This Shattered World (36 page)

The girl is cowering behind a hummock, her hand over the mouth of the soldier next to her to stop his groans of pain from carrying. She needs to go back, to rejoin the fight, but she can’t—her legs won’t move. She’s found out how easy it is to run away; she’s letting her platoon, her captain, fight without her. It isn’t until the rest of the platoon falls back that her captain finds her, still frozen, the soldier she dragged out of the fight unconscious now.

“You okay, Corporal?” Her captain crouches, inspecting her for signs of shock.

“I ran away,” the girl whispers. “I ran away.”

“Don’t think Jessop would see it that way.” Her captain is taking the other soldier’s pulse. “Come on, we’re holed up on the other side of the ridge.”

She sits there as her captain hauls the wounded man up onto his shoulder and begins the trek back to the rest of her platoon. She tries to stand, but she can’t, and she watches him grow smaller and smaller until she’s alone again, the only soldier left on the plain.

The girl was supposed to be brave, and she ran away.

MY STOMACH TRIES TO FIGHT
its way up through my throat as the jets push us away from Avon, and I catch myself grabbing at the armrests of my chair. The shutters around us are closed tight, denying me a glimpse of the blue sky above Avon’s constant cloud cover, or the stars. I don’t know if the dizziness is motion sickness or my mind’s inability to process the last few hours.

With a jerk, the engines slow. It’s only once the thrusters aren’t slamming me back against the seat that I realize gravity’s fading out, and the nervous tapping of my foot takes no effort at all. My weight falls away just as my connection to my home did—in a long, drawn-out silence, my mind spinning, my chest hurting. I have no direction now. I’m not even sure which way to point to find home.

If I crane my neck I can see Merendsen’s profile up ahead of me, and once he turns his head to meet my eyes, but neither of us can unclip without setting off alarms. I haven’t known him long, but I can tell it’s killing him to walk away.

The view shields all stay in place, giving us no warning we’re about to dock, no view of the spaceport as we ease in. Every person who comes or goes from any colony on Avon passes through here, transferring from massive spaceliners to shuttles like this one, built to withstand gravity and atmospheric pressure. I can’t imagine what the spaceport would look like, such a vast thing suspended against the stars, if the viewports were unshielded. Instead the ship clangs loudly as it settles into its cradle, and then Jubilee’s throwing off her harness and striding toward the back of the shuttle to see her passengers out the exit. As she passes me, she murmurs in a low voice, “Don’t get off the ship. Hang back, stay out of sight.”

The passengers begin filing out of the shuttle. I see Merendsen’s head turn toward Jubilee, but there are soldiers and passengers everywhere, and they can’t speak. Merendsen nods, his eyes meeting Jubilee’s; their look is weighted with their history together, the moment stretching long and thin. Jubilee’s jaw clenches, and she nods back at him before he’s carried off in the current of travelers, vanishing into the crowd.

It’s not until I’m casually letting the others in my row of seats leave before me that I realize Sofia Quinn’s on board too, her strawberry-blond hair standing out among the other passengers. On her way to that off-world orphanage—or to whatever escape plan she’d been devising. Around me harnesses clink as the passengers unclip, and I hang back as they file down the aisles to the back of the shuttle, clutching armfuls of their belongings. Sofia glances over her shoulder to make sure she hasn’t left anything and goes perfectly still as she spots me. I lift my hand to press it over my heart, and she nods. Then the man behind her jostles her with his bag, and she steps forward.

Sofia pauses at the bottom of the ramp, speaking to one of the soldiers manning the spaceport and letting him scan her genetag. They’re scanning
all
the passengers for genetags. My protesting gut suddenly stills in horror. They’re going to know who I am the instant they look at that code on my arm. The soldier scanning her lifts his head—and looks straight at me.

Sofia twists suddenly, leaning against the guardrails and clutching her middle. Silver-tongued Sofia. Always ready.

She groans, letting her knees start to give. “I’m gonna throw up, I can’t do this. It’s the gravity. You gotta find me somewhere, I’m gonna—” Her lips clamp together. As the soldiers fuss over her, and one unlucky volunteer gets lumped with taking her off somewhere she can lose her lunch, I sink down behind a row of seats to crouch, out of sight.
Thank you, Sofia
.

Jubilee brushes by me without another glance, and I watch through a crack in the seats as she hands a thin e-filer to one of the soldiers. “The manifest’s a little off,” she says apologetically. “Things are crazy down there.”

“You’re telling me,” says one of the soldiers. “It’s a madhouse up here too, Captain. Everyone wants off that planet.”

I can see a little line of tension in Jubilee’s jaw, her eyes narrowing as she watches the soldier, and I know what she’s thinking. Down there, it’s people shooting at each other and people being torn from their families. Up here, it’s a lot of paperwork. But she simply nods at him. “I want to get this shuttle back down before the rebels get their anti-aircraft up and running. Can we make this quick?”

“Sure, Captain.” The soldier tucks the e-filer under one arm. “We’ve just got to search the shuttle.”

I freeze, heart stopping for a split second.

“Search the shuttle?” Jubilee echoes, her voice sharpening. “Why? There’s no point; if anyone had stowed away, they’re going right back to the surface.”

The soldier on duty shrugs. “It’s commander’s orders. Came through right before you landed.”

“Before—before
I
landed?” Her head half turns, but she catches herself before she can look at me. They know. Somehow, they suspect I’m here. Or that Jubilee has been sheltering a fugitive. Maybe someone at the spaceport recognized my face before I got on board.

“Yes, sir.” The soldier regards her with respect, but shows no signs of wavering.

She hesitates. “Fine, fine, search it. But make it quick.” She stalks back up the aisle, footsteps tense and quick. She comes to a halt right beside the row I’m hiding behind, her body further concealing me.

I sink down, no longer able to risk watching through the seat cracks. Instead I can hear their booted feet clanking up the grid floor, the dull click and slam of lockers opening and hatches being inspected. Getting closer.

Jubilee’s grip is white-knuckled on the armrest beside my head. The soldiers—I can make out three distinct sets of footsteps—are nearly on us.

“Satisfied?” she says, interrupting them. “They need me on the ground, I can’t afford to get stuck up here on the wrong side of a blockade.”

The footsteps halt. “Yeah, yeah, okay,” says the one who insisted on the search. “You’re good. Move out, guys.”

I let out a slow, silent breath as the footsteps start to retreat. I can see Jubilee’s shoulders relax a fraction, and with the soldiers in retreat, she spares a glance at me; her eyes are wide, but there’s relief on her features. She turns to make her way up the aisle and head for the cockpit.

“Wait—Captain, your paperwork!”

The moment freezes, then unspools with slow, heavy finality. The booted feet come running back up the aisle. Jubilee whirls back around. A voice breaks the fuzzy roar in my ears. “There’s someone here,” it says. I look up, and there’s a soldier staring at me. His hand moves toward the gun holstered at his hip. The other two soldiers are coming up behind him. I look up for Jubilee and find her eyes on me in an instant of horrified indecision.

Then she flows into action. Lunging forward, she grabs at the man near me and hauls him down so she can knee his shoulder. The gun drops from his nerveless hand. Jubilee’s boot catches the man’s jaw, then she steps forward to get an elbow under the chin of the second soldier, this one a woman, sending her reeling backward to hit the wall with a crack. Jubilee’s perfect, deadly, a predator.

All this has happened in the space of a heartbeat. Jubilee whirls to face the third soldier, a man who has kept his distance just enough to escape the initial blows. “Captain,” he gasps, clearly afraid. “I am placing you under arrest for assault and—and treason—”

Jubilee’s breathing hard, her muscles tense. “Back away, Private. This isn’t your fight. Take your friends to the sick bay, and report me there.”

The third soldier hesitates, his eyes swiveling from Jubilee to the two motionless bodies slumped on the floor. Then his fingers twitch, barely noticeable, but it’s enough; Jubilee sees him reach for his gun and gets there a moment before he does, the two of them grappling for the Gleidel. A bolt screams in the confined space of the shuttle, but dissipates harmlessly off the metal interior.

Jubilee wrenches the gun from his grip and then lashes out with it, slamming it into the soldier’s temple. It’s over before I can blink.

Jubilee stands above the three unconscious soldiers, chest heaving as though she’s run for hours. Gun in hand, she has her feet planted firmly, like she’s ready to start all over again. Nothing I’ve heard about her is true. She’s even faster than they say. She could have killed me a dozen times each day we’ve been together.

Though we’re only standing there a few seconds, it’s longer than it took her to drop the three soldiers. Finally she moves, looking at me over her shoulder and then tossing me the gun she took from the soldier. “Know how to use one of these?”

I swallow as I catch it, my stomach uneasy. “You sure about this?”

“Just point that end at the bad guys if we make it back to Avon.”

“And who
are
the bad guys?”

She doesn’t have an answer for me, and for a moment I can see the weight of what she’s done in her eyes. She’s crossed the line. When these trodairí wake, they’ll report her for treason. Like me, she can never go home.

Jubilee clears her throat, and then the two of us drag the unconscious soldiers out onto the platform, concealing them behind some cargo containers. It won’t last long; someone will find them, or else they’ll wake and sound the alarm. But it’ll buy us a little time. Time to figure out our next move. We clamber back aboard, and this time Jubilee has me sit in the copilot’s chair. She starts flipping switches, so quick and so sure that I almost can’t see the way her hands are shaking. But I can tell by the set of her jaw she doesn’t want to talk about it, doesn’t want to process what she’s done. She just wants to keep moving, and that much I understand.

The shuttle shudders as the autolaunch takes hold of us, and there’s a faint sense of movement as we’re lined up on a launching pad. Jubilee’s silent as she programs in the holding pattern. The computers take over. There’s another shudder, and a hum, and then I’m pressed back against my seat as we’re shot out into space once more. Neither of us speaks as Jubilee guides us forward. She’s monitoring our course on a readout, the viewshields still in place; finally she stops, toggling another series of switches until the engine noise cuts back to a tiny hum and the cabin lights dim.

“Okay.” She leans back in her seat, palms braced against her thighs. “We’re far enough out, and small enough that hopefully scans will think we’re another satellite if we stay dark.”

“They’ll find us eventually, though, won’t they?”

She swallows. “Yes.”

I want so badly to reach for her, to wrap her hands in mine and thank her for defying her people for me; but I know she wasn’t only doing it for me. She believes in this fight now. She knows as well as I do that saving Avon is more important than her people, or mine. And I know she doesn’t want to be comforted.

So I clear my throat. “Merendsen’s note,” I say, shattering the quiet. “Maybe it has something we can use.”

Jubilee reaches into her pocket to pull out the coded message from Lilac. We lean together to study the folded sheet.

It’s a printed message, with Merendsen’s handwritten translation scrawled between the lines. Lilac is talking about all the things Jubilee seems to associate with her—parties, clothes, vacations—and though some of it’s left alone, Merendsen has translated other parts in hurried handwriting.

Knave got access,
it reads.
No records of a facility being moved on Avon. But Knave found hidden manifests from ten years ago, from unknown location in sector where
Icarus
crashed. Three shipments, three destinations. Corinth, Verona, Avon.

The paper starts to tremble; Jubilee’s hand is shaking. She grew up on Verona. And a rebellion happened there, too—ten years ago. I reach out and cup my hand under hers, steadying the page.

LRI using Avon as laboratory, soldiers as subjects. Whispers would never harm them; Fury must be side effect. Only way to stop everything is for J and F to find proof to show the galaxy. Don’t let my father do this to anyone else.