“Without making it obvious to the guards,” Garek warned, and Kas nodded.
“Unobtrusively and quietly.”
“You think the Kardanx will be careful?” Taya asked.
“I hope so.” Kas looked over at him. “And I'll remind them that Garek won't be happy if the guards get suspicious.”
That was fine with Garek.
He didn't mind being the monster they feared. When it came to getting Taya free, he'd be their worst nightmare if he had to.
He stood as well. “Let's spread the word through camp. We need to get things moving.”
“What about shaping the ore?” Quardi asked. “Taya says she needs it in long spears.”
“We'll have to do that after we've taken the camp. I'm not sure how long we'll have between taking one of the transporters and having the second come to investigate, but that's the window you'll have to work on them.”
“We can stoke the fires when Garek leaves to bring down the tower,” Pilar said. “Make everything ready, and then use Taya to shape it.”
Taya nodded. “You can't do it with the guard watching. He'll know it's shadow ore if he gets too close.”
“What's the timeline?” Kas asked. “What deadline should I give Luci and the Kardanx?”
“Two days,” Garek said. “That's long enough for them to find enough wood, to get their heads in the right place for the escape, but not too long to live under the fear and adrenalin of knowing we're about to put ourselves in danger.”
Aidan nodded in agreement, and so did Kas.
“Two days it is.” Kas disappeared into the dark and Taya rose up beside Garek, slipped her hand into his.
“Let's go scavenging.”
Everyone else stood except his father, who shifted again in his chair, looking frustrated.
“Bring whatever you find back here. I'll sort it,” he said.
Garek hesitated. “Do they check here?” It was such a communal space, they would be stupid not to check it regularly.
Taya shook her head. “In the beginning they did. Not any more.” His father tried to move the chair a little way away from the fire, and Taya must have seen more in the move than he did, because she crouched in front of him, rubbed a hand over his knee. “I know you get angry about these legs,” she said, and he could hear the depth of love and warmth in her voice. “You think they hold you back, but without you, we couldn't smelt the ore at all.”
He was used to his father blustering and being difficult and annoying, but instead of brushing Taya off as he expected, Quardi leaned in and kissed her cheek.
“Luckiest day of my life, when my boy fell for you,” he said, and she laughed softly. Garek could see from their body language this was a well-worn ritual between them.
“No,” she answered, and Garek could tell from his expression of delight his father knew what was coming. “I'm the lucky one.”
She looked over her shoulder at Garek, her eyes still alight with laughter at their private joke, and in that moment, as their gazes held, there was nothing he wouldn't have done for her.
Chapter 37
Two days felt too long, and not long enough.
Now that he stood back on the hill, crouched down beside the tower with Aidan, Garek went through a checklist of their preparations.
They were solid.
Containers had been made, mostly by Aidan and himself, supplies had been quietly gathered and stored.
Everyone had put together a small bag each of belongings to take with them.
His father had concocted some elaborate story to cover why he needed to keep the furnaces burning through the night tonight, and that had the additional benefit of keeping one of the two guards focused on what he was doing, rather than watching everyone else.
He and Aidan set out before the transporter had picked up the night shift, taking advantage of the early darkness to get a head start.
While they'd been walking, they'd watched the transporter return to camp with the day shift and then angle up into space, silhouetted against Barit.
Garek had stopped to track it, and had only continued on when the bright blue flame from its thrusters winked out as it left Shadow's atmosphere.
Now, although at least two hours had gone by since then, he checked the night sky one last time before he stood with a piece of Taya's shadow ore in his hand.
It had been Taya's idea to use it against the little box of lights at the bottom of the tower.
“The ore might interfere with the way it works, but it's also really hard, so you win both ways,” she'd told him as she put it in his bag that morning.
He'd nodded, then tried to smooth away the worry on her face as she'd buckled his knapsack again, gently cupping her cheeks and kissing her goodbye.
She hadn't said anything more; she hadn't needed to.
He could see her fear for him and her excitement at the thought of escape in the way she hugged him close one last time.
He didn't know why, but now he kissed the smooth, thickly-veined stone for luck, raised his arm and hammered it into the glass-fronted box.
A buzzing sound came from the now broken box, and he pressed the rock against it and the lights fizzled again, then spluttered out.
“Target struck.” Aidan used the guard terminology for a direct hit, and Garek approved. They had taken the war to a strange place, but this was an extension of what they'd both been doing in Gara.
With the box destroyed, they both found a flat piece of ground to stand on and grabbed hold of one of the horizontal metal bars which made up the tower, pulling downward.
They'd chosen the place with care while they'd waited, finding the most rusted part of the metal structure.
It groaned in agony, and they let go and moved out of the way, but though it had definitely tilted, it wasn't quite bent enough to fall.
“Again.” Garek grabbed hold, waited for Aidan, and then grunted with effort as they took the strain.
On the third attempt, they only just got out of the way as the whole structure toppled, the metal screeching like an injured snuffler as it went down.
Garek dusted the rust and grit from his hands. “Let's get into place.”
They'd both agreed the sky raiders would not land on top of the hill. There was no room, no flat surface big enough. So they climbed down, taking up hiding places among the rocks at the bottom.
Garek made sure he could still see a lot of sky from his position.
“What if they send a guard from the mine?” Aidan asked.
“Then they'll only have one guard at the mine.” It would be crazy for them to do that. Two guards was ludicrous as it was, but Garek admitted that they may feel secure enough to do that.
He thought it through. “Then we take the guard. Carry on waiting.” If the sky raiders were stupid enough to send the second guard when the first didn't come back, that would actually be a windfall.
They waited in silence, and Garek was grateful for the thick jacket Taya had taken from the store for him. It was levik leather, the dark gray of it making him almost invisible in the darkness, with a lining of soft levik fur.
The wind whistled and moaned, cutting an icy path across the flat plain. It was probably colder because the sky was so clear, but that was to their advantage, and sure enough, the flare of bright blue flashed high in the night sky after just over an hour of waiting.
“Here we go,” he murmured, and Aidan grunted in response.
The craft that came down was the same as the one that took everyone to and from the mine, a normal transporter with no weapons on it that Garek could see.
It circled the hill, taking in the fallen tower.
That's right, he thought, just a simple failure of your metal, something you already knew. There is no danger here.
Taya had raised the possibility that they would be able to see Garek and Aidan using the same technology they used to keep watch over them in the mine.
Kas had argued that was a very specific set-up
, a complex one, and he didn't think it likely to be a feature of the transporters.
It didn't matter to Garek. They would know he was here soon enough--having a little warning wouldn't save them.
The transporter landed and the doors slid back. Two figures emerged from the blunt, rounded front of the craft without any caution at all. They swung down using footholds built into the side, both in some kind of thick suit of dark blue with a full helmet.
Garek had wondered if they'd bring guards in their metal machines like the ones at camp and the mine, but these two seemed to be it.
He waited for them to walk past him, rose up and struck the one at the back on the helmet with the shadow ore rock.
He heard the fizzle of something from the hard shell, and the pilot lifted both hands to the helmet as if he couldn't work out what had happened.
Garek struck him again, and this time, the pilot turned.
Garek couldn't see his expression, but he guessed it was surprised.
The man grabbed him, trying to head butt him with the helmet, and Garek slid to the side, hooking an arm around the pilot's throat so he could hit the helmet again.
Something snagged at the sleeve of his jacket, and he pulled at it, realized as the helmet suddenly came loose that it was the catch where the helmet attached to the neck of the suit.
He pulled again, getting it up past the pilot's chin before taking an elbow in the ribs. He heard the sweet hiss of escaping air.
“I've got him.” Aidan said and Garek shoved the pilot at him, turned to the second pilot, who was only just turning back, only just realizing they were under attack.
She struck out with a wild punch that hit Garek on the shoulder and he was knocked back by the blow. The sky raiders were big, but so was he, and he was grateful the suit they were wearing included gloves, so their claws were sheathed.
He threw the shadow ore at her head, where it hit her helmet between the eyes.
This time, he saw a spark of dark purple that seemed to leap from inside the helmet to arc against the ore before it fell to the ground.
The pilot lifted her hands to her helmet, scrabbling at some lights flickering on the side, but Garek called the Change and knocked her down with a gust of air. He was on her in a moment, wrenching the clasp at her neck and hauling the helmet all the way off her head.
They stared at each other.
She bared long, sharp teeth at him, snapping at him, then panicked when she realized she couldn't breathe.
Garek leaned forward and snapped her neck, unwilling to watch her suffocate for however long it took.
He looked over and saw Aidan had done the same.
“This wasn't easy, but it didn't feel wrong. They stole our people.” Aidan moved over to look down at the pilot Garek had killed.
“Yes.” Garek picked up her body, straining under the weight, and dragged it behind one of the thick bushes that grew on the hill.
Aidan lifted his one, eyebrows raised, and Garek nodded, made room for the second body beside the first.
“Let's go change the air settings in the front area where the pilots sit, then wait to see what they do if the transporter doesn't report in.”
“You think they might send a guard from the mine?”
Garek shrugged. “If they don't, we'll fly to the mine as decided. We've got a few hours to play with.” He regretfully set the shadow ore down on the ground. It wouldn't be safe to take it.
“Do you think either of them had time to get off a distress signal?” Aidan took a last look at the bush and started toward the transporter.
Garek followed, his gaze going to the sky, watching for another flare of blue light. “I don't know. They're so complacent, I hope even if they did, it won't be seen as urgent.”
When they reached the transporter, Garek was pleased to see the doors had been left open. For a quick get away, probably.
All to the good, because he had no idea how he would have opened them otherwise.
He left Aidan on the ground, keeping watch for any sign of the sky raiders, and climbed into the front compartment.
The whole craft was powered off, and he pulled out his needle and poked it into the tiny hole built into the arm rest of one of the pilot's chairs to start it up, just as he'd done with the sky craft in Barit. The doors slid shut with a snap but he ignored that, and knelt down to find the air mix gauge as the vents began to pump their poison. He set it to replicate Barit air in less than a minute and found how to open the doors a moment later.
Aidan climbed up the side.
“Anything?”
The princeling shook his head. “Where do we wait? In here?”
Garek considered it. “One in, one out.”
Garek dropped to the ground and moved away from the transporter to find cover. With a shrug, Aidan pulled himself in and closed the doors.
Garek settled in to wait.
The plan they'd hatched had been built on guesses, but the guess was the sky raiders would send a transporter, and they had. The next step was for him to fly the transporter to the mine hours before shift change, hoping to force the guards to investigate, and when they did, ambush them and open up their suits.
It was the most unpredictable and dangerous part of the plan, but everyone on night shift had been told to head into the shaft when they landed.
The guards couldn't get them there, and wouldn't try anyway.
They needed their workforce alive.
An hour passed, and then two.
Aidan opened the door and stuck his head out. “They aren't coming.”
“No. We don't have time to wait any longer, anyway.” Garek swung back up into the pilot's chair and powered up. As they rose, and banked off toward the mine, a voice came through from somewhere, a low growl of a voice.
He exchanged a look with Aidan, lifted his finger to his lips.
Kas said he thought the sky raiders could see them in the back of the transporter, that they listened to them, too. If that was the case for the pilot's part of the transporter, too, they were in more trouble than he'd hoped. But there was nothing he could do about it now.
They were at the mine about five minutes later, and he knew he used too much power when he set the transporter down, he could hear the engines whining louder than they did when it landed in camp to fetch Taya.
Aidan winced and he waved an apologetic hand in acknowledgment.
He landed well enough, though, gentle and feather-light.
Aidan turned and clasped his forearm in the traditional guard handshake. “May you walk the walls tomorrow,” he said.
“May we both walk the walls for many years to come,” Garek responded in kind, and he realized the familiar pre-battle ritual settled him.
They both slipped out of their chairs and hunched low, crouching just out of sight beneath the window. Garek lifted slightly to look out, saw the guard was approaching.
“I don't know how he's going to look in here. That machine won't be able to climb up.”
It didn't need to, he discovered. Its legs extended, and as soon as it rose high enough, Garek hit the button to open the door, lunged out, and pressed the release button in the center chest of the machine, opening the glass dome.
The guard inside looked up at him, dumbfounded, and Garek leaped in with him, grabbed him and threw him out onto the ground.
He bent for the moment he needed to change the air gauge settings, and then jumped to the ground after the sky raider.
The guard was scrabbling at the leg of his machine, trying to climb back up it, but he'd already breathed in the air, and he was choking and gagging at the same time.
Garek looked up, saw Aidan had climbed into the machine and closed the lid again, turning it to face the mine.
Even if it wasn't dangerous to both the transporter and the night shift, they had decided not to even try to shoot the other guard with the weapons included in the arms, because they didn't have any idea which button it was.
Garek grab
bed the guard and started dragging him to the back of the transporter, fighting him the whole way.
The other guard, who'd been facing away, toward the mine's entrance, turned to see what was going on and Aidan moved toward him, lumbering forward clumsily.
Garek had to trust him to be the distraction he needed while he got the other guard out of sight.
The sky raider refused to go easily. There was keen intelligence in his eyes; fury, too. He fought as if he still had a chance to live, never letting Garek get a good enough grip on his neck.
When he realized there was going to be no air he could breathe, a sense of resignation came over him, but still he refused to give in. He swiped at Garek, trying to rake him with his claws, but he was weak enough by then that Garek was able to hold his arms down. He died breathing the poisonous air of Shadow instead of fast and clean.
“You should have left us alone,” Garek told him, letting him go and stepping back as he wheezed in his last breath. “Why couldn't you leave us alone?”
A grating, shrieking crash came from the other side of the transporter, and Garek turned away from the sky raider, ran to the front to find the guard machines locked in a strange embrace.
The one closer to the mine was the one containing the sky raider, Garek guessed. It looked as though Aidan had tripped his machine up and was leaning on the other guard.
Aidan must be trying to extricate himself, because the arms and legs of his machine were doing strange things, and the other guard was trying to push Aidan off him.
Garek ran. As he reached them, he saw Eli step out of the mine entrance, but he had to ignore him, ignore everything as he called the Change for a little boost up to slam his hand onto the button that opened the glass dome.
The sky raider flinched back as he was exposed, and then scrambled for the button within to close it up again.
Aidan managed to get one of his machine arms in the way, and it only closed partway.
“Get some shadow ore,” Garek shouted to Eli, saw him run to a pile of rock to one side.
He came running back with a piece the size of his head and threw it at Garek.
Sky Raiders Page 23