37The difference in the camp following Jovan and Djen’s split is like night to the previous weeks’ day. Friendships are repaired, cooperation returns, and morale, though still shaken, is very much on the rise. Enthusiasm for the war is renewed, and before long, time that had been spent in futile squabbling is replaced with launcher training, stunner practice, and fitness conditioning. Kieran embarks on an ambitious undertaking to map out all of the SkyLift routes on Iolanthe; Zane, Divya, and Megumi establish emergency supply caches throughout the jungle; and Trey, Xylla, and Ri take a ride downriver to scout potential territory should we ever have to flee in our escape craft. Mercury and Hegit create a new program to decode the information they pulled off the weather equalizer recorders. The boost in productivity is nothing short of amazing, but while I wish I could take credit for it, the true architect behind it all is Vida.
Her newfound loyalty makes all the difference in the world. While before she was a reluctant ally at best and a thorn in my side at worst, Vida is now the best NCO any general could hope to have. A born leader, she can motivate anyone to do practically anything, and I have no doubt she’s the impetus behind so many students’ sudden urge to take on projects or train for missions. I’m so impressed with her that I begin delegating some of my more mundane responsibilities to her, and before long, she’s overseeing to the day-to-day running of the camp, allowing me to focus fully on the war effort. Though our weeks of strife wasted both time and opportunities, our laxity has also served to make the enemy complacent, relaxed in the knowledge that their heightened security measures have mostly won the day. Now it’s time to prove them wrong.
I get my first opportunity when an SD examination of the facility housing the spare solar cells uncovers an unexpected weakness—a hole in the roof caused by an overzealous tree wrapping the building. My multipronged attack is back on, as I lead a team up the tree and down through the hole to deal with the spare parts while teams led by Vida, Trey, and Kieran go after the landing pads’ solar arrays. All three teams do extensive damage before getting chased off by the enemy. My team leaves the entire warehouse a pile of rubble.
High on our victory, we follow up with two more big strikes—going back for the solar cells on the remaining two landing pads, and forcing a two-day shutdown of the water treatment plant by sabotaging the filters. Production in the underground halts for three days, and power is cut to large sections of Bunkers 2 and 4 as they deal with the fallout from our destruction. Even once they resume production, several nonessential areas are kept on emergency power only.
The enemy retaliates, sending squatters after us and locking us out of the enviro-shield after each strike, but to no avail. With our knowledge of the forest, we lose our pursuers easily within the dense greenery, and no matter how many times they lock us out, we always find a way back in. After the third time we lose access, I make a mental note to see if we can come up with a more permanent solution to the enviro-shield problem. However, any thoughts of the shield immediately fly from my head when the news comes through:
Mercury and Hegit have finally decoded the intel from the flight recorders in the downed weather equalizers.
It’s a small but select group that assembles by the kitchen tree to hear their report. Along with me are Vida, Zane, Trey, Megumi, and Kieran. Mario is the final member, trailing along behind me like a living embodiment of my conscience, a silent presence who takes pains to make sure she’s never too far from my sight.
Looking uncharacteristically nervous, Mercury clears his throat and tentatively begins. “We went through the data from the weather equalizer, and, well . . .”
“It’s not good,” Hegit puts in when he fails to continue.
My eyes narrow. “Define not good.”
A slight pause ensues as the two exchange a look I can’t quite decipher—a silent war over who has to break the news, perhaps, or maybe they’re just trying to find the words to explain what they’ve found. It’s Mercury who takes a deep breath and continues.
“According to the data we got from the recorders, both equalizers went down after sustaining massive solar-electric jolts. The energy caused overloads in the equalizers’ power matrices, which short-circuited their propulsion systems and fried the main command units. Without the propulsion systems to keep them aloft, the equalizers simply dropped.”
“Aren’t there built-in safeties to prevent that sort of thing?” Trey puts in. “A backup propulsion system or something?”
Merc shrugs. “Sure. In fact, it was the safeties that slowed the equalizers in their final descents before crashing. If not for those, we would all be dead, and there would be significantly larger craters where they fell. However, the safeties are mainly there to prevent catastrophe should an equalizer actually go down. They can’t do anything for a fried command unit.”
I nod in understanding, my eyes involuntarily flicking to the sky as I consider the information. “Do you have any idea what could deliver a sol-tric jolt big enough to overload a weather equalizer?”
Silence fills the air, followed by another of Merc and Hegit’s enigmatic exchanges. A bad feeling creeps into the pit of my stomach. Without speaking, the two glance up into the sky, their eyes on the same thing, and suddenly I know.
The bad feeling turns into a knot of cold, hard dread. Slag. “It was the planetary net, wasn’t it?”
At Hegit’s affirmation, the others explode.
“The planetary net!”
“How could that be?”
“Well, I suppose they’re both up in the sky . . .”
I shake my head. Even I’ve taken enough Terra Bio to know that the answer is well-nigh impossible! The net and the equalizers exist in completely different layers of the atmosphere. There’s no way the two should even come near each other, let alone collide . . . unless something is not where it’s supposed to be. The equalizers have been in place for well-on seventy years, since the earliest stages of terraforming, which can only mean—
“The planetary net was mislaid.”
“We believe so,” Hegit agrees. “While every planet has its own unique net pattern based on its size and biochemistry, normally the net is too high up in the atmosphere to be seen from ground level with the naked eye. The fact that we can see it is a good indication that either it was laid too close to the planet or the generators were seeded too densely—maybe both.”
“That’s not all we found,” Mercury adds. “We were able to use the codes from the downed equalizers to hack into the rest of the network, and it turns out that these two weren’t the first ones to go down. Equalizers have been dropping across Iolanthe for weeks now, forced out of the sky by collisions with the net, abnormal weather patterns, and even lightning strikes.”
“No wonder the weather has been so strange lately,” Mario murmurs, and I suddenly realize I’m not the only one to have noticed the odd changes affecting Iolanthe.
“It’s only going to get worse,” Mercury warns. “All the data shows that the problem is escalating over time, not diminishing. The more equalizers that fall, the more unbalanced the climate becomes; and the more unbalanced the climate becomes—”
“The more equalizers fall.” I nod. It all makes sense now. The weather equalizers are a crucial part of the terraforming process for any planet. In the early stages of transformation, they convert the atmosphere from its native mix of gases into one capable of sustaining human life. Once the new atmosphere is complete, they create the weather patterns required for the planet’s designated climate—and not just create them, but maintain them.
The thunderstorms, the rising temperature, the strange plant and animal mutations, even the dead solar-flits—these aren’t the sources of several smaller problems, but rather the symptoms of one much bigger problem. The Navy screwed up the net, and whether it was due to simple carelessness or outright sabotage, Iolanthe is the one who will ultimately pay the price.
We are the ones who will ultimately pay the price.
“Can the equalizers we found be fixed?” I finally ask.
Hegit ponders the question, then shrugs. “Maybe, if we cannibalized the parts from some of the other fallen equalizers, yeah, we could do it. But we’d only be able to get one or two back up, not enough to make any appreciable difference in the situation.”
I nod, disappointed though not surprised. Turning my head in a slow circle, I gaze at the forest around me. Once upon a time I didn’t know a cocobolo from a cecropia. I cared nothing for the planet I’d been exiled to and even less for the Rainforest that inhabited it. Now every tree, vine, and flower, whether native or terraformed, friend or foe, is familiar in my eyes. Though circumstances may have forced me here, this Rainforest has long ceased to be simply a place to survive.
It’s my home.
I run my hand lightly over the bole of the Iona tree. Even the shallowest glance reveals that the ominous changes Vida and I noted in the woods a few weeks ago have not just persisted but gotten worse. The Ionas, once the stately rulers of the jungle, have sickened, their paper-thin sheets of soft bark mutating and morphing into brittle flakes that crumble to ash at my touch. Razor vines are yellowing, raptors are listless and slow to attack, and the yielding sponginess of the Illyrians has hardened and dried. Shrubs are wilting and flowers lie dead on their vines, and the brilliant verdancy of the forest has paled into a sickly, unnatural color only made more unsightly by the heavy black sap clinging to everything, native and Tellurian alike. It’s a hue I’ve never seen in this jungle before, and yet I recognize it all the same.
Death.
Iolanthe is dying, and there’s not a thing in the universe we can do about it.
Drumming my fingers along my thigh, I think about the possible ramifications of the situation. “How long?”
“For the equalizer network to fail?”
“For Iolanthe to fail.”
At my clarification, his face falls, and it’s clear he knows that by asking how long Iolanthe has, what I’m really asking is:
How long do we have?
At the unspoken questions, Mercury frowns. “Hard to say. There are too many unknowns to calculate. Could be ten months, could be ten years, could be ten thousand years, for all we know.” Merc hesitates. “Or . . .”
“Or?” I prompt when he fails to continue.
Mercury shrugs, an ineffectual gesture that only serves to amplify the frightened helplessness in his eyes, then finally finishes.
“This could be the beginning of the end.”
Over the course of the next few weeks, we do our best to put Merc’s ominous words from our minds. As frightening as the possibility may be, we all know there’s nothing we can do to stop whatever’s coming . . . and yet the more we try to forget it, the more proof we see of Iolanthe’s approaching demise. Withering plants and dying foliage, sick and deformed animals whose strange mutations are overshadowed only by their even stranger behavior, weather that oscillates drastically between terrible storms and brow-beating heat.
A storm hits us—the worst I’ve ever seen in my years on Iolanthe. Thunder shakes the sky, so loud its vibrations reverberate through my skin, while jagged forks of lightning shoot up the night with spikes of silver and white. It strikes a massive tree nearby, and the upper reaches explode, sending tons of blackened debris flying in every direction. Terrified, all we can do is huddle together in our tents, hoping to Iolanthe that whatever lightening rod it chooses next, it won’t be us.
The storm ends, eventually, leaving in its wake a whirlwind of destruction. Debris is everywhere, littering the grass, the tents, even the river. A strange sort of scum lies across the water, filling the pond with a truly putrefying odor only intensified by the growing heat. Soon after, insects hatch from within the scum—bizarre, mutated things with disjointed limbs and pulsating bodies. They swarm through our camp, buzzing above our heads in a thick black cloud for three days before dropping from the air in droves—dead. Their demise, as disturbing and grotesque as it is, comes as a relief to us all. We clean up our camp, tossing bodies into the woods by the bucketful. The storms subside, and even the terrible heat abates, and for a short time, it seems as though things are back to normal.
Then two days later, the first few people start getting sick.