you hooked me up with Gemini, you swore we’d be among friends, all fighting together for the nublood cause. Hasn’t worked out like that, has it?’
Sky snorts, her wet face glistening.
‘Get real, Kyle. Nublood makes you faster and stronger, but it doesn’t stop you being an arse like Stauffer.’
‘Never said it did. It’s just – oof ! ’
I trip. My ribs have another go at me, shutting me up.
Sky stomps off again, limping as fast as she can on her bad leg. Behind her back, Colm rolls his eyes at me. Not helpful. Ever since we were flown out here to the Deeps after the raid, this is how it’s been. It’s like they can’t stand each other and I’m stuck in the middle, dodging glares and making excuses. I’m not saying it’s his fault that things have cooled between me and Sky – that’s more down to the way things have worked out – but he doesn’t help.
‘What’s the rush?’ I call out, not thinking.
She turns, her face one big snarl. ‘WHAT DID YOU SAY?’
‘Okay, okay,’ I say, not wanting to get hit again. ‘You’ve got news about Tarn. Can’t you just tell us?’
‘I figured you’d like to see!’
She takes a deep breath and looks away real quick.
Not quickly enough. I glimpse the bitter disappointment in her eyes and my guts twist themselves into knots. A winter ago, I swore I’d help her find her sister, Tarn. We bumped stumps on it. One way or another though it hasn’t happened. There’s always another mission for Sky to fly. I’m not allowed out of the Deeps. As excuses go it’s a good one, but I feel I’ve let her down.
‘Sky, I’m sorry. I –’
‘What’s that doing here?’ Colm says, pointing.
I look. And my next heartbeat is a long time coming. On the landing field squats a matt-black Slayer windjammer.
‘Relax,’ Sky says. ‘We forced it down a week or so ago. Took a while to get it launched again. I flew it in here today.’
‘It’s massive,’ I say, taking in the bulk of it.
Sky’s not listening. ‘Hurry up. We’ll hitch a ride out.’
Just then I hear the whoosh of a steam boiler. Seconds later I smell coal smoke. Gears grind and tracks clatter. Sky sets off at a stiff-legged run. Colm and I go after her, me clutching my side. As we emerge from the trail gloom I see a battered tractor chugging away from us. We chase after it, hang off the back.
Sky cheers up enough to nearly smile.
‘Like hopping a windjammer!’ she yells over the noise.
As we lumber across the field I check out the transport. Apart from some impact damage from a hard landing, and blast scars from the firefight that followed, this is one hell of a machine. It wasn’t cobbled together from scrap in a back-of-beyond workshop. Our rebel jammers are rust buckets by comparison.
We drop off as the tow-tractor chugs around to the bow end. Sky has a word with some heavily armed guards. They nod, she waves at us, and we follow her inside the windjammer through a hatch high on its side, hauling ourselves up handholds set into the hull. Easily done any other day, but my ribs are killing me.
Colm offers a hand. I wave him away.
Techs are poking around inside. Sky ignores them and leads me through an internal hatch into the cargo bay. ‘It’s in here!’
‘What happened to the crew?’ I ask.
Sky shrugs. ‘Killed or ran. What’s it matter?’
Over to one side is a metal cage. The light from the few glowtubes in here doesn’t reach, so she pulls out a shiner and thumbs it on. By its light I see the cage door gaping open. The lock’s all melted as if someone’s taken a plasma lance to it.
Sky clambers inside, squats down and shines the beam on to the hull at the back.
‘Her tag,’ she says, looking back at me, her green eyes shining.
All I see, after I clamber into the cage after her, is a bunch of scratches on the grey-painted metal of the hull.
‘What am I looking at?’
‘These!’ Sky says, pointing.
Amazingly, it is the scratches she’s mad keen to show me. There must be hundreds of them, scored and gouged into the metal. Most are old and tough to see clearly, as if they’ve been painted over. Others are fresher or deeper, still shiny. Sky points out one set in particular, tracing the lines with a shaking finger.
‘Her tag,’ she says again, biting her lip. ‘Tarn was here.’
I lean in and squint, but still all I see is a bunch of random scratches. ‘How can you know that?’
Sky’s breathing catches and she stiffens.
‘Look, I believe you,’ I say quickly. ‘I don’t see it, that’s all.’
She scowls at me. Again. ‘A tag is your mark. Only you and your mates know it; that way it can’t be traced back to you. In the camps we all tagged. The kick was to piss the guards off by tagging as many places as you could without getting caught.’ She stares into space and shakes her head. ‘Nobody tagged more than Tarn. My sister scratched her tags in places no one else dared.’
I can’t help wondering if she’s just seeing what she wants to see. No way I’m saying that though. Next thing I know, Sky’s back on her feet and shoving past me out of the cage.
‘There’s something else,’ she says.
I go to follow and my ribs take another shot, doubling me up.
‘After that, can I go and get patched up?’ I say.
Sky’s hunting for something, flicking her shiner beam about and muttering to herself. I hear her snort.
‘For a nublood, Kyle, you sure whine a lot.’
‘Just because I heal fast doesn’t make it hurt any less!’
There’s a loud clunk sound outside and the windjammer lurches violently. I have to grab the bars of the cage to stay on my feet, which doesn’t do my ribs any favours. Next thing, the floor sways and bumps under me. My guess is the tractor is hauling us away to a dispersal area in one of the Deeps’ side canyons.
Sky finds what she’s looking for. ‘Gotcha!’
As I make it out of the cage, Colm catches my eye. He nods at Sky where
