Take Back the Skies (19 page)

Despite Matt being the engineer, she knew Fox was the real mechanical genius on this ship. She'd seen him fashion a working miniature skyship out of a few scraps of metal and a half-melted gear plate.

His blue eyes narrowed in thought, and Cat could practically hear his brain whirring.

‘Presuming they're arrogant prats who assume that no one could ever hack their locks, once we get in it should be wide open. Then it's just a matter of dismantling whatever
protections they've set up against broadcasting worldwide … I can handle it. Matt, you'll need to help me, though,' he admitted.

Matt nodded.

‘Not a problem. And, Cat, don't you worry about filming evidence. Fox here has it all covered, don't you, Foxy?' he said with a grin, clapping him on the shoulder.

‘Completely. And
don't
call me Foxy,' he snapped.

‘There's just one question, then,' Harry said, a grave look on his face as he eyed his crew carefully. ‘Which one of us is going in with Fox?'

Cat bit her lip, steeling herself.

‘I am,' she announced.

‘Absolutely not,' Fox retorted, turning to look at her. ‘I – we're not risking you in there. You're too young.'

Cat huffed.

‘Who else will likely recognise every man in that compound? You said it yourself – my knowledge of the government is disturbingly good. I can identify every person involved in whatever we find, and tell you who you'll be wasting your time following. I might not have accessed all the levels, but I've been sneaking around that building since I was old enough to walk! I know what I'm doing. Face it, Fox, you need me. Besides, this was my idea, and I'm not going to sit on the sidelines like a good little girl and let you have all the fun.'

‘Fun?' Fox scoffed, rolling his eyes. ‘You think risking our lives like this will be fun? Admittedly, you have inside knowledge, but Matt and I can manage just fine,' he retorted.

‘Matt? Can you really see
Matt
managing to sneak around a top secret government compound? No offence, Matt, but you're hardly built for stealth,' Cat added with an apologetic glance.

Matt shrugged, smiling ruefully.

‘She has a point,' he said to Fox, whose scowl deepened. ‘Admit it, Fox, if she was a boy, you'd let her go. She knows what she's doing, and she's a darn sight better at going unnoticed than I would be. Stop being so bloody overprotective and give the girl a chance.'

‘I won't be responsible for her,' Fox argued.

‘I'll be responsible for myself, thanks,' she snapped. ‘So that's it, – me and Fox.'

‘I'd better go and prepare, then,' Fox declared, getting up.

Cat looked at him inquisitively.

‘Prepare what?' she queried, and he stared at her for a long moment before sighing.

‘Come on,' he muttered, gesturing for her to follow.

She grinned, bouncing up from her seat and following Fox out into the corridor. Her eyebrows rose when they walked past his bedroom door.

‘Do I finally get to see what's in this mysterious room of yours?' she asked, as they reached the manhole. He shrugged, dropping down without using the ladder. Huffing in frustration, she jumped down behind him.

Fox pulled open the engine-room door and turned left. Cat couldn't help but grin as he pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the mystery door.

He slipped inside and she followed tentatively. It was dark, with two low gas lamps in the furthest corners, a
long workbench between them. Almost every inch of wall space was either covered by shelves, or had papers pinned up, all with drawings and blueprints on them. The shelves were full of boxes, and on the workbench sat a half-finished piece of machinery, while next to it a soldering iron leaned on its stand.

‘Impressive,' Cat murmured, eyes wide. She yearned to study the schematics on the walls in more detail, but Fox was reaching up for a box on the highest shelf, his shirt riding up to expose a slim strip of pale flesh above the waistband of his trousers.

Cat felt a flutter in her stomach, and her cheeks grew warm.

The box slid off its shelf and into Fox's arms. He quickly lowered it to the floor with a thud.

‘So what have you got in here, then?' she asked.

‘Bits and pieces. I like to tinker,' he said quietly.

Cat peered at the object on the workbench, running a gentle finger over a delicate gear plate, one of the chains still hanging loose, as thin as a thread of silk.

‘This is from a mecha,' she realised in surprise. She remembered having to repair the tiny gear plate several times after her father had lost his temper and lashed out at Samuel. It was part of a brain – the part that helped register images. But she couldn't see the thin, dark green film that usually accompanied the part. ‘Where did you get it from?'

‘Found a couple of broken ones in a rubbish cart just outside of government. How did you know?'

Cat shrugged.

‘My family had a mecha, back home. Have – he's still there. Father was rather … careless with him at times. I often repaired him,' she explained.

Fox had an amused look in his eyes.

‘Ever the little gearhead, hmm?' he teased lightly.

‘It was interesting. They're very complex machines, to have some semblance of intelligence and understanding,' she said.

Fox nodded, moving closer. He stood over her shoulder, leaning forward to point out a few things on the half-finished machine on the desk.

‘Look and see what you can recognise. Figure out what it is,' he challenged.

Determined to pass his test, she turned back to the workbench to study the mechanisms closer. She recognised many basic components; they could have come from a mecha, but also from a delicate clock or something with equally small gear plates. Brow furrowing in concentration, she grinned triumphantly as she spotted the one piece that gave the game away. Then she gasped, realising exactly what Fox had built.

‘That shouldn't be possible,' she breathed. ‘You've built a video recorder. But … it's so tiny!'

She'd seen a video recorder when a newscast team had come to their house, and her father had filmed newscasts in his office from behind his desk. The recorders they'd brought were huge, clunky things. Two people had been needed to carry one of those, whereas Fox's device could be worn quite easily on a jacket collar, the small lens peeping through a buttonhole. It would never even be noticed.

‘This is amazing. How on Tellus …?' She trailed off.

Fox's hand reached out to cover hers on the machine, his index finger pointing to the lens and its backing mechanism.

‘That right there, that's the lens in a mecha's eye which allows them to “see” their surroundings and temporarily imprint the images on a dalivinite film, lasting long enough for the mecha to do its job, but without saving the images. If you adjust it to use the tyrium dalivinite film developed for newscasts, stored in here,' he gestured to a small metal box set aside, about the size of Cat's palm, with a hole in one end, ‘it'll save the images permanently, so the film canister can then be inserted in the broadcasting machines over in the newscast building.'

Cat was gawping and she knew it, but she couldn't help herself.

‘That's genius! You're a genius, Fox,' she insisted, bringing the faintest of red flushes to his freckled cheeks. He looked away, shrugging. ‘But … there's no sound?' she asked.

He knelt by the box he'd just pulled down. Cat swivelled round in her chair to face him, curious. He neatly set aside the multitude of spare parts in the box and pulled out a device even smaller than the video recorder.

‘You didn't think I'd dismantle a mecha and leave the ears in, did you?' he asked wryly.

She looked at him in confusion; mechas didn't have ears.

‘Not literal ears,' he added. ‘But the mechanism that allows them to process sound. I ripped that out, modified it a little, set it to store on a permanent yelenium core, and there you go. Audio recording device.'

He passed it to her carefully, and she cupped it in her hands, bringing it up to eye level. The thin strands of orange yelenium that made up the core were encased in metal-framed glass, buzzing with little violet sparks, stretched out between two strips of metal like a harp.

‘I've been working on them for a while – weeks before you showed up. It's rather clever, really. The yelenium is so sensitive, the vibrations from sound create little ridges in it, so it remembers the pattern. If you make it a little thicker than usual, the ridges don't stretch, and you can replay the sound back by letting a little wire brush over the ridges,' he explained. He reached over, twisting the device so the small microphone pointed upwards, then ran a finger down one side of the casing until he came across a switch.

‘Say something,' he murmured, flicking the tiny switch.

Cat bit her lip, glancing up to meet Fox's vibrant blue eyes, which seemed almost to glow in the dim lighting.

‘This is brilliant,' she said, somewhat awkwardly.

Fox smirked, flicking the switch in the other direction. There was a speedy whirring of the few exposed gears, before Cat heard her own voice, somewhat tinny, but recognisable.

‘OK, I'm impressed now. I can't believe you made all these yourself. You'd make a fortune selling them!' she breathed.

Fox raised an eyebrow.

‘Then I wouldn't have the advantage in spying on government scum, would I?' he retorted. ‘Besides, they're already being made outside of Anglya. I got my idea from something similar I saw in a shop in Siberene. The problem
with isolating yourself so completely from the rest of the world is that you don't get to share in their advances. Did you know that in Mericus even the common people have newscast screens in their homes? Not just the aristocracy. Apparently they're thinking about using them for things other than news.'

‘What else could they use them for?' Cat asked in confusion, and Fox grinned.

‘Education, entertainment, all sorts of things. Think about it. If they can record news, why can't they record a professor giving a lecture, or a performer doing a show?' he pointed out.

Cat imagined being able to watch a performer on her newscast screen; it would be wonderful!

‘It's a shame it isn't like that here,' she sighed.

Fox shrugged.

‘Not yet it's not, but if we succeed it could well be. We'll open up communications with the rest of the world, and they'll probably be happy to bring us up to date. They really don't hate us as much as the government likes to make out. They hate our government, and they're bitter, but they don't hate Anglya itself. They did originate here, after all.'

‘Yeah, several hundred years ago.'

‘Still, they respect the First Men, and the country they came from. If we succeed, we'll be welcomed back with open arms, I'm sure of it.' His eyes were intense and serious, and his expression sent a shiver down Cat's spine. ‘I want you to be careful,' he murmured, drawing closer. ‘Worry about yourself. If at any point it looks like you're about to get caught, run and don't look back. I can handle myself,
and I don't want you putting yourself in danger for me,' he chuckled humourlessly. ‘I'm not worth you getting caught.'

‘I'd rather us both get caught and go down together than for you to get caught and me run,' she argued.

He scowled, shaking his head firmly.

‘I don't want you getting caught, Cat,' he insisted. ‘Please, just promise me you'll be careful.'

Cat folded her arms across her chest indignantly.

‘You don't need to protect me, you know. Anyway, you've made it very clear recently that you'd be happier on this ship without me here to disrupt things,' she replied.

He winced.

‘I never said that,' he began, and she rolled her eyes.

‘You never had to.'

Fox sighed, turning away from her, and Cat got the feeling that they had just taken two steps forward and about thirty in reverse; a feeling that was becoming increasingly common with the enigma that was William Foxe.

‘I'll be careful. But I'm not going to leave you behind.'

The answer didn't seem to satisfy him, but quite frankly Cat didn't care. Turning on her heel, she left. She was tired of arguing.

The thick soles of her boots were almost soundless on the floor as she walked through the narrow halls of the skyship. Pacing the corridors was better than sitting in her room, waiting for breakfast. She'd been tossing and turning all night, and by half past four she'd given up on getting any real sleep.

She paused in the pale blue-grey light filtering in through the small portholes and sat on the edge of the manhole, her legs dangling down to the floor below.

‘Happy birthday to me,' she sighed, somewhat wistful.

It had been a week and a half since she'd stowed away and she was, as of three o'clock that morning, fifteen years old. She didn't feel it; at times she felt ancient, and at others – usually when Fox was around – she felt like an awkward, stuttering twelve-year-old, trying to make sense of those around her, jumping head first into waters far deeper than she could handle.

‘That you, Cat?'

She blinked, peering down the manhole, smiling when she saw Ben at the foot of the ladder.

‘Morning,' she greeted him.

‘Good morning, lass. Many happy returns,' Ben replied. ‘Come here, I've got something for you.'

Intrigued, Cat dropped down, following Ben around to the corridor where the rest of the crew slept. Ben pushed open a door, beckoning her closer. She hesitantly peered inside. Ben's room was neat, with a few drawings pinned to the walls, all of different places in the world; some she recognised, some she didn't.

‘These are beautiful,' she murmured.