soft Nebula had to bend down and enhance her audio input to listen. “Dear Nebula, I cannot stay with you much longer. But I want you to know I do accept you as you are, and I would love you just the same.” She coughed, her breathing ragged.
“No.” Nebula scrunched her fingers into fists. “You cannot go.”
Mora went limp in her arms and her glassy eyes stared at the sky.
“No!” Nebula’s cry rang out, echoing off the cliff tops and throughout the canyons. Although her logic told her that Mora was gone, her heart refused to believe it.
Radian whipped around from his lookout point and ran to her side. “She’s passed on.” His face was drawn in a solemn reverie. “We came too late.”
Nebula could not tear her gaze away from her fallen sister. “She was the only family I had.” She felt like she had lost control, her body shaking and heaving with emotion. If she tried to contain it, her heart would surely explode.
“Nonsense.” Radian’s voice was so stern he silenced her sobs. She turned her head to him and saw intensity in his gaze. “You are a part of my family and you always will be.”
Nebula allowed Radian to take her into his arms. She cried into his shoulder, but it was not all tears of despair. Mingled with the sadness was an underlying spark of hope. In one moment she’d felt so alone, like a single star in a vast universe of black holes. Now she knew she wasn’t alone. Radian would love her until the very end of time.
Kale peered over the rim of the ridge. His words broke the spell of the moment. “Come on, I’ve found an alternate route to the ship.”
Radian stood, but Nebula remained by Mora’s body, gripping her limp hand.
Kale took a moment from watching the sky overhead to glare at them. “You have to leave her.”
Above their heads, a scout ship whizzed by, collecting stragglers from the mass evacuation. Soon enough, the Gryphonites would locate their hiding place in the crevice.
“Come on, Neb.” Radian tugged on her arm. “We must make it back to the ship to fly the others out of here. We must save as many as we can. There must be proof of the horrors the Gryphonites have created.”
Every logical thought screamed at Nebula to get up and complete the mission as planned, but part of her heart felt tied to Mora. She couldn’t leave her body there without a proper burial.
A war cry careened off the canyons to their right. They’d been spotted by the scout ship and they were calling for reinforcements. Radian put an arm over her shoulders. “I know how you feel. I’m leaving her here too. Please, Nebula, leave her be.”
“I cannot Radian. I have failed.”
“Think about all the others—Eldin, Illena. You can’t save her any longer, but you have a chance to save them.”
Nebula couldn’t refuse. She placed Mora’s hand across her chest and closed her eyes. After taking one last longing glance at her lost sister, she allowed Radian to drag her up. They followed Kale down a steep incline disappearing into a tunnel. The scout ship released a rainfall of nets, the fabric falling uselessly on Mora’s body and crusted sand.
The tunnel emerged on another plateau, adjacent to the one they left. The only problem was this rise had no way of getting down.
“What do we do now?” Radian asked as they stood on the edge of a thirty-foot drop.
Kale untied his backpack and took out a single rope. “We climb.”
“What?” Radian’s brows rose as he p
eered over the ledge.
“You afraid of heights as well as underground tunnels?”
“No. But we’ll be easy targets.”
“Not if we descend in that shadow over there.” Kale pointed to a narrow crevice formed by the walls of two plateaus.
Radian frowned and took a breath. “What do you think, Neb?”
“I am calculating right now.” Nebula weighed all possibilities. After a moment’s thought, she replied, “It is the only way.”
Kale tied the rope to a rock the size of a small asteroid. He threw the remainder of the length over the incline. “Let’s go.”
Nebula took Radian’s hand. She wanted to tell him everything was going to be all right, but the odds were not in their favor. It would be best to remain silent and allow hope to shine through.
“I love you.” The words flowed from her mouth before she could think and she blushed.
“And I, you.”
“We don’t have time for Romeo and Juliet, guys,” Kale shouted over his shoulder. As if to reiterate his point, a buzzing sound came from the canyon beside them, ringing in the air like an alarm. The scout ship was onto them. With a nod, Kale disappeared over the ledge.
Radian gestured for Nebula to go next. “Ladies first.”
Nebula agreed. One look over her shoulder, she grasped the rope and began her descent. Radian followed her, his rubber-soled boots gripping the rock wall just above her head.
“What if they see the rope?” Nebula shouted to Kale.
“I’ve hidden it underneath a layer of sand.”
The buzzing from the scout ship grew louder as it scoured the ledge, examining all the shady crevices and outcroppings. Nebula hoped Kale knew what he was doing. She was blind to the sky over the ridge as she climbed down, hand over hand.
It took an achingly long amount of time to reach the bottom. Every time the rope jerked, Nebula pictured more of the sand shaking off to reveal their escape route. When she was certain she could bear the weight of the jump, Nebula leaped from the rock. She prayed the silver hull of the scout ship would not peer into their particular crevice. Just as Radian reached the end of the rope, they set off, closing the distance between them and the stolen Warbird.
Scouts were cluttering the sun glazed sky, and their movement lured them in. They had four ships on their heels when they saw Max’s barricade on the horizon. Nebula marveled at Max’s success. He’d been true to his word. Humans armed with lasers fired around a Gryphonite Warbird as the birdmen laid siege.
Ducking behind a ridge, they huddled together while Nebula estimated the distance between them and the Warbird. It was one-hundred fifty-two yards of open territory with scout ships firing nets and Gryphonites flying overhead with lasers.
“You two go first.” Nebula glanced over the ridge. “I will take the rear.”
“I don’t know, Neb.” Radian scratched his head so hard she thought his hair would fall off. “I don’t like the thought of you in the back.”
“I can run the fastest of all of us, and besides, if one of you gets hurt or tangled in the nets, I can pick you up and carry you the rest of the way. That way no one is left behind.”
Nebula watched as Radian cast a glance at Kale. The Frigian shrugged as if to say it wasn’t his decision.
“They do not kill humans.” Nebula reached out to grab his hand. “I will be fine.”
“Okay,” Radian agreed, “but don’t fall too far behind. I’ll only run if you’re with us.”
After catching their breath, Radian and Kale set off at a sprint with Nebula following. They zigzagged in and out of enemy nets as rigging rained from the sky.
Nebula thought they would make it until she saw a Gryphonite hovering in the air over her head. He sputtered back and forth in an awkward, jerking motion and she noticed one wing was splinted together. She recognized his sharp beak and mottled feathers as the Gryphonite she threw over the canyon in the battle upon landing. She hadn’t known the Gryphonites could fly with only one wing.
He raised his laser gun and fired. A shot hit her in the chest just as she realized the Gryphonite must’ve known she wasn’t human. “They do not kill humans,” she heard herself say as she fell back. But she’d been wrong about one thing. She wasn’t human, not anymore. Who was she kidding? She had never been human at all.
“Nebula!” She heard Radian scream her name before her world went black.
* * * *
The piano resonated in the background, filling the hall with haunting tones. Nebula was sprawled on the marble floor in Mirilee’s rhinestone-crusted evening dress. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling, casting a cool glow of flickering light.
She propped herself up and saw Radian sitting at the piano. He slumped forward, looking at the keys as if he didn’t understand them and pressed a few more notes in a plaintive tune.
“No.” Nebula spoke to no one in particular. “I am not going to be a part of these memories any longer.” She wanted to move on with her life, and the past would only hold her down.
The music ended with an abrupt high note. Nebula knew Radian was now aware of her presence and she did not want to be mistaken for Mirilee.
Nebula sprinted to the glass doors at the back of the hall. Her high-heeled shoes threw her off balance and she stumbled, kicking them off to careen across the slick floor. Casting a look behind her, she saw Radian leave the piano bench to follow.
She burst through the open doors and skipped down an incline of stone steps before Radian could catch up. She had no idea how she was stuck in another memory and she did not want to confront the past. The steps led onto a terrace spiraling into a hedge garden. The bushes grew tall on either side, forming a labyrinth around her as she ran further. Their prickly branches snagged her dress and she tore it, yanking the fabric away from their grasp.
Radian’s voice sailed out above the garden. “Nebula, you have to come back.”
Nebula froze. Was it her name he said? How could he possibly know her here, in the back-files of time?
“Radian, I am here,” she called, but twilight was giving way to darkness and she couldn’t see her path back. She was trapped in between reality and a memory, in Mirilee’s body with no visual enhancers or tactical aids.
“Don’t worry. I’ll bring you back.”
The corridor grew narrower as the bushes pressed in and Nebula could feel a rising sense of anxiousness and fear. Time on planet Gryphod must be growing short. “Please, Radian, come quickly!” She fell to the grass and tried to avoid touching the brambles. Their branches rattled and shook in the wind, above her a sliver of a moon peaked out from gray clouds.
“Nebula, stay with me!” Radian yelled, his voice growing hoarse.
She felt weary and her world darkened. Her words came out weaker than before. “I am over here.”
The clouds thickened until they covered what remained of the moon and the night drew in. The branches wove above her and Nebula could no longer tell which way was up. Her thinking slowed and her eyes shut. She felt like she was floating away and disintegrating at the same time, as if she’d been left in the phase chamber with no destination coordinates.
Then a hand shot through the brambles and grabbed her arm.
* * * *
Nebula awoke to the chaos of the battle raging around her. Radian’s face hovered over her, his hands brushing back strands of her hair from her eyes. “Nebula, please wake up.”
Her eyes twitched. The sun was blinding. Nebula focused, adjusting to a different lens. Relief washed over her as her programs responded. She was back in her machine-enhanced body. “What happened?”
“You were shot in the chest.” Radian looked back at Kale, who stood behind them, firing nonstop at the sky. “We have to get out of here. Can you walk?”
Nebula did a full-system schematics test. “I can. The laser short-circuited my energy, but somehow a spark brought me back.”
Radian smiled. “I was call
ing your name and holding your hand. I didn’t know what else to do. I’m not an engineer.”
Behind them, Kale’s laser fizzled out. He hit it on his thigh and re-aimed at the sky. Nothing but a few sparks burst forth. “Come on, guys! No more ammo.”
Radian put his arms behind Nebula and heaved her up. Nebula weighed more than three men put together, yet he lifted until she was back on her feet.
“You have to run.” He pulled her forward and she followed, stumbling at first, and then increasing her pace.
They ran through the barricade just as the falling nets brushed their heels. The lasers kept the scout ships at bay as they ran to the platform that would raise them to the Warbird.
“There’s our pilot,” someone with a familiar voice called, like a man greeting his old friend in a bar. Nebula recognized Max manning the controls for the platform takeoff. He clapped her on the back. “Where’s Mora?”
Nebula pursed her lips and shook her head. Radian had to speak for her. “She didn’t make it.”
“I’m sorry.” Max’s face crinkled in despair. Nebula thought of his lost brother and knew he was familiar with her pain. “I know you did your best. Damn those birdmen.” He gritted his teeth. “They’ve stolen so many loved ones. Such a waste.”
Nebula felt a higher purpose rush through her like a tidal wave, made stronger by their collective loss. “That is why we are here, Max. To take these former prisoners back to Earth so they can tell their stories and rally more people behind this cause. I, myself, have recorded each vision, every movement of the eye, and I can assure you it will be reported to the highest authority.”
Max nodded. “Well done. Now let’s send you guys up there and get this show on the road.”
“What about Illena and Eldin?”
Max smiled and nodded. “Already aboard and buckled up, ready to go.”
Nebula felt could finally breathe again. She released a sigh as she filed onto the platform with Radian and Kale. “What about the others?”
Max looked back over his shoulder at the scene of chaos raging behind him. Slaves scurried everywhere, some hiding under outcroppings and others aimless, with nowhere to go. When his gaze returned, his eyes were watery. “About a hundred or so made it to the ship unharmed. But some must stay behind to cover your escape and help the workers who didn’t make it back in time. The colony must live on until a greater rescue attempt can be made.” He ran around the gate and it closed with him on the other side. He huffed out a breath of air, as if he was afraid of disappointing her. “All this time on this godforsaken planet, and the day comes to escape and here I am.”
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