Academy 7 (2 page)

“What level of fire are we looking at?” asked the chief.

“Um, on the view screen the smoke looks black and kinda high,” mumbled the boy.

That was helpful.
Dane kept his sarcasm to himself. Being short on fighters meant the person running the monitors had next to no training.

“What type of material is burning?” the chief said in a patient voice.

“Trees?” the boy said.

“Trees around a house? Or a stream? Or a forest?” asked the adviser.

A damn forest,
Dane got his answer through the cockpit window, not the radio. Black smoke billowed into the air, much too dark for a small stand of ground fuel. He grabbed for his mouthpiece. “I’ve got a forest fire blowing west, at least level three.” He kept his voice calm as he had been trained, but his mind was screaming inside.

Stupid kid should never have let it near level three before calling in. This was not the kind of fire you could miss on your radar screen. Not if you were paying any kind of attention.

“Five planes in your radius. That going to provide enough support?” the chief asked.

By this time, ashes were pelting Dane’s windshield, and he was thankful for the flame retardant that blocked out the smell of the smoke and kept the metal from scarring. He could see for certain now that the fire was out of control. Five planes were not going to cut it. They would be lucky even to make a dent. “We’re going to need at least thirty planes here,” Dane replied. “This thing has crowned.”

“Crowned?” For the first time, the chief’s voice faltered. “You’re telling me the flames are out of the underbrush and burning leaves?”

“Needles. We’re talking hundreds of fir and hemlock stretching far as the eye can see.” Which was not all that far, considering the muffling gray haze filling the air.

There was a rustling on the other end of the line, and a new voice replaced the chief’s. “Madousin, get the hell out of there. You aren’t of age to fight a level four.”

Dane reached down reluctantly for the throttle. The ash fall was growing thicker. Frowning, he peered out his windows. The smoke all but eliminated his view now. This thing was growing fast, and, from the looks of it, the hot zone was approaching at a rapid clip.

As he started to reverse, static flared on the radio. He thought he heard the word
help
but couldn’t make out anything else.

“This is Dane Madousin. Didn’t catch that last. Please repeat.”

“Don’t mess with me,” came the voice from control. “I said to get out of there.”

“No,” Dane tried to explain. “I thought I heard something else. Is there anyone out there?”

More scratching and nothing clear.

Dane glanced at his radar. No sign of the promised backup planes. But something was sending off a signal, very faint and not very far off, behind him.

“Tell the chief I think there’s someone—”

“Madousin, get back here now!” the fire chief boomed.

Dane switched off the radio. He eased
Gold Dust
into motion, backing toward the signal. As the smoke cleared enough to spot the ground, he searched for a break in the tree cover. Spaces meant water or a protection zone around a man-made structure. Whatever his radar had picked up, it was not natural, and no zone was going to be much help in the face of this fire.

He rifled through his memory, trying to remember if he had seen any structures on the map. No, there should not be any buildings here at all. Unless the map—

Then he saw it, coming out from this side of the blaze. Not a building but a straight strip designating a road. A rusty red land vehicle stuttered out of the smoke. No way was that contraption going to outrace the blaze. One change in the wind and the wheeled machine would be fodder for the flames.

Dane shifted his plane into motion, and it swept down in a sloping crescent. Squeezing into the narrow space between the tree trunks and the land vehicle,
Gold Dust
hovered beside the other machine. Dane motioned to the driver to pull over, but the haze was so thick he was not sure the frantic hand motions could be seen. Not until the land vehicle jolted to a halt.

Pulling ahead, Dane dropped the plane down onto the hard-packed earth. In the danger zone now. He felt a lurch of adrenaline as he slid on his oxygen mask then, with one fluid motion, shoved open the pilot’s side door and leaped out, dropping six feet to the road’s surface.

A booming roar shocked him to the ground, the sound of fire battering through timber. He dragged himself up into the stifling air and sought out the land vehicle. The driver had left his cab but seemed to be having trouble walking. His clothes were caked in soot, and he stumbled, his back hunched over, his chest lowered to his waist.
Smoke inhalation.

Dane hurried forward, grabbed the man around the back, and hauled him toward the far side of the plane, one lurching step at a time. Hot air whipped strong in Dane’s face, a reminder they were at the wind’s mercy. Gone was the plane’s shimmer of fresh paint, its golden color smeared with blown ash. Releasing his hold on the man in order to scale the side of the aircraft, Dane jerked open the door and leaped again to the road.

The man had slumped to the ground, his body on its side, curled in a tight ball. He struggled to sit up but collapsed back against the earth. Dane reached down to help, then somehow pushed, heaved, and shoved the weak body up toward the open space in the cockpit doorway.

A drooping arm caught in the strap of the oxygen mask, pulling the cover out of position. Acrid smoke invaded Dane’s lungs. Gagging, he thrust the body into the passenger seat and slammed shut the door, then raced around the plane’s nose, fingers tearing at his mask but only managing to tangle the strap. He gave up, needing his hands to climb into the pilot’s seat.

Within seconds, the plane lifted off the ground. The cockpit had filled with smoke, and Dane’s eyes watered as he steered the aircraft out of the fog.

He tried to switch the radio back on to no avail. No response, not even static. The radar remained blank. Either it too was failing or the extra planes had never arrived.

Harsh coughing echoed from the man in the other seat. Soot coated his skin, making age and facial features hard to discern, but the pain was easy to read. Dane finally wrenched off his own mask and slipped it around the man’s head.

Then he set the coordinates for the hospital on base and shifted into a higher gear. Z
hzhzh!
They were soaring. Way, way over the speed limit, but the hell with that. The passenger had slumped over, his head upside down at an odd angle against the door, and there was no telling if he was still breathing.

The outskirts of the city drifted into focus—rectangular shapes, straight walls, and pointed pyramids littering the horizon. Dane swerved to the left, hoping to avoid the traffic and the city flight patrol. He veered around the city’s rim.

The sterile gray-green structures of the Alliance Air Force Base stretched out to the west. Dane ripped into military airspace without missing a beat, eased up on the power as he spotted the hospital landing pad, and touched down with a precision that would make any pilot cringe in envy. Even his father.

But there was no time to savor the moment. Figures rushed toward the plane. Coughing himself now, Dane wrapped his arms around the passenger’s sooty chest and lowered the listless body into the outstretched arms of a medic.

He scrambled down to answer questions, but a heavy arm shoved him up against the side of the plane.

“Dane Madousin?” The harsh voice grated in his ear.

Dane coughed. “Y-yes.”

Cold steel closed around his wrists. “You’re under arrest.”

Chapter Two

THE HATCH TO AERIN’S COMPARTMENT ON THE
Envoy
opened with a cold, sucking sound. Four weeks she had been on board this ship, and still she could not accustom herself to that sound. It seemed to scrape into the recesses of her brain.

She stiffened but remained seated on the narrow bench of the tight personal quarters. They could not quite be defined as a room since, aside from the bench and the mirror on the opposite wall, the compartment’s only furniture consisted of the retractable bed which, had it been folded down, would have filled the entire six-by-four-foot space.

The rising hatch revealed the black boots, dark uniform, and gray head of the captain. He crossed swiftly under the low entryway without needing to duck. She knew better by now than to judge him by his small size. No slight personality could have run such a huge vessel and earned the respect of the massive crew. And he had done so. How he had done it, she did not know, but she had seen the way the men and women under his command watched his every move, leaping to obey, even when it meant halting a major voyage to answer a distress call from a broken trade ship.

Aerin still could not believe he had answered. She kept checking her shadow, waiting for the whip to fall or the deadbolt to slide into place, but she had been subjected to nothing other than an array of physical and mental tests upon the first week of her arrival. Still, this might be the time.

Goose bumps rose on her flesh.

The captain cracked a crooked grin and handed her a heavy, tightly sealed white box. “A package arrived for you from the Council.”

Council?
Her tongue remained flat on the bottom of her mouth as she set the box on the bench and ran her hands over the package’s smooth surface to see if she could find an opening. Nothing, but then maybe she was doing something wrong.

The captain reached down and pulled a thin, black-handled knife from his boot.

She felt her pulse quicken and backed away, slamming her spine and shoulders against the wall.

He did not react except to turn the handle around until it faced her, then held it out in her direction.

An extended moment passed before she realized he wanted her to take the knife and use it to open the box. With darting quickness, she grabbed the weapon and held it secure.

The captain remained still, watching her.

With a single, agile slice, she split open the package. Out onto the bench tumbled a blue packet and black clothing: boots, slacks, socks, and a shirt with ebony buttons. Such fine fabric. She reached out a tentative finger, then drew back.

“Go ahead; it’s yours,” said the captain, retrieving the knife and returning it to his boot. “Standard-issue uniform. Means the Alliance has placed you in a school.” He peered into the box at its remaining contents. “An academic one, judging by the thickness of those textbooks.” One eyebrow lifted in curiosity as he handed her a sealed letter. “This came as well. Read it and see where you’re headed.”

Aerin obeyed, but the written words made little sense.

Prying her tongue off the base of her mouth, she forced herself to speak for the first time since boarding the giant vessel, not to tell him the name of the school listed in the letter, but to ask one of the hundreds of questions battering her mind. “What is the Alliance?”

The captain’s eyes widened. He rocked back on the heels of his polished boots and for one panicked, heart-stopping moment, Aerin feared she had made a severe error. Then he chuckled, taking a seat on the edge of the bench, several feet away. She tensed at this nearness but forced herself to remain still. “Well, there’s a hard question. Not sure I’ve ever had to answer it before, but then I don’t often travel this far outside the boundary.”

She waited, uncomfortable with his laughter.

“I suppose the simplest response is to say the Alliance is the largest government in the universe,” he said, “composed of five central star systems. Delegates from every member planet run the government.”

“Delegates?” she asked.

“Yeees.” He scratched his head as if having trouble deciding how to explain. “The people on the planet pick someone to represent them. All those on the planet must have a say.”

The captain went on, his curved fingers tapping restlessly on the muscle of his thigh. “Of course there are too many delegates to work quickly or smoothly, so there is also a Council made up of four respected leaders. The Council listens to the delegates and makes decisions.”

“And what does this Council have to do with my attending school?” she asked.

“Education is the backbone of the Alliance. In fact, one of the council members is also the principal of Academy 7, the most prestigious school in the universe.”

Aerin lifted her head, but the captain kept talking, the tapping of his boots now moving in sync with his restless fingers. “Every young citizen between the ages of sixteen and seventeen is given the A.E.E., Academy Entrance Exam. That’s the test I gave you after you boarded this vessel. Not like any other exam you’ve taken, is it?”

“No.” The word
test
had other meanings to her. It meant using the skills she had to survive. It did not refer to solving problems or running for a length of time. The questions she had struggled with the most on the A.E.E. were the opening ones.
Parents’ names:
she had left her mother’s blank.
Schools attended:
the captain had filled that in for her with the word
homeschooled,
though he could not have known he was partly correct.

“What are the scores used for?” she asked.

“To place you in an academy. There are schools all over the Alliance now, in addition to the original seven. Test scores place you in the one most likely to suit your skill level.”

Aerin’s mind whirled. A government that not only allowed everyone to learn but actually wanted them to? The idea sounded far-fetched, but the captain did not look like he was teasing.

His eyes were sober, staring at the dyed design on her gray headband. He had done that enough that she knew he recognized the mark of Vizhan. He could not know the story of her past, but between that mark and her ragged appearance, he must have some idea of what she had been through.