Marked (12 page)

WITH MIYU'S HELP, I TELL LARKEN EVERYTHING. ABOUT JAMES
and Cash and the queen's bargain. When we're done, he's quiet. No fussing at me for getting myself into trouble, no warnings or advice. Nothing.

“Aren't you going to yell at me or something?” I ask him.

“Why would I yell at you?”

“Because that's what old people do when you pull something stupid.”

At first, he's taken aback. Then, thoughtful, he sighs. “You are not a child to be scolded. And I am not so old, Miss Van Zant.”

We laugh, but only for a bitter second.

“Even if you're not going to scold me,” I say to him, “I want your advice.”

He takes a breath, and as always, mulls over his response. “Do what you have to,” he says at last. “Plan your rescue. Take this bargain, but . . . as you'd likely put it, you should also—”

“Watch your exhaust,” Miyu finishes for him.

Larken nods. “Queen Napoor is smart, and it seems her most exceptional talent lies in always landing on her feet. So I would not put it past her to leverage Prince Cashoman in some way.”

“I know she's calculating. But . . . I think she's afraid. As afraid as I am. She's desperate to see Cash safe and alive.”

“You say this after she had you kidnapped. And what of Fahra?”

“What of him?” Miyu asks, still focused on the controls.

Larken swivels her way. “Captain Fahra. His own people cut those marks into his face, and now call him Fahrat. You know the word? The meaning of the nickname?”

She thinks for a moment. “
Fah
-rat, the Biseran word for an animal. Small and agile, the black-eared predator. Oh. Wait . . . Fah-
rat
—accent on the second syllable,” she says, her gaze finally drawn from the screen. “I see.”

Larken nods.

“What?” I ask. “What does it mean?”

Larken shifts in his seat, then tilts his gaze to me. “He was there the night Cash's father was slaughtered, the very
one who allowed assassins to slip into the royal chamber. Fah
rat
means ‘dishonor.'”

I'm quiet for a long time.

“You've lived in that kind of shadow,” I say to him at last. “You know what it's like to be branded a traitor and written off, Larken. There's more to your story than gossip and talk, so maybe there's more to his. Besides, the queen trusts him. Please trust me to give him a chance.”

Larken doesn't answer at all. Instead, he looks me straight in the eye. Right fist over his heart, he makes the rebel's salute.

It happens in the last hour of flight. At dawn. Less than a thousand miles from base.

Miyu looks up from the controls. “We've lost contact with Hank at HQ,” she says. “I got through an hour ago, but I just tried sending an updated transmission, and the feed blacked out. There's nothing, not even a static beacon.”

Larken reaches for a diagnostic screen, but Miyu shakes her head. “I already checked. It's not a glitch in our system. We're transmitting fine. There's just nowhere for the feed to go. The channel no longer exists. It's just . . . gone.”

Even as I tense up, she speaks what I'm thinking. “Something's wrong.”

“Keep trying,” Larken orders. “But keep one eye on the grid. We might need that pulse fire after all.”

“Already on it,” Miyu replies. “Guns out at a second's notice.”

I watch the defensive grid, the backlit web of airspace and enemy movement. The three fighters on our heels haven't advanced. They still trail, distant but locked into battle formation, a drawn arrow, aimed in the sky.

Until we're just shy of the Strand.

They break apart. Near the border's edge, over the first sweep of high-climbing blooms, they swarm us, surrounding us at the fore.

Miyu cranks down our speed, and the clank of locking cannons echoes like a one-two punch against the hull. We drop beneath the fighters, easing back, but they're too quick on the jump. Wheeling, they break. A breath later, they're behind us again. A proximity alarm blasts through the cockpit as they move in, closer than ever before.

Still, no enemy fire.

“I can't shake them,” Miyu yells over the blare. “Even if I swivel barrels, they're too close. If I shoot at this range, it'd knock us all out of the air.”

Captain Fahra and the guards burst into the cockpit, quick to buckle in beside me.

Fahra turns to me. He's eerily calm.

Larken runs a defensive check. “No weapons signature. No heat in their barrels or any sign of target lock; they aren't even trying to fire. What are they playing at?”

On the grid, the outlines of the fighters overlap with our ship, and it's like watching a parasitic attack. They've become an extension of us, a cloak, a . . . “They're a shield,” I spit. “They're herding us all the way to the border.”

“That makes no sense,” Miyu answers, frantic. “Why would they—oh my god.”

I look up, at the horizon, to see what's drained the color from her face.

Ahead, the highest ridge. We've reached the Pearl Strand.

Behind it, the first hint of black sky. A hundred columns of rising smoke.

The poppy fields are burning.

THE GRID LIGHTS UP, BUT I DON'T HAVE TO SEE THE ICONS
to know there's an armada of vacs ahead. Blue and black ships, locked in combat. I flinch at the magma sizzle of whistling torpedoes.
BOOM . . . BOOM . . . BOOM.

In and out, in and out come the shallow breaths, until I'm strangled, betrayed by my own lungs. I bite down on a sharp gulp of air, too big to swallow. No, no, no. It's happening. It's happening again.

Behind us, Benroyal's fighters stick to our tail. Before us, dozens of rebel and Cyanese and IP vacs crisscross the sky, wheeling and falling and turning in endless, interlocking loops.

Like a hapless bird, a rebel fighter's hurled against the hull of an enemy gunship. Stricken, it flames in descent.

I snap, shaking off shock and paralysis. I fumble out of my restraint. One of Larken's men swings an arm across my chest, but I bat it away.

“Sit down, Phee,” Larken orders.

Disobedient, I stagger. At Miyu's side, I stare through the cockpit windshields, straining to see over the next ridge. Our camp. Our precious, protected little valley.

I was right: There's no line Benroyal won't cross.

“Can you get through to base?” I ask. “Is anyone down there? Is anyone left alive?”

Miyu touches the communications screen, swiping through all channels. There's still nothing on the ground-to-air feeds, but the rebel vac-to-vac feeds hum with aftershock screams and panicked squawks.

A sudden blast knocks me on my exhaust, sending me skidding against the back of the cockpit. An explosion in my skull as my head lashes the wall. A second of blindness, then bursts of light—harsh as lens flare—assault my eyes. Voices, muddled and fuzzy, rushing like stale wind in my ears.

“Landlan lellah.”

“Lellah, lellah.”

A hand at my cheek. I blink. Fahra's hovering over me, speaking in Biseran. “
Lellah,
are you okay?” he asks. “Are you injured?”

“I don't know.” My words loll and drag. “Are we hit?”

He shakes his head. “No. But one of our escorts was. Someone shot it down. We caught the aftershock.”

Fahra helps get me back on my feet. Nothing's broken, I think, but everything's bruised. We tilt to balance as the ship maneuvers. A parade of seconds crawl by, and I'm disoriented, content to let Fahra guide me back to my seat. The fog in my brain begins to clear, and my hand curls at my chest. There I feel the small roar in my heart, at my fingertips. That voice, the girl I used to be . . . she snaps into rust-flight, let's-fight mode. “Larken, gimme seat number two. I'll man the pulse cannons while you transmit. We have to get through to Hank. Where are the Larssens? Where is—”

Miyu swipes up the volume on a vac-to-vac channel. She's made contact with someone in the air. “Roger, Talon One,” she says. “Go ahead.”

Talon One.
I know that call sign.

And then I hear his voice, coming through loud and clear. “Break low on my signal,” he commands. “Broadsword will cover your drop. Keep your nose down, and I will blow them off your exhaust.”

“This is Broadsword, copy that,” a second voice replies. Hank.

A third rebel. “Target is a go,” she says. “Ready in three . . . two . . .”

We sink in a gut-check fall, and I watch the skies. Two friendlies—rebel Tandaemo fighters—split in approach, tag teaming our remaining escorts.

While Hank shields our drop, Bear aims high and fires. Three hits, and the last two parasites are gone.

“Targets dispatched,” he says. “Break-break. Broadsword, requesting to provide close air support. Yamada needs cover to fallback position.”

“Negative,” Hank replies. “I need you back on the offensive. Yamada, get out of here. Break wide, and flank the hot zone. Get behind the Hill of Kings. Rendezvous with remaining forces.”

“Yamada?” Bear says.

“Come in, Talon One,” she answers.

“Keep her safe,” he says.

“Roger that.”

We turn, and both Tandaemo peel off, heading back into the fray.

Silent, Miyu threads past the battlefront, and we slip over the burning fields. In the valley, I stand between her seat and Larken's. We scan the terrain and what's left of our camp. No neat little squares or marching patrols. Instead, smoking rubble and the crackle of scattered fire. It's a quiet, burning disorder.

I squint for signs of life, or of death, but there's not much to see. On the ground, only a few bodies. I'm ashamed to feel so relieved, that corpses spell reassurance.

“Where are they?” I ask aloud. “What happened to—”

I glance past my old barracks tent, which, oddly, still stands. But not the infirmary. No, it's gone. The notion lands invisible, a hammer fall at the center of my chest. Hal and Mary . . . no.

“Try every channel,” Larken says to Miyu. “Hank mentioned remaining forces. They must have retreated.”

I don't like the way he has to convince himself. I don't know where my foster parents are, and Bear is caught at the front. Everything's falling apart in a way I can't manage. Helpless, I watch the daybreak burn.

Miyu picks up a signal. No voices, only the bleating noise of a primitive coded exchange. I toss my flex to Larken, and he runs the hum through my card. The message spools onto my tiny screen. Coordinates, then one word.

Underground.

“Not far,” Miyu says. “No time at all if I could pick up speed. Running low on fuel.”

We climb out of the valley to soar over the Hill of Kings, scattering the flocks of barden as we pass. Stubborn birds. They won't even leave when the dawn stinks of scorching debris. Incredibly, the tombs stand untouched, as if
invincible against all assault. Only time and bird drip have left their mark on the mossy stone of the high ground.

Miyu's freighter hiccups over the last line of crypts and we descend as if we're pulled, drawn by the natural fall of the would-be mountain. Miyu lands much better than I ever could. The freighter nudges the turf and I hardly feel the impact. We power off in a shuttered-down whine, and the pound of our engine's replaced with human whir, the sound of marshaling forces.

We step out of the cargo bay.

It's chaos on the ground. Lines of rebel fighters refuel and take off, firing up into the haze like reversed shooting stars—searing, hissing bodies of energy tossed back into the skies. I recognize some of the vacs, the secondhand aircraft we started with. But there are newer, state-of-the-art birds too, still bright in silver and blue. Our Cyanese friends have come through for us. I owe Larken. A lot.

I turn to him, but he's rushing to meet a towering Cyanese woman who's geared up for flight. We catch up just as her helmet comes off. A flash of recognition, and I see this isn't any pilot. She's the young woman from the Skal, his ally on the council. And apparently, she's also his fellow commander.

Quickly, Larken bows, and she returns it.

“Vilette,” he says. “What happened?”

Vilette tucks the helmet under her arm. “You should have been here.”

Larken's stricken. He nods. “I know.”

“We've no time for a briefing,” she says. “I need you in the air.”

Larken trails as she heads for a refueling fighter. His guards scatter in their wake, and suddenly, Fahra, Miyu, and I are alone.

“Come on,” I say. “Help me find Hal and Mary.”

First, we report to what looks like an improvised flight control, a tent near the foot of the hill filled with screens and headsetted officers. They've cobbled together a small communications hub—the servers at base must have been blown to bits. “Explains why we couldn't get through,” Miyu says. “They crippled communications first, then swept in to burn everything else.”

Fahra's thoughtful. “They came for a small number of rebels, I think. But they had not bargained on Cyanese reinforcement.”

Inside the tent, we wait for a break in the rapid-fire lines of ground-to-air squawk. Captain Nandan's here, directing our forces. Finally, I catch his eye.

“Reporting for duty,” I say.

“I'm a pilot,” Miyu adds.

Fahra straightens. “As am I.” That gets Nandan's
attention. There's recognition between the two Biseran men, and I can't tell if it's the kind that's bad or good.

I'm about to offer myself as a gunner, but Nandan shuts us down. “Every bird we've got's already manned now. I can't use you up there.” He turns away, leaving no more room for discussion.

Miyu and Fahra exchange questioning looks, but I don't wait for them to figure out our next move. To our right, away from the improvised airstrip, there's another hub of activity. Under a stand of balm leaf trees, I spy stretchers and bodies and tents.

“There.” I point, then take off in a run.

Inside the medic station, my eyes dart from one face to another. So much movement and frantic exchange. You can almost taste the chaos, the way it hovers, antiseptic and gritty, in every breath. I look for the Larssens, but all of these medics are Cyanese, fresh reinforcements who've arrived since I left for Manjor. Quickly, they separate the injured from the dying. It's a ruthless mercy, and their work has just begun.

Again, I interrupt a soldier's work. “I'm looking for Hal and Mary Larssen,” I ask. He's a young medic with too many bags of anti-gel in his arms. I reach out and catch one before it falls.

“They're riding the medi-vacs,” he says. “At the front. Picking up survivors.”

Don't know whether I'm more relieved they're still alive, or terrified they're still in the air. I can barely answer the medic, my voice a garroted squeak. “Thank you.”

“We can help,” Miyu adds. “Whatever you need us to do.”

The medic nods, but he's already moving away to deliver his armload of remedy.

So we jump in. I show Miyu how to hang plasmatic lines and Fahra how to run a sterilizer. We hustle until there are no more instruments to clean, no more crates to haul, and no more white sheets to drape over the dead.

Until dark. We work until the battle is over.

Not long after dusk, our vacs quit going back to the fields and slowly, the rest of them return. A steady stream of skycraft—some soaring, some scorched and crippled—touch down at our fallback position. I wait at the edge of the action, watching for some sign of the Larssens. Soon enough, they stagger in, their vacs touching down.

First Bear, jumping out of his fire-blown Tandaemo, his copilot Zaide behind him. Then the last medi-vac drops, crowded with stretchers and soldiers. Among them, I can barely see Hal, whose face is marked with ash. In his arms, one of the wounded. As the medics around him break away, Hal sinks deeper into the floodlights, and I see his patient's
a corpse. Her head lolled back, blue eyes vacant as glass.

Mary.

Bear sees her too, and he runs to his father. I reach them both as Hal's strength begins to fail. Hal falters, but we help him hold tight. Together, we cradle her body.