Twell and the Rebellion (21 page)

“
Because I don’t want to
‘do’ Jonaz,” Shanna replied crudely as she grinned at
me.

“
Shanna!” I could feel the
traitorous and mortifying rush of blood to my face as I glared at
her.

“Why stop now?” Shanna
ignored my embarrassment. “The plan worked, most everyone knows you
guys are
not so secret
lovers. The next step is to show everyone you’re
not satisfied for it to be a secret. You need to show everyone you
really are fighting to be with him.”

“
You don’t care what that
would do to Avin, do you?” I spat. “You don’t care who gets hurt as
long as everything goes your way.”

Shanna’s grin faded, her
expression twisting into intense pain. Shocked at the haunted look
in her eyes, I started to apologize, but before I had a chance to
get the words out, there was a sudden commotion at the far end of
the hall. A charge of energy rushed through the room as panicked
shouting roared down the hall towards us, making the flesh of my
arms prickle. At the same time, an awful soul piercing alarm rang
overhead so loudly my eardrums throbbed with the physical
invasion.

The officers were on their
feet, racing towards Maza and I found myself rising with everyone
else, straining my ears to try to hear what she was shouting about.
The words ‘
attack’
and ‘
no
survivors’
were caught and passed on in a
ripple of fear that turned into a river of panic as it rushed down
the hall. There was no doubt from the crawling sensation creeping
down my spine that the Abwarzians had attacked. Again.

“Cadets, listen to me!”
Maza’s voice rang loud with authority over the rising clamour. “I
urgently need everyone who passed the flight simulation test to
report to the airfield. The Abwarzians have attacked one of our
space stations and we need to get to the site
immediately.”

Shanna and I looked at each
other. I was shocked to see how pale she’d turned; that there was
fear in her normally fierce eyes. Yet it was fleeting as she
quickly composed herself, a mask of confident determination sliding
back over her features.

“
Come on!” she said
firmly. “Let’s go get those water sucking murderers.”

Sometimes, when I’m
extremely tired or something traumatic has happened, I can find
myself getting from one place to the next without quite knowing how
I got there. My body seems to simply know what to do, going into
motion without my brain contributing. This is how I found myself
getting to the airfield and boarding a war-craft without even
remembering how I got there. All I knew was that Shanna and Avin
were with me, buckling in beside me along with several other cadets
I didn’t know, while an unfamiliar officer sat in the pilot’s seat
punching in co-ordinates and preparing for take-off.

I looked down at my lap and saw
I was cradling a laser gun that someone must have pressed into my
hands, but I couldn’t recall when. Vaguely, as if I was trying to
think through murky water, it occurred to me if anything happened,
I would have missed my chance to say goodbye to Jonaz. I didn’t
even know if he’d be flying, or even if he’d passed his flight
training, because I hadn’t had the chance to even ask. The
realization felt like a gulf had grown between us, as wide as the
sky we were about to ascend to. But it was too late now because we
were lifting into the air at a rate we cadets had not dared
contemplate and shooting through Como’s atmosphere. Then we hurtled
into the dark space surrounding our planet.

At first, I found it hard to
believe it was real, because it looked exactly like the simulation
we’d practiced on. The stars were positioned identically, the moon
sitting at the exact same angle behind us as we travelled swiftly
towards the space station. I’d heard of the stations of course.
Many Comains travelled there for work and research. Comains like my
guardian, Shay.

I snapped into reality like I’d
been slapped in the face. “Which station is it?” I gasped; feeling
like my lungs had been left back on Como.

“
S3,” the officer replied,
not turning his head as he navigated our route. Suddenly my body
felt so cold I shivered, even though it was warm in the cabin. Avin
looked at me. Somehow, he simply knew.

“Someone you know works
there, don’t they?” His expression was compassionate as he searched
my face. I stared mutely back

“
They might not be there,”
he said gently. “Don’t panic yet.”

I nodded, trying to stay calm
even though every nerve was screaming at me to panic. Avin grabbed
my hand and gripped it so tightly it hurt as we flew on in silence,
but it was what I needed. It occurred to me he was probably as
afraid as I was, his life in as much danger as my own. Yet he was
more worried about reassuring me. I squeezed his fingers back and
the corners of his mouth lifted slightly, even though he stared
straight ahead at the window of stars, planets, and black
nothingness.

An agonizing eternity passed
before we reached S3. When we saw the swirling cloud of debris that
was once the space station, there was a collective gasp of shock
and horror. Fibres and ashes flew past us, tainting the windows of
the pod like a grimy dark prelude to the destruction we were about
to face. Any fire that had erupted had just as quickly been
extinguished from lack of oxygen, leaving only charred remains to
dodge and avoid as we flew carefully towards the skeletal remains
of the station. There were at least a dozen other crafts with us
and we circled closer together like insects towards a light. Yet
there was no light here and it seemed, no life.

There was not a living soul to
be seen and at first, it seemed there wasn’t even a single unsinged
surface where anyone could possibly shelter. There were no other
spacecraft on the pod-landing pad, neither Abwarzian nor our own.
There was no way to tell if our own craft had been destroyed, or if
our people had gotten the chance to get away before the attack
began. The desolation felt as thick as wet sand and fear clutched
at me with heavy hands as the hair rose on the back of my neck. I
knew implicitly that death had been here. I could feel it as sure
as I could see the twisted metal, the charred remains of the
station that had been our connection to other worlds and
civilizations. It was destroyed. No one spoke for a long time.

“
I’m going to land and
then we will see if there are any survivors,” said the officer. I
could already tell from his tone he didn’t believe there would be.
My stomach tightened into a hard, heavy knot and I took deep
breaths to calm myself as the officer worked his way down through
the debris and found a place that was safe to land. Every cell in
my body awakened, more alert than I’d ever been in my life, my
muscles already coiling in defence mode. I itched to get down there
and find my guardian, while at the same time a sense of dread kept
washing over me again and again, like a thick nauseous wave of
hopelessness.

As soon as we touched down, we
pulled on gravity suits and breathers and secured our weapon belts
around our waists, placing the laser guns in the holsters. I
wondered what had happened to the concept of using a consciousness
deactivation tagger like we’d trained with in the beginning. They
were designed to knock a person out for up to three hours and
before we’d been attacked, we’d been told they were favoured as the
weapon of defence. Now here I was, with a real laser gun, activated
and ready to slice through flesh and bone. For a planet that prided
itself on having more humanity than the Abwarzians, our weapons
were far from harmless. Moreover, I knew our leaders weren’t
either.

When I’d hunted the Abwarzians
who’d invaded our water caverns, I’d never even ended up using my
laser gun, so shocked by the similarities the Abwarzians mirrored
in looks and emotions I’d been unwilling to use it. I’d used my
powers instead, to disarm, not harm. Yet still they had wound up
dead, as had Raze, from my own hands.

As I looked through the window
at the state of the space station and feared for Shay’s life, for
the first time I was glad I had something in my hands to protect
myself and if I admitted it, something that would harm the enemy.
This was it, if anything happened once I stepped outside the craft,
I was going to have to rely on my powers and the weapon to protect
and defend myself. This is what I’d been training for and now I had
no choice but to put what I’d learned to the test and hope it was
enough to preserve my own life if it should come to that. My heart
beat so loudly I could hear it.

“Stay together and be
ready to fight. Harness your powers now,” the officer barked as he
opened the door to the pod. I’d expected some
further instruction, some sort of valuable advice. A pep
talk would have been nice at least. But it seemed there was nothing
else he wanted to advise, instead exiting the pod without preamble.
We followed closely behind, descending to the landing space as the
others landed. More officers and cadets spilled from the crafts and
merged towards us while several pods remained in space, circling
and guarding, ready to attack if the Abwarzians
returned.

Avin moved in front of me while
Shanna walked at my side. My senses were at full alert, my eyes
roving unceasingly for any flicker of movement as we picked our way
across the landing. The sensation of exposure urged me to get out
of the open and undercover as the heavy suit weighed me down to
slow motion. If I needed to move fast, it would have to be with my
mind, because the gravity suit held me firmly to the landing, every
step an effort. I didn’t even know how my powers would work in this
atmosphere.

When we came to what had
once had been the entrance to the station, the officer stopped and
turned back to us, I couldn’t hear his words in the suit, but I was
pretty sure his mouth formed the word ‘
careful
’ before he turned
around and led us into the yawning dark mouth of the blackened
station. I crept forward as my eyes strained to adjust to the
darkness. Every now and then, Avin reached back to stay me with his
hand, until it was safe to move forward. His height allowed him to
see the officer’s commands, while I had only his back to stare at
in the oppressing gloom. The silence was so eerie it felt like an
extra weight bearing down on me, making it even harder to keep
going.

The awful sensation of
anticipation ended too soon. Avin’s spine stiffened as he stopped
abruptly. Reaching around to grab my arm he pulled me to his side
and as my eyes followed the direction of his gaze, my heart
stopped. The first body we came across was so horribly burned it
was unidentifiable. The hair-raising smell of burnt flesh was
something I knew I’d never forget as long as I lived and I quickly
switched to breathing through my mouth to quell the panic
threatening to overwhelm me. It could have been either Comian or
Abwarzian, but there was no way to tell the difference. Whoever
they’d been, they’d died horribly; their mouth twisted open in a
frozen scream of agony that was permanent in death. I fought back
the tears smarting my eyes because there was no time to get
emotional. This was war and I would need to desensitize if I was to
go a step further. I tried desperately not to think of Shay as I
moved past the remains and forced my eyes ahead, knowing that first
body would be the one to haunt me long after the rest in my
dreams.

It wasn’t long until we
discovered the remains of the stations crew. Muffled cries through
suits indicated the discovery of one body after the next, as cadets
and officers alike fought to contain their horror. Shanna was the
first to discover the Abwarzian body, her vicious snarl bringing us
to crowd around it. For a moment, the others stood frozen in
fascination. Never in their life had they ever seen a human from
another world, with only our education to describe the people of
other worlds to us. But I had. And I’d seen their rage…and their
fear.

My heartbeat galloped
faster as I inched forward to stare at the remains. My skin
crawled. The majority of the corpse was badly
charred, the smell of burned flesh singeing my nostrils
again and making my stomach roll over and over until I thought I
might be sick. I closed my eyes for a moment to calm myself before
I again drew courage to look at his face. His face was largely
untouched and I saw he was small for a man, or at least compared to
a Comian man. His features were sharp and pointed, his complexion
pale and sallow. His glittering black eyes stared furiously out at
us, unnerving even in death. His expression was what I could only
describe as defiant, as if he had died fully believing in his
cause. I was more disturbed at that expression than at the cause of
his death, which had ironically been the very fire he himself had
most likely started. The weapon in question was still gripped
tightly in his left hand and I recognized it from our training as a
fire shooter, just one weapon in a range of their blood curdling
devices.

The officer stooped to
pull it from his cold stiff hand and a few
cadets leapt back as if the weapon could still harm us. I
shuddered violently, feeling chilled to the bone. There was no way
I could leave without knowing if Shay was here, somewhere among the
remains. With a renewed sense of urgency, I moved away from my
group and down a blackened hall like a sleepwalker, like my legs
had a mind of their own. It wasn’t long until I found another room,
which looked like it may have been the meal and recreation
area.