Cameron Stracher - The Water Wars

“Bluewater,” I said.

“They won’t let anyone drill,” agreed Driesen. “We tried, and look what happened. They won’t let anyone access free water if it threatens their hold.”

“Unless they don’t have a choice,” I said.

“How so?” asked Ulysses.

“We make them an offer they can’t refuse.”

“Ha! You sound like a pirate now!”

I felt like a pirate, suddenly enthused by a wily and implausible plan. “Listen,” I said.

The others fell silent as the jet flew northwest into the setting sun.

We had only one-third of a tank of fuel, but Sula said it would be enough. The jet could fly on one engine if needed, and the wind would do the rest. Driesen had everything he needed at the drilling site, I explained. We didn’t need a lot of water, just enough to fill several cisterns. There were cameras everywhere, and it was only a short flight home. Torq and his men would find us—it was impossible to escape—but by then it would be too late. At least that was the plan.

“It’s a good plan,” Ulysses acknowledged.

More important, it was our only plan. Bluewater would surely never stop until it recaptured Kai, and the rest of us might be killed if we got in its way. We couldn’t keep running. Not when we were so close to home.

“Vera?” Kai managed.

I leaned close to his lips.

He spoke with a deep rasp, but I could understand him. He told me then about the mercs who had come looking for them, the gun battle in which Martin was killed, how they had been forced to disclose Dr. Tinker’s location. The mercs flew them to Bluewater, where Torq refused to give Kai insulin until Driesen revealed the site of the aquifer. Kai didn’t know PELA had killed Dr. Tinker, and the news came as a blow. He and Driesen had worked together for years, and Kai considered him to be like an uncle.

“He could be crabby,” said Kai, “but he was a good man.”

I didn’t disagree, although my memory of Dr. Tinker was less kind.

All the time in captivity, Kai said, he was thinking how to get a message to me. He said this without blushing, which only made me blush harder—especially because I could feel Will’s eyes boring into me. Then Kai added, “The food was terrible. Not like your dad’s guacamole.”

I had to laugh that he would think about food at a time like this. But remembering my father’s cooking made me miss it as well. There was a potato and soy cheese dish where the potato skins were crunchy and the cheese oozed from the top like caramel. There was another dish made of cactus and local grains that he cooked slowly for two days until it turned into a sweet pudding. My mouth watered at the memory of the meals, and I couldn’t wait to dig into them again.

“Dad’s going to be surprised,” said Will. He tried to pretend he was brushing the hair from his eyes, but I could tell he was brushing away a tear.

For once I didn’t feel like crying. I was too excited to tell our parents everything. In the safety of our home, our adventures would become like tall tales, hard to believe but fun to recount until truth and fiction became mashed together in one kaleidoscopic whole. I hugged Will and forgot all about the pain in my shoulder. It didn’t matter, because soon I would have hours to lie on my bed.

We never saw the rocket. It exploded about five hundred meters in front of the left wing. The explosion shook the jet, sending us spiraling in a dangerous plunge until Sula regained control of the ailerons.

“Bluewater!” she cursed.

“I thought you left them behind.”

“I was flying slower to conserve fuel. But looks like I miscalculated.”

“Can we outrun them?” Will asked.

Sula shook her head. “No. They’ve got the same equipment we do. Hold on. It’s going to be a dogfight.”

The plane went into a steep dive. I screamed, although I didn’t mean to. Kai gripped my arm. Will practically tumbled out of his seat. My ears popped and then popped again as I tried to gulp down oxygen. When it felt like the ride couldn’t get any sicker, when we had fallen about as far as possible, Sula turned so we were actually upside down, hanging from our seat belts. For an instant we were weightless, floating in an air pocket. Then just as swiftly, gravity slammed us back into our seats. The plane groaned and vibrated madly. Kai moaned and held his stomach. I didn’t feel much better.

“There may be worse to come,” said Sula. She put the jet into a sharp bank left, then a hard bank right. Now we were behind the attacker. Somehow she had managed to flip on our pursuer by looping behind him. The other jet swirled and dipped, trying to shake us. It shrieked against the sky, then tore for the earth. Smoke spewed from its engines as the turbines worked at their highest thrust. But Sula dogged it like thread on a needle.

“Gotcha!” she whooped. She fired the rockets.

Two white lines burst from beneath the wings and raced across the blue. One exploded harmlessly behind the attacker’s tail fin, but the other caught the rear stabilizer, which burst into flames. The jet shuddered and fluttered in the air like a butterfly. Then all at once, it exploded into a ball of fire.

“Heads down!” shouted Sula as we struck debris flying toward the windshield. Several large pieces slammed into the wing but none badly enough to crash us. Sula maintained control until we cleared the damage, then eased the plane to a lower altitude. Smoking bits of plastene and metal tumbled from the sky. But we were not safe—not yet.

“We’ve got trouble,” said Sula when she reviewed the instrument panel. “You want the good news or the bad news?”

“Give us the bad first,” said Ulysses.

“Even if we hadn’t burned up most of our fuel in that dogfight, it seems we’ve punched a hole in the auxiliary tank.”

“And the good news?”

“There is no good news.”

The plane was vibrating severely now. Ominous red lights blinked on the control panel. I reached out for Will. “We’ll be okay, right?” I asked.

“Sula can drive anything, remember?”

“Anything with an engine,” said Sula. She was toggling the controls furiously, trying to maintain a level flight as the plane rapidly descended.

“There’s a workable landing strip near the research lab,” said Driesen. “They used it for copters, but it’s long enough to land a plane.”

She nodded, her eyes slits pinned to the ground below. “I can see it.”

From the air the broken dam looked like a row of cracked teeth with the two largest ones missing. Water still spilled through the gap even though the Minnesotans had made an effort—with rubble and dirt—to close it. A flowing river was a strange sight, and it gave me a vision of the world in which my parents were born. It twisted and coursed, foaming white and brown, a thing alive and vibrant as it rushed uncontrolled toward the sea. Green vegetation had sprouted along its banks, like a holo of an ancient world.

“Hold on!” said Sula.

I tried to steady myself, but my breath came in quick short bursts and would not slow down. My nails dug into my palms, but I could barely feel the pain. I looked to Will. His face was as pale as I had ever seen it. Kai laid his hand on my forearm, but his fingertips trembled and moisture pearled his brow. There was nothing to do except put our faith in Sula and hang on.

The jet began to plummet. One moment I could see the low tops of buildings, the next moment we hit the ground hard enough to blow two tires. We screeched and veered off the runway, then careened through dirt and scrub at three hundred kilometers an hour, spinning crazily in a dust vortex. A window popped, and the door burst open. Sand, soot, and black smoke swirled into the plane. Someone was coughing, and someone else was yelling instructions. But somehow we slowed and came to a rest. “Everyone okay?” asked Sula.