Into the No-Zone

4

ARGUMENTS

A week goes by with no sign of Ballard and the other rebel leaders returning. I’m still struggling to get my head around what Fleur told us. Peace treaty? War over? It makes no sense, like taking a step and finding there’s no floor to put your foot back down on. But something big is going on for sure. We’ve been ordered to ‘cease offensive operations with immediate effect’.

Some say this proves the rumour. I don’t know about that.

What I do know is it’s weirdly quiet and tense in the Deeps. Rona reckons everybody’s gone from yakking about peace deals to holding their breath. Weather’s been odd too. Firstgreen usually brings strong easterlies, but for days the windsocks have hung limp. Only in the last few hours has the wind picked up again.

One good thing – at least Colm and I seem forgotten now.

I’m not complaining. See, I’m all healed, tooth regrown, strapping gone and ribs good again. And no wind means no windjammer flying, so I get to see more of Sky. She’s sitting cross-legged on the end of my bunk right now, her back to me, honing the long-bladed hunting knife I gave her. The steady rasp-rasp of steel on stone drags a yawn out of me.

I breathe in and fill my nose with the sweet smell of the gun oil she uses. It makes a very welcome change from the usual stink of damp and sweaty bodies.

‘How sharp d’you need it?’ I say, stretching.

‘Sharp,’ Sky says. ‘Needs a fine edge to cut through bone.’

By rights she shouldn’t be in here. Deeps rules – one lot of sleeping tents for male fighters, another for women. No pairing-up allowed. War comes first, something like that. But rules and regulations slide off Sky like rain runs off a fourhorn’s greasy back. She comes and goes as she pleases. I’m glad. Whenever she limps in here my heart starts thumping. Can’t help it.

So far today we haven’t argued. Not much anyway.

Sky inspects her blade, spits on the whetstone and goes again.

I go back to watching her vid. That’s against regs too, shot by her co-pilot Kallio’s helmet-cam on the last relief mission they flew to the Blight before our jammers were grounded. Jagged rocks flash close past the canopy. The early dawnshine picks out streaks of orange and yellow in cliffs that were grey a minute ago, green leaves clinging to stubby, wind-thrashed trees.

‘Do you have to fly so bogging low?’ I say, flinching.

Sky doesn’t look up. ‘The lower we scrape the ridges, the less likely we are to be picked up on the run-in.’

‘That’s crazy low though,’ I say, wincing as I spot some grazing fourhorns looking down at her windjammer as it whines past. They look about as horrified as I do. And Sky’s fast, but she’s only pureblood fast. One mistake, she’s chewing on rock. She banks round an outcrop, chucking the jammer about like it’s a toy. I’m pretty sure the right wing tip clips some branches.

She glances across at the camera – at Kallio – and grins. Which stings, seeing as I mainly get scowls.

Ahead, jinking about as it tracks the lower slopes of the ridge, I see the lead windjammer with their mission commander, Ekway, inside it. The dawnshine catches it as it banks left and tucks even closer to the rocks. I glimpse the Gemini symbol painted on the hull and under the stub-wings – a massive black handprint with the little finger painted blood-red. Twist-black-four we call it. I hold my left hand up and look at the stump where my little finger was, before the Answerman took it for his collection of grisly trophies, the price for his answers. It’s healed clean – course it has – I’m nublood. Yet even now it shocks me, like it’s a stranger’s hand I’m looking at. Weird too how it still itches sometimes on damp mornings, as if thinking about growing back.

In my earbuds I hear Ekway’s voice on Sky’s tac-comm.

‘Blight in five. Get ready for the drop.’

That drags my eyes back to the cleverbox screen, and a good view of Sky. Her hair, hacked off by Fliss when we were on the run together, is back to bleached-white dreads and nearly shoulder length now. Her cheekbones are daubed with the black paint jammer pilots wear; her jawbone works as she chews something. Her eyes, the dark green of deep water, flick about restlessly, checking instruments. I make out the teardrop inked under her left, in memory of Tarn. One twitch, they both die, yet she’s obviously loving every second. I never get to see her like this on the ground, so alive. I reckon she just doesn’t know what fear is.

I must mutter something because real Sky takes a break from her whetstone and glances back at me. ‘Where are you at?’

‘You’re about to hit the Blight.’

A massive bang makes me jump and curse.

On-screen Sky swears too, and I see a sticky smear of blood and guts and yellow-gold feathers sliding up the canopy.

‘Was that the bird?’ she asks.

I nod. ‘Scared the crap out of me.’

The view changes as Kallio unstraps and clambers back into the cargo hold to cut the crates loose on Sky’s signal. His hand mashes a red button on the hull. The ramp drops down, opening up the back of the windjammer, and I can almost feel the wind slap and tug at him. A steep, rock-strewn slope blurs past, so close it seems he could reach out and burn his fingers on it. He looks down. Way below is the valley bottom, green and yellow fields streaming backwards. Labourers straighten and look up, gobs open, as they soar over. I hear a buzzing. A light by the open hatch starts flashing, red and urgent, counting down the thirty seconds to the drop.

Sky dives them down now until they’re among the weeds, so low the downwash from their lifters kicks up a giant rooster tail of dust and earth behind the windjammer. Above the shriek of the wind I hear a crackling, tearing sound, and some bangs. Kallio’s view jerks forward to the flight deck. The sky ahead is a wall of snapping flame and writhing smoke. Lethal blobs of green seem to drift lazily upwards to flash past, barely missing.

‘They’re shooting at you!’ I exclaim, flinching just watching it.

Sky grunts. ‘Yeah, Slayers have a bad habit of doing that. They’ve stuck guns all around the Blight. We took loads of ground fire.’

Something clatters the hull, knocking the windjammer’s left wing down until Sky catches it and levels them. Kallio’s view shifts to the open back again. And now they’re hurtling low across the jumbled sprawl of shanty-town roofs that is the Blight. Or was – this isn’t the same place I stumbled through on my way to see the Answerman. This filthy maze of shacks, plywood, corrugated iron and sun-bleached plastic looks like some giant, fire-breathing monster has stomped all over it. Everywhere fires blaze unchecked. Columns of ugly black smoke billow into the air. In some open places I glimpse corpses left lying where they fell.

Seconds later I spot the first barricades. Piles of rubbish and rubble, burnt-out wrecks of Slayer landcrawlers, anything the desperate Blight defenders can lay their hands on.

Poor Blight. So close to Prime, it’s taken the biggest beating. We destroyed their precious Facility, so now the Slayers are taking their revenge by levelling the Blight and going after our rebel base underneath it, Bastion. Our besieged forces there are helping the Blighties fight, but are barely clinging on. Sky reckons three-quarters of the Blight is overrun or abandoned.

The drop light flicks from red to green. Kallio lets the crates go. One by one they rumble backwards to the open ramp and tumble out. Their drogue chutes snap and fill.

The view swings right.

I twitch big time as I see Prime itself, crouching there high on the hill above the Blight, like a gigantic, stone-walled toad. Within those walls, metal towers gleam like mercury, flinging the dawnshine back at Kallio’s helmet-cam. It’s his stronghold.

The Saviour. Warlord. Lawmaker. Despot. Ruler of Wrath.

Our enemy. And . . . my father.

So hard to believe, even now. So wrong. So unfair.

His fortress too – that was where they once dragged me and sucked my nublood out to pump into him, to heal his crippled, failing body. The memories reach inside me through my eyes, grasp my guts with ice-cold fingers and start to squeeze.

I’ve seen enough. I hit stop, yank the buds from my ears.

‘Wow,’ I say, fighting to keep my voice level. ‘Blight’s a mess.’

‘Did tell you,’ Sky says, without looking up.

With the sun on the canvas all day, it’s still warm in the tent. She’s peeled her jumpsuit top off and knotted it round her waist. I put the screen down and watch her sadly, the way her shoulder bones slide under her T-shirt with each stroke of the stone in her hand. Muscles stand out like cables in her skinny arms. A crescent of pale skin uncovers at the small of her back as she leans forward. Tempting. I could reach her with my toes and give her a tickle. Would do a while back, without thinking. Not now.

I’ve been shrugged off enough. It’s no fun.

Anyway, we’re not alone. Others are off duty and taking it easy too. Colm’s on the upper bunk above us, reading something. I bet his ears are flapping.

Sky coughs. She’s got another cold.

‘This peace deal,’ I say to her back. ‘What do you think?’

Finally, she quits with the whetstone, holsters the knife and squirms around to face me. ‘It’s only a rumour.’

‘What if it turns out to be true?’

‘Even if it is, we both know it won’t be worth squat. Slayers are snakes. The Saviour’s the biggest snake of all. You don’t make deals with snakes, you just stamp on their head.’

A man struggles inside through the tent flap. Sky darts a glance at him as he heads for his bunk, and looks disappointed.

‘Still no word from Ness?’ I ask her.

She shakes her head. ‘Still working on it. He’ll crack it soon.’

‘And if he doesn’t?’

‘He’d better. For his own good.’ She pats her knife.

I’m working on a scowl when she winks. Not funny though. Here we are, with what could be a miraculous peace breaking out. We could have a future, for the first time in our lives. But that doesn’t interest Sky in the slightest. Course not.

Wood creaks above us. Colm’s upside-down face appears.

‘If this peace deal does come off,’ he says, ‘maybe we’d do a prisoner exchange. You could ask for your sister.’

Sky sneers. ‘You think that’s likely?’

Colm, his upside-down face reddening, shrugs at her.

‘More likely than you rescuing her. And you’re forgetting something, Sky. Right now there’s a ceasefire. Screw that up by trying to bust your sister out of wherever she’s being held and Ballard will skin you.’

‘Any deal will just be a trick,’ she snarls. ‘Of all people, you should know that, what with being raised a Slayer .’

She stresses the last bit. Deliberate. Nasty.

Is this why Sky can’t stand him? Rona said it was jealousy, me having Colm, her missing Tarn. I’d thought it was my brother saying that going after Tarn was dumb, that our cause comes first.

‘Colm didn’t choose that,’ I say through my teeth.

She rocks back and holds her hands up. ‘Okay, okay. All I’m saying is no way am I hanging about here, waiting on some peace treaty that might never happen. Soon as Ness comes up with the goods, I say we go looking for Tarn.’ Her eyes find mine and drill into them. ‘That was the deal. Remember?’

We go looking for Tarn . I roll the words around my mouth, not saying them aloud, just tasting them. They taste of ashes.

But I did make that deal. ‘Sure.’

Colm lets out a disgusted sigh and rolls out of sight.

‘You’re always moaning about wanting to fight. Going after Tarn with me is your chance to see some action,’ Sky says.

My face goes hot. ‘I do want to fight, but –’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ she cuts in. ‘Ballard says you’re too valuable.’

‘He is too valuable,’ Colm says.

‘I’m not,’ I say. ‘Sky’s right. I stopped being valuable after I led Gemini to the Facility.’ The truth is, Ballard and the rest of the rebel council are only worried I’ll get myself captured. We’re sure the Saviour was hurt bad in the raid. They don’t want Slayers getting their hands on my nublood and healing him again.

Sky nods. Her eyes go narrow and sly.

‘Ballard’s not here to stop us, is he? What about it, Kyle?’

Before I can say anything Colm jumps down from his bunk. Never have I seen my brother look so fed up, which is saying something because he tends to the grim and serious.

‘Don’t be crazy,’ he says, almost spitting.

Sky laughs her bitter laugh. ‘What’s your problem?’

He curses. ‘You are. You think you can do what you fraggin’ like, and to hell with everybody else.’

Her face, always so pale and bloodless, goes white. She hops off the bed and faces him, hand on the hilt of her knife.

‘That what you think, huh, Slayer-boy?’

I scramble up and get between them. ‘Don’t call him that.’

She shoves me back a step. ‘Tell your gom of a brother to shut it.’

But my brother isn’t done arguing yet. ‘Don’t listen to her, Kyle. She’ll get you killed, for nothing.’

Sky’s lips twitch. ‘Nothing? My sister’s a nothing?’

She snatches up her cleverbox and stalks off.

I curse and close my eyes. When I open them again, Sky’s long gone. Colm looks at me and slowly shakes his head.

‘Don’t,’ I tell him, as his gob opens. ‘Just don’t, all right!’

5

THE FIREFIGHT

I love my new-found brother. I do. We share everything: we like the same stuff, make the same jokes and laugh at them. Sometimes I wonder how I ever got along without Colm.

Now though, I need a break from him slagging off Sky.

Not that he’s all wrong, but I’m not in the mood to hear it. I slip away, leaving him chuntering away to himself on his bunk. Soon as I’m outside the tent I stand up straight and suck fresh evening air deep into my lungs. It calms me down. There’s still hope, I tell myself. Maybe this peace deal is for real. And I like Colm’s suggestion about trading prisoners. Getting Tarn back like that would beat sneaking off with Sky and defying Ballard.

A gust slaps the tent’s canvas and blows my hair into my eyes. If it stays like this, Sky will be flying tomorrow. No, she won’t. I remember our windjammers are grounded.

I hesitate, then go looking for her.

Two women she shares her tent with are outside it, smoking. They tell me Sky’s not there. I glance doubtfully at the tent flap. The older one blows smoke in my face and smiles.

‘She ain’t. Honest. Take a look inside if you like.’

‘Any idea where she is?’

They swap looks and shrugs.

‘You guys had another bust-up?’ the younger one asks.

‘Something like that,’ I mutter. And clear off, my face all hot.

I consider tracking Ness down to see if Sky’s stropped off to have a nag at him, then get a better idea. I make my way back out through the gathering darkness to the canyon where the captured Slayer windjammer was hidden away. My hunch pays off. The rear loading ramp is down. A flicker of light shows. I peek inside. The light is from a shiner hung up on the bars of the cage. Sky is sitting inside, her back against the hull where Tarn scratched her tag. Her head is down, her arms wrapped round her knees.

She’s so still. Is she asleep?

I do a cough to let her know I’m here. Good job too. Her head snaps up and a blaster appears in her hand.

‘It’s only me,’ I tell her.

‘Oh joy,’ she mutters. But at least she puts the gun away.

I step inside. ‘What are you doing?’

She glares at me. ‘Thinking. Being with my sister.’

‘Want me to go away?’

She hesitates. ‘How’d you know I’d be here?’

‘I didn’t, not for sure. I just –’

The wail of the landing siren cuts me off, followed by some distant shouting and the chuff and clank of steam tractors.

‘Sounds like we’ve got incoming,’ Sky says.

‘Bit late and dark, isn’t it?’ I say.

I hustle back to the ramp and stick my head out. The landing area is all lit up now by lines of brightly flaring oil-burners.

She limps over to join me on the ramp.

‘They’re back then,’ she says.

I spot the small windjammer on final approach. Sky knows her jammers way better than I do, but even in the dark I can tell which one this is – the fast transport that flew Ballard and the other rebel leaders out of here a week ago. Air brakes already out, its lifters howl as they’re throttled up to landing power. It dives towards the ground, flares late and touches down. The howl dies away. I hear the rumble of wheels pounding the hard-packed dirt.

‘Nice landing,’ I say.

Sky grunts. ‘You reckon?’

The burners are doused, plunging the Deeps back into a smothering darkness. Sky shifts beside me.

‘So what do you want?’ she says.

I throw my hands up. ‘I don’t want anything.’

‘Yeah, you do, Kyle. That’s why you’re here. You want me to let you off the hook for helping me find Tarn. Don’t you?’

‘No. You’re wrong,’ I lie, squirming.

‘Am I?’ She tilts her head to one side. ‘So when Ness finally comes up with the goods you will help me?’

‘What if we mess up the ceasefire, like Colm said?’

Sky shows me her teeth in a sneer. ‘Oh, quit with the Colm says this, Colm says that crap, will you? That’s all I boggin’ get from you these days. Think for yourself.’

‘I do think for myself. It’s just . . . he talks a lot of sense.’

‘Run back to him then. You’ve got your brother; you don’t need me any more. I’ll only get you killed, for nothing.’