After the short flight out of the mountains, Berk leaned back, letting go of the power regulator levers. He ran a hand through his tangled hair.
“We’ll get there before I can finish the story,” he said, nodding toward the city.
“You better start then,” Jyra said, anxious both to hear about the tattoo and to have something to take her mind off another trip into a battle zone.
“The tattoo was put on my wrist in a hospital on Silanpre,” Berk said. “All their patients get ‘em. Doctors scan the lines and it’s a convenient way to access information about medical updates for that patient. However, it also makes it easy to track all the patients.”
“Do the patients like to hide?” Jyra said, feeling her lips twitch toward the beginnings of a smile.
“The patients like to escape,” Berk said, jerking his head to stare at her. His eyes had the serious gleam again and Jyra hastily turned her laugh into a cough.
“How do they…why do they escape?” she asked, eyes watering.
“Do you know much about Silanpre?” Berk said.
“Not a thing.”
“It’s home to the best medical centers in the Kaosaam System. It doesn’t matter how small a city is there; each one has a hospital that can deal with pretty much any injury. Peradian, where I grew up, is one of the largest cities. It’s rumored to be where the corruption began. The hospitals were all managed by local governments, which made them accountable to the communities they served. An agency, however, managed to get control of the medical centers. First came privatization, then came chaos.
“The most immediate change was how few patients were released. Then reports started cropping up about high profile doctors who’d been forced out, professionals who’d been working in the medical field for decades. New staffs were hired by the private agency for all the hospitals. Then there were more complaints from patient’s families. On the increasingly rare occasion when patients were released, they were to return for a check up. I got news from one of my friends the last time I saw him. He came to visit me in the hospital. According to him, our neighbors had a young kid who’d been taken in and released. The family had been told to bring her back in a week. ‘Course at that point, people were getting suspicious. They didn’t take her back. A week went by and the kid’s screams woke my friend up in the middle of the night.”
“What happened?” Jyra said. She was unaware that her hands were clenched together and her fingers had turned white.
“She died and the family took the body to a doctor friend of theirs, one who wasn’t affiliated with the hospitals. He’d been let go from the hospital himself but no longer practiced publicly. He opened the kid up and discovered her stomach was hardly there. It was like a leaf after bugs have chewed at it. He was able to realize the presence of some foreign chemicals present in her body, but didn’t have the equipment to tell what they were.”
Jyra’s hands went numb and she pulled them apart, momentarily silenced by the story. She took a deep breath and prompted Berk.
“So if she’d gone back, the hospital would have been able to reverse whatever caused that?”
“I have no doubt,” Berk said. “They knew what they were doing. After a few more cases like what happened to that kid, those who were on leave started showing up again on time.”
“But why did they do all this in the first place?”
“Money. That was all. You can imagine. Medical costs destroyed livelihoods. Some people sold everything but the clothes they wore. Most couldn’t afford transport off Silanpre and so they had to turn to the one employer left.”
“They had to work for the hospital?” Jyra said. The parallel between the behaviors of the agency and TF made her stomach contract. She began spinning her hair around one of her fingers, tighter and tighter until the strands dug into the skin.
“They did and it got them no closer to loved ones in there,” Berk said. “Employees and patients were monitored so no relatives were ever in close contact. It didn’t take long before visitors were banned altogether. The hospitals owned Silanpre and the agency owned the hospitals. I don’t know how long it all took to happen. Sooner than you’d think, though, to bring an entire planet’s population to its knees.”
Berk fell silent as Horbson loomed before them. A massive fire lit up the city and the night. Jyra was sure it was the fallen battleship. She wondered how many people had been aboard, how many of them knew they were about to die. Before she could ask her next question, Berk answered it.
“I told you where I got the tattoo, but you’re probably curious how I got in the hospital in the first place,” he said. Jyra nodded. “A transport crash in the city. My family, parents, brother, two sisters were all admitted. I was the only one who fled the crash site. I thought they were right behind me. I tried to go back and help them but none of them were in a condition to escape. Responders were there soon after and took them in. The eventual cooperation people showed toward the hospital, the compliance, only made my anger worse.”
“But the public didn’t have a choice,” Jyra interrupted.
“I spent too much time wondering why no one resisted instead of starting a movement of my own. At one point, I thought of assassinating the responders who brought people to hospitals, but what would that achieve? The injured would likely die. It took me a long time to realize two things, which were people would’ve had a choice if I’d given them another way and there are things worse than death. By the time I had that figured out, the hospital had me.”
“How did you get injured?” Jyra said.
“I didn’t,” Berk growled. “I had wondered what the extra employees were up to. Think of all the staff they had once entire families showed up to work off their debts. We’re talking tens of thousands of people. But I found out for myself. A couple responders grabbed me off the street.”
“Are responders people?” Jyra said.
“Well, yeah,” Berk said. “What’d you think they were? That was one role the hospital was able to fill with all its manpower.”
“I have a hard time believing you didn’t put up much of a fight against two of them.”
“I didn’t used to be this way,” Berk said, staring at his bulk. “The agency workers had some formulas they cooked up and they needed human subjects, another good use of patients and disposable employees alike.”
“What sort of formulas?” Jyra said.
“No idea,” Berk said. “I don’t remember much about the beginning. I had quite a few tubes running into me. The lights on the console actually remind me of the fluids. Lots of different colors.”
“You—you have no idea what they put into you?” Jyra said, staring at Berk.
He shook his head. “Lots of steroids, I imagine. Have you felt my arm?”
“That’s not funny!” Jyra said. “How can you joke about something like that?”
“It’s my experience and I choose to treat it how I wish.”
“But don’t you want to get tested somewhere and figure out what they did to you?”
“Where should I get tested? If you think I’ve any desire to go near a medical center, you haven’t been listening.”
“I don’t know, I just…” Jyra wasn’t sure where her thought was headed. “If it were me, I’d want to know.”
“Well, I’m glad it’s not you then,” Berk said. “In the interest of continuing to live, I’m going to turn my attention outside and see what I can do about getting us safely delivered to the shipyard.”
He brought the pod over the buildings, flying close to the rooftops. White and orange flares filled the sky. Some spiraled through the air; others took the most direct path to the ground. As one shot passed the pod, Jyra saw the rivets on the steel plate. The flares were burning debris from the battle above returning to Drometica, as the man in the store predicted.
The fallen battleship in the middle of the city upstaged the storm of tumbling steel. The buildings that still stood near the ship burst into flames from the heat emanating from the carcass. Jyra couldn’t look directly at it; it was like staring at a sun. She witnessed the flames feeding upon the broken hull in her peripheral vision.
“We’ll need to divert around,” Berk said.
“What?” Jyra said, mesmerized by the spectacle out of the corner of her eye.
“If we get any closer to that thing, it’ll cook us.”
The pod jerked sideways and nearly crashed onto the roof of an apartment complex.
“Heat wave,” Berk said, opening the regulators and lifting them away from the roofs. “It’s messing with the air currents out there.”
Debris littered the streets. Shards of glass, cracked timbers, and chipped bricks blocked roads. Dust that accumulated for years on buildings resettled on rubble. Several more pieces of battle wreckage whizzed by the pod, trailing tails of fire.
“How far?” Jyra asked, taking in a sharp breath each time another projectile barely missed them.
“It’s coming up,” Berk said. He squinted and put his tongue between his teeth. “It looks dark up there so the yard’s not on fire.”
Just after they flew over another roof, part of a ventilator assembly crashed into the shingles. Jyra stifled her scream.
“What’s the matter?” Berk said.
“Things are falling all around us and it only takes one to finish us off,” Jyra said, scanning the skies through the cockpit, as though hunting for an obnoxious insect.
“They have to catch us first,” Berk said. “Hold on!”
He jammed the left pedal to the floor and the pod swerved. Jyra heard the whistling noise as the projectile raced by before it hit the street below.
“Just get us on the ground,” she said, closing her eyes and clasping her hands together again.
“Stop worrying. We’re here,” Berk said.
The roads became wider and buildings were no longer close together. They seemed to be following a main street up a small hill. At the top, Jyra could see the outlines of ships parked behind a tall fence. The angular and sheer design of the hulls made them easy to spot against the backdrop of the sky and the distant hills. Berk eased off on the engines as they soared over the fence. He flipped a switch and beams from the pod’s landing lights flooded the yard. The ships were parked so densely, Jyra didn’t see an opening for a pod half the size of theirs.
“There,” Berk said. He brought the pod lower and Jyra realized part of a gap had been hidden by the large tail fin of a cruiser. “We can squeeze in.” Berk guided the pod down to the shadow and began a vertical descent. The starboard engine knocked against the cruiser and Berk grimaced. They sank into darkness until the pod settled on its legs with a gentle bump.
“Shall we look around?” Berk said, rubbing his hands together.
“I want to do this as fast as we can,” Jyra said, lifting the cockpit dome up and climbing out onto the gravel.
“Me too, but we’ve got to make sure it’s decent. We don’t need to find out we’re flying a wreck the hard way,” Berk said, jumping onto the gravel. His boots crushed into the rock. The dull grinding noise echoed between the parked transports. Jyra couldn’t help but notice Berk’s size again following his story. She wondered what he looked like before the hospital changed him. He clicked on his light.
“This way,” Berk said. “Turn on your light. Oh wait. You can’t.” He smiled as he walked out of sight. Jyra jogged after him.
They walked down a row of ships. It was like hiking in a canyon. The view of the sky had been reduced to the narrow space between the contours of the transports on either side. Even as Craig’s apprentice at the repair shop on Tyrorken, Jyra had never seen so many ships in her life, certainly not all in one place.
Berk stopped and turned to face a pair of doors. Jyra stepped back, trying to take in the size of the vessel, but there wasn’t enough room. She could see reflections of explosions in the city reflecting off the high extremities of the surrounding hulls. Berk, meanwhile, tapped around the doors. Nothing happened.
“Hold this,” he said, passing the flashlight to Jyra. Berk began pounding on the hull near the hinges of one door and then the other. The thud of the contact reverberated in the aisle, but Berk found what he was looking for. A small hatch cover, about the size of the playing card, had fallen open. He pressed the button inside and the doors swung open on squealing hinges.
They stepped into the cargo bay. Another pair of doors on the opposite wall was even larger than the ones they had entered. The ship Jyra and Craig had flown to Drometica could fit in this bay.
“It’s definitely roomy,” Jyra said. They began exploring the ship. The dust and cobwebs drifted in the beam of the flashlight. They checked the cockpit and confirmed the ship required two pilots to fly. On the third level, they found quarters for the crew. Jyra thought she smelled mold. Even after they’d left that level, she thought she could still smell it.
They made their way back to the engine room. Ladders ran up the walls to the transmissions and drive shafts overhead. As they entered the room, Jyra saw two cylindrical devices, about as tall as she was, standing in the middle of the floor.
“Energy cores,” she said. “I’ve never seen those. This is an old ship.”
“Yeah,” Berk said. “The good news is Leonick can handle energy cores.”
“He can?” Jyra hadn’t intended to be as disbelieving as she sounded.
“You’d be surprised,” Berk said with a sideways glance. “He doesn’t say much, but Leonick’s a details guy. He’ll recall the strangest stuff. Drinking doesn’t even affect his memory.”
“Why do you drink?” Jyra said.
“Keep myself in check,” Berk said gruffly. “To finish what I was saying and to announce our leave, the bad news is this ship doesn’t have what we need. Time to keep looking.”
“What’s the matter?”
“We need an exterior incendiary mount,” Berk said. “For something Macnelia’s been working on.”
They walked down the passage from the engine room and up several stairs toward the cargo bay.
“An incendiary mount?” she said.
“For the bomb,” Berk said.
“We’re bombing TF?” Jyra said.
“Yeah, but not before we get Derek.”
“What if my parents are there?”
“Believe me, we’ll figure that out. We won’t drop the bomb until we know they’re clear of the building.”
They jumped back onto the gravel and Berk heaved the doors closed. He pushed his hair back and turned to find Jyra with her arms folded across her chest.
“Why wasn’t I told we had a bomb?” she said.
“Macnelia thought it best and I agree with her,” Berk said.
“Even after drugging the tea, it’s still not enough to trust me?”
“No,” Berk said. “It’s not. If it makes you feel better, I only found out about the bomb a couple days ago.”
“She keeps you all in the dark. That sounds like an excellent way to run a resistance,” Jyra said. “And, no, that doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“I didn’t think it would, but you know why she’s holding back the information.”
“Because Craig and I are new?” Jyra said. She glanced up at the visible sliver of sky to avoid looking at Berk, who shook his head.
“She’s doing it because you both are angry and we all know what that’s like,” he said.
“I lost my brother!” Jyra shouted. “None of you know how that feels!” Berk stepped forward and Jyra automatically retreated until she bumped into the hull of the ship across the aisle.
“I do know,” he growled. “And in the pain of losing my entire family, in the rage, I considered killing innocent people if you remember my story. I’m not saying I know exactly how you’re dealing with your misery, but I have some idea of the feeling. For the sake of those who are no longer with us, I suggest you remember that of everyone in the resistance. We’re not competing to see who has the harder past, we’re trying to cooperate to make sure others don’t have to endure what we have faced.”
Jyra wiped her eyes with the back of her arm, thankful for the cover of darkness, as Berk turned and continued down the aisle.
“So, I’m too angry to be trusted with some information?” Jyra said.
“Not anymore,” Berk said over his shoulder. “You completed the food mission and proven yourself a worthy addition to the team, as far as I’m concerned. Let’s keep looking.”
Jyra tromped after him, unsure how to feel. Although it seemed Berk had just offered to answer any of her questions about the resistance, she couldn’t think of one now. After passing a few unsuitable ships, Jyra privately scolded herself for delaying the mission with her outburst. They were working on borrowed time. If another ship came down on top of them, not only would it destroy the whole shipyard, neither Jyra or Berk could see it in time to escape.
Berk stopped at another promising pair of doors. They toured the ship and agreed it met the needs of the resistance. Berk crawled underneath it and emerged, rolling up a tape measure.
“The incendiary mount is on the small side, but it might work,” he said. They returned to the cockpit and spent half an hour working out the starting sequence. After warming up, however, the engines refused to fire. Another half an hour in the engine room uncovered the reason.
From the top of a ladder with the flashlight, Jyra called down to Berk.
“Game over. The thrust calibrators are missing.” She shined the light on the six thick cables on opposite walls that hung uselessly where the calibrators should have been.
“Even if we found others, we don’t have the tools or machines to move some in from another ship,” Berk said as they headed for the exit. “Shame. This would have been perfect.”
They pressed on, crossing into another aisle to check on other prospects. Jyra tried to ignore her nerves. The more anxious she became, the colder the air seemed and she shivered. She thought they should have found a ship by now. Berk glanced at Jyra as she yawned.
“Told you sleep was important,” he said. Jyra suddenly crouched and pulled Berk down with her.
“Put out the light,” she whispered. Just as Berk switched it off, a beam crawled along the hull opposite them.
“Under here,” Berk said. Jyra was certain the sound of every piece of gravel they turned as they crawled into hiding would give them away. The noise of the approaching footsteps grew louder. A pair of boots marched past them. Jyra exhaled slowly when she could no longer hear the guard.
“Let’s be quicker about this,” Berk said in a much quieter voice than he’d been using once they were standing in the aisle again. “That fellow’s got a stronger sense of duty than I imagined. The whole city’s burning and he’s still here.”
“Down the hill, let’s go,” Jyra said.“If he’s here, there’s got to be something worth stealing.”
After two more ship examinations, they were still without a viable transport. The ground had leveled and the ships at the bottom of the hill were clearly in no condition to fly.
“Give me a boost,” Jyra said.
“What for?”
“I want to get up on this ship and see if I can spot anything nearby.”
“The guard might see you,” Berk said.
“He’s going to find us soon if we don’t get out of here. If he stumbles on the pod, he’ll know for sure people are here who shouldn’t be.”
Berk lifted Jyra onto a small stabilizer and she was able to clamber up the chilly hull of the small supply ship. She looked up the hill for the guard’s light, but saw only darkness. Jyra clicked on the flashlight and moved the beam slowly over the surrounding ships. This area looked more like a graveyard. The totaled transports weren’t just at the bottom of the hill; a freighter nearby was missing its stern. She was about to give up when her light stopped on a ship four rows over. Jyra climbed down and led the way.
It was another small freighter, but in far better condition than the other one down the hill. Berk walked around it with the flashlight while Jyra waited by a crew door.
“It looks good from the outside,” Berk said as he sank to his knees and pointed the light under the ship. “Trouble is a freighter likely won’t have a—”
He stopped talking as he peered at the belly of the ship. “I don’t believe it. Someone’s customized this. It has two incendiary mounts down here!”
Once again, Berk managed to find the concealed door control hatch using his fist. The passage inside the door was wide enough for them to walk shoulder to shoulder. Berk handed Jyra the flashlight as he pushed the button to close the door. The first door they came to on the left led into the cargo bay. It was twice the size of the one in the first ship they checked.
“This will do well,” Berk said, looking through the window into the bay. “Let’s check the engine room first before we waste time in the cockpit.” They headed aft. The lenses of the emergency track lights in the floor caught the flashlight beam and cast reflections on the walls. Jyra pressed the button on the engine room door and nothing happened.
“Dead circuit,” Berk muttered. “The ship’s entrance hatch has probably got a battery backup. You should be able to slide it.”
Jyra placed her hands on the cold metal and pushed. The door began moving on its track into the wall.
She jumped as a voice burst out of the engine room.
“Converge on number nine’s position! Intruders! Repeat, intruders!”
“Been here too long to let this one go!” Berk said. “Get him in the light.” They heard hurried footsteps on steel grating. Jyra shined the light into the room and saw a pair of energy cores mounted on the floor. She tried to get the beam on the guard, but couldn’t tell where he was. The sound of two gunshots filled the room and bullets kicked up sparks to Jyra’s left.
“On the firewall,” Berk grunted. Jyra’s knees shook as she aimed the light and caught the guard scampering down a ladder.
“Keep him in sight,” Berk said as he walked to her side. Jyra watched him draw a shotgun from inside his coat and hold it in his right hand at arm’s length.
Berk’s trigger finger contracted, the gun cracked and recoiled. Jyra directed the light at her feet. Both of them heard the guard’s body hit the floor at the base of the ladder.
Jyra bit her lip. She felt as though she had just woken up without a part of herself. She saw the barrel of the gun drop toward the floor and wished she couldn’t smell the acrid stench of the weapon.
“We have to move,” Berk said. “They’re coming for us. He replaced the gun in his coat and walked into the middle of the engine room.
“Can you bring the light?” he asked. Jyra walked to his side and they examined the cores together.
“I’m sorry,” Berk said, with a quick glance toward the body. “It had to be done.”
Jyra pretended to understand by nodding. She decided that if they didn’t work fast now, more guards would arrive and there would be more killing.
“Check the walls,” Berk said. “No obvious damage?” Jyra guided the light around the room and didn’t see anything problematic.
“I think we’re set here,” she said. “We should make sure all the doors are sealed.”
“Agreed.”
They jogged down the passage and both headed for the door they’d entered. Berk tried to lock it, but the mechanism didn’t function.
“No power,” he said. “Go to the cockpit and fire up the main power units. Then get back here.”
Jyra dashed off with the flashlight. She ran up the passage and climbed three flights of stairs. Another door blocked her way and she had to push it open. The room on the other side certainly wasn’t the bridge. Jyra doubled back, found another passage and scaled a ladder. At last she found what she was after. She took a seat at the starboard console.
The engine room had looked similar to the first ship they explored. She thought hard about the book, recalling images of freighter controls. Power panels were usually installed on the wall. Several likely boxes were mounted nearby. She opened the covers and saw rows of switches, none of which were big enough to be the main units. Frustrated, she sat back in the pilot seat, watching the dust fly in the beam of the flashlight. Then she noticed another panel above the others.
Jyra pulled off its cover and saw five red levers. She grabbed all of them with both hands and forced them upward. Lights flickered to life around her and she heard the groan of machinery throughout the ship. She grabbed the light and rushed back the way she came, but Berk’s voice stopped her.
“I’m coming! Doors are sealed! Let’s go!”
Jyra returned to the bridge where Berk soon joined her.
“How’s it look?” he said, taking the other pilot seat.
“Hard to say,” Jyra said. “Are they out there?”
“Someone was banging on the door,” Berk said. He flipped several switches. “Okay, the cores are heating up.”
“Launch thrusters, too,” Jyra said. “We just need to get the main engines going.”
Berk looked into the sky through the steel frame that supported the reinforced glass over the bridge.
“Sooner rather than later,” he said and Jyra saw his eyes widen. She gazed up and nodded. Another dead ship was falling toward them. Even though it had hardly cleared the clouds, the massive explosions tearing through its hull were already visible. A new report flashed on Jyra’s console screen.
“Mains are ready!” she said. “Engaging launch thrusters.”
The ship shook as it lifted off. The thrusters spat gravel at the other transports parked nearby. The stern of the ship rose faster than the bow, which allowed Jyra and Berk to see the guards running up the hill.
“Back to the pod!” Berk said. They piloted the ship forward. Jyra kept the launch thrusters at full power. A mug shattered on the floor and the contents rushed toward the front of the bridge.
“Where’d that come from?” Berk said.
Jyra didn’t answer but she knew. Steam rose from the streaks of the warm beverage that must have belonged to the guard who lay dead in the engine room.
“Where are the landing lights?” she said. “We’ll need them in a moment.”
“Check the right side of the console,” Berk said. “I’ve got to get ready.” The ship’s forward momentum suddenly slowed.
“What’s happening?” Jyra said, hastily checking the screen for any damage reports. A door ajar warning appeared.
“Nothing. I just opened the cargo door so that’s added to the drag,” Berk said, standing up. “Get as close as you can to the other ships above where we parked. I’m going down to the pod on a rope out of the cargo door and flying back in the same door.”
“All right,” Jyra said. “Go, we’re almost there.” Berk slid on the spilled drink and his boots squeaked as he pivoted on the floor before descending the ladder. Jyra reached forward, flipped a likely switch, and the landing lights illuminated the rows of transports beneath her.
A flash overhead drew Jyra’s attention back to the sky. The wounded ship was closing in. She looked back at the shipyard and saw the cruiser tail fin ahead. She cut forward thrust and the bridge passed over the location of the pod. She applied reverse thrust and the ship held position. Jyra rolled the transport to the left so she could see the ground. After a couple minutes, she saw a flash that had to belong to a gun and she suddenly found it hard to swallow. The lights of the pod flared in the darkness, the vehicle rose up, and headed for the ship. Another minute passed and the cargo door ajar warning disappeared from the screen.
Jyra revved the engines and the ship shot forward, leaving the shipyard and the guards behind. The doomed vessel had changed course and Jyra kept it in view. It glided toward the plains. A plume of fire jutted from the wreck and it split in half; the bow headed for the city, the stern kept a rough trajectory for the plains.
Berk returned to the bridge as the stern hit the ground in front of them, raising dirt and sparks. Jyra felt the ship shudder around her from the shockwave.
“Don’t fly over it,” Berk said.
“I won’t,” Jyra assured him. She flew around the wreck. Even as they passed, Jyra felt her mouth go dry as she saw, through the scorch marks and flames, a jagged-shaped “N” on the side of the hull. Berk noticed it, too.
“Another confirmed sighting,” he said as he took his seat and began running diagnostics. “At least we got a ship.”
“Yeah,” Jyra said absently. The mountains loomed before them and Jyra remembered the flash of gunfire before Berk flew the pod up to the ship.
“You didn’t kill another guard, did you?”
“Wounded,” Berk grunted.
“With a shotgun?” Jyra said, raising her eyebrows.
“Shotgun wounds are usually serious,” Berk said. “No. Don’t you remember what I told Craig before we left?”
“You throw harder than guns can,” Jyra said.
“Punch harder than they can, too,” Berk said and raised his fist to show bruised knuckles.
Jyra noticed the wet floor under Berk and thought it was the spilled drink again until she remembered someone had fired a gun during the pod retrieval.
“Little more than a graze,” Berk admitted. “Thankfully not carrying the bullet. I hate digging those out.”
He turned so Jyra could see the hole in the sleeve of his coat and the blood around it.
“Berk, you’re crazy!” Jyra couldn’t believe he didn’t tell her at once. “That needs to be cleaned and bandaged.”
“Will do once we’re back,” Berk said. “You’ll understand if I object to using the on board aid kit. Might be…expired. Also, I’m not crazy. They called me Berk the Berserk in the hospital. Call me anything other than that or my real name, we might have a problem.”
Jyra was sure the way Berk clenched his bruised fist as he spoke was no coincidence. He sat up and began studying an overview of the ship’s information.
“This ship’s registered name is Mastranada. What do you think?”
“Sounds good,” Jyra said. “What do you think?”
Berk, who had pulled his flask free, was preoccupied with a long swig and didn’t answer.