Dark Lightning (Thunder and Lightning) (31 page)

“Communications are completely gone now,” Cheryl said. “No phone service, no news.”

“It’s all word of mouth,” Coach confirmed. “Things are pretty chaotic down there. There’s been fighting. Fires have broken out, and the firefighters have had trouble getting to them. They can’t coordinate.”

“Yeah, but who’s fighting who?” Polly asked.

“It’s kind of a free-for-all,” PJ said. “Some of them look like cops, but there’s some of them on both sides.”

“There were rumors of a mutiny.” That was Milton. “And now you say that’s what’s happening.”

“That your parents and the captain are prisoners,” someone said. “That’s what Cheryl told us, anyway.”

“We’d like to hear what happened,” Coach said.

I looked out over the group. I noticed now that most of them were armed with something. There were axes and hand hatchets, and a lot of knives in sheaths. I saw a baseball bat, and a couple of other club-type things. One girl carried a deadly-looking field javelin. There were no firearms, of course. Now I wished we could have brought more from Sheila’s arsenal. But would they know how to use them or be more dangerous to themselves and the rest of us if we had more?

It was a motley army, but it was all we had. I liked our chances in a more or less even match on open ground. Our guns would make a big difference even if we were outnumbered. But if we ended up fighting in the corridors, it could get messy.

I sighed. No matter what, having all these people with us would be a lot better than what I had been envisioning, which was me and Polly going up against the guards all by ourselves.

“Pour us some of that coffee I smell brewing,” I said, “and we’ll tell you what we know.”

—

All we needed was a campfire. The girls huddled around us on the floor as we sat and told our stories one more time. You get better at anything with practice, so it didn’t take as long this time. When we were done, no one spoke for a while. Then someone piped up.

“So what’s the cause of all the confusion? Nobody seems to know what’s going on. Nobody’s announced anything.”

“I have some ideas,” Coach Peggy said. Everyone turned to her eagerly, as the only adult in the room. She stood up.

“It seems to me that if this was going well for them, they would be talking to people, reassuring them that everything’s going to be all right. But the exact opposite has happened. No information is coming out. All the regular sources of information are shut down. Which means, to me, that their war in cyberspace is not going well for them. Cassie, Polly, you said that Captain Broussard expects the systems in place to fight back.”

“Count on it,” Polly said. “Travis is the world’s greatest paranoid. He wouldn’t make it easy for someone to get control of the ship’s systems.”

Coach said, “I can’t imagine what might be going on in those machines. But if it’s gone on this long, and the issue is still in doubt, that must be demoralizing.”

“I can’t imagine it, either,” I chipped in. “But I figure that Max Karpinski didn’t count on things being this hard. He must have thought he could take over quickly, but so far, it doesn’t look like he has.”

“He’s a mathematician, right?” Suki asked. “Numbers are nice and neat. You’d think computers would be nice and neat, too, but they’re not.”

Polly said, “I think he’s out of his depth. He obviously thinks Papa was wrong in the calculations he did. I’ve never known Papa to be wrong about numbers.”

“There’s always a first time,” someone said, from the back.

An uneasy murmur went through the crowd.

“Papa doesn’t
want
to stop the ship or turn it around—”

“Nobody does.” I saw the objecting person this time. It was one of the boys from Hilltown. I shifted in my seat to make my weapon handier.

“Whatever the answer to that question is,” Cheryl said, raising her voice over the growing whispers, “stop the ship, don’t stop the ship, we’re in danger, we’re not in danger . . . whatever. Taking over the ship by force is wrong. Just flat wrong.”

To my great relief, the reaction to that was much stronger than the tentative disquiet over the dark lightning issue.

Polly spoke up.

“I can tell you one thing. The engines aren’t going to stop, the ship is not going to be turned around, until there’s been a full discussion and a vote. Travis will be open to hearing anyone, just as he has been so far in this thing. But if he’s a prisoner, he can’t do anything.”

I did my best to show no reaction. Then I nodded with what I hoped was a show of great enthusiasm. But the plain fact was that she had no right to say that. If I was betting, I would say that Travis’s reaction to massive opposition about his decisions would be the exact opposite. He would hunker down and exercise his rights as captain to do what he felt best for the ship, and popular opinion be damned.

But these people didn’t need to hear that. When I realized that, I wondered if I might make a good politician someday. Or better yet, Polly. She seemed to have no qualms about telling a lie to these folks. Well, hell, neither did I, when it came right down to it. What made it easier was knowing that Papa was right. If we had to lie to do what we had to do to save everyone’s life, then so be it.

There was a little more talk, but it looked like Polly and Cheryl, between them, had won over any doubters. What we needed next was to tell them our plan.

—

This was a bunch of girls—and a few boys, as several more stragglers from both teams arrived—who didn’t shy from action. But, of course, they had never faced a situation where their lives might be in danger.

It didn’t seem to make much difference. They say teenagers feel they are immortal, they can’t imagine that any real harm could come to them. Maybe that’s true for some, but I question it. For myself, I was quite aware that I was mortal.

The bottom line, everyone was raring to go.

A little more time was spent with Polly and me adapting our plan to the new circumstances of having more than just ourselves to rely on. Not exactly Alexandra the Great laying out marching orders for the army, you understand, but we knew we would have to react on the fly and understood that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. Then we explained it all to the irregular troops. Then flycycles were found for all, and we made our way back to a spot near where we had crash-landed our tandem.

—

We took off like bats leaving a belfry. Or at least that’s how I envisioned bats, though I’ve never seen any.
Big
bats.

It was the middle of the night, but lights were still burning all over the surface, and the air was thick enough with smoke that we couldn’t see the South Pole. There were no huge conflagrations, but here and there we could see the small orange flares of structure fires.

We were in the air over Frostbite Falls. The largest fire I could see was in the center of town, and seemed to involve several buildings. Tiny figures were directing streams of water toward the fire. I could hear their shouts. I even thought I could feel the heat, though that might have been my imagination. They were far too busy down there to look up and see the bat squadron flying over, and we were high enough they were unlikely to see us anyway. But we would be visible to infrared cameras, to anyone who was watching for us. So we had resolved to make the trip as quickly as we could.

Starting up in the low-gee regions, we were able to build up some pretty good speed simply by losing altitude and letting the air around us accelerate us. That way we could save our strength for what was ahead.

I looked back, past Polly flying just off my left wing, and my heart leaped at the sight. Twenty-four of us, flying like geese in a V formation for the same reason geese did it, to profit from the draft. Every few minutes Polly would spell me in the lead. Behind us, flying almost wing tip to wing tip, were all our old friends and new friends. I didn’t even know all their names, but I was so proud of them.

I knew Polly and I had to step up to this job, provide leadership, and that was bit of a burden. Before, when it was just me and the sibling, I hadn’t felt so much pressure. I mean, my family was relying on us, and that was tough, but now there were all these other people. We had to keep them safe and healthy. I didn’t know if we could do it.

We weren’t in the air more than six or seven minutes. We swooped over Frostbite and angled into Dogpatch, where the entrance we were seeking was located. As we descended, our speed increased, and the cycles became harder to control. We were heavier, and powering a cycle at the lower altitudes took a lot more muscle than it did up at the gaming level near the nighttime sun. I was really straining as we neared the ground, but I felt I could handle it. I hoped everyone else could.

Then the ground was there, hard to see in the dark. It was a strawberry field, producing fruit as big as your fist. The rows were elevated to provide easier picking, and coincidentally to present a real landing hazard. But there had been nowhere else that looked better for landing.

Polly and I flared up as we reached about ten feet of altitude, to kill our speed, and stalled out. But the spread wings slowed our fall, and we both landed on our feet. We quickly started collapsing the cycles as the others landed in different places around us. Some landed with a
thump
I could hear. Even experienced fliers were not used to getting down to ground level.

In a few moments we had gathered and moved into the copse of pine trees where the subway station was. One girl I didn’t know was limping. We quickly diagnosed a twisted ankle and told her she couldn’t come with us. She was about thirteen years old, and bitterly disappointed. I couldn’t help thinking she might be the luckiest of us all.

Polly and I had to cast around a bit to find the entrance. Our positioning system told us to within ten feet or so, but with all the pine needles and such underfoot, it wasn’t as simple as it sounded. We all got on our hands and knees and brushed debris away until Jynx found a patch of concrete. In short order, we had it cleared and pulled up the hatch that covered it. Dim lights showed a narrow staircase leading into the depths.

We checked our weapons, and Polly and I led the troops down the steps. We were as quiet as we could be, but there’s no way we could do it silently. As it turned out, there was no one down there at the subway station.

A lot of the girls were looking around, pretty impressed. They hadn’t even known about the captain’s private transportation system. Not that it was anything fancy. Just the long, long narrow tube, and the little subway car sitting there.

I noticed that one of the Hilltown girls was trembling. She looked sick, and wild-eyed.

“What’s the problem, spacegirl?” I asked her.

“I . . . I can’t stand small spaces. I feel like I can’t breathe.”

“Claustrophobia,” I diagnosed, and she nodded. “Nothing shameful about that. Go on back up and tend to that other girl.”

She nodded, glumly, and didn’t waste any time going back up the stairs. Now our army numbered twenty-two, and we hadn’t even seen the enemy. But it’s best to get your wounded out of the area so you don’t have to spend a lot of time tending to them.

Polly had already taken a place in the car and put her thumb to the ID plate. It should have accepted her as an authorized user, but when she looked at me, she shook her head. Either no power, or someone had reset the codes.

“Well, we couldn’t have all fit in it, anyway,” Cheryl said.

“No, but we could have sent six or seven high-speed scouts and maybe take them by surprise.”

Polly was still fiddling with the car. I couldn’t see what good that would do, but I watched her. She found a little lever and clicked it up and down. Nothing seemed to happen. Then I noticed that it had moved a little, edging away from a boy who was leaning against it.

“I think it might be the parking brake,” I said.

Sure enough, when the lever was up, we could move the car. Which meant the power was still on in the rail, making the car float a half an inch over the ground. Polly got out and we shoved the thing back and forth. It moved slick as a hockey puck on ice. Polly and I talked it over with Cheryl and a few others, then turned to the troops.

“Here’s the plan,” I said. “We want two of you with the shields to sit up front. Polly and I will be right behind you with our guns. The rest will be on the ground. We’ll need three or four of you to push, and get us up to trotting speed. We hope we can come at them fast and overwhelm them, wherever we find them. It’s not a battle tank, but it will have to do.”

Polly took over. “We don’t know what kind of arms they might have. They’ve had time to build guns. What we do know they have is gas and stun guns. We don’t have but the two masks, so if we encounter that, we’ll give the signal and you all run like hell in the other direction. You won’t do anyone any good if you’re passed out.

“As for the stun guns, they have a long range. Up to about a hundred yards. They shoot small hooks that pierce your clothes and skin, and very fine wires that deliver the charge. They are fast, but not impossible to deflect. That’s what we’re hoping we can do with the shield girls up front. Deflect them, and hide behind the shields. If you all string out behind us, your chances of getting through will be a lot better.”

She handed it over to me. “If you’re hit, we will leave you behind. You’ll feel a hell of a jolt, and you’ll collapse and shake a lot. In ten or fifteen minutes you’ll recover, and then you do whatever you want to do. Follow us, try to catch up, or go home. If Polly and I both get zapped . . . well, you’re on your own. We would appreciate it if you could drag us back somewhere until we can recover, and we’ll continue, alone or with whoever still wants to go. You’re all volunteers, and we really love you for it. But if you’re having second thoughts, this would be the place to turn back. We won’t hold it against you.”

I paused for a moment. No one turned back. I hadn’t expected them to. Put like that, you’d feel like a coward to leave. That didn’t mean they would stick with us when the stun guns started to bang, though.

—