Liberty (12 page)

After breakfast, Gwen had a long list of chores that needed doing. While she cleaned the kitchen, Berrett attacked the bathrooms and Mama B. and I sat down to fold huge piles of laundry.

Mama B. laughed as she folded the small homemade shirts and trousers. “It never ceases to amaze me that someone so tiny could create such a giant trail of destruction.”

“Yeah,” I replied. The guilt woke up inside me and stretched its legs, tickling my insides with the memory of my own trail of terror.

“So, your family. Tell me about them,” said Mama B.

I focused hard on folding the clothes in front of me.

“I assume Berrett told you why we are here?”

She nodded. “Just me, though. The others know you are in trouble with the SUN, but they don’t know why. They don’t particularly care, and your secret is safe with me.” She pointed to the chain around my neck and winked.

“Look ... this is hard for me. I’ve spent my whole life trying to disguise who I am and protect what I have, and in the past forty-eight hours countless people have discovered the truth about me and the vial.”

“I know, honey, and I wouldn’t ask except it’s important for me to hear it from you. And to tell you the truth, it’s good for you to talk about something you’ve been locking up inside you for so long.”

I sighed. “You sound like Miriam.”

“Who’s that?”

“Every cargo ship in the system has to have a medic or a healer on board at all times. Miriam is a healer, and instead of just coming along for the ride, she actually takes her job seriously.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Not when she goes poking around in my head trying to figure me out.
I
don’t even have me figured out.”

Mama B. smiled. “You don’t have to have you figured out to talk about things that matter to you, though. Sometimes it’s when you’re talkin’ that you find out what it is you really feel.”

I scrunched my lips to the side and sighed. “I’m a terrible, terrible person.”

Mama B. laughed out loud. “Really?”

She saw my face fall and the tears threatening to spill from my eyes, and she put a hand on mine. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. You go ahead.”

I hung my head and a tear landed on the small shirt I was folding. “My parents and my brother are dead because of me.”

“Oh, honey. I’m sure that’s not true, but go ahead and talk to me about why you think that.”

“The SUN suspected that my parents had the vial. My family was murdered in a cruiser crash based on that suspicion. They had no idea it was in our house. I had it. My Aunt Tabitha ....”

My mind drifted back to the gallows on Mars. The image of the swinging noose filled the space behind my eyes.

I shook my head. “My Aunt Tabitha gave it to me, told me to give it to my father. I was twelve. I didn’t think it was that important. It was just a wooden box with a glass vial inside.”

“You know there’s no way you could have prevented that,” said Mama B. “If your parents had the vial, the SUN would have taken it back and you’d be long gone.”

I looked down as I reached for another tiny shirt. I had done this chore with my mother before she died. We had some of the best talks over folding linen. I felt an overwhelming desire to pretend that Mama B. was my mom, that I was a part of a family again.

“Sometimes I wish I was. Sometimes I wish I had died with the rest of my family. Then, at least ... at least I wouldn’t be alone.”

Mama B. put down her laundry and wrapped her arms around me. “Honey, it’s alright. Some of us live, some of us die. It’s the order of things. You may not see it yet, but I promise one day you’ll see good reasons for being alive. I do understand, though. I lost all fear of death the night I lost Frederick.”

I nodded. “I’m sorry about that. Berrett told me.”

She pulled back, but kept one arm around my shoulders. “You learn how to carry it. In the end, I feel much easier going through this life knowing someone is waiting for me on the other side.”

“You believe in heaven?” I asked.

“I never did until Frederick died. You know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think you have a brave heart. You were willing to risk your life to try to give your crew a chance to escape.”

“But I was just being selfish. I was trying to protect the Eternigen too.”

“I think that’s a necessary consideration in the interest of what that drug is capable of, don’t you?”

“I guess so.”

Once darkness fell, Mama B. and Berrett and I retreated to the cellar until Caleb came home. All the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end when I heard a door open and shut, but a few moments later Buster poked his head into the doorway and said, “You can come out now, pwincess!”

I followed Berrett and Mama B. up the ladder and into the kitchen.

“Dix, this is Master Caleb,” said Berrett.

Caleb eyed me warily over a dinner plate. “Nice to meet you, I think.” He turned to Berrett. “Wish it was under better circumstances.”

“Agreed,” I said.

Berrett spoke up. “Listen, about the
Aventine
—”

“You need to do some work on her outside the ‘sphere?”

Berrett nodded, and he and Caleb turned out of the kitchen and into the family room, leaving me standing with my arms folded in disgust.

Mama B. caught my expression. “Go after them!”

I went flying into the other room and ran smack into Caleb.

He whirled around. “Do you have a problem, girl?”

“Yeah. I’m a pilot first, girl second, and I’d like for you to stop treating me like it’s the other way around.”

“Really? Because around here pilots are mocked fairly relentlessly. Especially ones that blow up their own ships,” said Caleb. A hint of a smile skittered across his face.

I rolled my eyes. “Just fill me in, alright?”

Caleb and Berrett sat down on a sagging couch, and I sat across from them on a comfy old chair.

“So, you were saying?” asked Caleb.

“Yeah, I think I’m going to need to take
Ave
to a ... uh ... specialist. Do you mind?”

“Of course not. Here, Miss Pilot, sit between us on the couch and I’ll show you around the hangar.”

Caleb shot a wink at me. I glared at him, but I sat on the couch anyway as he flicked on his Cuff and showed me surveillance videos of the hangar, which was filled with massive engines, turbines, and parts I had only seen in textbooks.

“You guys are still using infrared imaging? I thought GSP phased those parts out years ago,” I said.

“It gets the job done. These are our cargo backups. Reliable, unmanned. I’m surprised a
girl
like you even recognized the parts,” said Caleb.

Berrett coughed into his sleeve.
“Wrongthingtosay.”

“Why? Because
girls
only think about fashion?” I snorted. “Seriously, Berrett, what century is this flar—”

“Don’t! Just shut up, it’s not worth it,” said Berrett. “You’re totally missing his sense of humor.”

“If that was an attempt at humor, I don’t think I want to see his attempts at ship-building,” I said.

Caleb whisked his wrist away from me.

“Things are a little less formal on the colonies, I gather,” said Caleb. “You insult me all you want, but you insult one of my babies, and I swear on my mother’s grave I will eat your first-born child for breakfast, and I
will like it.”

Berrett’s eyes went wide.

I laughed. “I felt that way about a ship.”

“A
ship. And you wonder why I have no respect for pilots? Every ship deserves that kind of love,” said Caleb. “Take the
Aventine,
here.”

He opened another video on his Cuff and my jaw went slack.

There was the most gorgeous ship I had ever seen. She made the
Misfit
look like a pimply, teenaged basement-dweller.

“Your friend Jordan has been building
Ave
with me since he was old enough to be an apprentice,” said Caleb.

“You
built
that thing?” I asked.

“I had a little help,” said Berrett.

The curvature of her design alone was enough to make grown men cry. Her bow jutted out, like a woman sticking out her jaw. Her silhouette curved around and rolled into a high arch over the cargo hold, then rushed back down and pulled tight to the inside. Her underbelly looked like a wolf’s, tight at the stomach and rounder where the ribs would be. She was
gorgeous,
and I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

“Alright, stop drooling and focus, pilot. We have items to discuss if you’re taking her off-world,” said Caleb. “There are a few things you should know, and then you should probably get back in the cellar just to be on the safe side. Every day, we come to the hangar at six. Sometimes I’m late and Jordan opens up alone. He knows the code to get in. Right?”

Berrett nodded.

“Right,” said Caleb. “There is a half-hour window between when he unlocks the doors at six and when the rest of the workers arrive at six-thirty,” said Caleb. “In that time, three things need to happen. We need to hook her up to the trailer and drive her out to the launch pad. Then we need to open the launch pad doors. I cannot emphasize this enough. If you blow through my doors, I’ll kill you both myself. When the doors are open, disengage the parking break, hit the thrusters, and off we go. Just make sure to send the code back to seal the launch doors behind you. It’ll make it easier for the team coming in if they don’t have to pick up after your launch. Make sure you get the new tags on. They’re in the cockpit.”

“Thank you,” said Berrett. “You got all that, Dix?”

“Yeah, but why—”

“I think we’re done here, Master Caleb.”

“But wait, I—”

Berrett grabbed my arm and pulled me off the couch. “We’ll head down to the cellar now. Thanks again for everything.”

“You got it, my young apprentice. Hey, Jordan,” called Caleb.

“Yes sir?”

“Be—”

Before Caleb could finish, the little boy came trotting in again and tugged on Caleb’s shirt. “Daddy, I fink she’s a pwincess.”

“A princess, huh?” asked Caleb.

“Yesh.”

“Well, kiddo, let’s hope she can live up to the title.”

I held my breath as Berrett nodded and pulled me down to the cellar door. Mama B. was already down there, resting in her room on an air mattress and scanning the SUN reports on her Cuff.

“We need your help getting some things ready, Mama,” Berrett said. “We’re stealing the
Aventine.”

N
O LIGHT SHONE THROUGH THE CRACKS IN THE BEDROOM
door. I rolled over and looked at my Cuff. It wasn’t even 5:30 a.m. A few minutes later, my bedroom door creaked open and Berrett’s face peered in.

“What are you doing in here, you creeper? Hoping to watch me sleep?” I whispered.

“Are you always like this first thing in the morning?”

I threw a pillow at him.

“I thought we didn’t have to be at the shipyard until six.”

“True, but I wasn’t sure how long you needed to get ready.”

I rolled out of bed and pointed out the fact that I had slept in my clothes. I grabbed the toothbrush he had brought for me and stuffed it in my mouth as I waltzed past him into the bathroom.

“You’re not normal, are you?” he asked.

“You wouldn’t like me as much if I were.”

Berrett laughed quietly. “Right. I got a cabby hat for you. It’s hanging on your door handle. I’m gonna go steal Caleb’s Cuff and shut down the cameras.”

I grinned back at my own reflection as Berrett shut the door on his way out.

It was going to be a good day. I was done hiding. It was time to make a move, time to step out of the shadows and into the light. Time to save my friends and, with any luck, find my future.

Right after I fix this raging case of morning breath. Ew.

We arrived at the shipyard at exactly 6:00 a.m. The harbor seemed small to me, a little cove nestled into the side of the yard.

“Home sweet home,” said Berrett. “Once upon a time, Baltimore was a place where water ships would sail in and distribute cargo. When that became outmoded, the city made the harbor into a hangout. After the Third War, the city was totally trashed, and it wasn’t until the harbor was basically leveled and turned into a giant SUN shipyard that life was breathed into her again.”