D. MacHale - The Soldiers of Halla

“It is. One way or another.”

He nodded. “I’m glad we’re back together, Bobby.” “Me too.”

“Courtney should be here.”

“We’ll find her,” I said with confidence, but absolutely no authority.

He pulled himself out of there. I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes, hoping for sleep to come quickly. As usual, it didn’t. My mind was too full of clashing thoughts, most of which were about what would happen the next day. I’d been on plenty of adventures since becoming a Traveler. My journals are loaded with the tales. It had become a way of life. A crazy way of life, but what can you do? That was the way it was meant to be. This time was different. Of all the things I’ve been through, either alone or with another Traveler, we were always able to take care of ourselves. More or less.

Not this time. Mark and I were setting out on what could be a suicide mission… with an older woman on our team. The closest I’d come to that was with Gunny, but he could take care of himself. Heck, he could handle himself better than I could. Elli was a different story. She was smart and resilient, no question there. But she was fragile. Physically and emotionally. I wasn’t so much worried about something bad happening to her. After all, she was a Traveler. But we were going to have to move fast and react to constantly changing threats. Doing that with an older, fragile woman was going to be tricky.

Making it worse was the fact that Mark would be with us. He wasn’t a Traveler. He could die. Like really die. And he was an exile. I had to make sure that Mark survived the ordeal… while watching out for Elli, and oh by the way, staying alive myself. Suddenly my plan didn’t seem like such a hot one.

Needless to say, I didn’t sleep much that night.

But I did get to sleep. Finally. My body and my brain needed it. I probably could have slept for days, but all we could afford was a couple of hours. Mark got me up before daybreak.

“Come on” was all he had to say.

I was up and ready to go in seconds. I followed him quickly and quietly, trying not to wake the other guys who slept in the beds around us. Elli waited for us in the garage near the helicopters. She had changed into nondescript gray pants and a black shirt. Standard wear for Third Earth. She stood stiffly, with her arms still wrapped around her waist. Her long gray hair was pulled back tight, out of the way. I’m not sure if it was the way her hair was, or the light, but for the first time I saw the resemblance between her and Nevva. She stood up straight. Her eyes were alert. Just like her daughter. They were definitely blood relatives.

I still had on my Second Earth clothes, and Mark had on the same raggedy pants and shirt I’d seen him wear the day he rescued those people from the building in the zoo. That seemed like years ago. For all I knew, it was years ago. I’d lost all sense of time.

Mark had three short, jet-black guns that looked like miniature shotguns. The single barrels were wide. Beneath each was a thick, round disk where, I assumed, the ammunition was stored. Not that I was an expert, but it was like no gun I’d ever seen.

“These were stolen from the fortress,” Mark explained. “It fires some sort of burst of charged particles. It’s enough to knock a big guy off his feet, but it won’t kill him. What it kills are dados. One shot and they go cold.”

He kept one and gave one each to Elli and me. I held the weapon up, admiring it.

“I love this,” I said in awe.

“I’ve never fired a weapon in my life,” Elli said, holding the gun as if it were diseased.

“Be sure to hold the stock tight against your body, or the recoil might hurt you,” Mark explained. “Each has ten shots. After that, it’s done. We don’t have reloads.”

Elli looked sick. I wasn’t even sure she knew which end to point at a dado. I took the gun from her.

“It’s okay. You won’t have to do any shooting,” I assured her.

She looked relieved. Not relaxed, but relieved. I hadn’t fired many guns either, but to be honest, the idea of nailing a couple of dados appealed to me. I didn’t want to go looking for one, but if I had one in my sights, I didn’t think I’d have any trouble pulling the trigger. The guns had shoulder straps, so I slung both weapons over my back.

“What’s the plan?” I asked Mark.

He led us out of the garage to where one of the other exiles, a girl with red hair and freckles, named Maddie, was waiting behind the wheel of an ancient yellow taxi. She didn’t look any older than sixteen. I wondered if she had her driver’s license, though I doubted if anybody checked anymore. Just so long as she knew how to drive, I didn’t care. We hurried into the backseat, slammed the door, and Maddie hit the gas. With a lurch we were off and flying. Fast. She knew how to drive.

Mark explained, “We have to get to the insert point before the sun comes up. Moving cars in daylight draw attention.”

“Insert point?” I asked.

“The city is honeycombed with ancient tunnels,” Mark said. “At all levels. They carried subways, sewage, electricity, pretty much everything that made a city work and that nobody wanted to see. There’s a whole city below this city that most people never saw.”

“It’s still intact?” I asked.

“Most of it collapsed when the fireworks started. That’s what they tell me, anyway. But the deeper tunnels survived, and we have maps. They’re like gold. It’s how everybody moves around without being seen by Ravinians.”

“People live underground?” Elli asked.

“Some do, but mostly the tunnels are used as highways. There’s a service tunnel that runs directly beneath the Ravinian fortress. They have no idea it exists. We don’t use it that often, because we don’t want to risk it being discovered and ruining the one advantage we have over them. But every once in a while we stage a quiet raid, like the one that got these guns. We’re able to get right under their noses without them knowing.”

Elli asked, “Is that how Antonio got to the fortress?”

Mark nodded.

I didn’t want to dwell on that last mission. “Do you know the factory he was talking about?” I asked.

“Yeah. It’s outside the fortress. It’s a huge place where they assemble the choppers. I think it’s where they store weapons, too. I don’t know for sure though. I’ve never been inside. Nobody has.”

“Except for Antonio,” Elli corrected.

“We should go there first,” I said. “I want to see what Antonio was talking about. We have to know what we’re up against.”

“Done. I can get us in.”

“Great.”

“Tricky part is getting out again.” Oh.

On that depressing thought we all fell quiet. Maddie drove us quickly through the dead streets of Manhattan. It was a hairy ride. Our car didn’t have headlights, and there were no streetlights burning, so it was hard to make out where the streets ended and the sidewalks or buildings began. That didn’t stop Maddie. She charged down the streets and took corners as if she were wearing night-vision goggles. For the record, she wasn’t. It was scaring the hell out of me. But I wasn’t about to be a backseat driver. All I could do was dig my fingernails into the armrest and prepare for the jolt when we hit something.

We didn’t, though I’m not sure why. Maddie pulled up to a two-story brick building that had no signage or markings. She hit the brakes, skidded to a stop, and looked back at us with a quick, “Go. Good luck.”

“You too,” Mark told her.

“That was great driving,” I said to Maddie, trying to make friends.

“You should see what I can do in a helicopter,” she replied with a sly smile.

I didn’t necessarily want to experience that particular pleasure. If she flew like she drove, I’d probably pass out from fear.