28Within hours of our little attack, it’s official: every toilet, shower, and sink in the underground bunker has completely backed up. Sewage, both human and industrial, is spilling out in every direction, forced back from whence it came by the overwhelming tide of gravity now that there are no pumps in operation to thwart it. Everything below is chaos. Squatters run every which way, panicked expressions on their faces as they wade knee-deep through the sewage and try frantically to figure out what went wrong—and more importantly, how to fix it.
I share footage nabbed from the smart film in the bunker walls (which Mercury has set up to allow me to wirelessly access), passing around feeds of appalled-looking squatters standing on chairs and perched on tabletops, even the most hardened-looking seemingly loathe to step in the nasty brew roiling just below their feet. Not that I blame them. The human sewage is bad enough; I can’t even imagine what sort of truly hideous byproducts from their operation might be lurking in that cesspool.
The others can’t believe their eyes.
“Do you see that?”
“No way! That water has to be half a meter deep, at least!’”
“Uh, hello? That ain’t water! Bet they wish it was though.”
“Jeez, it’s gotta stink in there!”
“I can’t believe we did that!”
At that, a chorus of yeahs breaks out, followed by a round of clinking glasses. I stand on the fringes of the group, a smug grin twisting my lips as I watch the others. Though half-light is almost over, the party has just begun. A pseudo-bonfire made out of half a dozen of our strongest lanterns sits at the center of the camp, and now those who went on the op stand in the flickering light and rehash the mission in all its glorious detail while the rest hang, spellbound, on their every word.
“You should have seen it when those nests went in! Sparks everywhere! I couldn’t even see, it was so bright!”
“Seriously, it was like the fireworks on Discovery Day! I thought the whole shed would blow up!”
“Wow, really?”
I smile ruefully. With every telling, the mission only grows in difficulty and danger, and I have no doubt that by the end of the night, everyone in camp will have heard the details so many times they’ll be half convinced they were there too.
“. . . and that’s when the fire broke out. You should have seen it—flames everywhere!”
“Oh my stars, weren’t you scared?”
“Me? Nah. The others were, but luckily, I was able to fight off the fire long enough to get everyone to safety.”
Wait, what? Cocking my head, I listen as Jovan proceeds to spin a tale in which he single-handedly fought off a veritable inferno while simultaneously carrying half the team to safety. I frown, my consternation only growing as his part in the mission continues to balloon while mine decidedly shrinks.
The final capper comes when he leans in confidentially to Amilee and Djen saying, “And just between us, the pumps? Well.” He shrugs modestly. “That was my idea.”
“Seriously? Wow!”
Annoyance shoots through me at the outright lie. Typical Jovan! Always ready to take credit whether it’s due or not.
I take a breath, momentarily tempted to speak up and set the record straight, then slowly let it out. As irritating as his presumption is, the fact is Jovan’s selling my war for me. Everywhere I look, all I see is awe and admiration. He’s making them want to be a part of this fight, a part of these missions. Even the holdouts look impressed, their eyes alight and heads nodding in spite of themselves, and I have a feeling that it won’t be long before their doubts evaporate and they’re in the fray with the rest of us. In fact, out of everyone here, there’s only person who doesn’t look happy about the mission’s success.
Mario.
She sits by herself on a small camping stool just outside the main group, arms wrapped protectively around her chest, the very picture of one on the outside looking in as she grimly watches the celebration going on around her.
I frown, hating the fact that, for the first time since I came to this misbegotten planet, Mario and I are, if not on opposite sides, exactly, at least not on the same side. She was my first friend here—my only friend, really. When Vida decided she hated me almost on sight and the other girls followed her lead, it was Mario who befriended me, Mario who championed me, Mario who brought the others around with nothing more than a gentle smile and her implacable surety that the inherent goodness of people would eventually win out. I’d thought her actions to be social suicide, but against all odds, she turned out to be right. We’ve been friends ever since, but now?
Now I’m not so sure anything can take away those heated words we spoke when I first announced we were going to war all those weeks ago.
“You can’t do this! War is wrong. Violence is wrong. If we start down this path, there’ll be no going back.”
“Oh yeah? Try telling that to the Spectres.”
“The Spectres aren’t here right now; we are. For the first time since the invasion, we finally have some semblance of security, of peace, and now you would endanger us all over again?”
“It’s not like that, Mario. I won’t force anyone who doesn’t want to to fight—and we’ll be careful! Everything we do will be planned and orchestrated down to the letter. The Specs won’t get anywhere near this camp. You’ll still be safe, I promise!”
Silence, then, “I don’t believe you.”
My chest tightens at the memory, and even removed from space and time, I can still feel the sting of those words. A rift opened up between us that day, a chink in the universe between her and me, and even now, over four weeks later, I can still feel it hovering invisibly between us. I would do almost anything to make things right between us, but I fear the only thing that can close this gap is the one thing I can’t give.
As if hearing my thoughts, Mario gives her head a slight shake, and even from here I can see the disapproval limned in the tight lines of her face. Maybe she didn’t root for us to fail, but she can’t condone our success. She can see the writing on the wall. She knows that with this triumph, any hopes she tendered that this war might come to an end before it ever really started have been permanently dashed. This group is mine now, sold on a vision and paid for with a victory, and now nothing short of an all-encompassing win or a catastrophic loss can end what I’ve begun.
Around me, the others continue their revels as Evelaine begins her final drop toward the horizon, and it’s only now that Mario quietly rises from her stool and slips away, as though she was merely waiting for the cover of darkness to hide her retreat.
A shadow falls over me as I watch her go. I’d thought our first battle to be a perfect victory, all of us in and out with barely a scratch. And yet as I watch her disappear into the lengthening shadows, I can’t help thinking that while no one was infected or killed, we did end up with a casualty after all.
Our first battle won, I immediately set about planning the next attack. As tempting as it may be to rest on our laurels for days, even weeks, I know now’s not the time to relax. Morale is running high, and with most everyone excited to see what comes next, all it will take is another win to take the fledgling anticipation running through the camp and turn it into real momentum. To that end, I lead our second raid a mere two days later, taking a team of five out to a relatively remote but still vital target: one of the primary bunker exhaust vents.
Set into the ground at strategic points around the seven terraforming bunkers, these vents were created to expel excess heat and other gaseous byproducts. Since they’re mostly located in forested areas, each vent has a set of two enviro-shield generators to protect it from the local flora and fauna. Lucky for us, it never occurred to TruCon to replace the ancient terraforming tech with updated generators—but then, why would it? Even when we were at war with Telluria once upon a time, a backwater like Iolanthe was the last target the Alliance would have thought to hit. Who could’ve foreseen that the Specs would invade and a group of half-cocked teens from the local academy would decide to wage war on an operation fifteen times their size?
I stand as near the lattice-covered vent as I dare, chin lifted and neck straining as I attempt to stare down into the dark void below. Pearl-gray smoke billows up from the five-meter-wide hole in translucent waves so hot they make even the jungle’s normal eighty-five-degree heat feel reasonable. Even the rain, misting lightly down over the forest, doesn’t do much to cut the heat.
Fanning myself with my shirt, I take a step back and shift my eyes to Mercury, who’s currently standing by one of the vent’s two enviro-shield generators—protected from physical tampering, of course, by its own shield. “How’s it coming?” I ask.
Merc fiddles with his chit some more. “I’ve wirelessly linked to the generator, and I’m dealing with the security. Another second, and . . . got it!”
A moment later, the soft hum of the generators dies and the rain-gilded curve of the shield flickers and goes out. Shovels in hand, the rest of us immediately get to work, digging up the generators and loading them onto small anti-grav sleds for the trip home.
I glance at the empty holes where the two generators once sat, then at the vegetation hanging overhead, and quietly snicker. With its constant growth, the Iolanthian canopy sheds like a cat. By the time the enemy realizes these generators are gone, they’re going to have one hell of time digging out all of the vegetation and debris that will have lodged in there. Whether it slows or even halts their operation remains to be seen, but if nothing else, it’ll be a huge pain in their collective ass. And once we hit some of the other exhaust vents, we’ll have enough enviro-shield generators to create our own protective shield around the camp. Talk about two birds with one stone.
A cheer goes up when we arrive back at camp with our new generators. Just the thought of soon having an enviro-shield surrounding the camp is enough to make everyone sleep better at night.
With our test run a success, I send additional teams out to more vents in the vicinity over the course of the next week. Whatever Mercury did to disable the security must have worked; not only do we encounter no resistance at the other vents, but a quick trip back to the first vent reveals that no one has yet replaced the generators—if they’ve even discovered their absence. Though it’s only been a week, vines and creepers have already begun to overgrow the unprotected vent, and I have no doubt that it’ll only be a matter of days before the entire thing is completely blocked.
“The forest doesn’t waste any time, does it?” Zane comments with a laugh.
“No, it doesn’t,” I agree with a wry smile.
We make a final pass around the vent, looking for anything amiss, but find nothing. No footprints, no shifted debris—nothing to indicate the enemy has ever been here. Satisfied our handiwork has as yet gone undetected, I nod in the direction of camp, and we gather up our stuff. I’m shouldering my pack in preparation for the final run home when something red and gold goes darting past my face.
I stop, surprised. It’s a solar-flit, like the ones I saw by the riverbank what feels like eons ago. Like the ones I saw lying dead in the field around the terraforming shed.
Relief flickers through me. So they didn’t all die. Although . . .
I twist my head to the side, examining it. Something about it seems . . . different. The wings, perhaps, are bigger, or maybe the body is smaller. A thin, translucent film covers the wing panels, making the bright jewel-like colors appear strangely flat.
I watch it alight on the bole of a nearby Iona tree, and it’s only as it tries to lift unsuccessfully from the bark once more that I see the black sap oozing from the trunk in a sticky trickle. Dark and viscous, it creeps along the bark so slowly it seems almost immune to gravity. Though I usually know better than to touch strange forest life, I reach out and gently tug the flit away, releasing it back into the air as my finger slides lightly across the sap.
The sap comes away from the tree almost reluctantly, smearing the tip of my index finger in a dense coat. Lifting it to my face, I turn my pointer left and then right, examining the heavy resin. It’s black, a hue so absolute it rivals the depths of space itself, and—when I take a cautious sniff—seems to be emitting a peculiar odor. Not sweet, not woody, not spicy, not earthy—not any of the scents I’m accustomed to smelling out here on a daily basis—but . . . bitter, almost. Like a river poisoned from upstream, its water already tainted as it continues to flow on down the channel.
I purse my lips in thought, trying to recall anything from those long-ago Terra Bio classes that might explain this, but my mind comes up empty. Nodding to the tree, I ask Zane, “You ever seen anything like this before?”
He peers at the trunk and frowns. “No, have you?”
“No, never.” A twinge of uneasiness flutters in my stomach.
“Maybe it’s some sort of adaptation,” he suggests after a moment. “A mutation, like we saw all the time at the academy.”
“I don’t know, maybe. Probably,” I allow. “But I’ve never seen a mutation like this before. Not here.”
“What are you saying? You think it’s a problem?”
“I don’t know. It’s just . . . the plants in the settlements were adapting to all the herbicides being used on them. That’s hardly the case here. So if they are adapting, what are they adapting to?”
Zane doesn’t have an answer for that any more than I do. I rub the resin between my thumb and index finger. There’s something wrong here. The adaptations I saw in town could be strange, but somehow, they still made sense, at least on an intuitive level. Not this. The resin has an oily feel to it, an unnatural foil to its usual stickiness. It’s as though whatever it’s become, it’s not entirely tree sap anymore.
Seized with a sudden compulsion, I scrub my finger furiously on the side of my shorts, wanting nothing more than to get the sap off me. It doesn’t want to leave my finger any more than it wanted to leave the tree, and even after my frantic strokes, a thin film still covers my fingertip. I try to ignore it—compared to the sweated-on grime covering my skin, a little sap should be nothing—but its presence seems to hang on me like a nagging worry you can’t quite shake.