The Survivor

by BRIDGET TYLER

  “Lots of smoke inhalation.” Mom anticipates my question. “But no fatalities.”

  “What about the construction?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “Unclear what we’ll be able to salvage.” She turns to Leela. “Is the Vulcan flyable?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Leela says. “She’s finished.”

  “Okay then,” Mom says. “I need you kids to get her out of here.”

  “Oh crap,” I say, the realization snapping through me. “The planet scrubbers.”

  Mom nods.

  “But they’re locked down,” Chris says. “Command access only. And only a few of us even know they exist. How could the Sorrow?”

  “Dr. Brown followed Ord,” Leela says.

  “And she was a colonel,” Mom says. “Did you remove her codes from Vulcan’s computers?”

  Chris shakes his head, wide-eyed. “You really think she told the Sorrow about the scrubbers?”

  “I hope not,” Mom says. “But we can’t take that chance.”

  Fear hammers into my heart. “Where do we go?”

  “Just get her off the ground,” Mom says. “And stay there until this is over.”

  She squeezes my hand quickly, and then she’s gone.

  My heart pounds all the way across the smoldering camp. The Vulcan is just sitting there. Ramp down. Powered up and ready to go. We left her that way, even though we knew the Sorrow were firebombing the camp and Takers could be all around us. It didn’t even cross my mind that they might steal the Vulcan.

  How could I be so stupid?

  Chris and Leela are still tethering in as I shove my hands up the nav app and the little ship jumps off the ground.

  “Maybe they don’t know. Maybe the firebombs were the attack,” Chris says, staring down at the burning settlement below us in the three-sixty. “They certainly did plenty of damage.”

  “Not enough,” Leela insists. “Why would they attack just River Bend? And just with firebombs? There’s more to this. Tarn’s up to something.”

  The answer flashes into my brain half a second before a blast of light bleaches out the night. A flat boom follows on its heels.

  “What was that?” Leela gasps.

  “Tarn isn’t coming for the Vulcan,” I say, pointing down to where the Landing now sits bare and vulnerable in the darkness. Its particle shield is gone. The fire at River Bend was just a diversion to draw away the marines and everyone else old enough to defend themselves.

  “The Sorrow are attacking the Landing.”

  Twelve

  Leela reaches over and grabs the nav app, pulling it across the wall screen to take control of the ship.

  “What are you doing?” I demand.

  “Putting us down,” she says, initiating a spiraling descent toward the Landing’s airfield. “Aai and the kids are down there all alone. We can’t just watch the Sorrow—”

  “Tarn’s not going to kill a bunch of little kids,” I say.

  “We’re not talking about Tarn,” she counters. “We’re talking about angry Takers who look at us and just see alien. Everyone old enough or strong enough to fight is at River Bend.”

  I look down at the airfield below us on the floor screens. A pair of black flyers perch beside the 3D shop. Blackout-robed Takers are pouring out of them, visible in the darkness only because of the light from the shop’s touchscreen walls.

  “There are too many of them,” I say. “We won’t be able to hold them off, and if they get their hands on the Vulcan—”

  “So just drop me off!” Leela shouts, hurling a glare at me. “I’m not going to let my mom die down there while I sit up here and watch.”

  “Oh sure,” I snap back. “So I’m supposed to sit up here and watch you die?”

  “No!” she growls back. She sucks in a desperate sob. “Yes. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do, Jo!”

  Neither do I. But we can’t just sit here, too close but not close enough. We have to do something.

  A shockingly loud burst of gunfire cuts through my desperate confusion and muzzle flashes light up the night below us as marines storm out of the 3D shop and charge the Takers.

  “Shelby knew.” Leela exhales the words, relief flowing through them. “Shelby knew the fires were a diversion.”

  A flare of blue-green light wipes out the starboard wall screens a heartbeat before a roaring explosion crashes over us. I spin to see a third black flyer fall out of the sky and slam into one of our parked flyers with a tearing shriek of metal.

  Flames leap from the wreckage.

  “Holy—Shields up!” Leela shrieks at the computer. Red impact marks popcorn over the Vulcan’s force field even as it shimmers into place. Friendly fire.

  “Can’t they see it’s us?” Chris demands.

  “Apparently not.” Leela gasps, swiping up an open comms feed. “Friendly! Friendly! Watch where you’re—”

  Bullets spray over our shield again.

  “Get on the ground, Vulcan,” Shelby growls over the open comm. “Or we’ll put you down.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Leela says. Her hands are shaking as she taps and swipes at the nav app.

  More impacts slam into the shield all around us, shaking the ship with repressed kinetic energy.

  “Jo!” Leela pleads.

  “I’m on it,” I say, my hands already skimming over the shield app, which popped up on the wall screen when Leela activated it. I shift power flow, keeping the force field steady as Leela swings the Vulcan away from the fighting and sets her down at the far end of the field, between the Trailblazer and 3212.

  “What do we do now?” Chris demands.

  “You two are staying here,” Leela says, untethering and shoving to her feet. “If they get too close, take off again. Go . . . somewhere.” With that, she starts up the corridor to the main hatch.

  “Where are you going?” I call, fumbling with my own tether.

  “I spent four years training to be a marine,” Leela growls. “I’m going to help.”

  “Leela!” I protest, but she’s already opening the hatch. I follow her out onto the ramp. “You’re unarmed and—”

  “Shh!” She yanks me back against the ship. “Did you see that?” Her whisper is so thin, I can hardly hear it.

  I look out into the darkness around us. I don’t see—

  “Takers!” I gasp as the silhouette of a robed figure slips across 3212’s standby lights. “What are they doing?”

  She ducks back through the hatch and I follow her, whispering, “Computer, screens off!”

  The corridor plunges into darkness.

  Chris gasps, startled. “What are you—”

  “Shhhh!” I whisper. “There are Takers out there. They must have seen us land.”

  “I don’t think so,” Leela says, peering through the hatch. “They’re headed for the Trailblazer.”

  “The raw!” Chris whispers.

  “Yeah,” she says grimly.

  “You mean it didn’t get offloaded?” I breathe.

  “We were going to hop over to River Bend in the morning.” Leela grinds the words out as she texts on her flex. “Crap. Jay says the squad is pinned down by the 3D shop. They’ll get out here as fast as they can, but it’s gonna be a minute.”

  “A full sixth of our raw supply is on that ship,” Chris says. “Losing it will cripple us.”

  “It’s worse than that,” Leela says, pointing through the wall screen to where white light is spilling through the Trailblazer’s unfolding rear doors. “If they got those doors open, then they have access codes.”

  Crap. She’s right.

  “Dr. Brown must have given them hers,” Chris says.

  “Yeah,” Leela agrees. “That means they don’t have to steal the raw. They can just steal Trailblazer. Then all they have to do is take her into orbit and ram the Prairie’s solar sails . . .”

  And our whole species is dead.

  “If they have Dr. Brown’s command codes, they could just as easily take the Vu
lcan,” Chris points out.

  “If they wanted the Vulcan, they’d be coming for her,” I say. “They aren’t. I don’t think they know about the scrubbers.”

  “So we leave Vulcan and try to stop them from taking Trailblazer?” Leela says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I think we have to. Somehow.”

  “I might be able to take one of them hand to hand,” Leela says, dubious. “But I counted at least four of them, and they’re armed.”

  “So are we,” Chris says, pulling a laser welder from his belt. “It worked before. With the raptors.”

  “Only sort of,” I remind him.

  Leela pulls out her own laser welder. “Better than nothing.”

  “Title of my autobiography,” I say, amazed at how steady my voice sounds. Is this how Mom feels when she slaps on her commander face and convinces us all that she knows what she’s doing and everything is going to be fine?

  We slip out of the Vulcan and double-time through the grass toward the Trailblazer.

  The shuttle’s open ramp glows gently in the darkness. It’s only a dozen meters long, but knowing there are armed Takers waiting inside makes the narrow gauntlet look like a light-year. We’re never going to get close enough to use our welders. One of them will see us coming before we’re halfway up.

  “The emergency hatch!” I realize abruptly. “We can get in through the cargo pod.”

  “Yeah,” Leela says. “The element of surprise sounds good right about now.”

  She taps her flex a few times, and I hear the slither of her tether extending into the darkness overhead, snicking into the contact point on the emergency hatch. I’m opening my tether app to do the same when I feel a quick stab of itchiness at the back of my neck. I think it’s an insect at first, but then I feel it again. Stronger.

  That’s Sorrow sonar.

  “Get down!” I hiss, pulling Chris and Leela back against the Trailblazer’s hull as a huge Taker emerges from the flame-lit darkness of the airfield, tugging a Sorrow in a faintly glowing gray robe along with them. That’s weird. I’ve seen Sorrow wear gray like that before, in the Solace, but we’ve only ever seen Takers and Givers outside the caves.

  That itchy feeling comes again, louder and stronger, followed by a sharp, chilly declaration. The two Sorrow are arguing.

  The gray-robed Sorrow stops and holds both of their hands up to cover their face, palms in. That’s the Sorrow gesture for no. Green biolight oozes between their trijointed fingers.

  The Taker spins on the gray-robed Sorrow, hefting a massive battle hammer made of Diamond Range crystal. They growl something that makes me feel terribly embarrassed, like I’m ten and Mrs. Divekar just caught me stealing jelly beans from the guess-the-number jar in the back of the classroom all over again.

  The gray-robed Sorrow doesn’t move.

  The Taker hefts their hammer a little higher and grumbles something low that hits my body squarely in the fight-or-flight response. That Taker is going to kill this Sorrow if they don’t play along. The gray-robed Sorrow gets the message. They spin back toward the Trailblazer in a whirl of dully glowing robes and stride toward the shuttle. Their hulking escort follows.

  Leela swears. “That’s eight of them, and the last one had a battle hammer. We can’t go in there.”

  “We can’t let them take the ship, either,” I say.

  “Thank you, Cadet Obvious,” she snaps. “But how are we supposed to stop them?”

  “We don’t have to stop them,” Chris says. “We stop the ship.”

  “Cuz that’s easier?” Leela snaps.

  “No,” he fires back. “But it’s possible. We can cut the power regulator. Engine won’t fire without it.”

  “No way!” I gasp at the same moment that Leela snaps, “Absolutely not.”

  “I know, it sucks,” Chris whispers. “But if they ram the Prairie . . .”

  “To get to the regulator, we’ll have to crawl up the fuselage,” I say. “They’re powering up now. If they fire the engines while we’re in there, we’re toast. Literally.”

  “You got a better idea?” Chris says.

  I don’t. Neither does Leela. I can see it in the grim look on her face.

  “I’ll go,” Chris says. “I can do this.”

  “No, you can’t,” Leela says. “You’re too tall.” She looks to me. “It has to be us.”

  My skin knows what it is to burn. Sixty percent of my body had full-thickness radiation burns after the accident. I shudder, trying to drive the sensation back into my memory, but it clings. I can hardly convince my head to move on my neck, much less climb up a fuselage. The flashback is holding me prisoner. Again. And I’m going to let the people I love down. Again.

  Then Leela grabs my hand.

  She’s shaking. Clammy.

  She’s just as terrified as I am.

  “This might be the stupidest thing we’ve ever done,” she says. “And that’s a pretty damn high bar.”

  Impossibly, her fear seems to dull mine.

  “It’s getting stupider, the longer we stand here,” I say.

  She nods.

  I surprise myself by taking a step toward the Trailblazer’s fuselage. And another. Then I’m running. Tugging Leela along with me. I can hear Chris behind us.

  I drop Leela’s hand as we reach the huge black cones and tap into the tether app on my flex.

  “Searching,” the computer announces. “Searching. Searching. Searching.”

  “Damn,” I say. “There aren’t any tether points up there.”

  “Our stupidity is literally inconceivable to others,” Leela growls. “You’re gonna have to boost us up, Chris.”

  “I’m not sure that’s gonna get you high enough,” Chris says.

  “You get me up there,” I say. “Then I can brace Leela and—”

  “I can stuff myself into the live space engine exhaust port,” she says, finishing the ridiculous thought.

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s get this over with,” she says.

  Chris weaves his fingers together into a sling and I plant my boot in his hand, clinging to his shoulders as he hefts me up to the edge of the fuselage.

  I grab the rim of the tube and plant my boots against the Trailblazer. Then I pull, my arms burning as I force them to bend and drag my body into the hot, grainy funnel.

  With my boots and shoulders planted, I snatch a climbing spike from my harness. I stab it into the carbon skin of the fuselage, mentally apologizing to the engineers who are going to have to repair the damage.

  “Hit your autoconnect,” I whisper-shout down to Leela.

  Her tether slithers past me and thuds into the spike. Seconds later her retracting line hauls her up into the fuselage.

  I grab her arms and heave. Leela isn’t a big person, but she’s solid muscle. The world narrows to my straining muscles and grinding joints as we work together to get her past me into the narrowing tube.

  Then she’s up.

  I help her plant her boots on my shoulders and lean against the searing wall of the fuselage to hold her steady. I can’t see what she’s doing—just the pale glow of her flex in flashlight mode and flares of light from the laser welder.

  For about seven seconds, I think we’re going to make it through this.

  Then the ship comes to life against my back.

  The rising thrum of the engines is so familiar, I can almost see the preflight sequence, like the app is running on the inside of my skull.

  “Leela—”

  “Nagging isn’t helpful,” she snaps.

  “They’re powering up,” I say.

  “Gee, thanks for the update.” She pounds on something above me with what sounds like her fist, then shouts in pain.

  “Leela!”

  “Shut up. I have one more wire to cut.”

  The engines are singing in harmony now.

  “Lee-la!”

  “No! No, no, no, I can’t reach it!” she sobs. “Please! Come on!”

  But it�
��s too late.

  We’ve done everything we can.

  “Brace yourself, Chris!” I shout. Then I let us fall, grabbing the edge of the fuselage so that only Leela drops into Chris’s arms.

  “I wasn’t done!” she shrieks.

  “Too late!” I cry as I drop to the grass beside them, already fumbling for the autoconnect button on my harness.

  Heat blooms over my skin as my tether flies out. I don’t know what it’s connecting to. It might be my climbing spike inside the fuselage, but we’ll be just as dead if we stay here long enough to find out.

  I wrap my arms around Leela and Chris as I shout, “Retract!”

  The tether snaps tight, whipping us into the air. The weight of my friends feels like it’s going to rip my arms out of my sockets, but I hang on. I just hope I’m strong enough to—

  WHAM!

  I feel my ribs cracking as we slam into something smooth and warm. Sparks spin through my vision and my stomach heaves. I try to hold on to Leela and Chris, but my arms are going numb. They fall away from me.

  I pass out. I don’t know for how long.

  The next thing I know, the Trailblazer’s engine is on fire.

  I twist on my harness, my brain struggling to figure out why I’m looking down at the flames. I’m hanging from the side of the Trailblazer. Apparently, my harness autoconnected to the emergency hatch at the top of the shuttle. Five meters below me, Chris is dragging Leela’s limp form across the icy grass.

  I smack my autoconnect button again and my tether retracts with a slither and a thud. Gravity claims me and I half slide to the tiny frozen spikes of grass. Pain claws at my rib cage but I ignore it, rolling to my feet and staggering toward my friends.

  “Is she—”

  “She’s breathing,” Chris sobs. “She’s breathing.”

  I hook my arm under Leela’s limp shoulders, relieving Chris of half her weight. My ribs scream with pain, but I don’t care. We have to get back into the Vulcan before . . .

  Light cracks through the Trailblazer’s main airlock, stabbing through the orange flicker of the flames as the ramp unfolds behind us.

  Chris screams, dropping to his knees and taking both of us with him.

  “Chris!”

  He gasps. “I’m hit!”

  A flash of rainbow light catches the edge of my vision. I throw myself sideways across Leela as a crystal shard the size of my palm slams into the frozen mud where I was lying seconds before. From here, I can see that another shard is buried in Chris’s shoulder.