Unravel (6 page)

Lin gave a tiny, half-distracted nod.

“Then where are they coming from? Which direction?” Elissa looked back and forth, checking the empty sky for any signs of movement, for the glints that would be the last light of the setting sun reflecting from metal wings.

“I don't . . . I can't tell. Above us . . .” Lin shook her head as if trying to clear water from her ears.

Markus, hand already on the communications unit, looked past Lin to Elissa. “Is she right?”

Elissa stared at him.

“
Lissa.
I'm running a scan, but if she's right, I'll alert Cadan now—”

“I don't
know
.” Harassed, she looked at her sister. Lin's hand had gone to her head, cupping her temple as if trying to shut something out. She turned her head to meet Elissa's eyes, and her own were wide with panic.

“Lissa, I can't tell where they're coming from. They're so fast, and if they don't slow down they'll—”

Elissa scrambled to her feet, hurried across to clasp her twin's hands. They curled around hers, a tight, desperate grip. “It's okay. We're safe. We're safe here.”

“Lissa,”
said Markus, behind her.

She didn't turn her head, all at once sure beyond all doubt. “Yes, she's right. Call him. Lin, it's okay. It's okay.”

Lin dropped Elissa's fingers and clamped both hands over her head. “They're here. They're here. I feel them—”

And as she cowered, shaking, the sky was torn apart.

Flyers exploded out of nowhere, screaming down over the desert, hurtling so low over the
Phoenix
that the roar of their engines killed every sound. Three of them, sleek silver craft flashing the color of fire in the dying light.

Then real fire, as flames spat from their engines, as they whipped around to come screaming down again. And then the sound of gunfire, pounding onto the desert floor in clouds of dust, sweeping across the roofs of the base, spitting sparks and chips of broken masonry.

Bullets thundered across the
Phoenix
's shields in a glittering rain, then a blast of fire came, sliding like water off the impenetrable surface of the force field. Elissa's hands shot to her ears. They'd weathered other attacks in the
Phoenix
, but that had been in space. Nothing had prepared her for the noise of an on-planet attack: the shrieking rattling roar of engines and weapons that seemed to get inside her brain, vibrating in her bones, thumping nausea into the pit of her stomach.

Outside, shots screamed through the air, up rather than down. Flames burst against the shields of the attacking ships. Then, almost faster than her eyes could see, faster than her brain could register, flyers shot up from the base. They looked tiny against the attacking ships, a little swarm of two-man crafts. Cadan and Bruce had trained in ships like them. Cadan was in one now. That one, racing up to what seemed like the zenith of the sky, boosters flaring? Or that one, diving between two of the attack ships, blasting them as it went? Or one of the ones that shot straight over to the
Phoenix
?

Cadan. Fighting to keep her and Lin safe. Risking his life. And both things not for the first time.

Something shrieked overhead, so loud that the sound stabbed Elissa's ears. She shrank, hands pressing harder against her ears, wanting to shut her eyes but not being able to, not while Cadan was out there, not while if she stopped looking, if she lost concentration, somehow he might lose concentration too, make the mistake that would send him plummeting out of the sky, craft in flames, escape hatch fused shut, trapped and—

Oh God.
Bullets sprayed across one of the little ships. If it had possessed a shield at all, it was gone now, blown to nothing by the relentless onslaught. Elissa saw the dark holes
pierced all over its flank, saw the attacking ship rake it with another blast, saw the flames swell, a fireburst of igniting fuel. It fell, tumbling from the sky, tracing a fiery trail in the dark air behind it, over and over, out of control, a fireball falling to earth.

Cadan!
Then, as her mind refused to accept it:
No. It's not Cadan. It must be someone else, it must be.

It was a terrible thing to think. She didn't care.
As long as it's not Cadan, as long as I don't lose him.

Beside her, Lin lifted her head. “They're going to
win
.” Her voice was raised to a shriek to battle with the noise, but it had gone from outright panic to nothing more than indignation.

“
No
.
Don't
say that. We have more ships. They can't win. They can't.” Thoughts jumbled in her head.
And win what? Who are they? What do they want? To wipe out the whole camp? Because they think we're in there? How can people be like this?

And then, again, shot with terror, with a feeling like the bottom falling out of the world:
Cadan. He can't be dead. He can't.

“Their weapons are way better,” shouted Lin over the noise pounding against the ship. “Those little ships—their shields are no good against this! Cadan should have used the
Phoenix
.”

All at once that was worse than anything, that Lin should criticize Cadan—
again
—when it might have been him in that—
No, I won't think it. I won't.

“He
can't
,” she shouted back. “You
know
he can't. It won't maneuver fast enough. He explained that to you weeks ago—”

“But she has tons of firepower.” All the fear had cleared from Lin's face. Her eyes were bright with a look Elissa had come to dread. “Lissa,
I
could use her.”

“You can't fly! Cadan said you're nowhere near ready!”

“I don't need to fly! All I need is to get her high enough to use the weapons. Cadan should have done it himself—”

“No.
No.
You can't do takeoff by yourself. You've
never
done that. If you were ready to try Cadan would have told you. You'll get everyone killed! And you don't know what you're talking about—if Cadan had thought that would work,
he'd
have done it. You can't—”

“Then what
am
I going to do?” Lin flung a hand up toward the Armageddon of fire above them. “Because your
boyfriend
says I'm not ready, I just wait here and let them all die? Is that what we came back to Sekoia for?”

The words hit Elissa as hard as the rain of bullets against the ship's shields. She felt herself recoil, body tightening as if that would protect her from what Lin was saying. “Stop it. Don't. If there was anything you could do, you know I'd—”

She broke off. Lin was all at once not even listening. The bright look had spread all over her face. It was hard, blazing with sudden triumphant realization. “There is.” She grinned. “I should have thought of it hours ago. I can. I
can
.”

She tilted her face toward the curve of glass above them, her teeth clenching so hard Elissa saw her jaw lock.

Fear swept Elissa. She'd seen that look on her sister's face before. Back when she'd been terrified she was helping a sociopath escape, someone who needed to be shut away, imprisoned. She hadn't thought she'd see it again.

“Lin, what are you—”

Lin didn't answer. Her eyes widened, dark and blank.

“Lin.”

“What's going on over here?” Ivan was on his feet, striding toward them. “What's she doing?”

“She says she's helping. I don't know. I don't
know
.” Elissa flung a frantic look at the control panel, watching for more lights to jump awake, for the throttle to move by itself. If Lin really did decide to take them into the air, it was too late to stop her, too late to do anything.

“Lin.” Ivan put a hand out. “You do something weird, you're going to hinder, not help. If you distract the pilots defending the—”

In the sky above them, with an ear-shattering thunder-crash, something exploded. Fire rained down all over the
Phoenix
, enveloping the ship momentarily in sheets of flame. Elissa felt her throat open in a scream she couldn't hear, saw Ivan duck, arms instinctively going up to protect his head.

The flames cleared, sliding down the shields. But smoke followed, smoke everywhere, oily and black, swirling and thick with sparks. Elissa couldn't see beyond the walls of the
Phoenix
, couldn't see what had happened, whether any craft were left in the sky, whether anyone was still alive out there.

Lin's mouth moved, saying something. There was no chance of hearing her—Elissa's ears had gone dead—but after a few seconds she managed to make sense of the movement of her sister's lips.
One down
.

The attacking ships. Lin had used her electrokinetic power—the ability to control electrical currents—to explode one of the attacking ships.

She'd threatened to do something like that once before, when they were on the run from Sekoia's security forces, but it had just been a threat to get Elissa moving—she hadn't actually intended to do it.

This time—this time she had.

It was as if Elissa's mind, as well as her ears, had stopped
functioning. She couldn't think further than the realization of what Lin had done, couldn't produce a reaction to it.

Around the
Phoenix
, the smoke thinned enough to reveal the continuing battle outside. Another of the defending crafts was down, burning in blackened wreckage on the desert floor. It was impossible to tell if the pilot had managed to escape, or if there'd been no time. Impossible, too, to tell if Cadan . . .

Way above them, one of the attacking craft seemed to judder, its trajectory checked for a half second. As if a connection had ceased momentarily to work—

Lin.

Elissa's head whipped back toward her twin. Lin's hands and teeth had clenched again. Her eyes were screwed shut, and her whole body was shaking as if she were under a weight too heavy to bear.
One down,
she'd said.
Two to go?

But she can't. The power it must have taken to do that to one ship—she can't do it to all of them.

As if she'd had the same thought at the exact same time, Lin's eyes shot open. Her gaze went straight to Elissa. She put out a hand.

She can't do it by herself. It's too much. But linked, we moved a spaceship. If I help her, if I do what we did before, we can do this, too.

All she needed to do was take Lin's hand, let the physical touch strengthen the link that was always there between them, give herself—as she had before—to act as combined anchor and catalyst for Lin's electrokinetic power.

She didn't move. The explosion sounded again in her head, flames filled her vision. What Lin had just done wasn't just moving a spaceship, it wasn't just getting them out of danger. Whoever had been in that craft—Lin had killed them.

They came here to kill us. They've shot down two of the pilots already. They wouldn't hesitate to shoot Cadan down too, or kill me and Lin, or take us both away for experiments that are no better than torture.

She should reach out to take Lin's hand. She could help save them all. Could help save Cadan, and the other pilots, and maybe all the refugees.

I can't. I can't kill people. I can't help her do that.

Lin shook her hand impatiently toward Elissa. Her face was tight with strain, she couldn't waste energy speaking, but it was more than obvious what she was asking, what she needed from Elissa.

She was willing to die to save my life. To save all our lives. I owe her forever. And I love her. There shouldn't be anything you wouldn't do for someone you owe your life to, for someone you love.

“I can't,” said Elissa, knowing Lin couldn't hear her, hoping she could read her lips, her gestures. She shook her head, stepping back. “I can't. I'm sorry.”

Incredulity swept over Lin's face. Then a look of such betrayal Elissa felt it go through her like an electrical shock. Lin's lips moved.
You have to.

Elissa backed farther away. “I'm sorry. I'm
sorry
.”

Lin opened her hands, staring at Elissa, a gesture of helplessness and blame. Then her fingers curled into her palms, and she lifted her face back to the fiery slashes of the ships dogfighting above them.

One of the attacking ships jerked, its flight path disrupted. It dipped, seemed to pull back. Within it, was the pilot fighting to keep hold of it, not knowing why his instruments were going mad, why the controls were no longer responding to his touch? Was the control panel smoking as Lin overloaded
the circuits? Was fire licking out from beneath it? Was he already snatching his hands away, terrified, panicking, not knowing what was going on?

They came to kill us. They don't deserve mercy.

It didn't make any difference. Elissa realized her face was wet; she could taste salt on her lips. At some point in the last few minutes she'd started crying.

Lin staggered. Her legs shook, and she grabbed at a seat to support herself. When her eyes met Elissa's, they were bloodshot. Elissa had seen that before: When Lin was at the end of her stamina, when she'd expended too much energy, blood vessels began to burst in her skin, her eyes.
If she keeps trying, if I don't help her, what else will happen to her? What else will I let happen?

Elissa's nose was running. She wiped her sleeve across it. “I'm
sorry
,” she repeated, wretched and helpless, knowing she could take the burden away from her sister but unable to bring herself to do it.

Lin's lips moved again, so slightly that it took Elissa a couple of seconds to read what she'd said.
So am I.