First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Electric Monkey,

an imprint of Egmont UK Limited

The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN

Text copyright © 2017 Eugene Lambert

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

First e-book edition 2017

ISBN 978 1 4052 7736 5

Ebook ISBN 978 1 7803 1696 3

www.egmont.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

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For Jana

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

PROLOGUE

PART ONE: DIVIDE AND CONQUER

1: SO MUCH FOR BEING A HERO

2: TARN WAS HERE

3: RUMOURS

4: ARGUMENTS

5: THE FIREFIGHT

6: STRINGS AND STINGS ATTACHED

7: THE COUNCIL DECIDES

8: A CLOSE CALL

9: NEGOTIATIONS AND INTERROGATIONS

PART TWO: NO-ZONE

10: WAITING FOR MURDO

11: AN UNCERTAIN WELCOME

12: DEAL’S A DEAL

13: BLAST FROM THE PAST

14: DECISION AND SACRIFICE

15: TEMPTATIONS, FRIGHTS AND NEWS

16: SO CLOSE, BUT SO FAR

17: AN UNPLEASANT SURPRISE

18: ROCKPOLISHER DOWN

19: BITERS AND REAPERS

20: AMBUSH

21: EYES THAT SEE NOTHING

22: NO SMOKE WITHOUT FIRE

23: MYSTERIOUS LIGHTS

24: IN THE REAPER CAMP

25: LOOK WHO’S HERE

26: SKY TELLS HER STORY

27: THE JUDGING

28: BLADE SPEAKS, FIRE LIES

29: THE PLACE OF THE OFFER

PART THREE: SHOWDOWN

30: RESURRECTION

31: REUNION

32: RUINS

33: WRATH’S FINAL SECRET

34: BECOMING REAPERS

35: THE WORM TURNS

36: BACK TO THE NEVER AGAIN

37: TRACKERS AND RATS

38: REVENGE SERVED COLD

39: BREAKING IN, BREAKING OUT

Back series promotional page

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

If it’s been a while since you read The Sign of One (volume one in this trilogy), here’s a brief reminder of some of the main characters, terms and locations.

Colm | Kyle’s twin brother. Was raised as a Slayer.
Dump world | A world where humans exile criminals, refugees, etc.
Gemini | The ident resistance.
Ident | Identical twin. Considered evil on Wrath, because only one is pureblood and the other is a ‘twist’.
Ident camp | Idents are held in secure camps until old enough to be tested.
Kyle | Teenage loner who grew up out in the Barrenlands. The narrator of this story.
Nublood | What ident ‘twists’ prefer to call themselves, as in nu-species.
Peace Fair | Annual ceremony, held near ident camps, where ‘idents’ are brutally tested and ‘twists’ winnowed from ‘scabs’.
Pureblood | Someone who’s 100 per cent human.
Reapers | Feral savages. Rumour has it they are cannibals.
Saviour | Despotic warlord who rules over Wrath. Father of Kyle and Colm.
Scab | Wrath slang for the pureblood twin, because after the Peace Fair they are branded to show they are no longer evil.
Sky | Gemini rebel, ident camp survivor and daring windjammer pilot. Kyle’s friend and ally – sometimes.
Slayers | The Saviour’s private army.
Twist | Wrath slang for a nublood twin, so-called because they are said to have ‘twisted blood’. Faster, stronger and much quicker to heal than pureblood humans.
Windjammers | Crudely built ridge-running flying machines.
Wrath | The dump world where this story is set.

PROLOGUE

It’s her turn outside. After all the hours spent hiding in the dark and staying quiet, the cold drizzle that greets her is almost welcome. It’ll be her first time at the lambing. Well . . . sort of.

Old Hicks takes them up the hill to the pens, her and a lad called Marat. Marat’s sixteen, more than twice as old as she is, and won’t waste time talking to a little girl. Fine by her, because talking is dangerous.

Talking can get you found out.

Tucked away in the gloom under the camo-netting, sheltered from the ever-shrieking wind, the girl finally gets to see the woollies close up. She’s a bit disappointed. They’re manky-looking and skinny, scraps of filthy wool still hanging off where they’ve been rough-sheared. Hicks flicks the beam of his shiner about and the girl sees sheep nursing a single newborn lamb each. But one ewe lies apart from the others, and seems restless. It gets up, bleats, paws at the straw-covered earth, then lies down again.

‘That un’s ready,’ Hicks says, squinting at her.

The girl hesitates, unsure. ‘Ready?’

‘To drop. Don’t just stand there gawping. Go see to it.’

Ready to drop. Oh yeah. She swallows and nods. Her sister’s done the telling from her turn outside yesterday. Now it’s up to her to do the remembering and play it so Hicks never guesses that today’s little girl is not the same as yesterday’s little girl.

So she scuttles around to the business end of the beast. Even though she knows what to expect, she still makes a face.

‘You like that, huh?’ Marat jeers.

See, it’s messy back here. A little white head and two tiny black hooves poke out of an explosion of red skin. The girl doesn’t know whether to laugh, cry or be sick. Marat sniggers at her.

She gives him the finger, while Hicks isn’t looking.

Fortunately, the old ewe knows what she’s about. The girl watches, bug-eyed, as the lamb slithers out and thumps wetly on to the straw. Only a little woolly thing, but the girl’s amazed. It all goes exactly like her sister said it would. A new life, in front of her eyes. It’s so beautiful.

Hicks is watching her. His slash of a mouth twists into a snarl.

‘What you waitin’ for?’

The girl takes a deep breath and swats the fussing ewe away. Gritting her teeth, she pulls at the stuff on the lamb’s face. It’s hot and slimy, but comes away easy enough. She makes sure the newborn’s nostrils are clear of mucus, grabs a handful of straw and gives its face a quick tickle. The tiny creature – even littler than she is – sneezes. Its warm breath tickles her cheek back. ‘It’s breathing,’ she calls out, excited.

Hicks grunts something at her, which she doesn’t catch.

The worst bit is still to come. But her sister managed it, so she’ll have to manage it too, so nobody suspects. That’s the story of their two-pretending-to-be-one life. She lets the mother ewe back in to lick its newborn clean, fishes out her laser-knife and fires up its glowing green blade. Then, not waiting to think, she slices the cord close to the lamb’s navel, dials up full heat and holds the fizzing green blade on to the bloody end until she smells flesh burning. The lamb kicks a bit, but it’s not so bad. The bleeding stops. A dab of orange iodine from the pot and she’s done. Her first lamb, and it looks fine, shaking less then she is. As she powers the blade down, the lamb lifts its head, wanting to suckle. She reckons it’s a girl.

Hicks stomps over and gobs into the straw. ‘Not a bad job.’

The girl’s not listening; she’s staring at the old ewe. It’s lost interest in the lamb and is pawing at the ground again. Beside her, Hicks curses. The girl looks up, startled, to see him making the Sign of One. Marat comes over. One look and he makes it too – the sign against evil.

The girl’s blood turns to ice. ‘What’s wrong?’

Hicks turns his back, lurches off to a corner of the pen and picks up some filthy old sacking. More cursing as he throws it at her.

‘What’s this for?’ she says. Instantly realises this was a mistake.

‘Same as yesterday,’ Marat sneers. ‘You forget already?’

‘We’re cursed,’ Hicks growls, looking disgusted. ‘Two blasted sets in two days. We’ll be in the upper pens when you’re done at the river. And don’t lose the sack this time, you hear? They don’t grow on trees.’

Finally, the girl understands. This ewe being restless again – it has a second lamb on the way. A twin lamb!

The sack. The river. She can’t help shuddering.

One is good, two is evil. The words pound through her brain as Hicks shambles off swearing, pulling at what’s left of his hair. Marat looks at the girl, his forehead knotted, like he’s chewing on a bone inside his head. This makes the girl sweat. She does her dumber-than-dumb face and sketches the Sign of One. Not because she wants to: because she has to.

What was her fool of a sister thinking? Why didn’t she warn her?

The ewe lies down, strains and bleats. The girl glimpses a second set of tiny hoofs start squeezing out into the world. And then the gate bangs shut against its stone gatepost, making the girl jump. She looks up and Hicks and Marat are gone. It’s just her and the sheep now. She drops to her knees in the straw, shaking. The old ewe takes a break from straining to glare at her out of its dark-slot eye. She reaches out and runs her hand over its firstborn. The tiny wet thing butts her fingers with its snout, mistaking her for its mother. It cries out, desperate for milk.

How can this poor little thing be evil? the girl wonders.

Like everyone else out here she’s half starved. Her pale face is pinched, her stomach swollen. She can’t help thinking that this is two lambs for the price of one: two small bundles of wool and milk and mutton and hope – a blessing not a curse. She says this last phrase over and over again. It’s word for word what her mother whispers to her and her twin sister every night at their going-to-bed time.

It’s only the rest of the world that disagrees . . .

The old ewe tires and needs help. The girl pulls the second lamb out by its hooves, sorts its breathing like before and sees to the birth cord. Without thinking, she helps give the poor little doomed thing life. As the ewe starts licking and nudging it, she fights not to think about how she’ll soon be sticking them both in the sack. Or how it will feel as the sack thrashes in the cold water. Most of all, she tries not to think about what will happen to her and her twin sister if they’re ever found out. It won’t just be a bag over their heads and a trip to the river. They won’t get off so lightly.

The girl almost never cries. She has a quick cry now.

Stones crunch and rattle, dislodged by a boot. She looks around and Marat is back. He leans on the gate, chomping on a piece of bindgrass. Says nothing. Just stares at her. Real hard.

Does he see her tears in the gloom? She can’t be sure.

Quickly, hating to do it, the girl stuffs the lambs into the sack. She shoves her way out and past Marat, shutting her ears to the ewe’s frantic bleating. She runs down to the river, finds a quiet spot. Only she can’t drown them, like her sister did. Instead, she takes a desperate chance. She hides them inside a dead tree, covering them with grass and leaves to keep them warm. She whispers to them that she’ll come back when it’s dark and sneak them home. Her mother will know what to do.

‘You’re a blessing not a curse,’ she tells them.

But as she turns around, the girl sees Marat has followed her . . .

PART ONE

1
SO MUCH FOR BEING A HERO

I’m getting the hang of this being beaten to a pulp thing. They haul me to my feet. I shuffle forward in the fighting crouch I’ve been taught. And then our combat instructor, Stauffer, knocks all kinds of lumps out of me until I fall down again.

He’s hammering me, laughing while he does it.

Plenty of other instructors and trainees are loving it too, watching the ‘hero’ of the Facility raid have his head kicked in.

Why not? If I were them, I’d hate me too.

It’s Ballard’s fault. He won’t let me or my brother Colm fight for real, says we’re too valuable to the Gemini cause to be risked. So while these guys we train with go off on hit-and-run raids, we sit tight here in our hidden base in the Deeps. That’d be enough to get us hated, but there are his speeches too. Rebel units from all over Wrath are flown out here to be rested, or for training. None of them escape Ballard’s we’re-all-in-this-together-and-fighting-for-the-future-of-idents speech. I get shoved in front of them, called a hero and made to tell my edited story – from finding out I was myself an ident and a nublood, through to how I ‘volunteered’ to let myself be captured, knowing I’d be taken to the secret Slayer base known as the Facility; breaking out with my brother’s help and activating the beacon buried in my arm so our rebel forces could destroy the base and rescue the hundreds of nublood kids enslaved there.

Ballard says my story inspires them. Says it’s important.

Yeah, right. He should ask Stauffer if I inspire him. This was a regular empty-hand skills session until he’d picked on Colm even worse than usual, to wind me up. I can keep my temper when I’m taking the hits, but I lost it and called him out.

‘Stay down, Kyle. Don’t be stupid,’ Colm hisses.

‘I can take him,’ I mumble.

I spit a gobful of red on to the dirt and groan. Something scrapes painfully inside me, like one of my ribs is bust. Above me, the bigmoon is already above the overhanging cliff, its crescent and rings bright in the darkening sky. Sky lizards circle in the last of the day’s updraughts, their shrill whistling calls drifting down.

Even they sound like they’re jeering.

‘Hey, Kyle, we need to talk,’ a familiar voice shouts.

I groan again as I see Sky elbowing her way through the watchers, breathing fast like she’s run here. Only before I can say anything, I’m thrown back at Stauffer. Maybe I fight harder now she’s here. Anyway, I nail him once – hard enough to pull a grunt out of him – before he knocks me back down again.

Sky squats beside me. ‘You’re the punchbag today?’

I shrug, so big-gob Colm answers for me, nodding towards the grinning Stauffer. ‘Kyle challenged him.’

She scowls. ‘Challenged your instructor? Smart move.’

Scowls are all I get from Sky these days. Not that we even see each other that often, now she’s flying combat ops.

‘Yeah, like you’d take his shit,’ I growl.

‘Make yourself useful,’ Colm says, chucking her a wet cloth.

Sky dabs carelessly at my face. ‘I’ve got news about my sister,’ she says, all excited. ‘I need to show you something.’

Around me, I hear the trainees muttering. Laughter too.

I grab the rag off her. ‘I’m busy.’

‘You swore you’d help me find Tarn. Remember?’

‘How could I forget?’

I grit my teeth. Mistake. One’s gone. I can wobble others with my tongue. Crap. Teeth take days to grow back.

‘Hey, skinny girl,’ Stauffer yells. ‘After I’m done with your boyfriend here, how about you and me have some fun, huh?’

He makes it clear what kind of fun with hip thrusts.

Sky flicks him her middle finger.

‘Quit messing,’ she tells me. ‘Finish him.’

My turn to scowl. ‘Don’t you think I’m trying?’

The look of scorn on Sky’s face – bottle it and you could sell it as battery acid. ‘You’re being dumb, fighting like they trained you to. Arse-face is catching you because he sees you coming.’

‘So how should I fight?’

‘Like a Reaper,’ she says. ‘Dirty.’

I’m grabbed and thrown back at Stauffer. His mates want blood, not chat. He comes at me, gob hanging open, maybe wanting to finish me quick and show Sky what a big, tough man he is. Nearly does too, with me still thinking about Sky. Only he slips and misses, and I come to my senses. I duck and weave and throw jabs to get him to back up. I don’t let him get close enough to hurt me.

‘Come here, you little shite!’ he snarls, starting to blow now.

Just as I begin to hope, I step back too far, straying across the rope on the ground that marks out our ring. Hands thrust me back at Stauffer, straight into his punch. He rattles my bones.

Down I go again, on to my knees.

And he’s laughing at me again. They all are.

That’s not what lights me up. These gommers can laugh all they like – what do I care? No. It’s seeing Sky standing there, watching with her thin arms folded, contempt twisting her lips. Something rips inside me that isn’t my cracked ribs. Before, I was fighting for Colm, and to wipe sneers off faces. Now I’m possessed.

I stagger back to my feet, spitting curses.

Stauffer stops his strutting and closes on me. I fake a half-hearted spin kick. He leans back, leaving his front foot planted. Careless. I pull out of the kick and stamp down hard, crunching the bones along the top of his foot. He screams and goes down, clutching at it. The fight’s over there and then, but I treat him to a few kicks anyway as he rolls around in the dirt. Afters, we call this in the Barrenlands where I grew up. It sends a message. Mess with me again, Stauffer, and this is what you’ll get.

‘Cut that out!’ Andersson, another combat instructor, shouts.

I glare at him, my chest heaving. ‘Or what?’

Colm jumps between us. ‘Take it easy, Kyle. You don’t have to fight them all. Leave some for tomorrow, why don’t you?’

He hangs his fist out. We bump stumps.

Even now I still cringe seeing my brother’s finger gone. Took it off himself using a wood-chisel after Sky told him that’s what was used on me. Says he did it to show he’s Gemini now. Sky says it shows that Colm’s even more of a gom than I am.

‘C’mon, let’s go!’ Sky chucks my boots and shirt at me.

Andersson moans at us for clearing off before the training day is over, but Sky’s a windjammer captain now and outranks him. She tells him to shut his face.

I give him a wink. I’ll regret that later, but it feels good now.

Triumph wrestles with guilt. ‘Dirty enough for you?’

It’s a few minutes later. The pounding in my head has stopped and I feel less like tearing the throat out of anybody who so much as glances at me. A cold drizzle has started. It helps in a weird kind of way, cooling me down inside and out.

Sky shrugs and keeps walking. ‘That loser had it coming.’

‘I should’ve stayed down, like Colm said.’

My brother nods, bites his lip and looks away.

Sky blows air out of her mouth. ‘What good would that do?’

I sigh, my ribs killing me, not needing another row about how I always take his side against hers. Which is crap anyway.

‘Stauffer will heal, then he’ll kill me.’

‘He wouldn’t dare.’

‘Maybe we should tell Ballard what happened,’ Colm says.

‘I can’t go running to Ballard the whole time.’

‘Seriously,’ Sky mutters.

We all shut up for a while as we trudge down the trail from the training grounds to the canyon floor. Scraps of golden evenshine strobe over us, sneaking through the camouflage netting that’s hung overhead to hide us from any eyes in the sky. I clutch my hurting ribs, glare at Sky’s back and think dark thoughts.

She glances back at me. ‘What?’

I’m so startled, I blurt it out. ‘When you hooked me up with Gemini, you swore we’d be among friends, all fighting together for the nublood cause. Hasn’t worked out like that, has it?’

Sky snorts, her wet face glistening.

‘Get real, Kyle. Nublood makes you faster and stronger, but it doesn’t stop you being an arse like Stauffer.’

‘Never said it did. It’s just – oof ! ’

I trip. My ribs have another go at me, shutting me up.

Sky stomps off again, limping as fast as she can on her bad leg. Behind her back, Colm rolls his eyes at me. Not helpful. Ever since we were flown out here to the Deeps after the raid, this is how it’s been. It’s like they can’t stand each other and I’m stuck in the middle, dodging glares and making excuses. I’m not saying it’s his fault that things have cooled between me and Sky – that’s more down to the way things have worked out – but he doesn’t help.

‘What’s the rush?’ I call out, not thinking.

She turns, her face one big snarl. ‘WHAT DID YOU SAY?’

‘Okay, okay,’ I say, not wanting to get hit again. ‘You’ve got news about Tarn. Can’t you just tell us?’

‘I figured you’d like to see!’

She takes a deep breath and looks away real quick.

Not quickly enough. I glimpse the bitter disappointment in her eyes and my guts twist themselves into knots. A winter ago, I swore I’d help her find her sister, Tarn. We bumped stumps on it. One way or another though it hasn’t happened. There’s always another mission for Sky to fly. I’m not allowed out of the Deeps. As excuses go it’s a good one, but I feel I’ve let her down.

‘Sky, I’m sorry. I –’

‘What’s that doing here?’ Colm says, pointing.

I look. And my next heartbeat is a long time coming. On the landing field squats a matt-black Slayer windjammer.

‘Relax,’ Sky says. ‘We forced it down a week or so ago. Took a while to get it launched again. I flew it in here today.’

‘It’s massive,’ I say, taking in the bulk of it.

Sky’s not listening. ‘Hurry up. We’ll hitch a ride out.’

Just then I hear the whoosh of a steam boiler. Seconds later I smell coal smoke. Gears grind and tracks clatter. Sky sets off at a stiff-legged run. Colm and I go after her, me clutching my side. As we emerge from the trail gloom I see a battered tractor chugging away from us. We chase after it, hang off the back.

Sky cheers up enough to nearly smile.

‘Like hopping a windjammer!’ she yells over the noise.

As we lumber across the field I check out the transport. Apart from some impact damage from a hard landing, and blast scars from the firefight that followed, this is one hell of a machine. It wasn’t cobbled together from scrap in a back-of-beyond workshop. Our rebel jammers are rust buckets by comparison.

We drop off as the tow-tractor chugs around to the bow end. Sky has a word with some heavily armed guards. They nod, she waves at us, and we follow her inside the windjammer through a hatch high on its side, hauling ourselves up handholds set into the hull. Easily done any other day, but my ribs are killing me.

Colm offers a hand. I wave him away.

Techs are poking around inside. Sky ignores them and leads me through an internal hatch into the cargo bay. ‘It’s in here!’

‘What happened to the crew?’ I ask.

Sky shrugs. ‘Killed or ran. What’s it matter?’

Over to one side is a metal cage. The light from the few glowtubes in here doesn’t reach, so she pulls out a shiner and thumbs it on. By its light I see the cage door gaping open. The lock’s all melted as if someone’s taken a plasma lance to it.

Sky clambers inside, squats down and shines the beam on to the hull at the back.

‘Her tag,’ she says, looking back at me, her green eyes shining.

2
TARN WAS HERE

All I see, after I clamber into the cage after her, is a bunch of scratches on the grey-painted metal of the hull.

‘What am I looking at?’

‘These!’ Sky says, pointing.

Amazingly, it is the scratches she’s mad keen to show me. There must be hundreds of them, scored and gouged into the metal. Most are old and tough to see clearly, as if they’ve been painted over. Others are fresher or deeper, still shiny. Sky points out one set in particular, tracing the lines with a shaking finger.

‘Her tag,’ she says again, biting her lip. ‘Tarn was here.’

I lean in and squint, but still all I see is a bunch of random scratches. ‘How can you know that?’

Sky’s breathing catches and she stiffens.

‘Look, I believe you,’ I say quickly. ‘I don’t see it, that’s all.’

She scowls at me. Again. ‘A tag is your mark. Only you and your mates know it; that way it can’t be traced back to you. In the camps we all tagged. The kick was to piss the guards off by tagging as many places as you could without getting caught.’ She stares into space and shakes her head. ‘Nobody tagged more than Tarn. My sister scratched her tags in places no one else dared.’

I can’t help wondering if she’s just seeing what she wants to see. No way I’m saying that though. Next thing I know, Sky’s back on her feet and shoving past me out of the cage.

‘There’s something else,’ she says.

I go to follow and my ribs take another shot, doubling me up.

‘After that, can I go and get patched up?’ I say.

Sky’s hunting for something, flicking her shiner beam about and muttering to herself. I hear her snort.

‘For a nublood, Kyle, you sure whine a lot.’

‘Just because I heal fast doesn’t make it hurt any less!’

There’s a loud clunk sound outside and the windjammer lurches violently. I have to grab the bars of the cage to stay on my feet, which doesn’t do my ribs any favours. Next thing, the floor sways and bumps under me. My guess is the tractor is hauling us away to a dispersal area in one of the Deeps’ side canyons.

Sky finds what she’s looking for. ‘Gotcha!’

As I make it out of the cage, Colm catches my eye. He nods at Sky where she’s messing with some device like a blaster crossed with a cleverbox. It makes a clicking sound. Looking satisfied, she aims it at the cage. The clicking swells to an angry howl.

‘Hear that?’ she says, like I’m deaf.

‘Kill it, will you?’ I say. ‘My head’s hurting enough as it is.’

She points the device away from the cage and it calms down.

‘Look!’ She shows me the screen on top of it.

‘What’s it show?’ Colm says.

‘Promethium-148,’ I read, slowly. ‘What’s that then?’

One of the techs looks around. ‘The old Earth name for darkblende. Those kids you rescued from that Slayer Facility – it’s the stuff they had them mining. Lethal stuff, toxic and hot. Pumps out loads of nasty gamma radiation.’

I scramble away from the cage triple-quick.

Tech guy sniggers. ‘Relax. We’re safe enough. The counter’s only showing raised rad levels. Nothing hard enough to burn us.’

I stare at him. He looks cool so I quit backing up.

And now I take in the eyeglasses, the tangle of headphones around his neck, the flame-red hair. I know this smart-arse from Bastion, the Gemini base hidden beneath the Blight shanty town. He’s the guy who picked up Rona’s distress call.

‘Hey, Ness, it’s me, Kyle.’

‘Oh yeah.’ He peers at my face. ‘What happened to you?’

I wipe my mouth. My hand comes away smeared with blood.

‘Forget that,’ Sky snaps, waving the counter-thing under my nose. ‘Darkblende gamma readings only show up inside the cage, and nowhere else. So this cage held prisoners contaminated from mining the stuff. Tarn’s tag tells us she was one of them.’ She grabs my hand and squeezes it. ‘This Slayer transport has to be the one they shipped my sister out of the Facility in!’

I try to share her excitement, honestly I do. Only I’m hurting and my head’s still full of nasty thoughts from the fight.

‘That’s great.’ I force a smile. ‘But –’

‘But what ?’ she says, real low.

‘Look, I get it,’ I say. ‘This freighter here flew your sister out of the Facility. So what? I don’t want to piss on your fire, but without the crew to ask we can’t know where it took her.’

Sky turns her gaze on Ness. ‘Tell Kyle what you told me.’

The tech’s eyes go extra big behind his glasses. ‘Hang on, Sky, I only said I’d take a look. I’ve got lots of other work to –’

She sighs. ‘Just tell him.’

Ness glances around, as if making sure his tech mates aren’t listening. ‘Okay, okay,’ he whispers. ‘So, like I said, I ran a scan on this jammer’s nav-track and the crew didn’t scrub its memory before our guys got to them. The data’s scrambled, to level seven at least. It’ll take some time, but I should be able to break it.’

We must be towed over a ditch or something because the floor leaps up under us. Ness staggers into me.

I push him away, harder than I need to. ‘What’d he say?’

‘He can hack into the transport’s navigation system and track where it’s been,’ Sky explains. And Ness nods.

Colm, watchful and quiet up to now, mutters something under his breath that sounds to me like a disgusted: ‘Great.’

Sky takes a deep breath and lets it out. Her green eyes drill into me. ‘So we can find out where the Slayer bastards took Tarn. Then go bring her back, like we agreed.’

Even though I saw it coming, I still twitch. ‘Just like that?’

I expect Sky to blow up at me. No. She just pulls her hand away and looks hurt. I’ve seen that expression a lot lately. Feeling guilty, I pick up the rad-counter from where she put it down.

Ness makes a grab for it. ‘That’s no toy.’

I fend him off, press the trigger and it starts ticking. Ness makes another lunge and knocks my hand. I end up accidentally aiming it at Sky. Only I must have the thing set wrong, because it howls so loudly I drop it. It hits the deck, squeals and cuts off.

Ness picks it up. ‘Look what you’ve done. You’ve broken it!’

Sky gives me her best scowl. ‘You’re such a gom, Kyle.’

The Deeps are a maze of narrow canyons between sheer cliff walls. In this main canyon we now call home, the cliffs to the east overhang a rocky shelf, forming an immense natural amphitheatre. That’s where all our tents and shacks are. The rocks below the shelf are riddled with caves and tunnels. These are too regular to be natural, but nobody knows who dug them out in the way-back-when before Wrath became a dump world and humans started arriving. Nobody cares much either. We just use them. Like this healer chamber I’m in now.

Shirt off, I’m sitting on an icy-cold metal table with my chest all strapped up. Rona’s bandage is wound so tight around me that breathing is a battle. Just my luck that it was my foster-mother on duty. I figure she’s strapped me extra-tight because she’s so mad at me.

I hate this room’s stink of soap, antiseptic and blood. It reminds me too much of the Facility lab where Slayer medics kept me prisoner, pumping my blood into my father, the Saviour.

Now she’s stitching a gash above my eye.

‘Kyle!’ Rona scolds. ‘Quit wriggling about, or I’ll give you a mirror and you can stitch the damn thing yourself.’

‘It hurts,’ I say, staring at the curve of needle she’s holding.

‘Course it bloody hurts. Taking on a combat instructor . . . you’re lucky he didn’t kill you.’ She frowns and leans in again. I feel the sting of the needle, a plucking at my forehead as she tugs the thread through. ‘What were you thinking?’

‘I lost my temper.’

‘Your mind more like.’

‘The guy was giving me a hard time,’ Colm says.

‘He doesn’t know you’re –?’ Rona lets the question hang.

We never talk about Colm and me being the Saviour’s sons. Apart from us, I think only Ballard knows. We leave that little detail out of the speeches he makes me give. Could be awkward, he says. Awkward? Colm reckons we’d be torn limb from limb.

It’s a constant worry that we’ll be found out.

‘If he knew that, you’d be sewing me into a body bag,’ I say.

Rona breathes out sharply, warming my ear with a tut. Six more stitches and she ties a knot and bites the end off. I brace myself to be bitched at – it isn’t the first time she’s had to fix me up.

‘Oh, Kyle,’ she says, sounding tired. ‘I know it’s tough with the grief you both get. But fighting will only make things worse.’

I squirm away, feeling all tight inside.

‘Sometimes you have to fight. You don’t understand.’

‘I understand all right.’ She hands me my blood-spattered shirt, and rubs her eyes. ‘I’m just sick to death of fighting and war.’

‘Ballard says we’re winning,’ Colm says.

‘Don’t you start! If we are winning, it doesn’t feel like it. All us healers see are windjammers bringing us cargo bays piled high with wounded fighters to patch up. There’s no end to it.’

She’s not wrong; we’ve all seen them. It’s six bigmoons now since the Facility raid and I guess it’s like Murdo says – you go poking a stick into a wrathmite hole, don’t be surprised when the bugs swarm out and bite you. The word reaching us out here in the Deeps is that Gemini’s taking some serious heat. The Saviour’s Slayer army has gone on the offensive, trying to wipe us out. The Blight is a smoking ruin and Bastion has been evacuated.

Rona sighs. ‘So many die. Maybe they’re the lucky ones.’

‘You call dying lucky?’ I say.

She looks through me. ‘I had one nublood kid in here a week ago. Gut-shot. Screaming and bleeding all over the place. We fixed him up. He healed so quickly he was sent out again.’

‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ I say, confused.

‘Is it? He was back yesterday. Blaster-burnt this time. What must it do to these kids’ heads, being so badly wounded, patched up and sent back out to fight, or die? They’re all so . . . young.’

Younger than me. Yeah, I know.

‘You can’t fight wars without taking losses.’

If Sky were here she’d be nodding, but Rona snorts as she swabs stuff on to my stitches.

‘Oh, listen to you. Those losses have names, and mothers too. But I’m wasting my breath. You won’t listen. The young think that dying only happens to other people.’

I duck away from her swabbing. Whatever she’s putting on me stings like crazy. ‘You’re saying we shouldn’t fight?’

She dredges up a sad smile. ‘I’m not. Kyle, I’m a healer, not a fighter. Even when I was your age I couldn’t kill, whatever the cause. That’s why I served the way I did, looking after you.’

Before I can stop her, she messes up my hair.

That does it. I have to tell her.

‘They hate me. Colm too. We train the same as they do, but while they go off to fight we sit on our hands, safe here. You should see the looks they give us – like we’re cowards!’

I glance at my brother. He seems more interested in the floor.

‘That’s nonsense. You serve in other ways, that’s all.’

I taste bile in the back of my throat.

‘Yeah? Tell them that. Making stupid speeches for Ballard. Him banging on about what a hero I am. Why can’t we be fighters like the rest of them? Fighting Slayers would be easier.’

‘Now you’re being stupid.’

‘At least we’d know who our enemies are.’

Rona clicks her tongue. ‘Your work is important. So is Colm’s. People here are scared and anxious. We’ve taken a hammering and Ballard needs you to remind people that we can win.’

She goes to help me into my shirt.

‘I can manage.’ I jump down from the examination table.

‘Suit yourself.’ Rona starts tidying away the bits and pieces of her healing trade. ‘Do you want something for the pain?’

‘No. I don’t want anything. I’m done here.’

I struggle into my shirt, even the buttons wanting to fight me.

‘How’s Sky?’ Rona says, watching.

‘How should I know?’

My foster-mother’s grey eyes meet mine. ‘She was here not long ago, fired up about something. I told her where to find you.’

I hesitate, wondering if Sky’s said anything to her. I bet she has. She’s here loads – they get along big time. Rona never says it, but I know she wishes Sky and me would get back together again.

‘Sky’s got a lead on her sister,’ I tell her reluctantly.

‘That’s great news!’ Rona’s face brightens. Only now she must notice my scowl. ‘Don’t you think?’

How can someone who’s seen forty summers be so dumb?

‘She wants me to help her rescue Tarn and bring her back,’ I say.

‘Ah. You did say you would.’

‘Yeah, but I can’t. Ballard would never allow it.’

‘You’ve asked him?’

I scowl at her. ‘There’s no point.’

‘Why not?’ Rona says. ‘If you find Tarn, there’s a good chance you’ll find the other missing nublood children too.’

‘Hasn’t Ballard got enough on his plate?’ Colm says, as he sets off towards the exit tunnel. ‘Like making sure Gemini survives.’

Rona sighs. ‘I was just thinking of Sky, that’s all.’

‘All Sky thinks about is Tarn,’ I say, unable to hold it in.

‘You’re wrong there,’ Rona says, shaking her head, lips pursed. ‘Think what Sky’s been through. She doesn’t shout about it, but she still cares for you. Take my word for it.’

‘If you say so.’ I go to follow my retreating brother.

‘And I thought you cared for her,’ she says.

I look back. ‘I do. Or I try to. These days, it’s . . . tough.’

‘Try harder then. You two should squabble less and talk more. Sky was there for you when you needed her, remember? And she needs you, more than you know.’

‘Are you coming or what?’ Colm calls.

Rona smiles, but it’s a troubled smile. Even I can see that.

‘And please, no more fighting,’ she says. ‘I’ve enough to do without stitching you up. Another windjammer’s on its way.’

She goes back to cleaning and tidying.

Colm is waiting for me where one of the shafts leads up towards the surface, leaning against the wooden ladder.

‘What was that about Sky?’

‘Nothing. Let’s go find Squint, then feed the dragon.’

3
RUMOURS

These days of early firstgreen, with dayshine sticking around longer, warmth in the air and leaves uncurling on the trees, Squint is put to work in the hidden fields down-canyon. Alongside some half-starved fourhorns, our food growers have him hauling ploughs and wagons. We worry he’ll pick up damage we can’t fix, but don’t get a say. Funny how it works. Nobody wanted the rusty metal and burnt-out electronic junk that Colm and I cobbled Squint together from. Sneered, they did. Yet soon as they saw him up and running, they stole him off us. Requisitioning, they called it.

For the cause. Everything for the cause.

When we find Squint he’s done for the day, lashed to a ground-anchor while a man hoses mud off him. He sees us coming, whips his tail about and buzzes his head off.

‘How’d he do?’ I ask.

The man shuts off the water and shrugs. ‘Not bad. Crashed on me once in the morning. Worked fine after it warmed up.’

‘Do you need him tomorrow?’

‘They don’t plough themselves.’ The man glances at the fields, stubble sticking up into the gloom under the camo-nets.

‘Okay,’ Colm says. ‘We’ll check him over.’

The man nods and hurries away. No thanks or nothing.

Soon as he’s gone I pull a bone-carved tube from my pocket and blow gently into one end. It makes a hissing sound.

Squint’s head lifts and his tail thrashes.

Colm grins. ‘Do you have to?’

‘I do.’ I blow the whistle much harder now, three times.

Squint hurls himself towards us, ripping the ground-anchor right out of the ground as if it were fixed into butter. He very nearly knocks us both over with all his excited jumping up.

‘Pleased to see us, huh?’ I say, trying not to laugh because laughing hurts, even with my ribs strapped.

‘Thought you’d dumped the jumping-up code,’ Colm says.

He’s laughing too now as he tries to fend Squint off.

‘I stuck it back in again.’

‘Why? You like being covered in mud?’

‘It’s fun, him making a fuss. Like having a dog.’

After a struggle I unclip Squint from the anchor trailing behind him. Squint calms down and drops into his ready-state crouch, hydraulics hissing. I pocket the whistle and watch Colm as he goes and screws the ground-anchor back into the dirt. Me, I’d leave it where it fell, but not him. Same skin, different thinking.

‘Good little boy,’ I tell Squint, scratching him behind his ears. Not real ears of course, just microphone mounts.

He hoots, sensing my touch.

‘You do realise it’s not alive,’ Colm says. Like always.

It’s been a tough day and I almost get cross with him, but catch myself. I think Colm’s often too clever for his own good; he thinks I’m too hot-headed. Rona says we’ve only had six months’ practice at being twins, unlike the other idents here who’ve had a lifetime, so we’ll both still be working it out. Whatever. All I know is that looking and sounding the same is easy; putting up with the differences is harder. I’m trying to get better at that.

‘Don’t you listen to him, Squinty,’ I say.

Squint beeps twice, which means ‘I don’t understand’. Work-bots only recognise verbals like Lift, Forward, Drag and Drop as standard, but we’re working on that. His crude vox-box doesn’t run to speech, only beeps, hoots and whistles. What we really need is to get our hands on one of those flash units out of a windjammer, the ones that warn the pilot if she’s stalling or landing with the gear up. Splice one of these in and he could talk.

‘What d’you think of his new leg? Not bad, huh?’

Colm hasn’t seen Squint’s new foreleg yet. This one’s by far the best I’ve scavved yet, and a decent match to his other legs too.

‘Where’d you get it?’ He sounds impressed.

So he should be. The casings are hardly rusty at all, just some light pitting. The hydraulic lines look good too, no patches. Look real close, there are even some shiny bits on the pistons.

‘Traded welding work for it with one of the steam-winch crew.’

‘Maybe he’ll walk straighter now.’

‘He does,’ I say, pleased. ‘C’mon, let’s go. It’s getting dark.’

‘Shouldn’t we check him?’

‘No. I’m beat. Anyway, there’s nothing we can do about him crashing. You’d crash too if you had two brains.’

See, no way could we scav a proper processor for Squint. Too rare. Too valuable. Instead we patched together two half-trashed boards nobody wanted. The least damaged one acts as master, passing stuff it can’t do to the other board. Only sometimes they trip over each other, and that’s when poor Squinty crashes.

Colm shrugs and we head off together. I click my fingers and Squint follows along, still dripping.

Night settles on the Deeps as we walk and dark shadows pour in to flood the canyon. We skirt round the big cavern at the bottom of the cliff where off-duty fighters hang out. You can trade rebel-minted creds in there for snacks, or – if you’re dumb enough – for gut-rot liquor brewed from potatoes. In the smoky lantern light I see the place is heaving with people already.

‘Big crowd,’ I say. ‘Wonder why?’

‘Let’s go find out.’

‘Later maybe. We should feed the dragon first.’

Truth is – my head’s still too dark to want company. And Stauffer might be in there on crutches, or some of his psycho mates. So we carry on to the kitchen tents, raid the bins and bag some fresh chicken guts, her favourite.

Halfway up the trail to where she’s penned we stumble across a pack of youngsters playing the Peace Fair game. A bored-looking older boy has been roped in to act the Slayer and do the Cutting and Unwrapping. Two little girls, so spit-alike I bet their own mother can’t tell them apart, are already wrapped. The ‘twist’ will have a cut drawn on her forearm under the bandage, the ‘pure’ won’t. I played it when I was little, but it freaks me out after seeing the horror of the real thing. And they’re not supposed to be playing it, not here in a rebel camp.

I can’t help scowling. ‘Can you believe that ?’

Colm shrugs. ‘They’re just kids.’

The guessers turn their backs and the older boy swaps the two wrapped girls about. They squeal with fear and excitement. And now the guessers start clapping and chanting.

‘One good, two evil! Cut them, bind them, unwrap them!’

The older boy sees us. He grins and shrugs as if to say, This wasn’t my idea, puts a finger to his lips for the girls to stop squealing and calls to the rest that they can look again. As they turn, he pulls out the knife for the pretend Unwrapping and brandishes it.

‘One good, one evil!’ he hisses. ‘Which is which?’

The kids shout their guesses, spit flying from their mouths.

I grab Colm’s arm. ‘I don’t want to see this.’

‘It’s only a game,’ he says, but lets me drag him away.

The stone-walled corral is built into the cliff ’s overhang. By the time we get there it’s full night-dark, but just enough of the bigmoon has hauled itself above the western clifftops to throw some useful shine down. Colm hangs back, looking after Squint while I creep up to the gate and peer through it. A lump of darkness stirs at the back wall. I hear a hiss, a warning rattle of neck feathers, her chain scraping. We only call her a dragon for fun of course. Really she’s a sky lizard. And not just any sky lizard – she’s a queen. Twice the size of the males, ten times as vicious.

I’m waving the bag to give her the smell of the chicken guts when I hear footfalls behind me. I whip round, blade out.

‘Thought I’d find you here,’ Fleur says.

She’s got a fake-scared face on. Behind her are some of her deadhead mates, watching, swapping grins. That’s what they call themselves, the kids we rescued from the Facility.

I clutch my side. ‘What you doing, creeping up on us?’

‘Heard you took a kicking,’ Fleur says. ‘Ouch. Look at you.’

I put the blade away and straighten up.

‘You should see the other guy.’

‘Hey, Fleur,’ Colm says, and shifts his feet.

She smiles at him. ‘Hey, Colm. How’s it going?’

While they talk, I scan her face like I always do, looking for any hint of accusation or blame. But not a bit of it – just the same fair hair, freckles and sad expression as her ident sister, Fliss, the girl who sacrificed herself to lead away the Slayers hunting Sky and me near Drakensburg. Reassured, I open my mouth to mumble the same question I always mumble. Before I can get it out though she glances my way and shakes her head. Still no word on her sister, that tells me. Still missing, presumed to be dead. Yet here Fleur stands, looking pleased to see me.

Okay, so I played a part in rescuing her and her mates from the Facility, but still . . .

‘They say you smashed Stauffer’s foot,’ she says. ‘Lamed him.’

I shrug. ‘Tosser had it coming. Anyway, he’s nublood same as us, so he won’t stay lame.’

‘More’s the pity,’ Colm mutters.

‘Think he’ll come after you?’ Fleur says.

‘Wouldn’t you?’ I say, a little more edgy than I meant.

Time to change the subject.

‘You here to help feed the dragon, Fleur?’

‘No way. I’ve lost enough fingers already, thanks.’ She grins, holds her fist out and bumps stumps with me and Colm. ‘Wouldn’t want to come between you and your lizard girlfriend.’

‘Scared, huh?’

‘Whatever. Look, hurry up. I’ve got big news to tell you.’

‘Oh frag, not you too.’

The smell of rank breath hits me and I hear the snap of powerful jaws. I turn to see the huge, leathery bulk of the queen sky lizard facing me, her triangular head rammed against the bars of the gate, long snout poking through. Her four big compound eyes glitter in the moonshine as she watches us. Her sting-tail swishes dirt back and forth. They hack the stinger bit off every so often. I check to make sure it hasn’t grown back, and it hasn’t.

‘Hungry, are you?’ I whisper.

She jaw-snaps again and whistles. A milky-white membrane flicks across her lower eyes, fastened on the bag of offal. She’s fed on live goats. I give her treats because I feel sorry for her.

‘Hurry up,’ Fleur says, wrinkling her nose.

Braced to fling myself away if she goes for me, I peel the bag of chicken offal open and hold it out. The lizard tilts her huge head, flares her snout-slits and sniffs, sucking air into her lungs with a sound like a blast furnace. Now she gapes, showing me row after row of razor-sharp fangs. Her crazy-long tongue flicks through the bars and explores the bag. By the time I quit flinching it’s already coiled up back inside her mouth. She tail-thumps, her dark neck feathers lifting and spreading. In better light we’d see them go all sorts of colours. Holding my breath I lock eyes with her and push the bag through the bars.

‘Chicken’s your favourite, isn’t it?’

Behind me, Fleur groans. ‘Can’t you just throw it?’

Whoof ! The big lizard lunges and plucks the bag out of my hand so quickly I hardly have time to twitch. I swallow. With my ribs hurting and strapped, no way would I have been fast enough to dodge if she’d gone for me. She could’ve had my arm off easy if she’d wanted to. That was dumb, no three ways about it.

‘You’re crazy, you know that?’ Fleur says.

‘It’s not right, caging her like this,’ I say, backing off, a bit shaken. There’s lizard drool on my sleeve so I crouch to wipe it off in the dirt. I watch as the lizard wolfs the scraps down in one big gulp. Inside my head I see other cages, holding ident children. If that’s so wrong, why isn’t this?

Colm half smiles, half winces. His thinking smile. ‘Maybe not, but let her go and they’d all go. We’d lose our cover.’

He’s right, as always. Sky lizards and people don’t mix. The local sky lizard colony would have cleared off as soon as we moved in, but with their queen trapped down here and her stink calling to them, the males stick around. When the occasional Slayer windjammer comes scouting, they see the sky lizards circling, and their droppings white-scarring the rocks, and look no further.

Cunning and necessary, I guess. Still can’t say I like it.

Fleur huffs. ‘You ready to listen now?’

In the moonshine her eyes look massive. Like Sky inside the Slayer transport, the girl can hardly stand still – she’s so full to bursting with news. Behind me the massive lizard hisses and slams into the bars, hungry for some more chicken guts.

‘Listen to what?’ I say, distracted.

She grins. ‘You ain’t heard about the peace deal then?’

‘The what ?’ I glance at Colm, but he looks as stunned as I do.

Fleur laps up our surprise, her grin even wider. Behind her, the deadheads nod and mutter among themselves.

‘Seriously,’ she says. ‘That’s the buzz going around – a peace deal’s on the table. There’s already a ceasefire. The Council’s meeting to discuss it right now. Our hit-and-run raids must be hurting them more than we thought.’

Colm gets his voice working. ‘How come we didn’t hear about this?’

‘It only happened a few hours ago, that’s why. While Kyle was getting his ass kicked. It’s all everyone is talking about.’

‘What happened a few hours ago?’ I say.

‘An encrypted message came in. Soon as our comms guys unscrambled it, Ballard, Mendela and the other top people all shipped out on our fastest scout windjammer. One of the launch crew overheard them. They’ve been summoned to an emergency Gemini Council meeting to discuss a Slayer peace offer!’

Fleur sighs, long and hard. ‘Seriously. The war is over.’

4
ARGUMENTS

A week goes by with no sign of Ballard and the other rebel leaders returning. I’m still struggling to get my head around what Fleur told us. Peace treaty? War over? It makes no sense, like taking a step and finding there’s no floor to put your foot back down on. But something big is going on for sure. We’ve been ordered to ‘cease offensive operations with immediate effect’.

Some say this proves the rumour. I don’t know about that.

What I do know is it’s weirdly quiet and tense in the Deeps. Rona reckons everybody’s gone from yakking about peace deals to holding their breath. Weather’s been odd too. Firstgreen usually brings strong easterlies, but for days the windsocks have hung limp. Only in the last few hours has the wind picked up again.

One good thing – at least Colm and I seem forgotten now.

I’m not complaining. See, I’m all healed, tooth regrown, strapping gone and ribs good again. And no wind means no windjammer flying, so I get to see more of Sky. She’s sitting cross-legged on the end of my bunk right now, her back to me, honing the long-bladed hunting knife I gave her. The steady rasp-rasp of steel on stone drags a yawn out of me.

I breathe in and fill my nose with the sweet smell of the gun oil she uses. It makes a very welcome change from the usual stink of damp and sweaty bodies.

‘How sharp d’you need it?’ I say, stretching.

‘Sharp,’ Sky says. ‘Needs a fine edge to cut through bone.’

By rights she shouldn’t be in here. Deeps rules – one lot of sleeping tents for male fighters, another for women. No pairing-up allowed. War comes first, something like that. But rules and regulations slide off Sky like rain runs off a fourhorn’s greasy back. She comes and goes as she pleases. I’m glad. Whenever she limps in here my heart starts thumping. Can’t help it.

So far today we haven’t argued. Not much anyway.

Sky inspects her blade, spits on the whetstone and goes again.

I go back to watching her vid. That’s against regs too, shot by her co-pilot Kallio’s helmet-cam on the last relief mission they flew to the Blight before our jammers were grounded. Jagged rocks flash close past the canopy. The early dawnshine picks out streaks of orange and yellow in cliffs that were grey a minute ago, green leaves clinging to stubby, wind-thrashed trees.

‘Do you have to fly so bogging low?’ I say, flinching.

Sky doesn’t look up. ‘The lower we scrape the ridges, the less likely we are to be picked up on the run-in.’

‘That’s crazy low though,’ I say, wincing as I spot some grazing fourhorns looking down at her windjammer as it whines past. They look about as horrified as I do. And Sky’s fast, but she’s only pureblood fast. One mistake, she’s chewing on rock. She banks round an outcrop, chucking the jammer about like it’s a toy. I’m pretty sure the right wing tip clips some branches.

She glances across at the camera – at Kallio – and grins. Which stings, seeing as I mainly get scowls.

Ahead, jinking about as it tracks the lower slopes of the ridge, I see the lead windjammer with their mission commander, Ekway, inside it. The dawnshine catches it as it banks left and tucks even closer to the rocks. I glimpse the Gemini symbol painted on the hull and under the stub-wings – a massive black handprint with the little finger painted blood-red. Twist-black-four we call it. I hold my left hand up and look at the stump where my little finger was, before the Answerman took it for his collection of grisly trophies, the price for his answers. It’s healed clean – course it has – I’m nublood. Yet even now it shocks me, like it’s a stranger’s hand I’m looking at. Weird too how it still itches sometimes on damp mornings, as if thinking about growing back.

In my earbuds I hear Ekway’s voice on Sky’s tac-comm.

‘Blight in five. Get ready for the drop.’

That drags my eyes back to the cleverbox screen, and a good view of Sky. Her hair, hacked off by Fliss when we were on the run together, is back to bleached-white dreads and nearly shoulder length now. Her cheekbones are daubed with the black paint jammer pilots wear; her jawbone works as she chews something. Her eyes, the dark green of deep water, flick about restlessly, checking instruments. I make out the teardrop inked under her left, in memory of Tarn. One twitch, they both die, yet she’s obviously loving every second. I never get to see her like this on the ground, so alive. I reckon she just doesn’t know what fear is.

I must mutter something because real Sky takes a break from her whetstone and glances back at me. ‘Where are you at?’

‘You’re about to hit the Blight.’

A massive bang makes me jump and curse.

On-screen Sky swears too, and I see a sticky smear of blood and guts and yellow-gold feathers sliding up the canopy.

‘Was that the bird?’ she asks.

I nod. ‘Scared the crap out of me.’

The view changes as Kallio unstraps and clambers back into the cargo hold to cut the crates loose on Sky’s signal. His hand mashes a red button on the hull. The ramp drops down, opening up the back of the windjammer, and I can almost feel the wind slap and tug at him. A steep, rock-strewn slope blurs past, so close it seems he could reach out and burn his fingers on it. He looks down. Way below is the valley bottom, green and yellow fields streaming backwards. Labourers straighten and look up, gobs open, as they soar over. I hear a buzzing. A light by the open hatch starts flashing, red and urgent, counting down the thirty seconds to the drop.

Sky dives them down now until they’re among the weeds, so low the downwash from their lifters kicks up a giant rooster tail of dust and earth behind the windjammer. Above the shriek of the wind I hear a crackling, tearing sound, and some bangs. Kallio’s view jerks forward to the flight deck. The sky ahead is a wall of snapping flame and writhing smoke. Lethal blobs of green seem to drift lazily upwards to flash past, barely missing.

‘They’re shooting at you!’ I exclaim, flinching just watching it.

Sky grunts. ‘Yeah, Slayers have a bad habit of doing that. They’ve stuck guns all around the Blight. We took loads of ground fire.’

Something clatters the hull, knocking the windjammer’s left wing down until Sky catches it and levels them. Kallio’s view shifts to the open back again. And now they’re hurtling low across the jumbled sprawl of shanty-town roofs that is the Blight. Or was – this isn’t the same place I stumbled through on my way to see the Answerman. This filthy maze of shacks, plywood, corrugated iron and sun-bleached plastic looks like some giant, fire-breathing monster has stomped all over it. Everywhere fires blaze unchecked. Columns of ugly black smoke billow into the air. In some open places I glimpse corpses left lying where they fell.

Seconds later I spot the first barricades. Piles of rubbish and rubble, burnt-out wrecks of Slayer landcrawlers, anything the desperate Blight defenders can lay their hands on.

Poor Blight. So close to Prime, it’s taken the biggest beating. We destroyed their precious Facility, so now the Slayers are taking their revenge by levelling the Blight and going after our rebel base underneath it, Bastion. Our besieged forces there are helping the Blighties fight, but are barely clinging on. Sky reckons three-quarters of the Blight is overrun or abandoned.

The drop light flicks from red to green. Kallio lets the crates go. One by one they rumble backwards to the open ramp and tumble out. Their drogue chutes snap and fill.

The view swings right.

I twitch big time as I see Prime itself, crouching there high on the hill above the Blight, like a gigantic, stone-walled toad. Within those walls, metal towers gleam like mercury, flinging the dawnshine back at Kallio’s helmet-cam. It’s his stronghold.

The Saviour. Warlord. Lawmaker. Despot. Ruler of Wrath.

Our enemy. And . . . my father.

So hard to believe, even now. So wrong. So unfair.

His fortress too – that was where they once dragged me and sucked my nublood out to pump into him, to heal his crippled, failing body. The memories reach inside me through my eyes, grasp my guts with ice-cold fingers and start to squeeze.

I’ve seen enough. I hit stop, yank the buds from my ears.

‘Wow,’ I say, fighting to keep my voice level. ‘Blight’s a mess.’

‘Did tell you,’ Sky says, without looking up.

With the sun on the canvas all day, it’s still warm in the tent. She’s peeled her jumpsuit top off and knotted it round her waist. I put the screen down and watch her sadly, the way her shoulder bones slide under her T-shirt with each stroke of the stone in her hand. Muscles stand out like cables in her skinny arms. A crescent of pale skin uncovers at the small of her back as she leans forward. Tempting. I could reach her with my toes and give her a tickle. Would do a while back, without thinking. Not now.

I’ve been shrugged off enough. It’s no fun.

Anyway, we’re not alone. Others are off duty and taking it easy too. Colm’s on the upper bunk above us, reading something. I bet his ears are flapping.

Sky coughs. She’s got another cold.

‘This peace deal,’ I say to her back. ‘What do you think?’

Finally, she quits with the whetstone, holsters the knife and squirms around to face me. ‘It’s only a rumour.’

‘What if it turns out to be true?’

‘Even if it is, we both know it won’t be worth squat. Slayers are snakes. The Saviour’s the biggest snake of all. You don’t make deals with snakes, you just stamp on their head.’

A man struggles inside through the tent flap. Sky darts a glance at him as he heads for his bunk, and looks disappointed.

‘Still no word from Ness?’ I ask her.

She shakes her head. ‘Still working on it. He’ll crack it soon.’

‘And if he doesn’t?’

‘He’d better. For his own good.’ She pats her knife.

I’m working on a scowl when she winks. Not funny though. Here we are, with what could be a miraculous peace breaking out. We could have a future, for the first time in our lives. But that doesn’t interest Sky in the slightest. Course not.

Wood creaks above us. Colm’s upside-down face appears.

‘If this peace deal does come off,’ he says, ‘maybe we’d do a prisoner exchange. You could ask for your sister.’

Sky sneers. ‘You think that’s likely?’

Colm, his upside-down face reddening, shrugs at her.

‘More likely than you rescuing her. And you’re forgetting something, Sky. Right now there’s a ceasefire. Screw that up by trying to bust your sister out of wherever she’s being held and Ballard will skin you.’

‘Any deal will just be a trick,’ she snarls. ‘Of all people, you should know that, what with being raised a Slayer .’

She stresses the last bit. Deliberate. Nasty.

Is this why Sky can’t stand him? Rona said it was jealousy, me having Colm, her missing Tarn. I’d thought it was my brother saying that going after Tarn was dumb, that our cause comes first.

‘Colm didn’t choose that,’ I say through my teeth.

She rocks back and holds her hands up. ‘Okay, okay. All I’m saying is no way am I hanging about here, waiting on some peace treaty that might never happen. Soon as Ness comes up with the goods, I say we go looking for Tarn.’ Her eyes find mine and drill into them. ‘That was the deal. Remember?’

We go looking for Tarn . I roll the words around my mouth, not saying them aloud, just tasting them. They taste of ashes.

But I did make that deal. ‘Sure.’

Colm lets out a disgusted sigh and rolls out of sight.

‘You’re always moaning about wanting to fight. Going after Tarn with me is your chance to see some action,’ Sky says.

My face goes hot. ‘I do want to fight, but –’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ she cuts in. ‘Ballard says you’re too valuable.’

‘He is too valuable,’ Colm says.

‘I’m not,’ I say. ‘Sky’s right. I stopped being valuable after I led Gemini to the Facility.’ The truth is, Ballard and the rest of the rebel council are only worried I’ll get myself captured. We’re sure the Saviour was hurt bad in the raid. They don’t want Slayers getting their hands on my nublood and healing him again.

Sky nods. Her eyes go narrow and sly.

‘Ballard’s not here to stop us, is he? What about it, Kyle?’

Before I can say anything Colm jumps down from his bunk. Never have I seen my brother look so fed up, which is saying something because he tends to the grim and serious.

‘Don’t be crazy,’ he says, almost spitting.

Sky laughs her bitter laugh. ‘What’s your problem?’

He curses. ‘You are. You think you can do what you fraggin’ like, and to hell with everybody else.’

Her face, always so pale and bloodless, goes white. She hops off the bed and faces him, hand on the hilt of her knife.

‘That what you think, huh, Slayer-boy?’

I scramble up and get between them. ‘Don’t call him that.’

She shoves me back a step. ‘Tell your gom of a brother to shut it.’

But my brother isn’t done arguing yet. ‘Don’t listen to her, Kyle. She’ll get you killed, for nothing.’

Sky’s lips twitch. ‘Nothing? My sister’s a nothing?’

She snatches up her cleverbox and stalks off.

I curse and close my eyes. When I open them again, Sky’s long gone. Colm looks at me and slowly shakes his head.

‘Don’t,’ I tell him, as his gob opens. ‘Just don’t, all right!’

5
THE FIREFIGHT

I love my new-found brother. I do. We share everything: we like the same stuff, make the same jokes and laugh at them. Sometimes I wonder how I ever got along without Colm.

Now though, I need a break from him slagging off Sky.

Not that he’s all wrong, but I’m not in the mood to hear it. I slip away, leaving him chuntering away to himself on his bunk. Soon as I’m outside the tent I stand up straight and suck fresh evening air deep into my lungs. It calms me down. There’s still hope, I tell myself. Maybe this peace deal is for real. And I like Colm’s suggestion about trading prisoners. Getting Tarn back like that would beat sneaking off with Sky and defying Ballard.

A gust slaps the tent’s canvas and blows my hair into my eyes. If it stays like this, Sky will be flying tomorrow. No, she won’t. I remember our windjammers are grounded.

I hesitate, then go looking for her.

Two women she shares her tent with are outside it, smoking. They tell me Sky’s not there. I glance doubtfully at the tent flap. The older one blows smoke in my face and smiles.

‘She ain’t. Honest. Take a look inside if you like.’

‘Any idea where she is?’

They swap looks and shrugs.

‘You guys had another bust-up?’ the younger one asks.

‘Something like that,’ I mutter. And clear off, my face all hot.

I consider tracking Ness down to see if Sky’s stropped off to have a nag at him, then get a better idea. I make my way back out through the gathering darkness to the canyon where the captured Slayer windjammer was hidden away. My hunch pays off. The rear loading ramp is down. A flicker of light shows. I peek inside. The light is from a shiner hung up on the bars of the cage. Sky is sitting inside, her back against the hull where Tarn scratched her tag. Her head is down, her arms wrapped round her knees.

She’s so still. Is she asleep?

I do a cough to let her know I’m here. Good job too. Her head snaps up and a blaster appears in her hand.

‘It’s only me,’ I tell her.

‘Oh joy,’ she mutters. But at least she puts the gun away.

I step inside. ‘What are you doing?’

She glares at me. ‘Thinking. Being with my sister.’

‘Want me to go away?’

She hesitates. ‘How’d you know I’d be here?’

‘I didn’t, not for sure. I just –’

The wail of the landing siren cuts me off, followed by some distant shouting and the chuff and clank of steam tractors.

‘Sounds like we’ve got incoming,’ Sky says.

‘Bit late and dark, isn’t it?’ I say.

I hustle back to the ramp and stick my head out. The landing area is all lit up now by lines of brightly flaring oil-burners.

She limps over to join me on the ramp.

‘They’re back then,’ she says.

I spot the small windjammer on final approach. Sky knows her jammers way better than I do, but even in the dark I can tell which one this is – the fast transport that flew Ballard and the other rebel leaders out of here a week ago. Air brakes already out, its lifters howl as they’re throttled up to landing power. It dives towards the ground, flares late and touches down. The howl dies away. I hear the rumble of wheels pounding the hard-packed dirt.

‘Nice landing,’ I say.

Sky grunts. ‘You reckon?’

The burners are doused, plunging the Deeps back into a smothering darkness. Sky shifts beside me.

‘So what do you want?’ she says.

I throw my hands up. ‘I don’t want anything.’

‘Yeah, you do, Kyle. That’s why you’re here. You want me to let you off the hook for helping me find Tarn. Don’t you?’

‘No. You’re wrong,’ I lie, squirming.

‘Am I?’ She tilts her head to one side. ‘So when Ness finally comes up with the goods you will help me?’

‘What if we mess up the ceasefire, like Colm said?’

Sky shows me her teeth in a sneer. ‘Oh, quit with the Colm says this, Colm says that crap, will you? That’s all I boggin’ get from you these days. Think for yourself.’

‘I do think for myself. It’s just . . . he talks a lot of sense.’

‘Run back to him then. You’ve got your brother; you don’t need me any more. I’ll only get you killed, for nothing.’

‘Oh, come on, Sky! It’s not like that.’

‘So what’s it like? Tell me.’

I take a deep breath, then let it out. ‘Maybe our cause should come before what we want. Like the people here who have children, but still choose to risk their lives fighting for Gemini. They’re fighting for everybody’s ident children, not just theirs.’

‘Colm preach that at you, did he?’

‘Just because you don’t like him doesn’t make him wrong.’

Sky folds her arms, looks away and says nothing.

‘You were all for the cause yourself once, when you thought Tarn was dead. We need to build a world where purebloods and nubloods live together in peace, that’s what you said.’

‘What if I did?’ she says over her shoulder.

‘So what’s changed?’ I say. ‘Look, can’t we just talk about this instead of always arguing? Rona says the other missing nublood kids could be in the same place Tarn is. You should tell Ballard what you’ve found out. Maybe he’ll authorise another raid to rescue them. That’s got to stand a better chance than just us two.’

‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ she says, all sneery.

I grit my teeth. ‘Why not?’

She looks back, her face one big scowl. ‘Because we’re clinging on as it is. And now this fraggin’ peace deal.’ She coughs and turns away again. ‘No way will he go for a raid.’

‘You don’t know that,’ I say.

‘I do,’ she says, coughs and looks away again.

Meanwhile, out on the landing field the landed windjammer drops its ramp. A dozen or so passengers exit down it, led by Ballard, his silver hair unmistakable even at this distance. Armoured steam tractors roll forward to meet them with loads of fighters running ahead. These fan out to form a defensive cordon around the newcomers and escort them to their rides.

Weird. Why would our leaders need guarding out here?

Then I see why . . . and it sucks all the spit out of my mouth. Those guards aren’t for Ballard, Mendela and the rest – they’re for the tall figure in a matt-black cloak walking with them.

A Slayer. Here. In the Deeps.

‘What the hell?’ Sky says.

Spit leaks back into my mouth as I slowly get over the shock of it. And now, in spite of everything, I start to laugh.

‘What’s so funny?’ she demands.

‘Never thought I’d be glad to see a Slayer,’ I say, grinning. ‘But I am now. If Ballard’s brought one here, that has to mean the peace deal is no rumour. Fleur got it right. The war’s over, Sky!’

Sky glares at me as if I’m mad.

‘Yeah?’ she says. ‘And fourhorns can fly.’

‘Oh, come on. What else can it mean? Let’s go and find out what’s going on. Maybe they’ll make an announcement.’

But Sky shakes her head again and frowns, looking more through me than at me. ‘You go. I’ll see you later.’

‘You don’t want to know what’s up?’

‘It’s not that, I – look, I’ll be along in a while. Okay?’

‘Sure.’ I hesitate, then figure I can’t be forever biting my tongue with her. ‘You never know, Sky, maybe Colm’s right too and we’ll end up swapping prisoners. Anything’s possible. If this is a peace deal, it’ll be our best chance of finding Tarn.’

‘Our best chance?’ Sky says, staring.

I shrug. ‘Like you said, we bumped stumps on it.’

She smiles. A bit sad and pained-looking, but it’s something.

I’m halfway back to the main base, striding out, hope buzzing away inside me as I wonder if Wrath is finally about to cut me my first-ever break. That’s when I hear the blaster fire.

My heart sinks. I reckon some drooler has seen the Slayer, lost it and started shooting. Ahead of me the tractors judder to a halt. The escorting fighters crouch and level their pulse rifles.

More crackles of blaster fire. I see the flashes. And realise I’m wrong.

It’s from way beyond the tractors – where all our tents are. Where I left Colm muttering into his bunk.

Now I hear the tump-tump of pulse rifles. Returning fire?

Peace deals and Slayers forgotten, I take off towards the flashes. The only weapon I’ve got is my hunting knife. No match for blasters, but it’ll have to do. Luckily, by the time I’ve pounded my way there the firefight seems to be over. People are milling around, mostly half dressed like they’ve just rolled out of their bunks, pushing and shoving and craning to get a look at what’s happened. Smoke curls up into the night, spark-filled, stinking. A few heavily armed fighters are shoving everybody back.

‘Who was shooting?’ I say, elbowing my way forward.

Nobody here seems to know, so I work my way through the crowd until I hear some guy mouthing off about what he saw.

‘All three of ’em was wearing masks,’ he’s saying. ‘Piled into that tent over there and started blasting. I was having a smoke when I seen ’em go in.’ He shakes his head. ‘Crazy, it was.’

‘Where are the shooters now?’ somebody calls out.

‘All dead,’ the man says. ‘We got ’em. Not me, I didn’t have no gun. One of the guys in the tent zapped two. The last one tried to do a runner. A buddy of mine took him out.’

More voices call out questions.

‘Who were the shooters? How many of our guys were killed?’

But I’m past listening. Behind the line of fighters holding us back, I catch a glimpse of a tent in flames.

The tent that Colm and me bunk down in.

Panicking now, I shove my way to the front of the crowd.

‘Let me through! My brother’s in there!’ I yell.

This cuts no ice with the hard-faced fighters keeping us all back.

‘Take it easy, fella,’ one growls.

‘I need to see if my brother’s okay,’ I say through my teeth.

‘What you need is to stay back,’ he says.

‘Okay, okay,’ I say, do a big old sigh, and turn away for just long enough to make them think I’m heading away.

Turn, drop my shoulder and hurl myself through them.

Two go down. One staggers, shoots a hand out and grabs me. An elbow in the face sorts her. A second later I’m at the blazing tent. That’s as far as I get though. The flames are too fierce and stop me in my tracks. If anybody’s inside they’re cooked.

‘Colm!’ I reel backwards.

Into hands that drag me away. My feet are kicked from under me and I’m pushed down, flat on my face. I struggle, despairing and mad as hell, but just get to eat more dirt.

I quit fighting and lie still. Wondering. Fearing.

Finally, after what feels like forever, I’m hauled back to my feet. I lash out, more to share my pain than trying to break free.

‘Quit that!’ Somebody slams a hard punch into my kidneys.

That kills. I hunch over.

‘The brother?’ a deep voice says behind me.

‘Says he is.’ They turn me around.

There – frowning at me – is the great man himself. Ballard.

Truth be told, I’m shocked. The same craggy face and close-cropped silver hair. The simple grey cloak of the Gemini Council worn over his combat fatigues. Only this Ballard is way more bent than I remember, impossibly older since I last saw him.

He signals to the men holding me. ‘Go easy.’

I’m held less tightly now, do my best to straighten up.

‘Kyle?’ Ballard says, his face mournful. ‘You’re not hurt?’

‘I’m all right,’ I mumble, glancing around at what’s left of the still-burning tent. ‘Colm was in that tent there. Is he –?’

Can’t ask it, in case I get the answer I dread.

I don’t get a second chance. A quick whispered order from Ballard to his fighter escort and now I’m being hustled away.

‘Wait, wait!’ I call out. ‘What about my brother?’

But Ballard’s not listening. Flanked by his wary bodyguards he follows along slowly, his head down, as if deep in thought.

‘Kyle!’ Sky shouts. ‘What’s going on?’

I look over my shoulder and see her trying to push past the cordon to reach me, only to be shoved roughly back.

Her raging face is the last thing I see.

The guards put a bag over my head. Everything goes black.

6
STRINGS AND STINGS ATTACHED

After a forever of stumbling along blindly and being pushed, I’m stopped, turned and shoved backwards. Hinges squeal, metal clangs and bolts rasp home. Finally, the hood is pulled off. I squint around at a small rock-walled chamber. Table. Bench. Covered shit-pit in the corner. Closed metal door. Loads of guards.

‘Why the bag over my head? What’s going on?’

I’m wasting my breath. None of the guards will answer me; they just watch me out of their bored, tough-guy eyes like I’m some not-very-interesting bug. I give up asking, lie down on the bench and glower up at the rock ceiling, sick to my stomach.

Does this mean Colm is dead?

Time crawls by, slow and ugly. Wrath knows how long it is before the oil-starved hinges squeal again. The chamber door opens outwards and . . . Rona and Colm are shepherded inside.

Seeing me, Rona’s hand flies to her mouth.

I jump up from the bench. Rona dashes across the room, throws her arms round me and hugs me so tight I can hardly breathe.

‘Kyle! Oh, thanks be to goodness, we were so worried.’

I hug her back, while over her shoulder I gawp at Colm. He looks shaken, his face pulled tight. His left arm is in a sling.

‘You’re alive,’ I blurt out.

He grimaces. ‘Yeah. I think so.’

Rona lets go of me, dabs at her red-looking eyes and takes a quick healer look at me. ‘You’re not hurt, are you?’

‘I’m fine,’ I tell her. ‘I – uh – wasn’t there to get shot at.’

One of the guards who brought them in steps up, clears his throat and lays a gloved hand on her shoulder.

‘You’ve seen the boy needs no healing,’ he says. ‘Let’s go.’

I glare at him, but Rona shoots me a quick warning look. She reaches out and pulls Colm and me together. ‘Listen to me,’ she says, frowning, ‘you’re safe here at least. Do what they say and don’t make any trouble. They won’t let me stay with you, but I won’t be far away. Everything will be all right. Okay?’

We each get another quick hug before she’s taken away.

After the door slams shut behind her, the guards left inside shove us towards the bench along the wall. A minute ago I’d have shoved back to spite them. Now I can’t be bothered. I’m more interested in hearing what my wounded brother has to say.

‘What happened?’ I ask him. ‘A guy said three masked shooters burst into our tent and then opened up with blasters.’

Colm nurses his bandaged arm and nods.

‘I was half asleep. The tent flap lifts and some guys barge inside. Next thing I know they’re blasting the hell out of your bunk.’

I stare at him, appalled. ‘So what did you do?’

‘They shot up my bunk next.’ A painful smile tugs at my brother’s lips. ‘Only I’d got such a fright when the shooting started I’d already fallen off it. It was lights-out and dark inside. With all the blasting, maybe the shooters dazzled themselves. My pulse rifle was still up on my bunk, so I cleared off as fast as I could. They came after me, but by then our guys were shooting back.’

I can’t help glancing at his bandaged arm. Rona’s handiwork.

‘I got lucky,’ he says. ‘Four of our mates were killed in the crossfire, more injured. It was a slaughterhouse.’

‘Who did this?’ I splutter. ‘And why? I don’t understand.’

‘Me neither. But . . .’ He takes a deep breath, sighs it out. ‘My first thought was that Slayers had somehow tracked us down and sent in a suicide squad to take us out. For revenge, or to teach us a lesson, like even out here in the Deeps nobody’s safe. Only before I was taken away, I got a good look at the shooters. They were Gemini fighters. I’ve seen them around. And before you ask, it wasn’t Stauffer or any of his thug mates.’

Colm’s words stomp about in my head, but make no sense.

‘You’re saying our own guys tried to kill us?’

He nods. ‘And it was definitely us they were after. They came straight to our bunks. It was a hit. We were the target.’

‘Why?’ I say, dry-mouthed.

‘I don’t know. Lucky you weren’t in your bunk, huh?’

‘Too right.’ I shiver. And now I finally remember that I’ve got my own big news to share. I tell Colm about how I saw the windjammer land and the black-clad passenger it unloaded.

‘Ballard brought a Slayer here ?’ he says, rocking back and chewing his lip. ‘Guess the peace deal must be on then.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought.’

‘So when did the jammer land?’

I think back. ‘Not long before the shooting started.’

Colm nods and pulls what I call his serious-thinking face.

Which sets me thinking too. ‘Coincidence?’

‘Could be,’ he says, but really slow, like he doesn’t believe it.

I glance at our guards. They’re still all watching us, unblinking, unmoving, as if carved out of stone. I’d figured we’d been stuck in here for our protection. Now I’m starting to doubt. These guys are doing a great job of making me feel more like a prisoner.

‘Wonder how long they’ll keep us in here?’ I say to Colm.

He sits on the bench, swings his feet up and stretches out. ‘Who knows? We should get some rest.’

‘Hey, what about me?’

But my brother’s eyes are closed already, and he looks so destroyed I haven’t the heart to make him shift.

I settle for the dirt floor. It’s as uncomfortable as it looks.

Without windows in here it’s only a guess, but based on how stiff I feel after hours of squirming around on hard-packed dirt, I reckon it’s early morning when they come for us.

We each get a beaker of water and a biscuit to munch as we’re marched along one rock-hewn corridor after another, minded by a dozen or so heavily armed guards. Finally, we’re shoved into a room where Ballard is waiting, sitting behind a massive round table. His wire-framed glasses reflect the glowtubes so I can’t see his eyes, but his lined face is one big frown. I’d hoped Rona would be there too. She isn’t. The only friendly face belongs to Scallon, the senior healer woman who pulled that bolt out of me back in Bastion. She gets up, greets us and shows us to a couple of spare seats.

‘Why are we here?’ I whisper.

And wish I hadn’t as her face falls.

‘You’ll see,’ she says, and returns to her seat.

I glance around the room. Apart from Scallon and Ballard and some watchful guards, there are two other people here, both seated at the table. Like Ballard, they wear the long grey cloaks of Gemini Council members. The tall black woman is Mendela, Defence Commander of this Deeps outpost. The irritable-looking plump man with the savagely pockmarked face I‘ve never seen before.

‘So there they are,’ fat guy says.

He inspects Colm and me, a look on his face like we’re pieces of fruit to choose between and both of us seem rotten.

‘Hard to believe,’ Mendela says, ‘it all hangs on these two boys.’

I swap glances with Colm. He looks worried too.

Ballard stands up, waving away a guard who leaps forward to try and help him. He takes his glasses off and rubs his eyes. He looks tired, like he didn’t get much sleep last night either.

‘Kyle, Colm,’ he says, blinking at us. ‘You must be wondering –’

Fat guy slams his hand on the table and interrupts angrily, chins wobbling. ‘For Wrath’s sake, Ballard, you’re wasting time we haven’t got. We have important things to discuss.’

Ballard stiffens. ‘We do, Councillor Schroeder. But first I think we owe these boys an explanation.’

Schroeder glares at us and snorts, sending spit flying.

Well, I can do angry too. I jump up. ‘What the hell’s going on?’

I expect to be shouted at, but Commander Mendela smiles. Not Ballard though. He looks like he’s in pain.

‘Sit down, son,’ Mendela says. ‘We like defiant, but we’ve got something to tell you and you would do well to listen.’

I swallow and sit down again, feeling more than a bit stupid.

Ballard clears his throat. ‘As Councillor Schroeder says, the Council has much to discuss, so I’ll be brief.’ He puts his glasses back on and his gaze settles on me. My head pounds and blood hisses in my ears like static. ‘You boys will, I’m sure, have heard the rumours of a peace treaty between us and the Slayers.’

I nod, not trusting my voice. So does Colm.

‘Well, the rumours are true,’ Ballard continues. ‘If Gemini ceases fighting and we withdraw our forces to the Barrenlands, in return the Saviour will grant us a sanctuary out there.’

‘So tempting.’ Mendela’s voice is thick with sarcasm.

Ballard sighs. ‘As you might expect, the peace offer comes with many strings attached. Ident children must still be handed over and held in camps. Instead of Peace Fairs, as soon as nubloods are identified they will be returned to us in our Barrenlands paradise.’ He sighs deeply. ‘However, the strongest of them will first be required to do two years’ service down darkblende mines. After completing this, they too will be returned.’

‘If they survive the two years,’ Scallon says.

‘Be quiet!’ Schroeder snaps.

I shake my head, dazed, struggling to take this in. Two years down a darkblende mine is crap, but sanctuary sounds good.

‘There is one other condition,’ Ballard says.

Mendela pulls a grim face, as if she’s chewing a mouthful of something sour. As for Scallon, she won’t look me in the eye.

Colm and I say it as one. ‘What other condition?’

Ballard winces, his watery eyes like grey pools in cracked rock. ‘The final condition is that we hand you both over.’ He pauses, maybe to let this sink in. ‘Unless we agree to all these conditions before the next doom moon, the peace offer will be withdrawn. The Saviour will order the mobilisation of a conscript army to fight alongside his Slayers. He says they won’t rest until every nublood on Wrath is hunted down. Extermination, pure and simple.’

‘The sting in the tail,’ Mendela says, and sighs.

My head pounds like someone’s taken a club to it. So this is how it all ends, I think dismally. I should have fraggin’ known.

‘And you’d do that? You’d hand us over?’ I croak.

Ballard just looks at me, stony-faced.

‘So that’s why those fighters tried to kill us,’ Colm says.

‘Huh?’ I glance at him. He’s staring at Ballard.

Ballard nods. ‘Details of the peace offer must somehow have reached here before we did. The Saviour wants you alive. The attempt on your lives was an act of sabotage by Gemini hardliners who wish to fight on regardless. With you dead, the peace deal is dead too. They will have known that my first act upon my return would be to place you in protective custody.’

I’m not sure I get all this, not fully, but one thing I do get: Colm and me, we’re screwed. I lick my lips. ‘What happens now?’

He pulls at his beard. ‘That, Kyle, is for the Council to decide.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Schroeder wobbles to his feet. ‘Let’s get this farce over with. Bring in the damn Slayer.’ He clicks his fingers at the guards by another door at the far side of the chamber.

They scramble to unbolt it and swing it open.

In walks a woman dressed head to foot in Slayer matt-black.

I gasp. Beside me, Colm lets out a strangled-sounding moan. Because it’s not every day you see a ghost. The last time I saw this woman was during the Facility raid, when Murdo Dern emptied his pulse rifle into her at point-blank range, almost cutting her in half. Yet here the High Slayer stands in her fancy black-leather uniform trimmed with fur, with her raven-dark hair and the cruel lines in her face no amount of powder can hide. A smile twists her full lips, and I see her obvious delight at our shock and confusion. Morana, High Slayer of the Barrenlands.

‘No fraggin’ way!’ I howl, gulping air, sending my chair flying as I lurch to my feet again. ‘You’re dead. I saw you killed!’

‘Only, as you see, I’m very much alive,’ she says, sneering.

Ballard grits his teeth. ‘You’re here for a reason, Slayer, so get on with it. Take your look. Tell us if you’re satisfied.’

She darts him a mocking glance. ‘Who are you again?’

‘You’ve one minute, and no longer.’

They swap glares, until she shrugs and turns from him to Colm and me. She steps around the table, coming closer.

‘Don’t be shy,’ she says. ‘Show me your handsome faces.’

I back up, but hit rock wall.

She glances at my brother and spots his heavily bandaged arm.

‘This merchandise has been damaged.’

‘A scratch,’ Schroeder says quickly. ‘Nothing more.’

Morana nods and her gaze slides across to me. ‘So alike, yet I have the feeling you’re the twist, Kyle. Am I right?’

I give myself a bit of a shake, conscious Ballard’s watching me.

‘I’m nublood,’ I tell her. ‘We call ourselves nublood.’

She shows me a mouthful of too-perfect teeth and laughs. ‘Oh, do you now? How dull. I think “twist” has far more of a ring to it. Now come closer, Kyle, and let me see you.’

‘Drop dead.’ I stay where I am.

Mistake. She looks at Schroeder. He curses and signals. Two guards grab me and shove me forward. I struggle. Nothing doing. They’re both nubloods and loads bigger than me.

‘That’s better.’ Morana peels off a glove. Her body armour creaks as she reaches out and turns my face this way and that, studying me closely. Then she strokes my cheek, her fingers cold and lingering, exactly as she did that day back in the Barrenlands when she’d captured Sky and me.

‘So tell me, Kyle, how does it feel to play such an important role in the future of your pitiful species?’

Her breath warms my face. I gauge the distance to her head to see if it’s worth trying for a headbutt. But she’s too far away and the guys holding on to me are too strong.

‘That’s enough,’ Ballard calls out. ‘Leave the boy alone.’

Morana gives me one last icy glare, then lets go. Pulling her glove back on, she turns and stalks back towards the open doorway and the waiting Gemini guards.

‘Very well,’ she announces, as cool as you like. ‘I will report back to the Saviour that you do indeed have his beloved sons.’

Ballard says nothing, just looks grim as hell.

Schroeder’s a different story – I reckon the man seems pleased.

Mendela hauls herself to her feet. ‘Is she done here?’

‘She is,’ Ballard says. ‘Take her away.’

‘I’ll see to it personally that our guest,’ Mendela wrinkles her nose at Morana, ‘is returned to the rendezvous point, with all the necessary safeguards so she can’t find her way back uninvited.’

Ballard nods, and Morana is escorted away.

There’s a long, ugly silence.

And I finally let out the breath I’ve been holding.

Our guards bring two new benches, one for Colm, another to replace the one I took out my rage and despair on.

‘Smash these,’ a guard warns, ‘and you don’t get more. Okay?’

I mutter at her that I won’t.

‘This is bullshit,’ I say to Colm. ‘Can you believe it?’

My brother’s not said a word since we were dragged back here to our cell, just stared into space and shaken his head a lot. So I’m glad when he finally looks at me.

‘It’s a trap,’ he says. ‘A clever one too.’

But I’ve also done some thinking since I quit smashing stuff.

‘I don’t see it. The Slayers must be dreaming if they think we’ll chuck our guns away and shuffle off to hold hands out in the Barrenlands. Once we’re there, they’d have us trapped. No way will the Council go for it. They’d have to be crazy.’

Colm takes a deep breath and hisses it out.

‘What?’ I say, irritated.

He clutches at his hurt arm and winces. ‘Kyle, this isn’t about peace or sanctuary in the Barrenlands. It’s about divide and conquer, setting brother against brother.’

I grind my teeth. ‘Just for once, can you speak plainly?’

‘Okay, okay. Look, I grew up a Slayer, so I know how they think. This peace offer’s fake, I’m sure of it. The Saviour has no intention of letting Gemini have a sanctuary in the Barrenlands or anywhere else. He just dangles the thought. It’s bait on a hook.’

‘And when we bite he’s got us trapped?’

‘It’s simpler than that, more cunning. They’ll make sure every Gemini fighter knows what’s supposedly on offer. Some will clutch at the straw. Who can blame them for wanting an end to a lifetime of fear and fighting? Others will want to fight on though, sod the cost. Before you know it, Gemini will split into pro-treaty and anti-treaty factions. We’ll start fighting among ourselves.’

I stare at him, gob open, hairs standing up on the back of my neck. ‘Surely the Council will see that too?’

He shrugs. ‘Maybe. But can they stop it? It’s happening already, here in the Deeps. That’s why my arm’s in this bloody sling. And why we’re stuck in this hole being guarded.’

I twitch. ‘So the hardliners can’t have another pop at us?’

Colm nods and tries for a smile. ‘You’re not as thick as you look.’

We sit there silent for a while.

‘Don’t know about you,’ I say eventually, ‘but I could’ve died when that door opened and Morana walked in.’

‘Seriously,’ Colm says, ‘I could’ve done without that.’

I hesitate, but it has to be said. ‘Murdo killed her. I saw it.’

‘You had just been shot. Maybe you –’

‘Maybe nothing! Ask him if you don’t believe me.’

‘I do believe you. But we’ve got more to worry about than a High Slayer coming back to life. Maybe her body armour saved her. Who knows? What matters is Gemini risked bringing her to the Deeps so she could identify us. What’s that tell you?’

‘Ballard’s not as smart as we thought?’

Colm glances at our guards and they seem not to be listening. ‘Ballard’s no fool. Everything he does, he does for a reason. I think it tells us that the Council will go for the peace deal. You heard the woman – she’s here to check the merchandise, to make sure we’re still alive and kicking, ready to be handed over.’

‘You think too much,’ I croak.

‘Sometimes I wish I didn’t,’ he says, and grimaces.

Another long silence. In my head I play back Colm’s words, trying to find holes in his thinking that hope might fit into.

Nothing doing. There are no holes.

‘Okay, fine,’ I whisper, straightening kinks out of my neck. ‘I get it. We’re screwed if we stay here. Either we’ll be handed back to the Slayers, or we’ll be lynched by hardliners.’

Colm frowns. ‘If we stay here? You say it like we’ve a choice.’

‘We’ll get word to Rona and Sky. They’ll bust us out.’

He says nothing, but his face is my face – I see the doubt.

‘You got a better idea?’ I ask.

‘I’m working on it,’ he tells me. And then, ‘No.’

7
THE COUNCIL DECIDES

I’m squeezing off a last few sit-ups when our guards let Rona in. She’s the only visitor we’re allowed while we rot here like rats in this stinking hole, waiting for Gemini’s leadership to make their minds up about the peace treaty. Three days we’ve been stuck here, and it’s doing my head in.

‘Hey, Rona,’ Colm says, and smiles.

To listen to him, you wouldn’t think he’s gone mad. I nod at Rona and wipe the worst of the sweat off with my shirt.

‘Oh, Kyle, must you?’ she says.

This is so Rona. I’m to be handed over to Slayers or killed by my own kind, and she’s worried I won’t have a clean shirt.

With a sigh, she unpacks her bag. Even though she was searched on the way in, our watching guards stiffen.

‘Any news?’ I ask her.

She shakes her head. ‘I’ll tell you when there is. Now hand over your bowls. No point letting this broth get cold.’

Colm fetches the food bowls while I pull my shirt back on.

‘Maybe no news is good news,’ she says.

‘You reckon?’ I glance at our scratches on the rock wall.

It’s eighteen days to the next doom moon. We’ve been crossing them off. Just thinking about it makes me shiver. Most nights our smaller and faster-moving dogmoon chases the bigmoon around Wrath’s sky. Four times a year however, roughly at the turn of the seasons, it climbs higher in the sky than the bigmoon. That’s when we call it the doom moon, and everybody is all oh no! and moaning about how it brings bad luck and savage weather.

Rona calls it superstition and nonsense. I guess we’ll see.

‘Don’t worry, the Council will do the right thing,’ she says. She slops slimy-looking broth into our bowls from a flask.

‘Right for who?’ I say. ‘What is this?’

Colm dives right in. Being a martyr must be hungry work.

‘It’s all I could get,’ Rona snaps. ‘With everybody too busy arguing, nothing’s getting done, least of all cooking.’

‘What happened to your face?’ Colm asks her.

‘It’s nothing,’ Rona says, but too quickly.

I look up and now I see the swelling under her left eye.

‘Was that . . . because of us?’

‘Eat your broth.’

I push my bowl away untouched. ‘Was it?’

‘When people are scared they can do stupid things. I’m being escorted here now. Don’t worry. It won’t happen again.’

‘It’s getting ugly then?’ Colm says.

Rona hesitates. ‘Worse than ugly.’ She lowers her voice. ‘That Schroeder is whipping things up, making pro-treaty speeches. There’s been rioting. Four people died last night.’

‘For the treaty, or against it?’ I ask.

‘Does it matter?’ She pushes my bowl back at me.

Even though I feel sick inside I choke a few mouthfuls down, for her more than me. And it’s not as bad as it looks. Then again, it’s been a good while since I last ate a proper meal.

‘How’s your arm?’ Rona asks Colm.

He holds his arm up in its sling. ‘Getting there, I think.’

I snort, hearing this. ‘He still can’t hardly move it.’

Rona suggested getting some of my nublood into him so he’d heal quicker, but the guards won’t let her bring healing gear in. It’s a curse. If we do bust out, him having two arms would be good.

‘Hey, Colm, tell Rona what you told me this morning.’

He scowls, and says nothing.

‘I’ll tell her then. He said that it’s okay if we’re handed over.’

‘I did not ! All I said was – if the Council could negotiate a realistic deal, something that might actually work, but still had to hand us over, who are we to say it’s too high a price?’

‘You believe this?’ I say to Rona.

She looks pained. ‘Your brother’s entitled to his opinion.’

‘You agree with him?’

I get huffed at. ‘No, I don’t.’ She turns to face my brother. ‘You’re brave to say it, Colm, but sacrificing yourself will achieve nothing. No good will come of making deals with Slayers.’

‘Like I said!’ I kick out at the dirt floor.

Colm shrugs and gets on with emptying his bowl.

I shove mine away and ask the question I’ve been busting to ask. ‘Did you talk to Sky?’

‘I did. She . . . asked after you.’

‘Frag that,’ I whisper. ‘Will she help us?’

Rona glances at the guards. They’re stretching, not watching.

I pull at her arm. ‘Rona?’

And see the pained expression on her face.

‘Kyle, I’m sorry. Sky can’t help. She’s tried to see you, but they won’t let her. I know it’s tough, but there’s no way we can get you out of here. You’re too important and too well guarded.’

‘So we rot here until they hand us over?’

Rona leans in, grabs my hand and won’t let go.

‘Don’t give up hope, Kyle. Our leaders will see this peace offer for the sham it is. And I heard talk that it’s a last throw of the dice for the Slayers – because they know they’re losing the war. If we fight on, we’ll beat them and have peace on our terms!’

‘You believe that?’ I whisper.

She breathes deeply and nods. ‘I do.’

Only I’ve known her too long to be fooled. She’s just saying this.

In the middle of that night, we get our first taste of the trouble brewing in the Deeps. A distant roaring and crackling sound from outside wakes us up, loud even through the armoured door. Seconds later I hear the heavy crash of our base-defence guns opening up. Our guards get all excited. We’re dragged to the back of the cave. They take up defensive positions in front of us, kill the glowtubes and plunge the chamber into darkness.

Okay for them, they have night-see goggles. We’re blind.

‘What’s going on?’ I ask, but get no answer.

Then all goes quiet again. Not long after, our cell door opens and the glowtubes flicker back on. A tense-looking Gemini officer hurries inside and takes a long, hard stare at Colm and me.

‘Both confirmed safe,’ he says into his throat-mike.

Through the open door I hear lots of distant shouting outside. Also the faint huffs and clatters of a steam engine. Still nobody will tell us what’s going on. Course not. The officer leaves, the door’s bolted again, and we’re left to crawl back on to our benches and try to get back to sleep, our heads full of wondering.

At dawn we get an unexpected visitor.

It’s Ballard. Even more surprisingly, he orders our guards outside so he can have a word with us in private.

I get a very bad feeling, and I see Colm swallow hard too.

Ballard has us sit at the grubby, food-spattered table. He sits on a stool opposite and picks up the water jug. ‘May I?’

I lick my lips and nod. ‘Sure.’

‘Please do,’ Colm croaks.

Ballard fills a beaker with water and takes a few sips. I can’t help noticing how his hands are trembling.

‘I’m here,’ he says gravely, ‘to tell you the Council’s decision.’

My breath scrapes in and out of me.

For what feels like the longest time he regards us both from under his bristling grey eyebrows. Then he scowls.

‘I’m afraid they voted in favour of the Slayer peace treaty.’

Colm empties his lungs in a gasp.

Me, it’s like someone starts bashing nails into my skull. I’m stunned, yet not surprised. No way was the Council ever going to back the two of us against possible salvation. I stagger to my feet, clutching at the table and knocking my stool over.

A guard appears at the open door and levels his pulse rifle.

Ballard lifts a hand. ‘It’s all right. The young man has had a shock, but he won’t do anything foolish. Will you, Kyle?’

I look down the rifle’s barrel and shake my head.

Ballard tells the guard to stand down and waits until he ducks outside again. ‘There was nothing I could do,’ he says, sounding as tired as he looks. ‘For my part, I argued the decision was not the Council’s to make, that all Gemini fighters should vote. Difficult perhaps, yet not impossible.’ Grimacing, he levers himself up from his stool. ‘Unfortunately my suggestion was rejected.’

Colm jumps up and runs to help him, despite his injured arm. I glare at him, then catch myself. None of this is his fault.

Ballard thanks him and starts pacing about.

‘Do we get a last good meal?’ I jeer.

He stops and looks at me. His face is lined and grim. Next thing I know, he straightens up and shakes his head.

‘All my life, I’ve fought for what I believe in. I won’t quit now on the say-so of fools. I’ve no intention of handing you over.’

‘But you said –’ I shut up.

Colm looks bug-eyed too, and it takes him a few tries to get his voice working. ‘What about the peace deal?’

‘To hell with it,’ Ballard growls. ‘And to hell with the Council too, and all their weak-kneed dithering. Had they treated this farce of a peace deal with the contempt that it deserved, perhaps the damage could have been contained. Now it’s too late. All over Wrath, Gemini is tearing itself apart.’

‘You’ll let us go?’ I say, relief like a geyser inside me.

Ballard frowns at me, more sad than angry. ‘It’s not that simple. I’m afraid you’ll have to stay here a little longer.’

‘Why?’ I feel I’ve missed something.

‘Let’s just say that my situation is . . . awkward at the moment.’

Colm nods, like he follows this. Me, I’m lost. Before I can ask Ballard what he means, he unzips his jacket, pulls a leather holster from an inside pocket and places it on the table.

‘This is yours, I believe?’ He slides it towards me.

I pick the holster up. Inside it is the slug-thrower Rona gave me when I went on the run after finding out I was a nublood. A weapon from the Long Ago on Earth, it once belonged to the Saviour. Before she died, my birth mother nearly killed him with it.

‘Where’d you get this?’ I say, amazed.

‘Our forces found it at the Facility. I’d planned to give it to you under more auspicious circumstances, but needs must. Take a look, Kyle. You’ll see we’ve made some improvements.’

I pull the gun out. It’s shiny and well oiled now, no rust anywhere. I flick it open. Two chambers are loaded. Not with proper bullets mind, more like modded blaster rounds.

‘Thanks!’ I blurt out.

Ballard sighs. ‘You must both give me your word you won’t use it on your guards. They’re on your side.’

The steel grip is cold in my hand. And the chill spreads to the rest of me as I get why there’s only two rounds. One for Colm, one for me. It’s our way out, in case he and his loyal fighters can’t protect us from those who would hand us over.

Feeling numb, I give my word. So does Colm.

Ballard solemnly bumps stumps with each of us and turns to go. At the door he hesitates. ‘I’m very sorry it has come to this.’

You’re sorry? But I say nothing.

‘For now I remain in overall command of the Deeps, but those who are pro-treaty already openly call me traitor. Even among my allies many feel you two are – shall we say – a luxury we can no longer afford.’ He frowns and stares at me. ‘It’s odd, Kyle, I’m no dreamer, yet I’ve always had a sense that you were somehow the key to unlocking our future on Wrath. Only how can you do more than you have already?’ He shakes his head. ‘While I have it within my power, I will continue to protect you. I give you my word.’

With that, he steps through the doorway and is gone.

When Rona comes in later her face is drawn. I ask if she’s heard about the Council’s decision. She sighs and says she has.

‘What’s it like out in the Deeps?’ Colm asks.

‘Not good,’ she tells us. ‘Schroeder’s followers were on their way here to seize you, but Ballard’s fighters turned them away.’

‘Was that the shooting we heard last night?’ I ask.

She spills some of the soup she’s pouring into my bowl. ‘It’s got a bit of meat in it this time. Eat up now, before it goes cold.’

I gaze at her, suspicious. ‘Rona?’

Finally she meets my eye, looking so troubled I get a lump in my throat and wish I’d kept my mouth shut.

‘It’s Sky,’ she says.

My heart goes bang. ‘Is she all right? What’s happened?’

‘I’m sorry, Kyle. She’s gone.’

‘Gone? What do you mean gone?’

My foster-mother sighs. ‘Last night a windjammer launched without clearance. The winch-launcher was hacked and remote-controlled. They tried to shoot it down. It got away.’

That heavy blaster fire last night . . .

I feel dizzy, like I’ve stood up too fast.

‘No way! Sky wouldn’t clear off without me –’

Words stick in my throat as the truth sucker-punches me. Ness must have come up with the goods about her sister’s location. And here’s me, trapped and useless. A liability, that’s all.

Colm doesn’t look surprised, but clutches at straws for me.

‘Are you sure it was Sky?’

Rona slumps down on to a stool. ‘It was the Never Again, your mate Dern’s ship. He has form for clearing off when the going gets tough, I hear. Only he was found later in a ditch, tied up and gagged, a lump on his head big as a lizard egg.’

I groan. ‘Don’t tell me. Sky did it?’

She nods and tucks away a stray lock of her greying hair. ‘Dern says she poured a liquor bottle down his neck before clobbering him. He’s mad as hell. Can’t say I blame him.’

My spoon slips from my hand and clatters on the table.

‘I don’t believe this.’

I’d been sure that if push came to shove and Ballard couldn’t protect us, Sky would get off her arse and rescue us.

Colm was right though. Sky doesn’t care.

‘I’m sorry,’ Rona says, reaching for my hand.

But I’m too gutted and too fast . . . and I won’t let her have it.

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