The Covert Academy (27 page)

Simeon marched out of his office, down his private elevator and along the landing platform to his luxury cruise ship, amassing the Colonnade’s entire contingent of soldiers and drones in his wake.

A high girlish voice shrieked out of the depths of the dropship.

Joshua, his head still buzzing, tried to focus on the direction it had come.

‘There’s someone else in here!’ Sarah warned. A
pitter-patter of running feet reverberated all around them. ‘Where is that coming from?’

It was closing in on them. Fast.

‘Fall back around the computer!’ Joshua ordered.

Nursing their wounds, Joshua and Sarah dragged Marcas back to form a defensive circle with Kayla, Elayne, Will and Alara, who still clung to life.

Without warning, the dropship’s giant inner gate opened. A blaze of moonlight seeped through. They could see the dark ocean whizzing by underneath, and Wake Island rushing to meet them in the distance.

The dropship was preparing to live up to
its name.

The wind howled through the open gate, drowning the vibration of the running feet.

‘What is this?’ Kayla shouted over the turbulence.

Joshua closed his eyes. He knew exactly who was coming. Simeon had sent her back to him. Who knew what he had done to her? Twisting her mind over the years in some vile reformatory.

He was afraid of what he would he find. He forced his eyes open.

Lucia ran out of the shadows.

Lucia looked nothing like Joshua remembered. She looked older. Far more than the fifteen years she should be by now. She moved with the agility of youth, but her face was weathered by the intervening years. Her green eyes still sparkled, not with the cheeky playfulness he had known so well, but instead with a keen shrewdness. Outwardly she was built like a female version of Joshua. Not Joshua the street runt, but Joshua the lean, mean Academy-trained machine.

But the detail that chilled Joshua to the bone was what she was wearing. It was a jumpsuit. It appeared similar
in design to the Academy’s version, but slightly more bulky, as though they had had to trade off the extra mass for more features. He wondered what she was capable of now. He almost preferred the emaciated version of her he thought he had seen in the Colonnade.

‘What are you doing here?’ he shouted over the wind, whipping at their faces from the open gate.

‘Hi there yourself, big brother,’ Lucia smirked and gestured to the dropship. ‘I’m driving this thing. Can you believe it?

He couldn’t.

‘Lucy, listen to me,’ Joshua yelled, his voice straining. ‘You might think you’re in control, but you’re not. Simeon is about to attack us at any second!’

‘Simeon?’ Lucia smiled widely now. ‘Simeon is a fool. He thinks
he’s in control of this invasion. That’ll be the last mistake he’ll ever make.’

She pulled
out a long weapon from behind her back. It was vaguely shaped like a Stunner, but much smaller and balanced with the heel of the stock. It had a short snub-nosed barrel, and a long sturdy blade balancing out the tip of the gun. It was essentially a sword/Stunner-shotgun hybrid.

‘Like it? I made it myself!’ Lucia said. She strode over to a nearby drone on a hanger and whipped the sword around, neatly cleaving the drone in two.

Even Sarah looked impressed. Her own blade was no match for that kind of strength.

The two halves of the drone clattered to the floor. A pile of flares tumbled out, but it was otherwise completely hollow. No ammo. No guns.

‘The Confederacy isn’t invading anything, the Fletchers are,’ Lucia gloated. ‘Simeon could never have filled the Great General Withers’ boots! Oh sure Simeon expanded his influence, but only because we allowed it.’

Joshua circled around Lucia, keeping her away from the bio-ID computer. Sarah and Kayla stood guard around Will, who typed furiously on the keyboard.

‘I thought you hated the Confederacy,’ Joshua shouted.

Lucia grinned. ‘People are too stupid to look after themselves, I know that now. They crave someone with authority to tell them what to do.’

‘You?’

‘Of course not me,’ Lucia snapped. ‘But we’ll make sure someone suitable replaces Simeon. There are still seventeen more High Council members. We only need one.’

‘And then what?’

‘Then I wil
l produce an heir to the throne,’ Lucia stated calmly, as the first wave of the Academy’s defensive fire struck home.

The din of battle faded away for Joshua. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The Lucia he had known would have said, “boys, ew!” if she had heard someone talk about producing heirs. Yet here she was at fifteen years old and she was planning the start of her own dynasty. Joshua didn’t know who she was any more.

‘You’re not in control of yourself!’ he yelled. ‘This isn’t you!’

‘I AM in control!’ Lucia shrieked.

The dropship circled around the island, unloading empty drones. The anti aircraft gun emplacements hidden under the shallow water fired like underwater explosio
ns. They hurled chunks of metal streaking through the air at incredible speeds. A few dropships ducked and weaved as best they could. They would be the ones with Lucia’s fellow Fletchers hidden on board. The rest of them followed the preprogrammed path that Simeon had given them. They flew in predictable patterns over the island, making it easy for the Academy defences to track them.

Dropship after dropship erupted in a
breath-taking display of fireworks. They careened down into the ocean around the island, and slowly filled with water. They dotted the ocean like drowning flies, but eventually they would sink beneath the waves.

The ones that fell on the island itself seemed to hang in the air just metres above the ground before finishing their crash, as though some magnetic field slowed their descent at the last moment. Joshua vaguely remembered Sarah explaining the island’s many defences on his first day. This must be one of them.

A few of the dropships that were more in control managed to sneak past the point defence fire. They slowly landed on the outskirts of the island and opened their ramps. Nothing seemed to appear, but Joshua now knew that it would be Fletcher assassins sneaking out in their own actively camouflaged suits.

He eyed Lucia. She was grinning ear to ear.

‘Why all this trouble over the General’s iPC?’ Joshua struggled to be heard over the chaos. ‘The same bio-ID technology is right here with this computer.’

‘Not quite the same,’ L
ucia said. ‘The General’s iPC is the only one that has seen all the members of the Confederacy together.’

Of course
, Joshua thought.
She is looking for the other Confederate members too! The General’s iPC has their data stored in it. Casey has had it for weeks and he never even knew.

Lucia had just unwittingly given them the key to destroying the Confederacy once and for all. But if she found it first it would be the key to a thousand years of enslavement under her grand dynasty.

‘I’ve got this computer now,’ Joshua said, pointing over his shoulder, ‘and the General’s iPC. You’re not in control.’

‘I. AM. IN. CON
TROL.’

Joshua ignored her and looked to Will.

‘Do you have control of the dropship?’ he asked.

Will nodded, his eyes wide.

‘Then crash it,’ Joshua ordered.

Lucia lunged for Will, but it was too late. He punched a button, and the dropship pitched far below the horizon.

For a few seconds, their world turned sideways as the ship raced to the ground. Elayne grabbed Alara with one arm and held onto the computer terminal with the other. Will and Sarah held Marcas between them.

But Joshua had nothing to grab and flew up to the roof, becoming entangled in loose wiring. Lucia tumbled around the room too, but she acted quickly, and pushed off with her powerful legs to an emergency escape hatch. She lifted the safety bar and hit the door with the palm of her hand. It exploded out into the air. Lucia leaped out of the crashing dropship, and fell into the ocean. She skimmed along the surface at first, but ended with an almighty splash and disappeared beneath the waves.

Joshua watched her go. She may not be the sister he remembered, but he knew she was not stupid enough to jump without knowing whether she would survive.

But what she didn’t know was that they would survive too. At least that’s what Joshua hoped.

The dropship was just metres from the ground when it ran into the invisible force field covering the surface area of Wake Island. It caught the falling ship like a safety net, rapidly slowing their descent.

It was enough to save their lives, but not enough to save the dropship. The front half crumpled into the disguised landing pad where the Nyctalopia used to dock. Inside the dropship, the kids were rattled around like peas in a can.

The dropship teetered on
its end for a moment before falling over and off the platform. They finally came to a halt. The dropship was a mess. Loose wiring was strewn everywhere.

Joshua breathed a sigh of relief. The ordeal was over. He glanced over at Sarah and smiled. Rather than return it, Sarah’s mouth dropped open in horror.

The dropship was filling with water like a sinking ship. When it had fallen over it had landed in the deep water that surrounded the landing platform.

‘Move! Move! Move!’ Joshua yelled. He whipped out
his trusty old knife that Lucia had once made, and sliced at the wires he had become tangled in. The surging water was rushing up to meet him.

He glanced
around to see the others busy lifting Alara and Marcas up the sides of the dropship to open air.

He still
wasn’t free. There were far more wires than he had at first realised.

He slashe
d again and again with the knife. The wires finally came free, but his foot had become jammed inside a metal alcove.

He took a last gulp of air as the warm salt water gurgled up over his head.

The air was thick with the smell of burning. Grass, trees, oil, even metal and flesh. But it was the best air Joshua had ever breathed. He gasped repeatedly, his chest heaving, then coughed and spluttered back to life. Frothy pink sputum bubbled from his lungs and gushed out all over him.

Sarah was bending over him, smiling and talking. He sank back on the beach and exhaled cleanly with a sigh. The sun began to sink again over the horizon. They had been chasing it all the way from O’ahu.

He almost wished he could stay there, with that view, forever.

Then the ringing in his ears subsided and the pandemonium returned. Drones hummed overhead. The solid, bassy booms of the Academy’s rail guns fired at the invaders from every corner of the island, shaking his teeth. Dropships splashed
down into the deep ocean like breaching whales, or else slammed into the shallows, showering them with metal and sand.

Sarah wa
s yelling at him over the noise, but he still couldn’t quite hear her voice. He got shakily to his feet and surveyed the carnage.

The drones were as useless as Lucia had predicted. They merely soaked up bullets from the Academy defences.

The gigantic drudges, however, were very effective. They stomped around the island, crushing anything in their path. Academy students attacked them from all angles. From the treetops above, two sailed down in partial grav mode. Several others ran through the jungle with enhanced strength, distracting the drudges. The first two wielded swords like Sarah, and they stabbed down into the guts of the drudge.

Joshua wanted to call out to warn them, but they were too far away. They had done exactly as he had
back in the Colonnade. The drudge’s death throes flung them to the ground. With the motor controls for its legs severed, it buckled under its own weight and collapsed on top of the two brave students, crushing them instantly.

Joshua winced. It all seemed to happen in slow motion. It was surreal. Similar stories played out everywhere around him. For every drudge taken down by a team of students, or a drone that soaked up ammo from the AA guns, the Academy lost twice their number.

They would be destroyed no matter what they did.

Joshua’s ragged teammates lay on the beach next to the crashed dropship. They were exhausted and panting hard.

Will watched the dropship slowly sink further into the
water. He slapped his forehead. ‘The bio-ID computer!’ he realised. Without waiting for orders, he clambered back up the dropship to the open entrance.

With cries of alarm, Elayne and Kayla scrambled after him.

‘Hey!’ Joshua called. ‘You’ll need this!’ He lobbed his knife up to Will, who snatched it out of the air and dived into the dropship.

Joshua was about to join them, but when he turned to Sarah he saw
a faraway look on her face. She was scanning for something with her iPC zoomed out to maximum. She snapped back to the present in a flash.