The Pearl Wars (6 page)

6

I swirl a spoon through a bowl of the canteen’s leftover mystery chili, mentally replaying the events of the day. A janitor mops the floor by the kitchen. It’s just me and him tonight.

I sit at a circular table in the corner of the room. The chili’s cold. It tastes even worse than it smells. I can’t say our cooks know how to do Mexican. They should stick with what they do best—opening cans and dumping them into serving bo
wls.

The walls around me are the same color as the seven pitiful pieces of melted cheese that congeal into a rubbery disc in the center of the bowl. I would have been better off sneaking a couple pieces of fruit down to my room and calling it a night.

“Well,” a figure enters the canteen, “I can’t wait to join this fun little pity party.”

I look up and smile, even though she’s twenty minutes late.

Avery Wicksen: fellow orphan, snoop extraordinaire, and totally unattainable eighteen-year-old post-grad.

She skips over to the corner of the room, plopping down on the seat next to me. Her straw-colored hair’s tied up away from her face. She wears a pale-blue tank top and loose-fitting jeans, and couldn’t be more beautiful if she tried. She stares down into the bowl, shaking her head. “That is a crime against nature. They should be ashamed of themselves.”

I push the bowl away. “I was wondering if you were gonna show up.”

She grins, the faint cluster of freckles on each side of her smile dancing up and down. “Ran into some trouble with Dolores.
Trouble
in the sense that I couldn’t escape her. I swear that woman is in love with me.”

I lean against the wall, facing her. Dolores Anderson is the fossil-old librarian that Avery works with during the day. Given her less-than-stellar training record and knack for ditching classes, the teachers stuck Avery with mass boring library work rather than graduating her to full-blown agent status. Hanging out with her is like taking a look at my own future. If only our similarities were enough to hypnotize her into falling in love with me. “You two have tea again?”

She nods. “Ever since her husband died she’s been so clingy. Part of me wishes they’d just send her off to one of the retirement ships. Rigel, maybe.”

“Yeah, right. Once you’re up here, you’re here to stay. Unless you wanna let the Tribunal do a full mind wipe.”

Avery shrugs. “
Nature’s
doing a mind wipe on Dolores. Sometimes I think she mistakes me for her daughter.” She pauses. “But enough about her.” She grabs my wrist. “How are you?”

“Been better,” I reply.

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Not really.”

She leans in closer, squinting and placing her fingers on my cheek. An orchestral symphony swells inside my body. For a second I’m convinced that she’s gonna kiss me. My mind frantically searches for the right thing to do. Lean forward, grab her shoulder, pucker up. Then she opens her mouth.

“Are you aware that you have an imprint of a brick on the side of your head?”

My inner symphony hits a bum note and the orchestra lights flicker off. “Yeah, I’m aware. It hurts like hell.”

She chuckles. “Did someone brand you?”

I lean back, knowing that the red mark is the least of my worries. “I told you I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.” She pulls away. “Just saying. Us poor little orphans have to stick together up here.”

I sigh, resting my chin on my knees. “We lost the Pearl today. I lost my belt. Everything. If Eva hadn’t stepped in when she did, I might be dead.”

Her green eyes fill with concern. “Dead? On a training mission?”

“Yep,” I reply, pressing on the table with my thumb. “And if that doesn’t define my life up here, I don’t know what would.”

“So you think it was your fault.”

“I
know
it was my fault, Avery. There was this Pearlhound, not even an adult. I should have been able to take him, but I panicked.”

“This guy have a name?”

“Cassius Stevenson.” I sigh.

Her brows raise.

I meet her eyes. “What? Does that mean something to you? Is he like some super macho legend I should know about?”

“No,” she responds. “Just curious.”

“Oh, and by the way, Eva’s pissed about you hacking into our CPs. How do you do that, anyway?”

“A lot of time and a lot of reading.” She shrugs. “But look, I’ve seen Skandar in action and he ain’t so hot. And Eva may think she’s some warrior princess, but I heard she still sleeps with her old teddy bear blanket.”

I smirk. “Really?”

“No,” she replies. “I made that up to get a smile out of you. Truth is, Jesse, it doesn’t really matter. The teachers make it seem like Pearls are the be all and end all, but there
are
other things in life. Don’t obsess over the parts you can’t control. Jeez, if I spent time wallowing about my failures I’d have jumped off the ship ages ago.”

“I wasn’t wallowing.”

She laughs. “Oh, you’re wallowing. That is the most wallowing bowl of chili I’ve seen in my life.”

I glance over to the lonely bowl, considering her sage advice. It’s times like these that I’m convinced the two of us should just hijack a shuttle and take off for Polaris or Vega or some other fun ship—a ship where they don’t train children for illegal, dangerous work and then mock them when they’re not up to it.

“Speaking of,” she reaches over and grabs the bowl, “you got any enemies, Fisher? We can pick the lock on their door and dump this on them while they’re sleeping.”

I chuckle, despite myself. “That sounds like the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

“Oh, come on. I’ve had worse.”

“Well, there is August Bergmann … ” I wince as I say his name, imagining how he’ll spin my little Surface adventure once he hears about it. The guy’s had it in for me ever since Year Six.

Her face lights up. “Yeah! Now there’s a perfect candidate for a late-night chili dump.”

I shake my head. “But I’m already in trouble. Alkine’s
concerned
.” I frame the word with air quotes. “They’re all concerned.”

She rolls her eyes. “They’re
always
concerned. If they weren’t, they’d be concerned about
that
too.” She pushes the bowl away. It flies across the table, nearly toppling off the edge.

“There were Fringers,” I continue. “Not friendly either. Hence the lovely mark on my cheek.”

She rests her chin in her hand, staring at me. “It’s actually kinda cute. Think of it as a temporary tattoo. Real badass.”

“Yeah.” I smile. “Temporary tattoos are the definition of badass, right? They might as well have just scrawled ‘loser’ across my face. Bergmann’s gonna have a field day with this one.”

She shrugs. “There’s always the chili. Just sayin’.”

I nod, relishing the idea of August Bergmann with cold chili dumped all over his body.

“Seriously, though,” she leans closer, “you’ll get over it. After my parents died … when General Campbell had me transferred over here, it was the absolute loneliest time in my life. Sometimes this place is like a tomb. You just wanna get outside and breathe in fresh air for once, but people keep pulling you back. I mean, who cares about Pearls and stuff when your whole world falls apart, right?”

I nod.

“But then I started hanging out with you and things weren’t so bad. The teachers may be concerned about you, Jesse, but they’re boring, stuffy people. They don’t matter.”

“I don’t think they’d agree.”

“Trust me,” she says, “you’ll be wasting your effort trying to please them. Wilson was
born
disappointed. Alkine, well … if you ask me he’s not exactly the sympathetic war hero he’d like everybody to believe. You make me laugh, Jesse. And there are maybe three people onboard who can do that. Should count for something, right?”

I smile. “Thanks, Avery.”

“For what?”

I pause, holding back what I really want to say. “For coming up here. For talking.”

“Hey, no problem.”

I stare at her face for a second before glancing away, realizing that I look like a stalker. “I should get to bed early tonight. Wilson’s making us do Bunker Ball tomorrow morning and my legs are killing me.”

“I’ll walk down with you.”

We stand up from the table and take off through the empty canteen, leaving the chili in the corner to harden.

When we reach my room on the second level, I input my code and crack the door, turning around. An awkward pause comes between us.

There’s always an awkward pause. If we were really boyfriend and girlfriend I’d lean over and kiss her goodnight, or at least give her a hug. Instead, I offer a meek “goodnight” and she smiles, heading down the hallway. I watch her go for a moment before slipping into my room, kicking myself for wasting yet another perfect opportunity.

Before plopping onto my half-made bed, I walk to my desk and run my fingers over a pair of medallions hanging on the wall. They belong to my parents, which means
technically they belong to
me
. The Tribunal had them shipped over in honor of bravery and sacrifice and mass heroic stuff like that. They’ve been a permanent fixture in my room for as long as I can remember. The Tribunal destroyed all photographs for security purposes. My parents weren’t the keepsake type, either. These medals are all I have—a constant, glistening reminder of how fearless they were. Not like me. I can’t even handle a Pearlhound trainee.

I drop the medallions and let them clank against the wall, reaching for the entertainment console at the end of the desk. Then I slump face-first onto the bed and purge the day from memory with the most mind-numbing program I can find on Skyship TV.

7

Cassius hadn’t slept well. Four times he’d woken up, covered in sweat. Each time he was convinced it was going to happen again. Fire. Everywhere. Another room destroyed.

Part of him still couldn’t believe that it was true. He’d seen what was left of his room. He’d heard what Madame said, but he held onto the hope that there was another explanati
on.

Now he was on his way to her office for mission briefing. They would be traveling up to Skyship Atlas tomorrow afternoon. If Madame stuck to her word, it would be his last full day at the Lodge for a while. He wasn’t sure if finding Fisher was an opportunity or a punishment.

He paused outside the Office of Research and Development—the Lodge’s nerve center. Madame was expecting him in half an hour, which
meant he’d have time to browse through the Lodge’s database in search of more human combustion episodes. Not that he didn’t trust Madame, but he wanted to see if this had ever happened before,
to anyone else. After all, there was nothing special about him. He couldn’t be the only one.

“Stevenson?” A man’s deep voice issued from a speaker above the door. “Is that you out there?”

The voice belonged to Lieutenant Henrich, one of the head instructors at the Lodge’s training division and one of Madame’s most trusted allies.

“Yes, sir,” Cassius replied, annoyed to have been spotted so soon.

“Come inside and give me a hand,” Henrich said. “You’ve been given the access code, haven
’t you?”

“Yes.” Cassius plugged in his code beside the door and entered. Madame had just granted him access to the office two weeks ago. He was the only student privileged enough to receive it. Another perk of being her favorite.

Once inside, he passed through rows of computers and bookshelves. It was a tight space, longer than it was wide. At the far end, below a curved glass window, sat the central computer system, responsible for tracking Pearls as they hurtled through the stars and estimating Surface coordinates once they landed.

“Over here.” Henrich’s voice came from the Stasis Laboratory, a small room connected to the main office. A green glow spilled out from the open doorway. Cassius passed through an
aisle of bookshelves, hoping that whatever Henrich wanted wouldn’t take long. He needed to find out what was happening to him. Madame’s cryptic answers weren’t enough.

Green light washed over his body as he entered the laboratory. Lieutenant Henrich stood before a wide counter, wearing a white undershirt and dark trousers. His black hair was slicked back as usual. A Pearl sat in a shallow basin before him. A wall of television screens beamed just beyond the counter, each displaying security footage from one of the ten entrances to the Bio-Net around Rochester. Many of the Lodge’s rooms shared this feature. A precaution.

“Stevenson.” Henrich greeted him with a lopsided smile. “Come over here and help me attach this stasis equipment. Fraggin’
thing’s already getting buggy on us.”

Cassius moved next to the Lieutenant in silence. He didn’t much like one-on-ones with instructors. It felt awkward. The adults at the Lodge didn’t interact with the trainees outside of instruction time.

“Hand me that harness over there.” Henrich pointed to a claw-like device on the far end of the counter.

Cassius picked up the heavy instrument. A wide tube a
ttached to the top stretched into the wall. The claw portion would leech the energy from inside the Pearl and funnel it through the tube where it could be stored in the city’s energy terminals. It was advanced machinery. If Skyship hadn’t gotten their hands on the schematics a decade ago, the race for Pearls would have been over before it had started.

Henrich grabbed the harness and twisted the knobs on the side to open the claw to a suitable width. He laid his hand on top of the Pearl. “I hear we’ve got you to thank for this beauty.”

“Yeah,” Cassius mumbled, “but I stole a shuttle to get it so Madame’s not too happy.”

Henrich positioned the harness around the Pearl and tightened the clamps to secure it. “You’re lucky she’s taken a shine to you.” He checked the tube for holes. “You don’t want to get on Madame’s bad side. Honestly, I’m surprised she gave you clearance to this office. You should feel pretty good about that.”

Cassius looked up at the monitors. All ten entrances to the Net were still and empty, except for the guards, slumped over and yawning.

“Some fire last night,” Henrich continued. “You’re a lucky kid, I’ll tell you that. We’re doing a sweep of the electrical systems later this afternoon. I don’t know what could have happ
ened.”

Cassius glanced over to him, expecting to see a hint of a knowing smile. Lieutenant Henrich was one of Madame’s right-hand men. But then Cassius remembered what Madame had said:
I cannot trust anybody else in the Unified Party.

Satisfied with the strength of the tube, Henrich powered on the harness. Cassius watched as the device whirred to life, absorbing the energy from inside the Pearl and sucking it out. In a few hours there’d be nothing left but a hollow, translucent shell—an empty fishbowl.

“
It’s amazing,” Henrich started. “All these years and we’re still not able to break through the outer layer. That’s some strong material there. It’d have to be to withst
and impact, I guess. I’d hate to be standing in the way of one of these when it fell.”

Cassius agreed. There’d be no surviving it. A falling Pearl burned through anything it touched before hitting land. They were only safe after they stabilized.

“So you’re heading to Skyship tomorrow.” Henrich leaned on the counter. “Be prepared for protestors up there. Flip the Tribunal the middle finger for me, okay?”

Cassius kept his eyes on the emptying Pearl. “Do you know why Madame picked me?”

“You’re her kid, Stevenson. She’s giving you an opportunity the other kids don’t get. It’s an honor.”

He thought back to the infirmary room, to his raw, tingling skin. An honor. Right.

Henrich frowned. “Listen, I’ve known Madame longer than you’ve been alive. Let me tell you what I’ve learned.” He scratched his nose. “It’s all about Pearls. It’s all she thinks about. How to find them, what to do with them. Bring her Pearls and you’re golden. Stand in her way and … ” He chuckled. “Well, you don’t stand in Madame’s way.” He ran his fingers over the emptying Pearl. “If she’s bringing you up to Skyship, chances are it’s got something to do with these little babies.”

Cassius was about to respond when he noticed movement on the top-right security monitor. “Hey,” he pointed to the screen, “what’s that?”

Lieutenant Henrich craned his neck over the counter to see the screen. Cassius watched as a crowd of people—twenty or so—converged on the seventh Bio-Net entrance. He recognized them as Fringers immediately. Their clothing was filthy, little more than torn rags covering their gaunt bodies. Their skin was dark with the Surface Tan.

“Second group this week.” Henrich shook his head.

Cassius moved closer to the display, trying to make out details. The Fringers carried something in their arms. Sunlight glinted off of metal. Weapons.

A monitor in the opposite corner whirred to life showing footage from a nearby ground camera. He could see the rectangular entrance clearly, as well as the closest Bio-Net connectors—large, solid Xs climbing into the sky, growing fainter the higher they were placed.

The group sped up as they neared the entrance. Ever since the Unified Party had erected the Chosens and shut out anyone unable to pay the environmental tax, the cities had become targets for bands of Fringers, incensed with the government’s lack of support to those on the outside.

Cassius turned to Henrich. “Why are they allowing them to get so close?”

“Just wait,” Henrich replied, fixated on the monitor.

The group of Fringers stopped mere feet from the entrance and drew their weapons. The video feed didn’t pick up sound. Cassius wondered if they had fired any shots.

Henrich smiled. “Can you believe this? They think all it takes is a couple of guns to break into a Chosen City.”

“This happens often?”

He nodded. “We’re coming up on the anniversary of the Chosens. Perfect time to stage a coup, right? Expect the crowds to get bigger before they die down. Doesn’t matter, though. Watch.”

Cassius turned his attention back to the screen. The Fringers stood still, probably making demands of the guards.

A blinding beam of light filled the screen. The ground exploded. Dust shot up from below, engulfing the crowd in a swirling brown cloud. Limbs fell in a tangle to the ground. Weapons flew into the air.

“Automated defense systems.” Henrich chuckled. “Stupid Fringers forgot to look up. Bam!” He laughed.

Cassius turned to him. “Dead?”

Henrich nodded. “Dead and gone.”

A chill ran down Cassius’s spine. He’d seen people killed before. Even tortured. But something about the video stuck with him. The efficiency of it. The silent feed.

“And still they try.” Henrich shook his head. “I guess if you’ve lived outside the Net so long you’ve gotta have more than a few screws loose, huh?”

Cassius kept his attention on the display, watching as the dust faded to reveal a pile of bodies. He didn’t respond.

“
That’s
why you don’t mess with Madame,” Henrich said proudly. “Or the Unified Party, right Stevenson?”

Cassius nodded, turning back to the draining Pearl. Maybe he shouldn’t go snooping through the research files after all.

–––

Cas
sius walked the hallway in silence. Before he could take the last few steps to Madame’s office, her door swung open. A brown-haired boy stepped out, a determined frown on his face. Their eyes met for a moment, but the boy pushed past Cassius without a word and took off down the hall. Cassius turned to watch him round a corner and disappear.

He was young. Too young to be in her office.

Cassius caught the door before it shut entirely and slipped into the office. Madame sat behind her desk, speaking on a headset.

“I understand, Prime Minister.” Her voice was calm, though she spoke through gritted teeth. “Yes,” she answ
ered. “I know it is a larger fee than you’d prefer, but you need to understand what we’re dealing with. Shippers are crossing the Skyline more and more frequently. It’s as if the treaty means nothing to them.”

She flipped the headset outward so Cassius could hear the Prime Minister’s voice. It was muffled, but he could still hear the man’s thick cockney accent. “If they’re breaking the law, why not arrest them?”

Madame sighed, bringing the headset back to her ear. “If it were up to me we’d do more than arrest them, but the President is fearful of a war. We need Pearls, Mr. Hughes. We’re not crammed together on an island like the Commonwealth. We’re spread out, surrounded by miles and miles of Fringe Towns. Granted, it gives us more landing space … greater access. But Fringers are teaming with Shippers, and the Unified Party must have Pearls to stay strong. My terms remain fixed.” She paused, motioning for Cassius to take a seat beside her desk. “Fine,” she muttered, and flipped off the headset, giving a great sigh.

“Cassius.” She removed the earpiece and glanced over to him. “You’re early.”

“Who was that?” He motioned to the doorway.

She frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“That boy,” he replied, “that just left your office.”

She removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Oh, don’t you worry about that.”

Cassius turned back to the door. He
was
worried. Madame never let students into her office. Cassius was the exception. The
only
exception.

And that’s the way it needed to stay.

Madame opened a drawer beside her and pulled out a small black bag. “Prime Minister Hughes wishes for more leniency from the Unified Party.” She set the bag on the table. “It seems the European Commonwealth has fallen on hard times. They’re attempting to mimic Canada’s Polar Cities in Scandinavia. He reckons the project would move faster with Pearl Power.”

Cassius knew that the Polar Region, with its Arctic Ocean, was the most stable and desirable area on the planet. It would be in the Unified Party’s interest to keep the Commonwealth from building there.

Madame leaned forward in her chair. “It’s not my fault their piddly little country is low on landing space. I upped the fee to eight million euros per Pearl. He is not a happy Englishman.”

Cassius smiled. Pearls targeted land, and North America was one of the biggest chunks of civilized land left. A large percentage of Pearls fell in Unified Party territory. And with the recent purchase of Africa’s landing space, Madame could ask whatever she wanted for them. Europe would have to pay.

“We should have never sold them the schematics to our stasis equipment.” She unhooked the bag’s top buckle. “But it was not my decision to make. McGregor was in charge then. I’m more worried about the Fringers now. Reports came in this morning that a town in south Texas got their hands on a disk of stasis schematics from Skyship agents. I’ve sent down a troop to level the entire community if necessary. If Fringers find a way to harvest Pearl energy it’s all over. It’s bad enough that they’re trading with the Seps.”

She sighed, reaching into the bag and removing three items. Cassius watched as she set a pistol, a Skyship passport, and a folded suit on the desk in front of him. “This is all you’ll have to rely on in your search for Fisher,” she started. “The pistol is constructed entirely from plastic and filled with a trace of diluted Pearl energy. It is twenty times more effective than any bullet and, more importantly, won’t register on any Skyship scanners.

“The second item,” she continued, “is your passport. It will get you onto Skyship Polaris once we’ve left the Tribunal meeting. From there you’ll board a ship to the Academy. For security purposes, your name will be Michael Stevens. I’ve uploaded details onto your com-pad. Study them. You will be questioned.”

Cassius ran his eyes over the three items, a lump in his throat. “And the suit?”