The skin beneath the cast was intolerably warm and moist. Jyra kicked the bedspread back with her good leg. She sat up in the darkness and dug her fingers beneath the rigid armor that kept her tibia immobilized.
It had taken several weeks underground before Jyra was used to the absolute darkness while she slept. The brown clouds of Tyrorken had been visible, night and day, except during dust storms. Even the evenings in the mountain on Drometica hadn’t prepared Jyra for the utter solitude she experienced in her recovery room. The noise of traffic in the hallway rarely reached her ears.
Serana had shown her around the base as promised. It was far larger than Jyra could have imagined. Tunnels extended into the very foot of the mountain for miles. Excavation never stopped; additional space for equipment and people was always needed. The resistance on Silanpre had been active for twenty years, recruiting members, expanding their base, and fighting the Allied Hospitals.
“What exactly does the resistance target?” Jyra had asked, as Serana wheeled her out of one of the main control rooms.
“We use a number of tactical strikes and, depending on the circumstances, we can rescue certain patients,” Serana said.
“How do you determine which patients to rescue?”
“Usually we just need enough information. For example, if someone has a friend or family member taken into the hospital, they can provide details about the patient’s condition and location in a facility. If the patient’s room is above the ground, we can assemble a team to break them out.”
“A ground force?”
“By air,” Serana said. “Fly in, blow open the wall or, if we’re lucky, a window gives us access. Get the patient onboard and get out. It’s getting trickier though. The last time we tried, the hospital shot the team down.”
“The hospital has that kind of the artillery?”
“When I say they’ve taken over, I mean it. The hospital security force dominates local police all over Silanpre. We’re up against a private entity with unlimited resources and its own army.”
Jyra rubbed her leg in the darkness, thinking about the conversation. Despite the daunting challenge of opposing the hospitals, everyone she saw in the corridors moved with purpose, smiling at people they recognized and even laughing.
This is what Tyrorken needed, she thought. This many people to fight for it that believed they could succeed. She stared at the ceiling she couldn’t see. Somewhere above, her home world still spun. Jyra relaxed back onto her pillow, wondering if Tyrorken still supported life.
Sleep came and went. Jyra rolled over, smelling the food before she saw it. Once she turned on her lamp, she saw the chicken sandwich waiting on her beside table. A handful of deep purple grapes and a jug of water accompanied the sandwich.
Jyra sat up too quickly and felt the pain course between her shoulder and ribs. She ate one-handed, relishing each bite. The chicken was tender and seasoned with rosemary. The grapes were sweet and their thin skins split between her teeth. Until she came here, Jyra never had memorable meals. Now she found herself reminiscing about yesterday’s breakfast of wheat cakes and strips of bacon.
Once she finished her meal, she slid off the bed into her wheeled chair and tucked the plate on the rack underneath the seat. She clicked her lamp off at the door, remembering Serana’s request to minimize power consumption. Keeping the lights on throughout the base while protecting the location from the hospitals was no easy feat. Electrical surges had to be directed toward different parts of the base to mimic tectonic activity.
“Does that really work?” Jyra asked, after Serana explained it.
“We haven’t been discovered yet,” Serana had said.
Jyra wheeled through the corridor, leaving her plate in the same collection bin she visited after every meal. She knew her way through the passages, turning left, then right, staying close to the wall. Her wounded shoulder throbbed gently as she pushed the wheels. Drenal confirmed during her last visit that the muscles were healing well, but residual soreness could persist for the rest of her life.
Jyra braked next to a door and knocked. She scratched her leg near the top of the cast while she waited. Serana opened the door and greeted Jyra with a smile.
She wore a gray flight suit and a pair of worn leather boots. Her hair was pulled back and her eyes, framed with eyeliner, gleamed in the light of the corridor. Jyra hadn’t ever seen Serana without makeup and they’d spent nearly every day together since she arrived.
The walls and floor of Serana’s room were covered in clothes, sheets of paper, and an assortment of greasy ship parts. Jyra hadn’t been able to examine any of it in detail since her chair couldn’t fit in the narrow aisle that wound through the clutter.
She rolled backward as Serana stepped into the passage and shut the door behind her.
“Thanks for the sandwich,” Jyra said.
“I’m glad you liked it,” Serana replied. “It’s one of my favorites. We just got an order of chicken and some fresh produce, so I thought I’d take advantage of it.”
“Who supplies the food?” Jyra asked, as they set off toward the center of the base.
“We work with a variety of outlets,” Serana said, tucking her hands into the waist pockets of her suit. “We try to rotate through different vendors to keep the hospitals off our trail. Sometimes, of course, we take what we can get.”
“Stealing?”
Serana’s smile reappeared. “We think of it as redirecting,” she said. “The hospitals stopped transporting their goods in marked ships, but we can still identify their encrypted signal. If conditions are in our favor, our forces will take down a hospital ship and put their supplies to better uses.”
Serana’s smile widened as she fell silent. Jyra noticed then how Serana’s eyes maintained their sharp appearance, regardless of what the rest of her face expressed. They remained the same shape, never squinting or crinkling at the edges. She’s always determined to get what she wants, Jyra thought, as the passage floor became a descending incline. An unbidden thought of how the TF resistance might have operated if Serana had been in charge borrowed Jyra’s attention as she coasted deeper underground.
The lights in the corridor grew brighter as they approached the center of the resistance base. Jyra slowed down as the passage walls leaned away to either side, opening into the vast central cavern. Control panels and cubicles spread across the floor and onto rocky outcroppings on the walls. The metal banding used to brace the earth in the hallways had been reinforced with a network of steel mesh and beams all around the cavern to keep it from collapsing. Jyra couldn’t even see the ceiling of the massive chamber. Lights, power cables, data lines, and signs hung far below it, shrouding the top of the cavern in dust and shadow. The main vessel control center for routine operations sat in the middle of the cavern beneath the large banner that read Allied Resistance. The first time Jyra saw it, Serana had told her it hung in the room of the first meeting of the resistance. In such a large space it looked rather diminutive. Serana plunged into the crowd, clearing a path for Jyra, who never wished to be able to walk as much as when she entered the central cavern. Navigating through the throng of bodies was often tedious and always stressful.
Once they pressed into the first ring of cubicles, the congestion relaxed, but Jyra still had to fight the floor incline, working her wheels to keep from striking cubicles and thick cables that spilled over the dirt before rising toward the distant ceiling. They finally reached the commander’s post.
“Where are we today?” Serana asked loudly to announce her presence.
Jyra could barely see over the console in front of her but everyone behind it looked heavily absorbed in their work. One of the women pushed back from a screen, stood up, and crossed to where Serana waited. Her hair was pulled back so tightly, Jyra was surprised the woman could still blink. Her tone was no warmer than her expression.
“Hangar B,” she said brusquely. “Survey the damage to the vehicle involved in last night’s mission. Report major damage and repair minor damage as encountered. That is all.”
“Understood,” Serana said, inclining her head in acknowledgment. She clapped Jyra on the uninjured shoulder and they made for the nearest elevator on the edge of the cavern.
“She’s wound a little tight today,” Jyra said.
“She is,” Serana said, clearing a path for Jyra again. “Her brother was on last night’s mission.”
Jyra forgot about her pain as she pushed herself the rest of the way to the elevator. She immediately thought of Dario, imagining herself as the curt woman in command.
“What went wrong?” Jyra asked as they entered the elevator.
Serana didn’t speak until the doors closed, blocking the sight and sounds of the cavern.
Serana stared at the dirt smudges on the floor. “Something wrong with a mission is almost always worse than it sounds.”
Once she was strong enough after her procedures, Jyra had been working with Serana around the base. After the extensive tour, she had started helping with ship repair. Though she often couldn’t physically make repairs, Jyra found she had a knack for troubleshooting, even from her chair.
The elevator doors parted to reveal Hangar B. The smells of overheated electronics, scorched metal, acrid smoke, fuel fumes, and spent shells rushed into Jyra’s nostrils and her head swam immediately. Her fingers dug onto her wheels. Serana had cupped a hand around her own face as they stepped into the smoky room.
The bright lights pierced through the haze and Jyra felt sick for the woman in command. She pressed herself back into her chair, hoping it would bolster her resolve. The ship before her seemed more nothing than anything.
It was larger than a skiff, a simple twin-engine transport for ten people or so. Most of the fuselage sheathing had been consumed by fire. The cowling on both engines was charred and, when Jyra rolled closer, she saw they were both hollow. The turbines had been torn out. The seats in the small cabin were all battered and warped by flames. Jyra jerked her eyes away when she saw the bones of a severed hand wedged in a cracked rib of the fuselage.
The leader of the crew surveying the wreck met Serana near the cockpit to give his report. The crew was dressed in hazard suits. The helmet muffled the leader’s voice.
“We’ve been over it twice,” he said when Jyra moved closer to listen. “The reserve fuel tank was leaking everywhere. I can’t believe it didn’t ignite. The main tank fried half the ship when it went. Multiple rib fractures and deck damage are prevalent throughout.”
He paused and pulled off his helmet and gloves and set them on a nearby work table. The leader was middle aged, similar to Drenal. Jyra saw only a couple patches of silver in his otherwise light brown hair. He pushed his short bangs off his sweaty forehead and fixed Serana with his gray eyes, which were round and somber.
“Conduct your evaluation by all means, but I think we’re looking at minimal salvage here,” the leader said, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his smudged suit.
“Thanks Graze,” Serana said, turning to stare into the cockpit. “I’m like to agree with you on this. Any idea what hit them?”
Graze shook his head and pointed at an empty and warped cannon mount on one of the fuselage ribs.
“The discharged shells were all onboard,” he said. “Unless an enemy projectile shot in and out of the fuselage, which is highly unlikely. All the powder traces match our ammunition. The cannon itself was gone. Nowhere near the crash site.”
Jyra rolled past Serana, circling around the front of the cockpit. The spars that had supported the reinforced glass over the pilots were still intact, but were bent and twisted. From her vantage point, Jyra was able to see the undersides of the spars, just as if she were sitting in the cockpit staring straight up. Despite the soot from the fire, she noticed a dull silver cut shining against the black on both spars. It looked as if the pilots had taken a file to the spars, but why hadn’t the fire scorched the bare metal?
“Did your crew make these marks?” Jyra asked. Both Graze and Serana came to her side.
“What was that?” Graze said. Jyra pointed at the spars.
Graze didn’t say a word but leaned up against the nose of the ship and stretched his arms inside the cockpit, placing a hand near each cut to approximate the measurement.
“Del, bring that cable we found on the cockpit floor,” he called. One of his crewmembers shuffled over. Graze pulled his gloves on again and Del handed him the cable. It was about an inch thick, and both ends were frayed from where it split from another piece. Soot covered the cable as well, except for two places where the dull gray strands still showed under the bright lights.
Graze held it up near the spars. The marks lined up with the bare parts of the cable.
“Good eyes,” Graze said. “This was the only thing we found that wasn’t part of our ship.” He shook the cable once and handed it back to Del.
“So the attackers fired a cable through the cockpit and were able to pull the ship where they pleased,” Serana said.
“Looks like Del was onto something,” Graze said. Del blinked behind the shield of his helmet and nodded.
“Damage this severe is what you’d expect from reentry stress,” he said.
“This ship is only rated for local travel, though,” Serana said. “It’s not spaceworthy.”
“I think the attackers knew that,” Del said. “This used to be a hospital transport.”
“You think they spent the time and energy to hijack this ship, pull it past the atmosphere with one of their space cruisers, and tow it back just to let the burn up destroy it?” Jyra said.
“It sounds sadistic enough for the hospital,” Serana said, before Del could answer.
“Blowing it out of the sky would have been a quick death,” Graze said. “Reentry burn up, though, isn’t necessarily so fast. Heat, pressure, asphyxiation, and organ ruptures are just a few of the ways you might die. It’s a long way back to the ground, especially when you can feel the hair burning off your arms and scalp.”
“The pilots sealed the cockpit,” Del said through his helmet. He pointed at the thick door that isolated the cockpit from the cabin. “The cockpit would have lost pressure when the cable shot through the glass.”
“I don’t know if we should salvage anything,” Serana said. “If this ship went through reentry, it’s impossible to guarantee the integrity of any part since the entire craft isn’t designed to withstand such temperatures. And anyone aboard during burn up will not have survived.”
Silence met these words. Jyra thought of the woman in command. She had no idea what happened. Her brother is dead like mine, Jyra thought.
She leaned on her wheels and began moving away from the ruined ship, absentmindedly following Serana and Graze. The sound of their voices interrupted her thoughts about Dario.
“I heard the response team initiated family protection from the site before even beginning vehicle recovery,” Graze said, pressing the button to summon the elevator.
“It takes time for the hospital to analyze remains but if they visited the wreck, they’ll have all the samples they need,” Serana said.
“What are you talking about?” Jyra asked.
“Next steps,” Serana said. “Whenever something like this happens and our people are either killed or captured, we have to move quickly to protect those closest to them who aren’t part of the resistance.”
“The hospital only needs to cross reference a few tissue samples before it can identify family members,” Graze added. “Once they have that information, the extortion, blackmail, and forcible commitment begins.”
“The stakes are higher when the hospital detains resistance members. Their families could betray us. We have to deploy missions to get family members to safe locations where the hospitals won’t look for them.”
“So the hospital knows that if it destroys one of our ships, we’ll send more out to protect family members?” Jyra said. “Wouldn’t all those extra missions from the base give away our position?”
Serana shook her head as they stepped back into the main cavern.
“We have ships stationed all over the planet,” she said. “Nearly all of them can be mobilized at a moment’s notice.”
The noise in the cavern had increased. People rushed in and out of central command, carrying folders of reports. The sound of hundreds of voices rose toward the hanging lights, echoing throughout the cavern. The footsteps of those around Jyra erased the tracks of her wheels moments after she created them.
“Tell them,” Serana said.
Graze nodded and pushed away through the crowd. Serana drew back toward the wall and Jyra followed her.
“What’s happening?”
“The name’s of the dead are about to be released,” Serana said.
Jyra couldn’t see Graze anymore, but he must have found who he was looking for, because a deep bell chimed over the speaker system, silencing the noise in the cavern immediately. The names came next, each spoken with a solemn professional tone, but each name had a different voice.
“Grant Bast.”
“Lasset Culver.”
“Colvin Fine.”
“Mitra Roke.”
“Tram Sipstron.”
“Krand Solveil.”
“Olia Tinder.”
“Tony Verral.”
Halfway through, Jyra realized each person must have made the recording at an earlier date for this specific purpose. The bell tolled after each name. When the last voice spoke through the speaker, a single wail followed, rising from central command. It was the woman, realizing she would never see her brother again. A final chime of the bell cued a moment of silence. Some people fell to their knees and placed their hands upon the dirt. Others bowed their heads in prayer, but remained on their feet. Many of them, like Serana, stared straight ahead, their eyes hard and unblinking.
The silence didn’t last more than a few minutes, but time disappeared with the bell. Jyra’s shoulder throbbed, but she did nothing to soothe it. She sat motionless in her chair, repeating the names in her head. Thoughts of Macnelia, her parents, Dario, and even Jed tried to enter her mind. She saw their faces and heard their voices in her memory, but she forced it all aside. Others need my attention now, she thought, mentally running through the list of eight again.
*
Jyra hoisted herself onto her bed that evening. Her joints ached from exhaustion and the weight of her head threatened to overwhelm her neck. She had spent the rest of the day with Serana monitoring the missions to relocate family members of the slain resistance members. Jyra was completely exhausted by the time she left the control room . It wasn’t even the main vessel command center in the central cavern. The control room organized rescue missions and surveillance runs.
The goals of the relocation work were easy enough to understand, but fulfilling them was nothing short of excruciating. The thrill of completing a mission was tempered by the crisis of another ship heading toward an ambush or other perils.
One moment, Jyra remembered Serana throwing an arm around her as many in the control room celebrated when the largest mission of the day safely reached its drop point. The laughter came easily. The cheers buoyed the mood. Then, Jyra recalled how it felt as if her stomach fell through her chair. Three transports came under fire almost simultaneously. The joy evaporated. Tight lips and frowns replaced smiles.
The wheeled chair rarely bothered Jyra as a means to travel except inside the central cavern. It was easy to move around the base by rolling and, once she got used to it, being chair-bound wasn’t that bad. That changed today.
Jyra knew that her ability to stand wouldn’t have altered the outcome of the menaced transports. Even so, the chair only compounded her sense of helplessness. Even when two of the transports arrived with no casualties reported, many in the control room, including Jyra, remained shaken. The third transport had lost radio contact. The resistance still didn’t know what happened to it. A few of its passengers had been receiving undercover medical attention, keen to avoid the Allied Hospitals.
Her leg itched. Jyra sat up to run her nails over her skin near the top of the cast. Another few weeks and Drenal would finally cut it free. She dropped the wounded leg over the side of the bed and inadvertently kicked her duffel. Jyra looked up to make sure she’d closed the door and leaned over to unzip her bag.
The blanket that had been in her quarters on Valiant Conductor II caught her attention. She had bunched it up and stuffed it in her duffel in the haste of packing. Jyra pulled the blanket out for the first time since her escape and a crumpled photo fell out. Without so much as a glance, Jyra picked it up and threw it back in her bag. She pulled out the picture of Dario and gazed at it for a moment before setting it on the bed next to her. She selected the dagger and her mother’s locket next. They sat on top of “Ships of the Kaosaam System.” She extracted the book as well, but opened the locket first.
Her parents and brother, as well as her younger self, appeared in the light of the lamp. Jyra noticed one of her teeth was missing. Her hair was much shorter in the photo. She remembered that Dario had cut her hair to look like his a few months before the pictures were taken. Sherlia wasn’t pleased, but Dario insisted Jyra had wanted him to do it. Jyra backed him up, but Sherlia didn’t believe it and had tried to alter the cut to, as Jyra remembered it, “suit your face better.”
We were siblings, Jyra thought, smiling at the part in Dario’s hair, imagining how it would have looked on her. What suited him should have suited me just fine. Without thinking, she opened the clasp and attached the locket around her own neck.
The topcoat from the mission to rescue Derek and her changes of clothes were all that remained in the duffel aside, of course, from Leonick’s gift. Jyra remembered her parents used to joke they kept their money under their mattress rather that deposit it in the TF employee bank. At least I can keep up the tradition of sleeping over my cash, Jyra thought. She pushed back a flap of the box to ensure the funds were still there.
Satisfied, Jyra returned the dagger, the photo of Dario, and the blanket to the duffel, taking care to drape the blanket over her money. She moved her tin of charcoal and toothbrush aside on her beside table to make room for her book. Jyra used her good foot to slide her duffel under the bed.
Without her money to worry her, the control room memories stole her attention instead. The moment the scene came back to her, Jyra felt her stomach clench and a chill shoot from the back of her neck to her feet. The fear came without warning. Jyra focused on taking several deep breaths, noting that she wouldn’t heal any faster if she felt stressed all the time.
Jyra had gained some confidence helping Serana analyze damaged ships for salvage and repair possibilities. Even so, she wasn’t quite sure what Serana saw in her. She placed value on Jyra for escaping from another resistance. There had to be more to it than that. She didn’t feel like a particularly valuable person to the Allied Resistance. The image of the severed hand made Jyra close her eyes, but it only brought the bones into sharper detail, so she opened her eyes again. I’ll have to develop a stronger stomach if I’m going to make it here, she thought. I need to be stronger.
If she continued to react to the atmosphere of the control room like she did today, Jyra knew she would have to avoid it. But what if other areas of the base started to trigger her, too? Her emotions had never interfered with her life in such a significant way. Her misery in the wake of her brother’s death made sense. Her feelings in the control room did not. The stress had nearly paralyzed her, preventing her lungs from filling with air and threatening to freeze her heart in her chest. Tadwin had told her to get a grip on herself when she upset as a child. Tadwin rarely discussed feelings, but Jyra wondered now if he’d been trying to suggest that she master her emotions.
She sat up with a heavy sigh. Jyra seized the back of her wheeled chair and stood, placing most of her weight on her healthy leg. Her eyes focused on the steel banding on the ceiling. The light glinting off the metal reminded her of the stars, which were scattered in the sky above her, like the tree needles blanketing the ground.
“Grant Bast, Lasset Culver, Colvin Fine, Mitra Roke, Tram Sipstron, Krand Solveil, Olia Tinder, and Tony Verral,” she spoke to the ceiling. If the Allied Hospitals had killed them as Del supposed—using reentry to tear apart a local transport—it seemed the hospitals on Silanpre were as wicked as TF. As she came to the conclusion, Jyra realized her eyes had dried out; she’d been staring at the door across the room.
The moment she blinked, someone knocked.
“Come in,” she said automatically. Serana threw the door open in a rush and crossed to Jyra in five hurried strides.
“We found the third transport,” she said breathlessly.
“Where?”
“Nearby,” Serana said. “Do you think you can come with me?”
“Where?” Jyra said again.
“To the transport,” Serana said. “You and I need to fix it.”
Jyra clutched the wheeled chair harder, half excited, half convinced Serana was joking.
“My leg…”
“I think you can use a crutch now,” Serana said. “Drenal will understand.”
“Will he?” Jyra said, raising an eyebrow. “He has to approve it first, doesn’t he?”
“He can’t. He’s stranded with the transport.”
Jyra felt an instant surge of panic, but fought against it, determined to maintain rational thinking, even though her hands shook.
“It’s dark, though.”
“We have lights,” Serana said. “We need to go now. Two hospital patrols are closing in on the crash site.”
Jyra didn’t even think as she hobbled in front of her chair and sat down.
“Take me to the ship,” she said.
“Always a woman of action,” Serana said with a small smile.
“Don’t you have other people you’re responsible for who could help you?”
“No.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re the only person I’ve saved from a hospital patrol,” Serana said, pushing Jyra into the hall. “Maybe we can change that tonight. There are a few others who are coming, but I need someone who can get the transport in the air again in a hurry.”
Jyra nodded and stared straight ahead. Her hand rose to close around her mother’s locket. She gripped it until they turned the corner before tucking it inside her shirt.