Chapter 36
Venthros comes into view, a blue-gray marble against the backdrop of space.
The planet expands as we speed closer, larger and larger until it fully encompasses my windscreen.
Vera’s Sky Runner appears out Moon Dancer’s window on our left, The Bargainer’s spherical body juddering through turbulence on our right.
As a unit, we descend through Venthros’s atmosphere, jet over a choppy green ocean, and close in on the western hemisphere … and with it, Mount Kilmon.
My hands loosen on the controls. I have the strangest impulse to reach out and touch the glass, to offer some sort of silent greeting to that terrible, magnificent structure.
The volcano dominates the horizon, its flanks sculpted by eons of hardened molten rock, its peak flattened and jagged like a broken tooth.
Though this year’s eruption hasn’t officially started yet, plumes of smoke rise from the volcano’s crater, thin trails of fire shooting from its peak.
We bypass the volcano (I am both relieved and not relieved) and head across a valley toward Soto.
As we descend upon the city, I begin to see the processions we’ve been hearing about on the news, thousands of people lining up outside Determinist distribution centers waiting to pledge their loyalty in exchange for Ran Doc Min’s neutralizer.
The distribution centers aren’t so much centers as they are armored vehicles, each manned by a trio of Determinists who are armed and armored themselves.
According to NewsNet, as soon as the neutralizer pods are distributed, Determinist workers will inject each Venthrothian with lie detector serum, accept their oath of loyalty, and hand over a neutralizer inhaler.
The citizen will take a puff from the inhaler and earn themselves immunity against the voroxide.
There are a lot of distribution vehicles. There are a lot of people. And this is just one city in one corner of the whole planet. It’s hard to wrap my head around the scale of Ran Doc Min’s operation: millions of people, tricked into subservience by a man who only wants power.
“Target sighted,” Vera says through my headset.
I train my eyes toward the field beyond the city and see what she sees—there, among the dry yellow grass, stands the Determinists’ central deployer, an enormous A-Line freighter painted in streaks of silver and black, its wings curled up over its body like some kind of vulture.
Since the smaller distribution vehicles will only contain a limited number of neutralizer inhalers, they’ll need to be periodically restocked, and for that, they’ll return to the A-Line.
The cargo ship is made of indestructible aerotitan sheets, narrow in the front and wide in the back, and it’s big.
Like, really big. Like, ten-times-the-size-of-most-other-spaceships big.
“Approaching target,” Vera says. “Everyone in position.”
I try to orient myself, noting the angle of the sun hitting the A-Line’s curved sides, the position of the doors, the gun slots—closed for now—that will unlock and open fire if a threat is detected.
“Keller?” Vera asks. “You ready?”
Ha. Wouldn’t I love to give her a solid answer.
Of course I’m ready. I’m Keller Hartman, the best gunner this galaxy’s seen in decades, recruited into the Sixth straight out of training because they just couldn’t live without me.
Only, I wasn’t actually recruited. I was inserted.
And—judging by the bile in my mouth and the fuzziness in my head—I’m nowhere near ready.
“Keller?”
“One second,” I say, then yank off my headset and look at Lament.
His mouth drops open in alarm. “What are you doing?”
“You still have your lifestone?”
“Keller—”
“Do you?”
“It’s your lifestone,” he corrects. “And you know I do.”
“Don’t take it off.”
“I won’t,” Lament growls, with the impatience of a man who would like to return to the task at hand. “Anything else?”
You gave that boy your lifestone.
Have you told him why?
“Nope,” I say.
He speaks into his headset. “We’re going in.”
We blast through the sky toward the A-Line.
I wiggle my shoulder blades against my backrest, take my controls into my hands.
To break into the Determinists’ freighter, steal the neutralizer, and release it into Venthros’s atmosphere, we first have to disable the ship’s security system, and to do that, I’m going to have to take a shot that’s …
look, I’m not going to say it’s impossible, because if that was true, we wouldn’t be here.
It’s more like impossible adjacent. It’s friends with impossible.
If it was writing out its five-year plan, it would aspire to impossibility.
All A-Line deployer ships come with built-in attack surveillance and defense technology.
There are cameras positioned around the ship’s body that can detect an incoming craft and will automatically open fire if a threat is identified.
That would be bad news for us, except there happens to be a known loophole: The cameras are wired together.
If you scramble the sensor on one camera with, say, a well-placed Halobringer ray beam, it’ll freeze the whole system.
The A-Line manufacturers haven’t ever bothered to close this loophole, because they assert their cameras will always identify (and eliminate) an incoming threat long before the enemy gets close enough to do any harm.
The joined wiring is, in their words, a nonissue.
We’re betting they’re wrong.
As Lament and I fly closer, I switch my Halobringer from its highest setting (ultimate annihilation) to its lowest (general butchery), charging the gun just enough to fuel this shot.
I’m still worried the ray beam will be too powerful.
It could destroy the ship in one go (we don’t want that).
It could take out not just the attack sensors but all the ship’s interior wiring (also not good).
Even if I calculate the power output correctly, there’s a chance I’ll miss my shot.
I have a whopping total of one try to fire a ray beam through a camera lens the size of a coin.
And it gets better, because we can’t just fly into range at normal speeds (see: deployer attack sensors).
The only way to maneuver close enough to take out the A-Line’s cameras is to also fly so fast that the ship’s sensors don’t register our movement.
Put shortly, I’ll be attempting this shot at supersonic speeds.
If I miss, our plan is ruined and the planet is doomed.
Yay.
Lament turns Moon Dancer into her final position, gearing up.
Anyone inside the ship will hear the sonic boom of our flyby, but if we do this right, by the time they rush to look out their windows, we’ll be long gone.
The A-Line’s guns will remain in their slots, the threat will remain undetected.
The Determinists will shrug and go back to pulling the wings off butterflies, or whatever it is they’re doing in there.
Lament starts giving us some speed. I’m completely relying on my controls here, zooming my panel’s viewfinder to locate one of the A-Line’s small glass cameras.
If Lament deviates Moon Dancer even a fraction, the shot will be off.
If my hands tremble, if I lose focus, if I punch the trigger too soon or too late, the shot will be off.
But Lament doesn’t deviate. And my hands don’t shake. I line up the target in my sights, hold my breath. Lament gives Moon Dancer more speed still, and the moment we break the sound barrier, I press the trigger.
It seems like there should be a noise of some kind.
A boom or bang, the electronic burr of a ray beam hitting the ship’s system.
But there’s nothing. Not even the sound of our own sonic boom (you can’t hear yourself break the sound barrier because, you know, you’re ahead of it).
I watch the Halobringer’s distinctive comet light blast out its muzzle and hit my chosen camera, vanishing in a silent puff.
Lament and I careen past a split second later, ruffling the field’s grass in our wake.
Lament pulls us up and away. I strain in my seat, searching the swiftly shrinking A-Line for some hint that my shot hit its mark, or didn’t.
“The systems are down,” Vera’s voice tells us over our headsets, squeaking a little. “Jester confirmed it was a direct hit. Well done, Keller.”
A general cheer goes up over our speakers. I smile, exhale a shaky laugh.
“That was the easy part,” Avi says. “Now comes the true heist. Gear up, everyone. It’s time to kick some Determinist butt.”
We reconvene in a sparsely wooded area a few miles north of the A-Line. The others are already there, waiting among the scrubby foliage while Lament lands Moon Dancer carefully through the canopy.
These woods aren’t anything like the ones near Mount Kilmon. The trees are younger, mostly birches and maples instead of towering redwoods, but I scan the branches anyway, just in case.
“Any monsters out there?” Lament asks lightly as he unlatches the cockpit.
“Not if they know what’s good for them.”
Caspen unloads her overland rover from The Bargainer’s hulk, revving the engine like she’s at the starting line of a race. Those of us taking part in this leg of the plan—everyone except Master Ira and Illiviamona, who will remain on the cargo ship—scramble inside, elbowing for the best seats.
“Why do I always get stuck in the middle?” Avi whines from her spot between Jester and Toph.
“Because you’re the smallest,” Youvu Hum replies patiently.
“I can’t help my size!” She adopts a perfect pout. “Next time, I say we draw knives.”
Vera tosses her a look from the front passenger seat. “I think you mean straws.”
“No, I mean knives. Then we’ll duel to the death.”
“Hey,” I tell Avi from the row ahead, “I’m stuck in the middle seat, too. You don’t see me complaining.”
“That’s because you’re next to Lament.”
This conversation has taken a dangerous turn. I should redirect it. “So?”
“So you’re in love with Lament!”
I flush bright red. To my left, Lament gives a little cough.
“Vera,” I complain. “Aren’t you going to scold her?”
Vera only smiles.
Caspen hits the gas, and we lurch forward with a collective Ack!
It doesn’t take long before we’re blasting out of the woods, speeding across the terrain back toward the A-Line.
On the horizon, Mount Kilmon has started smoking in earnest. The volcano looks far away, but in Caspen’s overland, the trip will probably take less than an hour.
I think about traveling from here to there.
Then I tell myself to stop thinking about that.
The Determinist deployer emerges in our view once more.
I note the thick landing gear, the shiny body, the single row of windows curved around the ship’s nose like beads on a string.
As we careen toward the craft’s smooth underbelly, I get my hand on my ray gun, listening for the sound of an alarm, shouts, or the blast of enemy fire, but there’s nothing.
We drive right up under the ship and hop over the rover’s open sides, moving quickly, quietly now, tensed for what’s to come.
“Don’t forget your headsets,” Vera instructs.
We snag our sets from under our seats while Avi pulls out a small metal disc and makes grabby-hands motions at Toph.
He picks her up, raising her easily over his head.
Avi reaches up to attach the disc to the A-Line’s metal belly.
“No need to stand back,” she says, tossing her ponytail. “This shouldn’t—”
There’s a miniature pop, which ripples outward across the deployer’s bottom. A panel falls off a few feet away, revealing a dark hole that leads into the ship’s lowest compartment.
“—take long,” she finishes.
“Neatly done,” Toph says as he sets Avi back down.
“You have a spy’s finesse,” Youvu Hum agrees.
Avi gives a bow.
I frown. “So is she actually—?”
“Onto the ship!” Avi hollers.
Avi, Toph, Caspen, and one of the Youvu Hums haul themselves up through the opening first and dart away to commandeer the control center.
(Caspen has assured us she knows how to fly an A-Line so many times that I am beginning to suspect she does not, in fact, know how to fly an A-Line.) Meanwhile, Vera, Jester, the other Youvu Hum, Lament, and I race to hunt for the ship’s central supply of neutralizer.
Vera checks her watch. “Four hours until eruption.”
“Not much time to steal this ship, battle any opposition, and release the neutralizer all across the planet before Ran Doc Min figures out what we’re up to and launches a counterattack,” Youvu Hum notes.
That’s the spirit, Jester says.
The A-Line is a freighter, meaning it has a small control center on the ship’s upper level and tons of cargo room below.
We spend the next few minutes racing through dimly lit corridors, using Avi’s liquid lock dissolver to open door after door, hoping to find the mother lode.
Or signs pointing us toward the mother lode.
Or clues about signs that will point us toward the mother lode.
So far, though, all the rooms in this section of the ship have already been cleared out.
We keep searching, the five of us on high alert, though we don’t run into any Determinists.
No guards, no crew. Which prods at something in the back of my mind, something that insists I should be asking questions, only I don’t have time to examine those thoughts because Jester pushes open a door to reveal an enormous cargo hall.
It’s the biggest room we’ve found yet, a cavernous chamber illuminated by intermittent orange light.
We step inside and my stomach flutters at what I see.
The space is filled with rows upon rows upon rows of wooden crates, each one stamped in big red letters with a single, bold word: NEUTRALIZER.
Jester produces a crowbar, which he uses to lever the lid off the nearest crate. There’s a creak, and the splintering of wood, and at last the top pops off to reveal …
Nothing.
I blink.
There’s nothing inside the crate.
“Keller,” Nina says from somewhere to my left. “I’d really hoped it wouldn’t come to this.”
I spin around and think, No.
A band of armed thugs emerge, and we’re surrounded.