Rebellion in the Shadows
Chapter Twenty-eight

“Su’jee, do you think it’s real?” I was afraid of answering it but Su’jee looked more excited than I was.

“Only one way to replace out.” As she said it, I answered the voice comm.

“Talaya! Is that you?!” It was indeed Arwago’s voice that was on the other line.

“Yes! Yes, it is, where are you?” I said.

“We made it. I can’t say where because comms can be hacked. As it is we only have a few seconds. But thank Tau you’re alive! Tesser was monitoring your body chip and when it went offline, we assumed the worst. She’s only now figured out how to ID your calcumat without it.” It was hard to hear. Not only was he talking a thousand words a second, but the static kept cutting in and out.

“Can you get us out of here?”

“We have a plan, all we need you to do is go down to the emergency shelter and get Tesser’s case.” There was a loud scuffle and Tesser came on the line, still cutting out every few words.

“Talaya, these combustibles are extremely volatile. Use extra care OK? Not just cause they can explode and kill you, but without them, we won’t be able to stop Sidarc’s plan. Or at the very least slow it down until—”

“Just get the combustibles to Privy Master Riko, he will take care of the rest. OK?” Arwago was trying to get off the line but I was desperate for more information.

“Arwago wait, what else? Should I relay anything to Kirtis?” I asked.

“Kirtis? What? No, Talaya we can’t trust him. Just get the combustibles to Riko.” The line clicked and they were gone. Su’jee and I didn’t move, the information had shocked us both.

“What was that at the end about Kirtis?”

“They said not to trust Kirtis.” Rotowey wouldn’t let us stray from the schedule for long, so we left and went to the medical area. After everything that had happened, we were gone maybe three minutes, but Rotowey and Kirtis were already at medical looking for me. Su’jee’s quick thinking saved us.

“Sorry she passed out again and it took a minute to wake her up,” she said, again lying as easily as breathing. Kirtis wasn’t buying it at all, his eyebrows rested low above a set of accusing eyes.

“Talaya go and get checked out, Su’jee and Kirtis can wait outside,” Rotowey said.

Kirtis didn’t listen to Rotowey. Instead, he went to talk to the Corpsman at the front desk while another one checked me out. Without a body monitoring chip, the medical team was flummoxed. The calcumat was normally scanned by Corpsman and a set of instructions would display on the diagnostic machine. Without the chip, there was nothing displayed. The Corpsman had no idea what was wrong with me. Since it was nothing, they were closer than they knew. They ended up diagnosing me with low blood sugar and sent me on my way with a concentrated nectar bar. Kirtis walked with me back towards my room.

“Everything OK? You got the weird scrunchy face thing going on.”

“Scrunchy face? Is that a medical term?”

“It’s when you look like your trying to figure how many cups of apples it would take to get to Arkii.” I smiled at his assessment.

“Everything is fine, just low blood sugar.” I said. It wasn’t working, he could tell something was going on.

“Maybe you should skip out on afternoon training then. I’ll send a comm to your instructor.” I only nodded. Words were difficult with so much on my mind. The whole conversation with Arwago was too fresh to focus on anything else.

Terrified as I was that Kirtis wasn’t to be trusted, we had come a long way together. His reliability and dedication to the rebellion was always at the forefront of his actions. If it was possible, he was more involved with it than I was. Kaynotee had only gotten to safety with Kirtis’s help and same with relocating the other civilians. On the other hand, Prelle was now dead, and that had been on one of his missions too.

When we got to my room, Kirtis tried to walk in behind me but Rotowey blocked his path with his shock prod.

“We’re her guard detail currently,” he said.

“Thanks, Rotowey I got it though,” he said, flicking the weapon aside.

“We have strict instructions not to allow anyone in her room,” Rotowey said. The vein in his neck was pulsating but it was nothing compared to the flush of purple on Kirtis’s face.

“Listen Rotowey, I know it’s hard to hear with your head so far up Master Guardians ass, so I will dumb it down for you.” He mimed with his hands and started to yell, “We don’t need you here.” He turned away and flicked his wrist at Rotowey. “Go lift some weights or something.” Kirtis stepped inside and the door swooshed behind us.

“Kirtis, I’m fine really,” I said, but the shakiness in my voice wasn’t helping my cause at all.

“Is this because of the shuttle launch? I told you it won’t happen that way don’t worry. We’ll think of something.” That was probably the best way to play off my odd behavior. Kirtis was handing me an excuse that would get me out of my next few classes and give me time to form a plan.

“Thanks, Kirtis. I’m just going to take a long nap then.” I moved towards my bedroom, with him behind me, pulling the desk chair to reside in his normal spot outside the door. “Alone,” I said. His face looked hurt for a second, but as quick as it came, it was gone. My burla passed by me to get to his real favorite person and Kirtis bent over to pet the animal before moving back to the door.

“I should probably go to training anyways. The guards will leave you alone, just don’t do anything stupid,” he said. He stepped into the hall and my mind went into overdrive.

Master Guardian didn’t seem to trust him anymore, but that was according to Kirtis and he was careful. They could be a team and all this an elaborate plot to replace out where Arwago was hiding. There had to be a way to figure out his loyalty, it was just going to take some creativity on my part, not exactly something I was good at.

While I was pacing my room and driving Tomma crazy, a very basic plan came together. There was only one way to replace out if he was involved and it was tricky. It took me a half hour to type out a message, instead of sending it, I opened my door without going into the hall.

“Su’jee would you like to spar with me?” I asked.

Rotowey answered, “Negative Talaya, you are to return to your quarters for rest until 1800.” I tilted my calcumat towards Su’jee.

“My calcumat says its ok,” I said. Su’jee read the message,

Tell Kirtis, Arwago and Tesser will be waiting at my family home at 1800

Then I swiped it away before Rotowey could see it. Su’jee understood and her face lit up with excitement.

“No Talaya better skip it, orders are clear,” she said. Another perfect lie. It was something I needed to get better at.

Waiting was always difficult. It was one of my worst qualities, right behind stubbornness. I was halfway through a round of pushups, trying to bide time, when my wrist beeped.

All hands alert- Master guardian

Before opening the message, I stepped back out into the hall. Rotowey and Etulay were standing guard. Both holding their shock-prods in their right hands and both with tiny holographic Sidarc’s hovering above their left wrists.

He sat in his ornate uniform, the one reserved for lavish parties and award ceremonies. The uniform looked pristine, like it was brand new and stitched onto him seconds before the announcement. The sides of his head had been shaved and no hair was out of place on top of his head. The scar on his face was no longer bright red but a dull pink. His tone was amiable, but his eyes were as sinister as ever.

“Hello, everyone here at the Flying Force Space Academy. It is with great excitement that I am going to tell you the wonderful news. We are ready for our first mission into space. The new satellite will launch on Friday. I have selected two very lucky pilots to complete this mission. They will be accompanied by my second in command, Privy Master Select Geokee and Privy Mate Admin Su’jee. Their profiles are below, please congratulate them on this great honor. I am excited for this new chapter of our planet’s life. When I began this program six years ago, I had no idea how quickly everyone would excel. To be ready this soon, its unprecedented, so well done! Everyone played their roles perfectly.”

For some reason, I thought this line was meant just for me, but couldn’t understand why. The Flying Force Anthem started to play through my calcumat speaker as Master Guardian finished his speech.

“This new satellite will give us much needed monitoring of our planet’s health, it will be so simple, but it will increase our quality of life. You are the reason for this success. Tomorrow, as a celebration, I have authorized a training and class free day. Please enjoy this treat and prepare for the adventures that awaits us on Friday.”

After the message finished playing there was a pop up with the entire mission laid out. I saw, to no surprise, that I was the co-pilot. Kirtis was third, to co-pilot back if something happened to me. The addition of Geokee, was a surprise. This meant that I was not going to oversee the mission, he was. This was clear evidence, Sidarc was going to kill me somehow or another on the space shuttle. The way he had given the speech, the look of victory in his eyes, it was as clear as day. I looked at each guard, they were thinking the same thing as I was, and smiling.

“Are you expecting us to congratulate you?” Etulay asked. His insipid grin stretching from ear to ear. Rotowey didn’t let me get in a word.

“Back to your quarters,” he said.

“It’s dinner time, I still need to eat ya know!” He jabbed his shock prod into my back. My body went rigid, every muscle tensed, and I let out a yelp. My hand rubbed the spot he had jabbed it into.

“Your food will be brought to you from now on,” he said.

“Oh Rotowey, I’m not going to miss you,” I said as I stepped back into my room. He laughed, a slow annoying sound that rang through the hall.

“Don’t worry, I am sure they are going to give you a memorable death and a hero’s burial,” Rotowey said.

Instead of kicking him in the face like I wanted to, I said, “Better than dying an unknown kiss-ass.” His smile disappeared and he stabbed me again with the shock-prod. It was unreasonably long before he pulled it back. I kept my mouth shut when he finally let go and stepped into my room, massaging the sore spot on my side.

Now that the mission was out in the open, time was short. Kirtis hadn’t gotten a hold of me and each minute that passed made me more nervous. Whichever way he reacted, would determine my fate. There was no way I could get those combustibles without his help. I couldn’t even leave to eat anymore, it was hopeless when I was so trapped in my room.

Not a minute too soon, a beep on the door code panel sent my heart pounding. Kirtis was here, letting himself in. The guards were mysteriously absent when the door opened.

“I sent them on a bogus mission for Master Guardian, should give us about twenty minutes. Here,” he said and handed me my dinner tray.

“There’s a problem.” He went straight to my desk chair. I tried to look surprised at the news.

“With what?” I asked as innocently as possible.

“Something has come to my attention and it’s not good,” he said, then took a deep breath. “Su’jee is relaying information to Master Guardian.”

“How do you figure?” I got up to get a snack from my cupboards preferring a protein bar to whatever slop the cafeteria had thrown onto my tray.

“This afternoon she sent me on a wild purthis chase, telling me that Arwago and Tesser had set up in your home. I sensed a trap, you know because I just… I had feeling that it was a trap. I didn’t even get to launch the drone before I saw that about ten people were prepping to follow me. Probably gonna blow a hole in my head with a laser as soon as I was a few hundred feet away from the building.”

“You think people were following you?”

“Pull up the central system control on your home,” he said. I stood next to him in my chair at the desk and pulled it up. The entry exit log was shut down as of seventy-two minutes ago.

“The log is off,” I said looking at him.

“Exactly. Tell me it is isn’t the MP’s just waiting to kill whoever shows up?”

“Shit. Kirtis, did you ever tell Su’jee about anything?” His eyes went wide.

“Only that you and Prelle were taking the civilians on a Condor during patrol,” he said. He got out of the desk chair and went to the window.

“Damn, this is bad,” I said. My mind was racing, I had caught the wrong person. Su’jee was working with Master Guardian, feeding him everything that Kirtis and I had been doing. That is why the other guards didn’t bother her about how she treated me.

“I knew she couldn’t be trusted. She came to me a few hours ago with some bogus information about a voice comm from Arwago saying you were going to blow up the drones,” My heart dropped. Vital information had been kept from Kirtis and it had put any attempt at an escape plan, and possibly the entire rebellion at risk. My stomach churned.

“Don’t worry I knew that was a lie, you would have told me if they had gotten a hold of you. Talaya, she has probably told him everything. All the time I spend in here, and anything she’s overheard.” He was furious with Su’jee, fuming over the mistake and staring off out my window.

“Kirtis.” He turned his head to me and narrowed his eyes, already anticipating what was about to be said. He leaned back into my chair and Tomma jumped into his lap.

“You did this?” he asked.

“I thought you were the traitor,” I said.

“What? Why would you think that?”

“I did get a voice comm from Tesser. It was cut off, but she said you couldn’t be trusted.” I looked at the ground while he sprang back to his feet, much to the annoyance of my burla.

“Of course, she doesn’t trust me! You think it’s easy to be Master Guardians little pet MP? Do you have any idea what he has made me do? But I regretted every second of it and I’ve risked everything for the rebellion! I gave them information that saved lives. Hell, I even stole a 4-5-2 and gave it to them! It was filled with supplies and weapons that were supposed to go to another base. Without me, those guys would have been starving to death, defenseless, within a week. What more could I do to prove it?” He was more upset than I have ever seen him before, pacing the room without trying to calm himself at all.

“Kirtis let’s not worry about that right now, OK? I trust you.” He waved me off, but I grabbed his hand, forcing him to look at me. “I do. But this was the only way to know for sure, and it helped us replace out Su’jee is working for Master Guardian, but it also means, he knows. You are just as unsafe as I am. I mean, that’s why Geokee and Su’jee are supposed to be on the shuttle with us, probably to make sure we both don’t come home alive,” I said. Grabbing his hand had been a bad idea. With a twitch, his frown extended into his eyes. I let go and stood back, but my thoughts stayed on that hand. How warm it had been and comforting it had felt. His voice snapped me out of it.

“What are we supposed to do now?” he asked.

“First things first, Su’jee knows the plan. She was there when Arwago comm’d me. I wouldn’t be surprised if she already recovered the combustibles and is trying to replace Riko,” I said.

“Riko? What’s he got to do with it?”

“I have no idea, Tesser just told me to replace Riko and give him the combustibles.”

“So, you didn’t know about the drones?” he asked.

“No, that was news to me,” I answered. Kirtis stood up and crossed his arms. I walked over to where he was standing near the window. I had almost forgotten the most important piece of information.

“They said they are going to come for us.” His eyebrows shot up.

“That’s good news! But how the hell do they expect to do that? Just fly in here and ask nicely?”

“I don’t have a clue, but I trust them,” I said.

“We have to get those bombs,” he said, more to himself than to me.

“I don’t know Kirtis seems like a stretch. What are the chances that Su’jee just left the stuff in her room or something?” He started pacing the room again, along with his tendency to talk aloud, he was going to drive me crazy.

The knock at the door had us both immediately on edge. The door snapped aside with a swish. Su’jee was there, shock-prod in hand, but at least she was alone.

“We aren’t supposed to let you in there,” Su’jee said when she saw Kirtis standing behind me.

“Talaya and I were just talking. Why don’t you come on in and we can all talk,” he said, there was a sneer on his lips. If she came in, she wasn’t going to walk out in one piece. I shushed him and leaned in.

“Su’jee, we just needed a little… privacy.” I let the words hang in the air and make everyone uncomfortable.

“That’s not really supposed to happen.” Her face was beet red, when I still didn’t stand aside she said, “I will wait out here I guess.” I closed the door and smiled.

“Why would you say that?” he asked.

“I just bought us another half hour, so get over it. That won’t work with Rotowey though, so we better hurry up with this,” I said.

We had decided that I would go down to the emergency shelter to check for the combustibles while Kirtis would go to Su’jee’s room to look for the same thing. He would send me a comm if he found anything and vice versa. Then we would meet at Riko’s room.

The hardest part was trying to get my window opened. The locks Kirtis was so sure he could get open were more difficult than he’d thought.

“I can’t get this one loose.” He was supposed to be unscrewing a bolt to the lock while I held the tamper sensor in place. We had already gotten the other three bolts out with the spoon from my dinner tray. We had bent it into a tight circle, then had banged it against the desk to angle it the same hexagon as the bolts. The noises hadn’t been investigated by Su’jee, even though I could see her shadow against the window. The last bolt was being stubborn. It had been recently painted over and we couldn’t get a good grip on it.

“We need like a knife or something, to pry it away from the paint, I could try to go get one?” I knew he had seen my father’s knife on my desktop. He must have understood that it was priceless to me. It would be ridiculous to give up at this point. I swiped it off the hard surface and tossed it his direction.

“Here, just don’t break it,” I said, then added, “He would approve anyway, he hated the Flying Force.”

It only took a second for the knife to unstick the bolt. The window was small, but I stuck my shoulders through, then wiggled the rest of my body until I was sitting on the ledge. The roof’s edge was only five feet or so above my window. I half pulled myself up until I could swing up one of my legs.

“Your turn.” I whispered down to Kirtis. While I had slunk expertly through the window and onto the roof, Kirtis was loud. His grunts and swears felt like a blaring horn alerting everyone to our escape. The noise stopped after another loud swear.

“I’m stuck,” he said.

“What do you mean stuck? We measured and you fit.” I flipped around and let my head dip below the ledge. Kirtis hadn’t managed to get his broad shoulders out of the window. One arm was through but of the other, I could only see fingers poking out. Seeing him so ridiculous had me laughing.

“Can you pull?” he asked. I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to answer but I extended both my arms out to him. One hand of his in mine, I yanked as hard as I could and he budged a half inch.

“Pull damn it!” he said.

“You aren’t exactly light!” Tomma was not happy, he was yowling in my room at all the commotion. Thankfully, on the next pull, he budged a few more inches, enough that he could get the rest of the way by himself. Until he got stuck again, this time trying to swing his leg up onto the roof.

“The gods Kirtis, let’s go!” My voice was still in a whisper, but it felt like a yell.

“You made this look easy, but it’s not! I just don’t bend that way,” he said in the same tone. It took two more tries and me grabbing his leg to get him on the roof. We sat on the edge for a second to catch our breath.

“Kirtis, when this is all over, you really need to do some stretches,” I said. He nudged me with his shoulder.

“Not everyone can be flexible. Some of us have other talents, like being able to fly well,” he said with a smirk.

“Shut up,” I said and stood up dusting off the dirt and a few tree leaves from my otherwise clean uniform. We both went over to the other side of the building, half crouched as we wound our way through the other sky lights and vents. The roof, like the building, was a giant flat circle, which made it easy to walk across. Our plan was to drop into the kitchen through the large vents over the stove, then split up. The kitchen vents were easy to spot, standing several feet taller than anything else.

Dropping through the kitchen vents seemed like a good idea. Kirtis had done a rotation of kitchen volunteering and assured me the path would be clear to the stove. His hands moved quickly as he unclipped the small scrubber from the vent. The noise we made wasn’t slight and it was making me more jittery than anything else. My feet went into the top first. The vent itself stuck up and curved over to end up parallel to the ground. My body scooched backwards farther into the vent, oil caked the thin metal and was covered in food grime. The smell was terrible, like burnt eggs mixed with rotten fish. Kirtis leaned in when I was slightly past the curve. He grabbed my forearm then lowered me down the shaft until I was holding onto his hands.

“That’s as far as I can go, you will have to drop down the rest of the way,” he said.

“Will the stove be hot?” I asked, suddenly afraid of getting burned. He didn’t answer.

“Kirtis, will it be hot or not?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. My arms were getting tired, and he sounded like he was getting strained too.

“Ugh forget it,” I said, letting go of his hands.

There wasn’t a clear path to the stove top, there was a small vent fan in the way. It wasn’t very strong so when I dropped the inch or two down, after letting go of Kirtis’s arms, it broke through with a crash and I landed on the warm stove.

“Talaya!” I heard Kirtis whisper at me.

“Yeah?” I answered like nothing had happened.

He chuckled and asked, “Everything good?”

“Yep, probably have visitors soon though, that was loud.” There was a stack of small wood crates full of apple slices next to the reheater on the other side of the kitchen. The apples scattered all over the kitchen floor as I dumped each crate. The sound of him entering the vent wasn’t as loud this side of the roof, but still, it was noise. My eyes kept focusing on the vent overhead, then at the door. The many pops and scrapes were bound to attract unwanted visitors.

“I set up crates for you to drop onto, be careful,” I said. Seconds later he came crashing down and landed on the boxes. They tumbled and collapsed as soon as his feet touched them. He stumbled into my outstretched arms, almost knocking us both over. His face ended up inches away from mine. We had been that close dozens of times while training, but something was different, something that made me feel like a burla was purring inside my chest. His eyes lingered on mine, seconds ticked by, but it was as if we were both stuck in a trance. Eyes darting from my lips to my eyes as he searched my face one final time before pushing me away. I looked down at his feet to make sure he had his footing before I let go of his arms and gave a small awkward cough.

“Thanks, the crates didn’t work though,” he said.

“Probably a weight issue,” I said while straightening my uniform shirt. Since it was now covered in unidentifiable food particles and grime, it didn’t do much.

“Yes, definitely not because they were stacked by an obvious blind person,” he said. We started to the door. Now that we were splitting apart, the time for jokes was over.

“Good luck,” he whispered as we both went through the door. The halls were well lit, and it annoyed me. No wonder normal people didn’t go sneaking around at night.

The button to the elevator was pushed five or six times before I was convinced that it had summoned the machine. When the doors open, the stench of mildew made my stomach flip. The doors closed behind me, it wasn’t the normal quick swoosh like the door to my quarters. It took a full minute for them to close all the way. It took even longer for the thing to get all the way down to the shelter.

I had never been to the shelter before, but this wasn’t what I expected. Half the carpet was an off-putting tan color, and the rest of it was covered in unidentifiable stains. If the smell of mildew was bad on the elevator is was three times worse in the shelter. The walls had paper peeling from them, and stacks of furniture in every corner covered in yellowing sheets.

Arwago said I would know what I was looking for and my eyes searched the room, desperate to finish my mission as quickly as possible. It didn’t take long to spot what was out of place. A large pallet topped with a thin cardboard box, there was no top to it, making it more of a giant basket and it was full of those disgusting spicy chips that Arwago had offered me. Some of the bags littered the ground around the bottom of the box. Someone had been here, and not long ago either.

Shoving chips aside, I dug through the mess of bags. My fingers felt the cold metal before I saw it. Faster, I moved the clutter aside and gripped onto the handle of a small case. It was heavy but I pulled it from the box and set it on the ground. There was a thumb print encoder built into the front. It would open, I knew before my thumb even touched the scanner. One beep later, I was staring at twelve identical metallic balls. The same ones that Tesser had been working on in the lab. They each had a small thumb print scanner on them as well. This was exactly what we were looking for, but I wasn’t the only one that was aware of it. Someone else was standing in the doorway holding a shock-prod and wearing a giant smile.