Joston
I look at Chlo, who’s racing toward us, then I look over at Nik, who knows the same thing I do—there’s no fuel left.
Aymee and Niya left the Marinax without checking the fuel levels in their transport raft. How two such brilliant . . . but I don’t have time to think about this, and, anyway, it’s a mistake any pilot might make, especially in the heat of the moment.
In fact, it’s a mistake I just made.
“Chlo!” Niya says. She lifts the lid and waves to her friend, who looks ragged and exhausted, like she’s just spent the night in a prison. Which she has.
But . . . Chlo’s alone.
“Where’s Lasson?” Nik says to me, and I shake my head. I have no more information about Lasson than he does. Wilm’s been feeding me only battle coordinates and timing on the prison wall blast.
“Get out,” I say to Niya, ordering her around like she’s my subordinate. But we have no time to mess about. We’re in the middle of a war zone. And our transport is useless. That is, this transport is useless. There’s another one on the roof of the palace, and it’s got plenty of fuel in it—or it did when we left it there. When it was still definitely intact.
Niya, anxious to see her friend, jumps out and meets Chlo halfway.
The air’s filled with smoke and dust from the explosion. It’s nighttime during the day, which is helpful to us, especially to me. And it’ll be helpful to Lasson as well, assuming he’s alive, which is what I’m assuming.
Nik and I check the weapons we brought onboard with us. Even though Niya’s not armed, we both are now. We climb out after her.
“I don’t know where Lasson is,” Chlo is saying to Niya. “I haven’t seen him since last night.” The two friends are facing each other, holding hands.
“It’s okay,” I say. “We’ll find him.”
I know what everyone’s thinking—that, no matter what the circumstances, Choryneans just can’t resist a lie—but I am certain we’ll find Lasson.
Because we have to.
“Joston,” Niya says, “let’s get Chlo out of here. Nik can take her back to the airfield while you and I find Lasson. Then we’ll use the transport raft you left on the roof yesterday.”
I shake my head. “Can’t be done.”
“Why not?” Niya says.
“There’s a slight problem of our having no fuel,” I say.
“What do you mean?” Niya says.
“He means the raft we came in has been running on hope for the last five minutes,” Nik says.
“I wouldn’t go anyway,” Chlo says. “I’m not leaving here until we’ve got Lasson.”
“Where do you think he is?” I ask Chlo, since she’s our leading expert on Engra’s prison system.
“I have no idea,” she says. “It’s not like males and females are kept in separate areas. They’re not.”
“Nothing on the instant comm?” Nik says.
“Nothing,” Chlo says. “Silence. It’s been like that since last night.”
“Let’s go in,” I say. “It’s not like we have to get past any guards. An entire wall is gone.”
The four of us make our way into the newly redecorated open-plan prison. Some of the cell doors are still closed, so Nik and I use our firepulses to blow out the locks, freeing who knows what horrible criminals, none of them stopping to thank us and all of them leaving at full speed.
“There hasn’t been a violent crime on Engra in centuries,” Niya says to me. “Don’t worry.”
But I’m not worried. My only concern is finding Lasson and getting him out of here. Getting us out of here. Although I’ll come back. The rebels need help. And I’m finding the revolution more and more irresistible. Much more exciting than working for the Star Line Express. More suited to my abilities. My inclinations.
We get to the end of the third hallway, and Chlo says, “Guys, I think that’s it.”
“Not a very big prison for your strict law-and-order culture,” I say to Niya. I’d been expecting something about fifty times this size.
“Engra doesn’t need many prison cells,” Niya says. “There’re very few petty criminals, and the big crimes are punishable by immediate exile or execution.”
“Chlo, where do you think the most likely place for Lasson would be?” Nik says, getting us back on point.
“I hate to think it,” Chlo says, “but . . .”
“He’s with the king,” I say. “My friend just commed me. They’re holding Lasson hostage and demanding the rebels disarm.”
“No,” Chlo says. “They can’t be.”
But they are. And what I don’t say is that Wilm told me they’re demanding the rebels stop their attack within the next fifteen minutes or Lasson’s done for.
“They mean to kill him, don’t they?” Niya says, reading my mind.
“We’ll get to him before that happens,” Nik says.
“You’re damn right we will,” Chlo says. “Or die trying.”
“Chlo, you are not getting anywhere near the king’s private chambers,” I say. “They’ll execute you on sight.”
“That’s where they are?” Niya says.
“Yes,” I say. “That’s what I’ve been told.” By Wilm.
“Excellent,” Niya says. “Follow me.”
Niya
As bad as this all looks—with Lasson being held by the king and not just Lasson’s life but the entire revolution in jeopardy, we’ve been handed a huge piece of good luck. Because, as a flight controller—as the flight controller who was on duty the day of this unusual occurrence three years ago—I happen to know something that hardly anyone else knows. The king himself, who took over just last year, may not know.
But I still haven’t figured out how to get onto the roof without walking up the interior staircase, which must be heavily guarded today.
“Joston,” I say as casually as I can, even though I feel like shouting. “Remember our plan to get to the transport raft on the roof?”
“Yes,” he says. He’s shifting back and forth from foot to foot. He can’t bear just standing here. None of us can. “The plan you had no actual plan for?” He’s trying hard not to sneer.
“Yes,” I say. “That one. But you had that plan too. How were you going to get to the roof?”
“There’s scaffolding on the north wall,” Joston says. “I was going to scale it.”
“Let’s go,” I say. But I can’t lead the group. It’s too dark here from the smoke and dust and I don’t have a torch. Joston takes the lead.
“What are we going to do on the roof?” Nik says.
“You’ll see,” I say, unable to say much more. My chest is filling with smoke and ash and I’m having a harder and harder time breathing, much less talking.
I see Joston listening on his comm, nodding. The rebel leader must be giving him directions—which areas are the safest, or the least dangerous.
We get to the north wall in minutes, but when I look up the scaffolding, my heart sinks. There’s no way we can scale this. The lowest level is too far from the ground.
“Damn,” I say, staring at the impossible. “What now?”
“Ready?” Joston says to Nik, who gives a wink and a nod and puts down his laced-together hands, which Joston steps into it.
The two of them look like a circus act as Nik, grunting, lifts Joston onto his shoulders. Yet Joston is still not close enough to grab on to the lowest crossbar of the scaffold.
“Big breakfast, hunh?” Nik says, smiling beneath a grimace. Nik’s a big man, but Joston is no lightweight. He’s slim, but very muscular. Nik can’t be having an easy time of it.
“Okay,” Joston says, looking down from Nik’s shoulders. “Three . . . two . . .”
Without waiting for one, Joston pushes off Nik’s shoulders, like he would a trampoline—except Nik is hardly a trampoline—and vaults himself into the air while Chlo and I gasp in horror.
But Joston barely catches one hand on the lowest rung of the scaffold while Nik says, “I don’t know what you two were so worried about. Joston and I have been practicing this for weeks.”
“Like hell you have,” Chlo says as Joston pulls himself up to the bottommost platform and lowers the rope ladder that was lying there, out of reach.
“You first,” Joston says, pointing to me, and I climb up the swaying—and, sadly, fraying—ladder. It stays together for Chlo, and we all hold our breath as the fast-disintegrating rope falls apart with each step Nik takes. But Nik makes it too.
Now the climb’s easy—as long as I don’t look down—although the smoke and debris in the air are worse the higher we climb. There’s a good side to that, though, since there’s no one on the roof but us.
“Where to?” Joston says, heading for the transport raft he somehow had the guts and skill to land here yesterday.
“Not there,” I say. “Over here.”
I point down at an innocuous-seeming crease in the roofline.
“What have we got here?” Nik says.
“A secret trapdoor,” I say. “It’s just over the main royal chamber, which I think is where Lasson is. The royals used it three years ago when they thought the rebels had breached the palace walls.”
“How do you know about this?” Chlo says.
“I was in the control room that day, and they had four aircars sent over to pick them up, and they had to give the coordinates so they could land.”
“How are we going to work this?” Chlo says.
“Joston’s going to stay here, in the raft, and wait for—”
“There are one and a half other pilots here,” Joston says, pointing at me when he says half. “One of you can stay in the raft. I refuse to sit around and wait.”
Then, without waiting to hear the rest of my plan, Joston pulls open the trapdoor, hops in, and disappears, shutting the door behind him.