by Tess Sharpe
18
SCOTT DID a classic double take. “What are you talking about?” he asked. “I told you, I can’t get my suit to hold for more than a few minutes. And I’m not sure I can dismantle tech like that on my own. I kind of need Amadeus.”
“We don’t need you… I mean, we do,” Carol said. “But to get in, we won’t need Ant-Man. The guard Hepzibah questioned said the suppression weapon is at Fort Olvar.” She turned to Rhi. “And you said that your friend Jella and whoever she’s touching can just blend into any surface, so she’s as good as invisible, right?”
Rhi nodded. Her eyes widened as she caught on to Carol’s thinking. “Yes!”
“Okay, so Jella can get Scott and Amadeus into the fort to dismantle the weapon while the rest of us get Umbra. After that, the Damarians won’t stand a chance.”
“Jella would be a game-changer,” Scott agreed.
Hepzibah nodded in approval, rose, and disappeared in the kitchen while they tossed ideas about timing back and forth. A few minutes later, she returned with a large plate of flatbread, olives, and a slightly dusty jar of a spicy relish Carol recognized as a Shi’ar recipe Hepzibah had learned to make while growing up under their rule. For a second, the team lost themselves in the restorative crunch of salty bread and the zing of the relish, then returned to the task at hand.
Amadeus set his tablet on the table and hit a key that displayed a holographic calendar with dates scribbled on it. “If we do it right, I think there’s a way we can rescue Jella and Umbra at the same time. Before we crashed, I managed to download some of Ansel’s files—look.” He circled a date on the hologram. “If my calculations on the Damarian calendar are correct, this fundraising event is tomorrow. Which means the president and all his underlings will be at this Damarian museum in the capital, Edias.”
“So what do you suggest, Amadeus?” Carol asked, curious about how he’d lay out a plan like this.
“We go in undercover,” Amadeus said. “I can whip up some counterfeit invitations and ID. You, Scott and I… we look the most like the Damarians. No offense, Hepzibah.”
“The Damarians couldn’t dream of being as glorious as me,” Hepzibah waved his apology away. “But I understand—they do not possess such magnificent ears or tails, or antennae like Mantis. It’s their loss.”
Carol looked over her shoulder at the bench where Mantis was sleeping. She hoped the empath’s dreams were good ones. Tomorrow, she’d be waking up again to a nightmare.
“Tails and antennae are cool,” Amadeus said, ducking his head a little to hide a smile. “So, if the three of us go in, posing as donors from, I dunno, what’s a really far-off place in Damaria that the president doesn’t visit a lot?”
“The Isle of Tuke,” Rhi suggested. “It’s remote, but the ember-bomb minerals come from there—which makes the landowners very wealthy… and very protective of their island. They don’t leave often.”
“Sounds perfect,” Amadeus said. “Scott’s likely the guy they’d take most seriously, so he’d go as the landowner, Carol as his wife, and me as the assistant?”
Carol ran down the pros and cons in her mind. It was risky, especially since she’d confronted the president over the comm. But she had a feeling that Damarian women didn’t talk much at these events, anyway—so with the right clothes and demure attitude, she had a good chance of getting away with it. There was power in being underestimated.
“I like it,” she said to Amadeus. “What does everyone else think?”
“Seems solid to me,” Scott said.
“The big question to answer: how to get the girls away from their Keepers?” Hepzibah asked. “They keep them close, no?”
“They’re within arm’s length at all times,” Rhi said. “Just in case the Keepers need to use their powers.”
“Physical contact is required to turn off their implants and for the Keeper to maintain control,” Carol explained to Hepzibah in an undertone.
“I think I’ve figured out how to disrupt that,” Amadeus piped up. “At least temporarily, until we can remove Jella and Umbra’s implants. I made some mini EMP patches. Placed over the implant on their arms, it should scramble the sensor long enough for me to perform some quick extractions. I had to crank the pulse up really high to disable Rhi’s implant. They are powerful. And they have kill switches. We need to be careful so the Keepers don’t suspect us.”
“I’d suggest a showy distraction,” Scott said. “But as long as they have contact with the girls, they could use their powers against us, right, Rhi?”
She nodded. “They will not hesitate to use our powers, or our bodies as human shields.”
Scott’s mouth clicked closed, clearly fighting his reaction to Rhi’s matter-of-fact statement. “Okay, so we’ve got to be discreet.”
“Rhi and I can wait somewhere in the shadows in case you need us,” Hepzibah suggested.
But Rhi shook her head. “If I can’t be seen at or near the fundraiser, and I know I can’t, I should be focused on Zeke. I still have to find out where they’re keeping my brother.”
Carol frowned. “You can’t find Zeke?”
“I haven’t honed in on him since we got here,” she said. “They must be keeping him on the move. If they don’t stop, it’s much harder to get a hold on his location.”
“Can’t you just spin one of your rips and pull Zeke through it?” Scott asked.
“It’s too risky. The in-between is a tricky place and often you end up leaving things behind the longer you linger inside it. Sometimes it’s memories. Sometimes it’s your eyes or your teeth. Or even vital organs. There’s a reason I flew a spaceship instead of just walking through the rip. It’s a tear through time and space— it won’t kill you, but it’s not exactly a friendly environment.”
Carol didn’t even want to touch on how Rhi had discovered all this. She was just going to trust the girl knew her stuff.
“They can’t keep him on the move forever,” Carol said, propping her chin on her hands as she thought it through. They might have set up some sort of mobile prison for Zeke, and if the technology she’d seen so far was any indication, the whole planet was powered mainly by their precious twin suns rather than fossil fuels or other sources. Who knew how long they could keep the boy moving without stopping? What if they had him on a boat or underground?
Her lack of flight was hampering her at every turn, and it itched under her skin, the frustration, the pure fury at being limited like this. Then she felt a flash of guilt, because Mantis was truly suffering right now. Carol’s issues paled by comparison.
“Ansel might have the details on Zeke in his home office,” Rhi said. “He lives on an island outside of Edias. I know his house will be empty because he’ll be at the fundraiser. I want to break in and search for it.”
“The president’s home will be heavily guarded,” Scott warned.
“That’s why she’ll have me with her,” Hepzibah said instantly, smiling at Rhi. “I will accompany you, Rhi. We’ll find where they’re keeping your brother while Carol and the others get your friends.”
“If we dismantle their weapon after we get Jella and Umbra, and Rhi finds out where Zeke is, all we need to do is grab him and then free the girls at the Maiden House,” Amadeus said. “I guess the big worry is if they’ll move the girls now that they know Rhi is back?”
“I don’t think so,” Rhi said. “It would be a risky move, and Ansel doesn’t like to take risks. My Maiden House already has extra security because we were considered the most dangerous. And it’s in the most isolated spot.”
Scott bit back a yawn. “Should we move now?”
“No,” Carol said. “The Damarians are going to be up and down the Field of Fire all night, searching for us. It’s better to stay cloaked and powered down as much as possible, so they can’t detect any energy signatures, and then head out with the sunrise.”
“Then I’m gonna spend some time hacking into the Damarian network so I can cook up some fake invites and ID
, snoop around a little,” Amadeus said, getting to his feet and stretching his arms above his head. “Where should I set up so I’m out of your way, Hepzibah?”
“I shall show you.” She got up, and then looked at Rhi. “Do not worry,” she told the girl. “We will crush them.”
“She certainly has a way with words,” Scott commented, getting to his feet as well. “I’m going to go sit with Mantis for a while and try to… I dunno, project calm, good thoughts at her. Maybe it’ll help.”
“I’m sure she’d appreciate that,” Carol said.
Then it was just her and Rhi, sitting in the tiny shuttle kitchen in the middle of the night, plotting to overthrow a planet whose security forces were mobilizing to kill them.
Carol folded her hands and leaned on the table. “Let’s talk about Umbra and Jella,” she said. “And how I can let them know I’m there to save them in a discreet way. Is there a code word or something you set up?”
“Oh, it’s simple,” Rhi said, reaching inside her dirty jacket and pulling out the necklace she usually wore. This was the first time Carol had seen it up close, the series of silver discs sliding on a silver chain. With them laid out across her palm, Carol could see the etchings: numbers.
“The first year they put us in the Maiden House, they tried to take our names.”
A chill twined around Carol’s spine, but she kept silent, waiting, hoping Rhi would continue.
“Miss Egrit assigned us numbers and we had to wear these discs as ID.” She traced a finger around the one that had a five stamped on it. “Miss Egrit made me number five. Or she tried.”
“You fought back.” Carol didn’t need to make it a question. She understood the determination it took to rise in a world designed at every turn to reduce you to a tool, not a person.
Rhi nodded and went on. “So we started switching numbers. It was my idea. That first year, a lot of different people were there, observing us, apart from Miss Egrit. They started getting confused—I thought Number Five had the water powers, not the finding powers?—you know, that sort of thing.”
“So you annoyed them into giving you back your names.”
“Yes. And after they gave up on the numbers, I kept the discs, even the twins’,” Rhi said. “It’s like I knew even then that I’d end up being the one who ran, and I’d need these so it’d be easy to find them all again.”
“You ran to get help,” Carol stressed.
“But I still left them behind,” Rhi whispered. “No warning. He said—he said on the comm that Umbra cried when he told her. They must all think I abandoned them. Or died.”
“They don’t,” Carol said firmly. “Umbra doesn’t. She knows you. And when I give her and Jella the discs, they’ll know for sure. They’ll know you came back to free them, just like you always promised.”
Rhi pulled the chain from her hand, sorting through the discs—at least a dozen, and Carol knew they weren’t rescuing a dozen girls. Remembering Rhi’s story about the twins, she didn’t ask what had happened to the others, as Rhi slipped two discs off the chain, numbers 11 and 12.
“These belonged to Vale and Vik,” Rhi said, pressing them into Carol’s palm. “If you show them to Jella and Umbra, they’ll know I sent you.”
Carol stared down at the discs, recognition rising inside her. She knew what it was like to have nothing much left of someone other than memories and an ID tag.
“You look sad,” Rhi said. “I—did I say something wrong?”
“No,” Carol said quickly, her voice growing hoarse. “I just…” She let out a laugh, an uncomfortable sound that had her shifting in her seat as her hands closed around the silver circles. Sometimes, she was no good at emotions. “We have something similar to this back home, in the military. Ours aren’t dehumanizing like this, more for ID purposes, if you get lost in a war zone or your body is discovered in a…” she trailed off, clearing her throat, thinking of Stevie’s smile, of her brother, frozen in her mind in his twenties. “We call them dog tags.”
“Did you have them?”
“I did,” Carol said. “And so did my brother… the one who didn’t make it back home. His dog tags did, though. For a long time, I wore them around my neck next to mine, even though it was against regulation. When I took my job with NASA—that’s one of our space-exploration agencies—I gave them back to my mother. I knew I’d never hear the end of it if I lost Stevie’s tags in space.”
“That wouldn’t be ideal,” Rhi said with a hint of a smile.
“I think space might have been safer for them than Earth,” Carol said. “Few years back, my mom lost a bunch of stuff in a flood. Including Stevie’s tags. Mother Nature can be nasty sometimes.”
Sometimes Carol had pictured them, carried far from home, probably buried in mud or at the bottom of a river, and she felt a little heartbroken.
Some things were just objects. But some things… they became talismans. Symbols. She knew that all too well, Hala Star on her chest and all.
Rhi’s head tilted, and then she smiled, a brilliant smile that was full of a kind of joy Carol had thought she didn’t know how to feel. She held out her palm. “Take my hand,” she said. “And think about the tags.”
Carol clasped Rhi’s hand in hers, and the steel tags—with the stamped letters of his name, blood type, and ID number— formed in her mind’s eye.
Carol watched as Rhi spun her other hand in a counter-clockwise motion, the air above the table rippling and spitting in a tiny whirlwind. The blue-and-white sparks gathered into a tiny hole, which Rhi air-massaged and stretched into a glittering six-inch rip.
Then Rhi leaned forward and reached into the tear, her hand disappearing into the light. Carol tasted moist earth and ozone on her tongue, and gasped as the girl yanked out a muddy chain, dirty tags swinging in the open air between them. The rip snapped shut, and Rhi let go of Carol’s hand, dropping the tags into her open palm.
Carol couldn’t stop the choked breath she let out as she wiped the still-moist soil away, rubbing the indentations compulsively, as if to reassure herself the tags were really there.
Steven J. Danvers. Blood Type O+. ID 5421964.
The last piece of Stevie, finally back with her. When she met Rhi’s eyes, her voice cracked with emotion.
“Rhi, I—”
But the girl just smiled. “I know.”
She got up, leaving Carol alone with the necklace. As she watched Rhi walk down the hall to find a corner to bunk down in for the night, her fingers curled around the tags and the two discs that had belonged to the dead twins. And she swore on her brother’s memory, on Rhi’s lost sisters, that even if it was the last thing she ever did, she was going to free these girls.
19
MORNING CREPT toward them while Carol was on watch. Stevie’s tags were again around her neck, tucked under her shirt, but she couldn’t begin to describe how this made her feel.
Rhi had given her a tremendous gift.
She sipped the flowery herbal tea Hepzibah was fond of and watched the twin suns rise along the horizon, the dawn light shining through the crooked red-stone spires that stretched across the distance.
“You made a whole pot,” Hepzibah said, climbing into the cockpit and slipping into the co-pilot seat next to Carol to pour herself a cup.
“I missed the taste. You can’t get this on Earth. And I knew you’d be up soon,” Carol said, still staring out the shuttle window. “What do you think, Hepzibah?”
She turned to look at the horizon. She didn’t need to ask Carol to clarify. “Amadeus showed me the blueprints he found of this Maiden House. It’s ridiculous they call it that—it’s a prison. Nothing else.” She shook her head, as if she was trying to ward off bad memories. Carol understood—prisons made Hepzibah uncomfortable. Her skill at breaking out of—and into—them had saved her life and put her on the path to help form the Starjammers. But Hepzibah had spent her childhood on a planet under an invader’s rule, and then as an adult was kept on a prison planet and sen
tenced to be eaten alive. The thought of that particular punishment still made Carol shudder.
She’d escaped that fate, but some memories lingered.
“If we can shut off the weapon, I think we have a good chance,” Hepzibah finally answered her question directly. “If not, I guess I’ll just have to do all the heavy lifting for you.”
Carol snorted. “Just because I can’t fly doesn’t mean I can’t break into a prison.”
Hepzibah reached over, squeezing her knee affectionately. “I know how much flying means to you,” she said quietly. “But it’s not gone forever. And you know I’m joking—you’ve assembled an excellent team. But then, you always did have a gift for joining up with talented people.”
“You know, the term humble-bragging was invented for you,” Carol told her.
“I do not need to be humble,” Hepzibah said, her brows drawn together fiercely. “That is what they teach the women here on this miserable planet—to make themselves small. I refuse to fall into such a trap. There is strength in pride… in a woman knowing her worth and proclaiming it for all to hear.”
Carol had missed her. Even when they both had lived on Earth, Hepzibah had been busy with the X-Men much of the time, and it had been even longer since they’d worked side by side like this, liberating people in their rough-and-tumble Starjammers way: no paperwork. No higher-ups. No politicians breathing down her neck.
“Sometimes I wish I had your confidence.”
“Just sometimes?” Hepzibah teased.
They heard some rustling and clinking sounds coming from the kitchen—the rest of the team was up. Carol needed to check on Mantis. She took the pot of tea and poured another cup before she ducked out of the cockpit and took a left down the corridor, her feet making echoing metallic tings with each step. She tapped on the bunk door before sliding it up and peeking her head in.
Mantis was sitting up, eyes swollen, with half-moons of deep blue-green shadows beneath them. Carol handed her the cup of tea, and she took it, breathing in the fragrant steam between sips.