I punch the engine, feeling the whole shuttle shudder briefly as the VTOL jets lift us up off our supports. I take a long, steadying breath, then let the shuttle dart up into the sky.
The girl is cowering behind a hummock, her hand over the mouth of the soldier next to her to stop his groans of pain from carrying. She needs to go back, to rejoin the fight, but she can’t—her legs won’t move. She’s found out how easy it is to run away; she’s letting her platoon, her captain, fight without her. It isn’t until the rest of the platoon falls back that her captain finds her, still frozen, the soldier she dragged out of the fight unconscious now.
“You okay, Corporal?” Her captain crouches, inspecting her for signs of shock.
“I ran away,” the girl whispers. “I ran away.”
“Don’t think Jessop would see it that way.” Her captain is taking the other soldier’s pulse. “Come on, we’re holed up on the other side of the ridge.”
She sits there as her captain hauls the wounded man up onto his shoulder and begins the trek back to the rest of her platoon. She tries to stand, but she can’t, and she watches him grow smaller and smaller until she’s alone again, the only soldier left on the plain.
The girl was supposed to be brave, and she ran away.
MY STOMACH TRIES TO FIGHT its way up through my throat as the jets push us away from Avon, and I catch myself grabbing at the armrests of my chair. The shutters around us are closed tight, denying me a glimpse of the blue sky above Avon’s constant cloud cover, or the stars. I don’t know if the dizziness is motion sickness or my mind’s inability to process the last few hours.
With a jerk, the engines slow. It’s only once the thrusters aren’t slamming me back against the seat that I realize gravity’s fading out, and the nervous tapping of my foot takes no effort at all. My weight falls away just as my connection to my home did—in a long, drawn-out silence, my mind spinning, my chest hurting. I have no direction now. I’m not even sure which way to point to find home.
If I crane my neck I can see Merendsen’s profile up ahead of me, and once he turns his head to meet my eyes, but neither of us can unclip without setting off alarms. I haven’t known him long, but I can tell it’s killing him to walk away.
The view shields all stay in place, giving us no warning we’re about to dock, no view of the spaceport as we ease in. Every person who comes or goes from any colony on Avon passes through here, transferring from massive spaceliners to shuttles like this one, built to withstand gravity and atmospheric pressure. I can’t imagine what the spaceport would look like, such a vast thing suspended against the stars, if the viewports were unshielded. Instead the ship clangs loudly as it settles into its cradle, and then Jubilee’s throwing off her harness and striding toward the back of the shuttle to see her passengers out the exit. As she passes me, she murmurs in a low voice, “Don’t get off the ship. Hang back, stay out of sight.”
The passengers begin filing out of the shuttle. I see Merendsen’s head turn toward Jubilee, but there are soldiers and passengers everywhere, and they can’t speak. Merendsen nods, his eyes meeting Jubilee’s; their look is weighted with their history together, the moment stretching long and thin. Jubilee’s jaw clenches, and she nods back at him before he’s carried off in the current of travelers, vanishing into the crowd.
It’s not until I’m casually letting the others in my row of seats leave before me that I realize Sofia Quinn’s on board too, her strawberry-blond hair standing out among the other passengers. On her way to that off-world orphanage—or to whatever escape plan she’d been devising. Around me harnesses clink as the passengers unclip, and I hang back as they file down the aisles to the back of the shuttle, clutching armfuls of their belongings. Sofia glances over her shoulder to make sure she hasn’t left anything and goes perfectly still as she spots me. I lift my hand to press it over my heart, and she nods. Then the man behind her jostles her with his bag, and she steps forward.
Sofia pauses at the bottom of the ramp, speaking to one of the soldiers manning the spaceport and letting him scan her genetag. They’re scanning all the passengers for genetags. My protesting gut suddenly stills in horror. They’re going to know who I am the instant they look at that code on my arm. The soldier scanning her lifts his head—and looks straight at me.
Sofia twists suddenly, leaning against the guardrails and clutching her middle. Silver-tongued Sofia. Always ready.
She groans, letting her knees start to give. “I’m gonna throw up, I can’t do this. It’s the gravity. You gotta find me somewhere, I’m gonna—” Her lips clamp together. As the soldiers fuss over her, and one unlucky volunteer gets lumped with taking her off somewhere she can lose her lunch, I sink down behind a row of seats to crouch, out of sight. Thank you, Sofia.
Jubilee brushes by me without another glance, and I watch through a crack in the seats as she hands a thin e-filer to one of the soldiers. “The manifest’s a little off,” she says apologetically. “Things are crazy down there.”
“You’re telling me,” says one of the soldiers. “It’s a madhouse up here too, Captain. Everyone wants off that planet.”
I can see a little line of tension in Jubilee’s jaw, her eyes narrowing as she watches the soldier, and I know what she’s thinking. Down there, it’s people shooting at each other and people being torn from their families. Up here, it’s a lot of paperwork. But she simply nods at him. “I want to get this shuttle back down before the rebels get their anti-aircraft up and running. Can we make this quick?”