Rebellion in the Shadows
Chapter Nineteen

“Orbiting isn’t that complicated, why? What makes an object continue in a circle around another larger object?” No one put their hand in the air.

“Come on people look at your notes, we already went over this, weeks ago. Newton’s first law of motion? Anyone? No? An object in motion stays in motion, without gravity or friction, a satellite will forever be pulled towards a planet while momentum pushes it away from the planet. Now, what happens if you don’t have enough momentum to escape the gravitational pull?”

“You crash into it.” Someone behind me answered.

“Yes, exactly. That is why it is so important to understand required escape velocity,” The instructor projected a graph that relayed the information he was giving.

“Is that different than taking off the surface? Isn’t the escape velocity the same in orbit?” I asked.

“No. The escape velocity is higher the closer you get to the planet’s surface. However, in space you will be traveling at 25,000 miles per hour in orbit. It takes 10 km/s to escape the gravity on the surface, while in orbit, it will only take about 6, how would this compare to a larger planet? Earth-sized?” he asked the room.

“Earth was bigger, so it would be higher, but why would we need to know that? Who cares about another planet?”

“It’s marked ‘need to know,’ according to this instructors manual, moving on.” His answer explained nothing, and he knew it. It was another blatant gap in information. They weren’t telling us the whole thing and it drove me crazy. Not just because I knew about the rebellion, but because I had fallen for it for so long.

He showed a short video that displayed take-off from the view on a spaceship. There it was again, not one person questioned how they got the video, even though we were told we have never left the planet.

The temptation to digi-comm Tesser and Arwago every five minutes was brutal. Arwago had made it clear, he needed to be trusted and left to his own devices. Instead, I sent a comm to the only other person that I knew for sure was in the rebellion. Rather than asking for an update, I sent a video of Tomma falling out of my chair trying to get to the dinner plate on the desk.

I watched Kirtis open it up from across the room and smile. Notawa sent me a comm immediately after warning me to pay attention so I switched to silent mode and projected the book back in front of me.

Arwago was waiting outside class an hour later munching out of a bag of chips that smelled terrible.

“You don’t answer comms anymore?” he asked. I could smell his breath from five feet away.

“I turned them off for class.” When I saw the look on his face I added, “What’s wrong?” Several Technicians walked by. Arwago tossed a chip from the bag into his mouth.

“Reconist, you’re required in the lab, report there immediately.”

“Of course, Privy Master.” I gave him a salute and started walking towards the lab. To my surprise, he walked with me. The smell of the chips was making me sick.

“What are you eating?” I asked.

“Here try some,” He put exactly one in my open palm. Carefully, I placed it on my tongue. The chip felt like a thousand tiny insects stinging my mouth. It was spicier than anything I had ever eaten. Every pore in my face felt like it was smoldering.

I spit the chip into my palm and said to Arwago, “They’re a little spicy.” My mouth was on fire and fanning at it with my hand did nothing to stem the flavor.

“Yes, they are.” He laughed and put the bag to his face to tip the remaining chips into his open mouth.

“So, what’s going on?” I asked when the coast was clear. The amusement left his face and he was deadly serious when he looked at me.

“We have some information that makes movement necessary, walk quickly please.” He walked even faster. When we arrived at the lab, there were several people already there and not one of them stood still.

“Talaya, this is Rando and Afilia.” Arwago said without slowing down. The pair of them walked with us towards the blue room. Rando looked familiar, but not his face. His hair was combed to the side with one small piece stuck up in the back. He sat two seats in front of me in my orbital class, I would recognize that ridiculous brown spike anywhere.

We nodded to each other. Afilia looked familiar too, but only because her face was identical to his. Down to even the splatter of freckles along her cheeks.

“Here she is,” Tesser had come over and placed a weird hat on my head while we walked. It was an altered helmet, metallic instead of plastic and the inside was covered with rubber points. She set it on my head, and the little points started to vibrate. When a loud buzz started, I ripped it off.

“What the hell Tesser?!”

“Keep it on. We are scanning now.” I was still weary but left it on while it buzzed, until it started to heat up. I went to remove it but she held it down.

“Tesser!” The hat was burning up.

“Quiet down and let it run. It only lasts a few seconds.” She turned to a technician behind her and said, “We could reverse the actuary on the base and maybe add a layer of insulation.” The hat beeped and she yanked it off.

“Arwago, Talaya is cleared.” she yelled across the room.

“Anyone want to tell me what is going on? Or just keep trying to light my head on fire.” Everyone in the tiny room looked at me. The attention made me uncomfortable, each face I saw was more worried than the last. Tesser took a deep breath and started in.

“We have some new developments. Maybe not new exactly, we have had things happen that have probably been happening but now we have become aware of. The movements aren’t necessarily startling but the well-checks on certain assets have… deteriorated. I think that Arwago did expect everything that’s happened, not that there aren’t always variables. I mean, even human reaction variables have millions of possibilities. Food consumption prior to negative news can decrease reactions by a factor of 12,” she said. It was hard to sift through the unnecessary commentary to get to the real information. I looked at Arwago and he looked at Tesser.

“Here, have some chocolate. It’s a sugar cocoa mix. High in calories but extremely sweet.” She grabbed a piece of something brown off a counter behind her and shoved it into my mouth.

It was sweet but not like the donut. The flavor spread across my tongue, melting into an even more rich mix of smooth and sweet. Still savoring the taste, I asked, “What’s the movement or whatever?” Arwago motioned for me to follow him and all five of us walked in the blue room. The door was closed and locked behind us. Rando grabbed the two metal folding chairs and set them up near the holo-keyboard. With his hands on the back of the chair, he pointed to the seat in a gentle sweeping move. The whole room felt packed to the ceiling with tension, but it was the expression on Tesser’s face that had me most upset, she was worried. I sat in the chair and Arwago took a seat across from me.

“It’s your dad,” Arwago was much clearer. Each finger on his hand was tapping its opposite, but he stared straight into my eyes without any worry crossing his dark eyes. I looked at the people in the room. Their sympathetic glances made much more sense now. Rando and Afilia were white faced and silent.

“My dad’s condition has deteriorated? What does that mean?”

Tesser took over still speaking in the slow and steady way that made me nervous. “We have been monitoring him since we found him. Yesterday, there was no movement anymore. The place he was being held is now empty and we can’t replace him using the same biomatrix anymore. That doesn’t mean he’s gone though.”

Arwago jumped in, “We think someone told them how we were monitoring his health or at the very least that we knew where he was.”

“What do you mean? Who would do that?”

“We aren’t sure, we’re looking at possible suspects. We needed your help because we got the fingerprint data back from your house,” Arwago said.

“What are we waiting for? Let’s go get the people that were at my house. If they know where he is, we need to make them tell us.” It was my turn to worry. The desperation in my voice was clear to everyone, but no one in the room was reacting to my panic. Arwago leaned forward in his chiar.

“Talaya, we always knew it was serious. We gotta be careful. We can’t blow our covers and start a war over one person. As much as I would love to, we aren’t ready for that. We need more manpower and assets. 70 rifles and a half-built base in the polar region won’t cut it.” He reached over to put his hand on mine. Combined with a firm squeeze, it did a lot to calm me down. He was right. It wouldn’t do a lot of good to save my dad just to have hundreds of others die in the process. I locked eyes with him, hoping he would understand what this meant to me, that there had to be something he could do to help.

“Not to interrupt, but we need her to look through the finger print data.” It was clear that she did want to interrupt, and he took his hand back. Tesser was already pulling up the data on the screen then lowered her infamous goggles and typed on her own invisible keyboard.

We spent the next several minutes looking through twenty or so profiles. Most of them I didn’t know other than recognize a face or two from class or walking through the halls. Random Reconists and Privy Mates that were in the Flying Force and most, who were in the military police.

When Notawa’s photo popped up I said, “Oh yeah, she was there with me, keep going.”

Tesser didn’t change the profile and I felt the tension in the room rise the longer it stayed on the screen.

“What time?” Arwago asked.

“That would have been Friday night when I went home and she met me there,” I said. Tesser and Arwago exchanged a look. I was getting tired of their games of chicken when it was time to deliver bad news.

“That’s what we thought, so when we were pulling up the heat signatures, we noticed that her fingerprints were everywhere, which is kind of careless. If they knew anything about anything, they would have worn gloves. I mean we could still figure—”

“Tesser is trying to say that Notawa’s fingerprints had heat signatures registering from as early as Friday morning.” It was the first time I had heard Rando speak. His voice was deeper than I thought it would be and I turned to him trying to understand the implication of his words.

“Yes exactly,” confirmed Tesser.

“So, the real question is, do you trust her?” Arwago asked. Everyone waited for my answer.

“Absolutely, she couldn’t do anything to hurt me,” I said. It was supposed to come out with pure confidence, but my voice faltered. Her little lies came to mind. The scherlot, the absences, the bruise on her arm, and the way the bags kept growing under her eyes. Arwago scrutinized my face, then turned to the people closest to him.

“We need to bring her in.”

“What do you mean ‘bring her in?’” I asked. Arwago gave me a sympathetic look.

“I know she’s your friend, but we can’t be too sure. It would make perfect sense. Kirtis saw her with the book after the Union race, and you told her about your dad, right?” I nodded and he kept going, “And immediately after, he’s moved? Then there are her finger prints at your house. Not to mention the fact that she showed up at your room right after Zarleque did. Did you comm her?

“No, but—”

“I am sorry Talaya but it’s too many coincidences. We need to know what she knows.” He was making sense and it wasn’t good for my friend. He didn’t even know about her admitted meetings with Master Guardian.

“Arwago, you can’t. She wouldn’t hurt anyone. Let me talk to her first. Please.” He closed his eyes and sighed.

“When were you supposed to see her next?” I pulled up my schedule.

“I have class with her in 15 minutes.” I said.

“Talk to her but bring her here for a brain-scan right after. We need to know if her memories have been altered.”

“Is that what that hot-hat thing did? Checked to see if I had my mind altered” I asked.

Tesser answered me. “Yes, we figured out that they were using heavy magnetics and some hallucinogenic to inhibit short term memory. We aren’t sure how they are presenting new memories or behaviors, some sort of physiological effect that takes a few days. The ‘hot-hat’ scans for traces of the heavy magnetics. We have no way of reversing it. Zarleque was an anomaly.”

“Maybe we should go with her, just in case?” Afilia said. Her golden-brown eyes stared into mine, anger burning with them. Either she hated me or Notawa, either way it wasn’t good.

“Hang out near her room but let her do the talking,” Arwago said. He was typing on his calcumat. “We should comm everyone, see what they know.” He stopped when an alarm rang in the room. Everyone’s face went white, only I was unsure what the noise meant.

Tesser was the first to ask, “Is that what I think it is?” Arwago only nodded.

“The gun locker. Shit. Talaya go.”

“What’s going on?”

“Just go, we’ll deal with it,” he said.

I left the room when Arwago turned to give orders to someone else. Things were beginning to unravel. The sheer number of people showing up to the lab told me that. Tesser had run out of the blue room just as I was leaving. Her goggles were on monitor mode and she hit the counter of beakers, sending glass flying around the room.

“Arwago they’re already in! I am flooding the codes, but I think it is too late,” she said.

“Arwago is every—”

“Don’t be late Talaya we will talk later, everything is fine.” Everything was not fine. Twenty more people showed up as I walked out the door, each one more upset and some looking ready to battle while others, carried bags or pets. I looked around for Kirtis, but he wasn’t one of the many faces.

I arrived at my next class a few seconds after it started. With a cursory apology to the instructor, I sat in my seat, my eyes already trained on the woman that was supposed to be my mentor. Notawa was sitting near the front. She turned and waved at me as I sat down. Nothing was out of the ordinary. She even answered a few questions during the long class. I didn’t hear one word the instructor said. The flurry of activity in the lab, mixed with the suspicions about Notawa and add on top of that, the renewed worry about my dad. It was amazing I could even sit still. When we were excused, I stood up and waited for her to replace me.

“Hey, Talaya. Sorry about yesterday, I just figured we had enough drama with Zarleque, right? Want to go to your room? I would love to see Tomma.” I tried to keep my voice normal and walked with her out of the room.

“Yeah, we can study in my room, want to grab a couple of protein sandwiches first?”

“That sounds great, meet you there.” She left, bouncy as much as the first day I met her. Was it an elaborate lie? She didn’t seem capable of something so dishonest.

Tomma met me at the door but I fell into my study chair. The small burla jumped into my lap, angry that I wasn’t paying any attention to him. Instead of giving him what he wanted, I shoved him to the ground. The angry howl that followed gave me a slight pang of guilt, but other things had my attention.

The rebellion comm sheet was filled with urgent alerts. When I tried to open them, the only message that displayed was, ‘not authorized.’ The comm sheet had never been down before. That wasn’t good at all and my worry only grew. The door swooped open, and I almost jumped out of my desk chair.

Notawa walked in. She had two protein sandwiches on a single plate.

“Sorry the line was way too long for fruit, so I figured we could just eat these. Hey Tomma!” Tomma went over to Notawa and gave me the evilest glare from his one yellow eye as if he would never forgive me for pushing him off my lap.

“My scherlot loves sandwiches too, you want some? Of course, you do you big silly burla.” She was petting him and giving him little pieces of the meat from the sandwich. It was difficult to not jump right into to questioning her. If Notawa knew where my dad was, she was going to tell me, one way or another.

“Don’t feed him mine, I’m hungry. He eats way too much anyway,” I said. My anger was growing with every normal thing she was going. The deep breaths were doing nothing, one look my way and she would know how upset I was. There was no hiding it. My jaw clenched as I watched her give another piece of bread to Tomma.

“Just a few pieces,” she said. After a few moments of silence, I couldn’t help myself. I had to ask.

“Crazy about Zarleque right?”

“Don’t feel bad Talaya, it wasn’t your fault.” She was taking small bites of the sandwich. More to be doing something, other than stare back at me. That fullness in her cheeks from the first weeks was gone, she looked almost gaunt now and I felt a tiny piece of guilt trying to work it’s way out of my stomach.

“I don’t feel bad. Still no word on my dad?”

“Why would I know?” she asked, still not looking my direction. I stepped another foot closer to her, and my hands curled into fists.

“I know you were at my house before my dad went missing.”

“What? Talaya what are you talking about?” Her face said it all. I had caught her completely off guard. She had been in my house right before my father went missing, just like they had said.

“Did you take him?”

“No, Talaya. I am sure your dad is safe somewhere.” She wouldn’t look at me and the color started to drain from her face.

“Enough with the lies Notawa! The book? Zarleque? Those meetings? Why? Why would you do that to me? Aren’t we friends?”

“Talaya…” Her voice was soft and low, guilt in every syllable of my name.

“It’s true isn’t it?” My voice had gone quiet, her admission had devastated me. Tears formed in the corners of my eyes. Everything about that day came back. The promises to help me replace my father, the assurance he was fine, locking me in my room. all of it lies. Had she even sent a comm to Arwago that night? Every night since then, if I sent him a comm, he answered in some way usually in person. No, she had hurt me more than I thought possible.

“Talaya, I didn’t want to! It was a last-minute mission. They had asked for Privy volunteers to work with the Flying Force military police. Occasionally Privy’s are asked to do stuff like that, it helps with ranking up. We get trained for them at Privy school. Honestly, I had no idea it was your dad, not until Sidarc sent me back to your house. We don’t get names or anything. I was just as shocked as you.”

“Why would you help to kidnap anyone?” The exasperated sound coming from my own throat was foreign to me.

“People need the Flying Force. Do you know what would happen if we just let people get away with stuff? You have no idea what Earth was like. People killed each other over small things, sometimes for no reason at all. The Flying Force is necessary! We keep the peace through security! That’s our motto, this is just another part of that mission.”

“By tearing apart families? Notawa my mom was taken twenty years ago! It put me and my dad through hell! You have kids, you should know what it would be like if you were taken from them! And now you took my dad!” I had hit a nerve. Her kids were off-limits.

“I didn’t take your dad! All I did was assist on a certified mission. And who do you think I do this for? For them! Master Guardian. He isn’t anything like you think. No one disobeys him, and that is for a reason.” She started shaking. “You step out of line, say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing even once and its over. He will bring you right into his terrifying little office, sit you down in that horrible chair and threaten everything you love.” Her soft squeaky voice had risen into a shout and Tomma ran from the room at the noise.

“And he knows Talaya. He knows everything. Nothing is off limits to him. My kid? My husband? He will sit you down and pull up holograms of them just to torture you. Hours of him telling you exactly what he will do to them if you don’t obey. All the while causing you pain that makes you forget who you are!” Her voice was laced with fear and panic. The bubble of guilt that had happily retreated at her confession came back to the surface and for a moment, I didn’t know what to do.

“Is that what he did to you?” I asked.

“Of course he did that to me. That’s what he does to everyone! Why do you think I told him about you and Arwago? I’ve seen what he has done to people that don’t listen. Ever ask Kirtis about his family? Or ask Arwago about the people in those pictures in his room? Trust me, you are better off not knowing,”

“What did you tell him about Arwago?” She backed away towards the door. With eyes closed she stood next it before it swooshed open.

“You can’t make me talk about it. But I am telling you, when he brought your dad here, he knew exactly what he was doing, and he will not hesitate to kill him if you don’t do what he wants.”

“My dad is here?” The news had shocked me more than her confession. That explained Arwago’s hesitation to give me a location.

“You aren’t listening to me. Just do what he says! That’s the only way to keep everyone safe. They don’t stand a chance if you ignore him.” She stepped into the hall.

I followed her out and whispered, “Don’t you see? That’s the problem with this whole thing. He shouldn’t be allowed to threaten children and fathers, or kidnap mothers or kill people or burn down buildings. The whole thing is wrong.” She took another step away from me. I reached out and grabbed her bicep. She looked at it, then yanked her arm away.

“You have no idea what he is capable of,” she said. My eyes squinted her direction, trying to convey my determination, even if her fear was becoming my fear.

Through clenched teeth, I said, “I’m not afraid of Sidarc.” She turned on her heels and started down the hall. Instead of following her, I went back into my room. I threw the first book I saw at the window, then kicked over the chair. When that didn’t calm me down, I went into my room and knocked over the cup of water on the nightstand. Tomma scurried farther underneath it with an angry howl. My shoulders slouched and I fell onto my bed, fresh tears dotting my pillow as I tried to decide what to do.

No one should have that kind of power. Threatening families like that? Notawa’s daughter was five! He had taken the thing dearest to her and dangled it over a precipice like he was some sort of god. I sat back up.

He wasn’t going to get away with it.