CHAPTER TEN
CRISTIAN REMAINED UNCONSCIOUS for the short journey to the planet of Pandora. Sitting next to him in the sleeping alcove, Caina drew her knees up and stared at the blood on the white webbing on Cristian's leg. It made her stomach turn to think her parents might be in the hands of the same people who'd cut up his knee. Her father was getting older, and her mother was so frail...if only they were safe.
“Here’s Pandora,” Joshua called back.
A ragged, disintegrating moon orbited the blue and white planet of Pandora. Chunks of debris made a ring around the moon, some of them drifting towards the planet and disappearing in a blaze of beautiful destruction through the atmosphere. The sparkling debris almost looked like fireworks, the orange and white-hot chunks scraping through the atmosphere and dying.
Joshua navigated around the burning pieces, the ship falling with them towards the surface. A chain of mountains came into view as a small line of bumps running across the continent below. The academy lay tucked away in one of the valleys, far from any colonial developments. Joshua had caught the planet's rotation right when the sun was setting over the valley. Pale blues and golds lit up the sky as they descended in the ethereal light.
Suddenly, the Suki slammed to the side, and Caina was almost thrown off the bed. She looked up and saw a light flare past them. "What was that—more debris?"
"No. They found us. Secure Cristian and put on your restraints. This is going to get rough. The Suki has shields, but that only lasts so long."
As she activated the restraints to hold Cristian in place, she mentally measured her brother's skill as a pilot. He was good enough to get an interplanetary pilot license from the academy, but could he keep them alive until they landed? Or wouldn't they be safe even then? There wasn't anyone to come to their rescue. With the colonies spread out over unfathomable distances, and with only the political, bickering Alliance to unite them all, there was no real military. Some colonies were more militant than others, but Pandora was a colony full of universities and academic centers. It hadn't put any resources into such an endeavor.
She put a hand under the restraints to make sure they weren't too tight on Cristian's chest. His eyelids fluttered, and she paused, her hand feeling his chest rise and fall.
The cruiser tilted, and she braced herself on the edge of the alcove. Joshua glanced back at her. She left Cristian and settled into the seat next to Joshua. Two red lit ships on the screen made steady progress toward them.
Another flare of light lit up the cockpit.
With a quick glance at her, Joshua jerked back on the nav stick. “Hold on.”
The Suki shot up from the tranquil twilight and into the blue-black atmosphere, the sheer velocity of the climb pressing down on Caina’s lungs. She couldn't breathe, and then her vision went black. She wasn’t completely unconscious, though, because she could still hear. Joshua growled, and they jerked to the side, now upside down. The blood rushed to her head, and she could see again.
Joshua commanded the cruiser’s communication system, “Call Dylan.”
Before she could ask who Dylan was, the ship dipped to the side and they plunged toward the mountains.
“Hello?” a voice answered.
“Dylan, it’s Joshua. I’m at 5,000 and someone is shooting at us. We need to come in. Cristian’s hurt.”
There was a pause, and then the voice replied, “5,000 over the academy?”
“Yes. Can you—“
A black streak shrieked past them, and they tumbled down towards the land below, spinning around with such violence that she couldn't see. She could hear herself screaming. She lost all sense of direction, her body going weightless. Joshua was shouting commands at the Suki, but she couldn’t focus on what he was saying. The pressure increased, and the spinning became less violent, slowing enough for her to catch sight of the horizon—a vertical line outside the front screen.
Joshua pulled the stick, and the line went horizontal. The spinning slowed, and then they dove to the mountains at a reckless speed.
“Pull up!” she yelled at him.
The ground still rushed at them until she could no longer keep her eyes open. Finally, the Suki shuddered and arced away from the jagged mountain line. They swept towards a shadowed valley, flying in low and fast.
She’d just barely identified the towers of the academy when the fading daylight lit up with a blinding array of explosions. Joshua flew under the light, and they hit the ground with a thud that reverberated through the ship, the hull groaning. The Suki strained to decelerate. It finally slowed and stopped.
Joshua released his restraints and jumped out of his seat towards Cristian. She released herself just as the cruiser door slid open.
A man with thin blonde hair stood in the doorway. His eyes were cold and dark, and he was small with a slender build. Even under the padded gray vest he wore, it was obvious that he was fit, moving with wiry energy towards the sleeping alcove where Cristian lay.
"Dylan," her brother said. "This is my sister Caina. Caina—the academy surgeon."
She nodded, still shaken from the ride.
Joshua shut the door and returned to his seat, his hands moving over the nav stick and the console. The Suki hummed to life and lifted from the ground, rapidly gaining speed.
The doctor examined Cristian, his hands going to the blood-stained webbing as he frowned. Joshua called back to them, "We're leaving the atmosphere in five seconds."
Though she wanted to ask what the surgeon thought about Cristian’s injuries, she knew better than to ignore Joshua's warning. Even the doctor moved quickly, finding his seat as soon as she did. The ship was nearly vertical by the time the restraints whirred over their bodies. The relentless pressure bore down, a force that shoved them backward until Caina thought her neck would snap. The ship crooned as it burst away from the planet's gravity and shot out into the blackness of space.
They continued on past the crumbling moon. Their speed increased and then leveled out as they entered the wide expanse of the rest of the galaxy. "They can follow, but I doubt they'll catch us," Joshua said, looking at the map showing their location. The two red icons indicating their pursuers were still back on the planet, their progress a slow, laborious line compared to the cruiser's streaking blue line.
"Where did you get this thing?" Dylan asked, releasing his restraints with a bemused expression.
"I stole it from a space station," Joshua answered, flashing a guilty look back at the doctor.
“Hmm. They’ll be wanting it back.” Sitting beside Cristian, the doctor continued, "He's got a few devices implanted, one of them probably a transmitter. We need to deal with that first. And he's been hit with plasma...a lot. There's definitely something chemical happening with his neurons—he's survived some serious trauma."
“He has a cyber joint in his right knee,” Joshua said.
"Yes, I found that strange. There's nothing wrong with Cristian's knees." He moved to the knee and examined the webbing. "I'm going to take this off and have a look."
He took a small knife out of his vest and cut open the bloody webbing. He peeled the webbing back with long, delicate fingers. When the webbing exposed the knee Caina drew in a breath.
The doctor muttered something she couldn’t hear, though she could tell he wasn’t pleased. The skin over his knee was crossed with gobs of poorly placed surgical glue that oozed blood and pus. Gray psuedo skin was quilted over one side. "What a mess. That explains the level of pain meds in his bloodstream."
Dylan glanced over at Joshua. “I'll need a fully equipped med clinic to remove this. We can disable the transmitter in his neck for now."
The doctor turned Cristian's head to the side, revealing a small cut. He took a small, flat device from his vest, and placed it against the cut. The device buzzed, and Cristian jerked. "Sorry about that," Dylan said quietly, peering in at the cut. "I'll take it out later."
Cristian's body spasmed again, his torso jerking upward. His eyes opened and he blinked at them, his face contorted in pain or fear, she couldn't tell which.
“Cristian," the doctor said, his voice soft. "It's Dr. Dylan, from school. Do you remember me?"
Without waiting for a response, he shone a light in Cristian's eyes, continuing his exam. The doctor took a syringe out of his vest. "I'm sorry, but I have to do this. You’ve got nanotechs in your irises—doing God-only-knows-what. It's going to burn," he murmured, and dropped an inky liquid from the syringe into Cristian's eyes. Cristian's arms jerked up against the restraints, and he rolled his head back. He was obviously in pain but he didn't make a sound, gritting his teeth. Caina tightened her hands into fists.
In the tense silence as Cristian writhed on the bed with his eyes shut tight, he whispered in a ragged voice, "Don't…don't.”
Joshua watched, his expression blank and his eyes a flat, dull red. Caina released her restraints and sat next to him, fear coursing through her.
At last, Cristian's body relaxed against the restraints, and the frantic whispers stopped. When his eyes opened, they watered black tears. She wanted to feel his hesitant embrace, or hold his hand, but she didn’t dare touch him.
Cristian turned to the surgeon and Joshua. "I have other implants. They c-can hear what I hear," he said hoarsely.
Dylan ran a monitor over Cristian's body, stopping behind the left ear. "I see it. They didn't use nanotechs for this. They surgically implanted this one."
"Can you t-take off these restraints now?" Cristian asked.
The doctor hit the control next to the bed and the restraints retracted into the wall.
Cristian rubbed his eyes, scrubbing away the remnants of the gel leaking from his eyes. "I know w-where all the implants are, if you n-need to know."
"You were awake when they put them in?" Dylan asked.
"Yeah."
The doctor shook his head at this. "We'll find the best way to get them out without causing you any more pain."
Cristian nodded and sat up, his gaze going to his knee and then away.
"Did you ever see my parents?" Joshua asked. Caina held her breath. Maybe Cristian really did know where their parents were. It didn't even matter that someone was still listening to them. They had to know.
He looked down at his hands. "I’m s-sorry. Your m-mother didn't make the escape from Huron. I'm really sorry," Cristian said, his voice low, his dark blue eyes avoiding theirs.
Horror flooded over her. Joshua left his seat, his face ashen, staring at Cristian.
Her mouth trembled and her voice cracked when she asked, "Are you sure about my mom?"
"Yes. I s-saw them shoot her. I don't think they meant to k-kill her."
The grief hit her like watching a mirror crack, as if she could actually hear the pain crash and break her into a hundred splintered pieces. She almost didn't know she was crying because all she could feel were the pieces inside her. "Where's my dad?"
Cristian kept his head down. "Your father is being t-tortured by the Nostekoi until he agrees to give up his ownership of the colony. I'm n-not sure where they took us. Some outer planet, m-maybe another galaxy. They want him to s-sign over control of the colony, but he wouldn't. He kept saying he wouldn't let a group of b-butchers take over. He wouldn't give up, but neither did they. If it's legal, I guess they don't have to fight for it. They're planning on c-capturing you to force him to do it, and if they really did get you, he would. He'd give them a thousand colonies before he let them hurt y-y-you."
The doctor spoke softly, his dark eyes sympathetic. "He must have already done it. It’s being shared all over the networks that Remington has a new premier."
Caina was so stunned her tears stopped. Joshua swallowed and asked in a hollow voice, “What are the Nostekoi?”
Cristian started shaking, his body racked with spasms. He took a deep breath, “I d-d-“ his voice caught and he grimaced, trying to speak, finally spitting out, “I don’t know.”