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I punch the engine, feeling the whole shuttle shudder briefly as the VTOL jets lift us up off our supports I take a long, steadying breath, then let the shuttle dart up into the sky
The girl is cowering behind a hummock, her hand over the roans of pain froht, but she can’t--her legs won’t move She’s found out how easy it is to run away; she’s letting her platoon, her captain, fight without her It isn’t until the rest of the platoon falls back that her captain finds her, still frozen, the soldier she dragged out of the fight unconscious now
"You okay, Corporal?" Her captain crouches, inspecting her for signs of shock
"I ran away," the girl whispers "I ran away"
"Don’t think Jessop would see it that way" Her captain is taking the other soldier’s pulse "Coe"
She sits there as her captain hauls the wounded ins the trek back to the rest of her platoon She tries to stand, but she can’t, and she watches hiain, the only soldier left on the plain
The girl was supposed to be brave, and she ran away
MY STOMACH TRIES TO FIGHT its way up through my throat as the jets push us away fro at the arht, denying limpse of the blue sky above Avon’s constant cloud cover, or the stars I don’t know if the dizziness is motion sickness or my mind’s inability to process the last few hours
With a jerk, the engines slow It’s only once the thrusters aren’t sla out, and the nervous tapping of ht falls away just as , drawn-out silence,I have no direction now I’m not even sure which way to point to find home
If I crane my neck I can see Merendsen’s profile up ahead of me, and once he turns his head tooff alar hi us no warning we’re about to dock, no view of the spaceport as we ease in Every person who coh here, transferring from massive spaceliners to shuttles like this one, built to withstand gravity and atine what the spaceport would look like, such a vast thing suspended against the stars, if the viewports were unshielded Instead the ship clangs loudly as it settles into its cradle, and then Jubilee’s throwing off her harness and striding toward the back of the shuttle to see her passengers out the exit As she passesback, stay out of sight"
The passengers begin filing out of the shuttle I see Merendsen’s head turn toward Jubilee, but there are soldiers and passengers everywhere, and they can’t speak Merendsen nods, his eyes hted with their history together, theand thin Jubilee’s jaw clenches, and she nods back at him before he’s carried off in the current of travelers, vanishing into the crowd
It’s not until I’ the others in my row of seats leave before me that I realize Sofia Quinn’s on board too, her strawberry-blond hair standing out aers On her way to that off-world orphanage--or to whatever escape plan she’d been devising Aroundback as they file down the aisles to the back of the shuttle, clutching arlances over her shoulder to oes perfectly still as she spots me I lift my hand to press it over my heart, and she nods Then the , and she steps forward
Sofia pauses at the botto the spaceport and letting hienetags My protesting gut suddenly stills in horror They’re going to knoho I am the instant they look at that code onher lifts his head--and looks straight at uardrails and clutching her roans, letting her knees start to give "I’otta find ether As the soldiers fuss over her, and one unlucky volunteer gets lu her off somewhere she can lose her lunch, I sink down behind a row of seats to crouch, out of sight Thank you, Sofia
Jubilee brushes by h a crack in the seats as she hands a thin e-filer to one of the soldiers "The s are crazy down there"
"You’re telling me," says one of the soldiers "It’s a madhouse up here too, Captain Everyone wants off that planet"
I can see a little line of tension in Jubilee’s jaw, her eyes narrowing as she watches the soldier, and I knohat she’s thinking Down there, it’s people shooting at each other and people being torn from their families Up here, it’s a lot of paperwork But she siet this shuttle back down before the rebels get their anti-aircraft up and running Can we make this quick?"