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Two days later, Mom and Inese finished fitting the new jet with an invisibility generator. As such, it was now ready for flights outside of allied airspace, which included taking me to shooting lessons. I wasn’t fond of the idea of going into battle with a gun, but the more I knew about the weapons I was using, the less likely I’d make a fatal mistake.
“You awake in there?” Inese called through the door.
I flinched. My alarm clock went off an hour ago, but I still huddled in bed, trying to make sense of the first twelve chapters I’d read in the book the missionary gave me. I figured reading it might give me some clue regarding the time stones without researching anything that directly affected the brain seed. But this book was completely different than the textbook Jim had, or the one I brought from the Community, or even articles that discussed one religion or another. This book read like one of Jack’s comic books, but with more prose.
“Jenna?”
I wrapped the book in one of the vines on the wall and let the leaves pass it along until it reached my desk, bypassing Tim’s untouched tablet. I’d been careful to avoid the usual topics that would cause a memory attack, but since I’d stopped researching beasts, the attacks were starting to occur more frequently.
“You awake?” Metal chinked against the lock. Inese would probably be inside shortly.
“One moment.” I swung my legs off the side of the bed. Given the tendency for me to have those blasted memory attacks, I understood why she was trying to get in, but if she’d just give me a moment I could get the door.
I urged one of my vines to wrap around the door’s handle and twist.
The door swung open. Inese stepped in, one of her lock picking tools half-raised. She smirked at the sight of the vines around the handle. “Getting creative, are we?”
I nodded, sluggish and sore. It had been a late night playing the new dancing game, which Jack excelled at. I never would have imagined him hopping around like Lily, his knotted hair pulled back in a ponytail.
Inese leaned in the doorway. “If you don’t hurry up, you’re going to be late.”
I looked up sharply. “We’re going today?” I hadn’t realized Inese would make plans for training so soon. I had figured she would want to take the jet on a test flight with the invisibility generator before going long distances.
She jangled a set of keys and propped her sunglasses on her forehead. “We’ll get some shooting lessons in, and better yet—flying lessons.”
I blinked. “Seriously?” She never let anyone fly her car. Granted, now we were talking about the jet, but I’d take that as a win.
“Gwen thought it might take your mind off that research you aren’t supposed to be doing, and having a second pilot wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
I grimaced, but it was still a win. I was still getting flying lessons.
Inese grinned. “So, are you ready?”
“Let me get dressed.” I dug out my smiling tree shirt and riffled through the drawer for a clean set of pants.
“Don’t forget the pistol I gave you. I’ll bring extra ammunition.” She closed the door behind her. It didn’t take me long to get ready, and I ate breakfast on my way to the hangar. I waved at Lance as I passed. We hadn’t exactly talked much since our date in Singapore, but I was starting to think we might be able to make this work. I just had to figure out what specifically he wanted from the world he idolized in Jim’s stories, and then apply that to my own dreams about a safe, efficient Community.
Lance smiled and waved back as I hurried onward to the hangar. He was going to be training with Quin and Jack. Today’s shooting lesson would just be me, Inese, and Lily.
Lily stood inside the hangar, two pistols at her side. She grinned at me, and then at Inese, who nodded once before closing a side panel to the engine.
“All aboard,” Inese said. I clambered inside and took the seat beside Inese. Lily hung back on the bench. “The idea behind this is that if we ever need to make a quick escape, we should have more than one person who can fly. Seeing as how you’re the only one who doesn’t get sick at high speeds, I figured it should be you. I’ll explain what to do, and after Lily’s target practice, I’ll give you a shot at flying her.” Inese stroked the dashboard, beaming. “Normally you’d run through simulations first, but we don’t have the technology for that. The good news is that I can take control from the copilot’s chair.”
I nodded, giddy, and she proceeded to explain how to start the engine and prep for flight. I bounced in my seat, watching the hangar doors rumble open.
I was going to fly!
“When you start off, you want the controls like this.” She explained the letters along the side of a lever between us, one which could be set to park, hover, hybrid, and flight. She also had a joystick that could be angled to change altitude while in flight mode, but acted as the cyclic pitch while in hover mode.
“Since we have the secondary rotor system, we can basically switch between flying her like a helicopter or flying her like a jet. Helpful for taking off from a hangar as small as this one.”
My gaze darted across the control panels as I tried to follow everything. Cyclic pitch... collective pitch... joystick... My copilot’s seat had the same controls, but they weren’t active since Inese was in command. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to remember the names of any of the controls by the time she was actually ready to let me fly this thing.
“Before anything, we’ll partially extend the wings—” Inese pressed a button on the console. The jet hummed as the wings extended from underneath it, prepping the rotors for flight. “Set the flight mode to hover...” She shifted the lever between us. “Now we’re ready to take off. A lot of the systems are automated, so it’ll make switching between modes easier.”
She checked her control panels—presumably to make sure no one was in the flight path, and then lifted the lever on the left side of her chair. The jet lifted in place. “Remember, if the nose starts to yaw...”
I stared at her. “If the nose starts to what?”
She sighed. “If Liana went on missions this would be so much easier to explain.” She took a deep breath. “Sometimes the jet will start to yaw one direction or the other, turning when you don’t want it to. That’s when you use the foot pedals.”
I glanced toward my feet, to the two pedals I’d been avoiding. “Got it.”
“Now, we push the cyclic pitch forward...” The jet crawled across the hangar, gaining speed. “And once we’re clear of the hangar, we extend the wings... gain speed... switch over to flight... and now we’re flying.” She grinned, sailing smoothly between the clouds. The airship blinked as a tiny dot on the radar.
I craned my head around my backrest. Behind me, Lily clenched the edge of her seat. “You okay back there?”
Lily nodded, her lips pressed tight.
Inese continued explaining the controls, the use of the joystick, and the various levers. There was a ton of stuff to learn and, really, I’d be lucky if I could fly this thing anytime soon, let alone understand the readouts.
Not long afterward, Inese announced we were going invisible. She pointed to a button directly ahead of the levers. “Go ahead, push it.” I did, and the gray and blue controls made way for clouds and sea rushing beneath us.
I relaxed in the chair, enjoying the sensation of soaring through the air with nothing above or below me. For just a little while, I didn’t have to worry about brain seeds or beasties, or anything but clouds.
We passed across a desert expanse where the occasional critter wandered, only slowing once we reached a land pocked by craters and debris. In the distance, a half-broken building tore the skyline, sunlight gleaming off contorted steel. It was surrounded by the fragments of a city.
I swallowed hard. This city was a much lonelier version of Singapore, secluded in Australia’s Northern Territory. Coming here was a chance to see a bit of the Coalition of Freedom’s history, all while avoiding civilization and prying eyes while we tested the jet.
“Is that...” Lily’s voice broke over the rumble of the engines.
“That’s the remains of Freedom Tower.” Inese landed, shut down the engines, and handed us each a backpack. “This has water, among other things we might need.”
Low shrubbery covered the dark red sand while short eucalyptus trees provided hints of shade. A few squat animals lingered on the horizon, about the right shape for a kangaroo or wallaby. Despite being late February, the air was hot and dry, like how I’d initially imagined Egypt. I fished out one of the canteens and took a sip. Inese had packed snack bars, four bottles of water, a compass, and even beeswax lip balm in the bottom of the bag.
I eyed the supplies and pulled out a hat, then zipped the bag shut and threw it over my shoulders. “Are we camping?”
Inese adjusted her sunglasses. “No. But the bush isn’t known for being forgiving, and considering the lack of civilization around here, I want to be prepared.”
“Understandable.”
Inese gestured to the remnants of the city. “That’s where we’re headed. There’ll be some shade, and if we do run into any problems, there should be protection from the elements. Granted, you’ll want to watch for wildlife and rogue beasties, but there shouldn’t be anything we can’t handle.” She led us across the dry land and I mentally reached to the shrubs, noticing where one had additional weight on its branches. Using my power, I shook the branch. A bird flew out, startled. The bird turned into a silhouette in the sky.
“There are beasts here?” I asked.
Lily nodded. “How familiar are you with Australia’s part in the war?”
“All we were told was that Commander Rick took out the last rebel base here. I don’t even know Russia’s part in the war. Our history was very basic world history.”
Lily snorted. “The joys of censorship. Interested in hearing it?”
“Sure.” Jim’s history book was pre-Community, so I didn’t get much information out of it regarding the war.
“Long story short,” Lily explained, “Australia was ignored for the earlier part of your Community’s history. It was too far out to be of any real concern. Then the Coalition decided to build Freedom Tower. At the time, they were strong enough to hold off minor attacks, and their treaty with the Oriental Alliance kept the Camaraderie off their backs. The OA even set up a few bases here, but the area they wanted to use was too inhospitable for much else, and Australia wasn’t keen on letting them into the populated areas.
“Around 2060, or something like that, the Camaraderie got fed up with the Coalition. Several battles later, they bombed the crap out of Australia, and what had been hospitable got obliterated into no man’s land.”
“So everyone left, except for the occasional bandit.” Inese gestured to the broken tower. “Beasties were so far in-between it wasn’t worth picking them up. The OA didn’t want to rebuild, and the Camaraderie was tired of wasting resources. As for the Coalition, well, no one wanted to return. Not after so many people died.” She glanced at me over her shoulder, her dark sunglasses reflecting the bright sun. “If you want details about the people who lived here, you should hear Jim’s version of the events. He’s a better storyteller than either of us.”
A short while later, we halted at the edge of the city. Dead center, two huge chunks of the broken tower were half-buried in the sand. Inese rested her hands on her pistol holsters. “The tower used to be shaped like an ‘F.’ Not their brightest idea, but it was the age of superheroes, so it was to be expected.”
The broken tower did look like it could have been the image in our history book if it hadn’t been destroyed.
“Come on. It’ll be a good spot for target practice. Keep an eye out for beasts.” Inese drew a pistol and Lily did the same.
We crossed over cracked pavement, careful as we slid over rubble. A dented metal pot stuck out from a doorframe, scratched aluminum cans rolled across the forgotten road, and shrubs reclaimed the lawns. “This place is a ghost town,” Lily murmured, eyeing the shrubs in the lawns and staying close to Inese.
I trailed behind them uneasily. A few houses still stood, but their roofs had collapsed at odd angles. Remnants of metal statues lay across the parched earth. Then finally, the tower itself rose above us by a few stories, the rest of it in pieces on the surrounding grounds. The doors were blown off their hinges, glass still lying in fragments across scorched, dusty tile. Inese ducked her head and squeezed through the doorframe.
“Is this safe?” I asked.
“For now. I want to show you something.”
We entered a hall with a buckled ceiling and missing segments of floor. Most of the doors were burned or blown out, whole rooms in disarray. It was stuffy, with little breeze. Stuffy... like being held captive inside the Legion Spore—
I caught my breath, returned to Gwen’s chalk circle, and only moved forward again once my heart rate had steadied.
The only light in the building filtered through the broken windows. Inese tested her footsteps, careful until she stopped at the end of the hall. She motioned to a stone relief etched in the wall. “This was made by an earth elemental. See anyone you know?”
I unclipped a penlight from my bag and shone it on the sculpture. According to the brass plaque above them, these were the founders of the COF—the Coalition of Freedom. Men and women of varying age, some in simple, everyday clothing, others in uniform that resembled the costumes of comic books. I drew in a breath, gently rubbing my finger over the smooth, ash-covered plaque. The grime swept away, revealing the name underneath.
James Martin.
Jim.
His relief showed a handsome man in his late twenties who smiled, holding a book in one hand while a shiny, miniature shuttle hovered over his shoulder. Like most of the founders, he looked to be in extremely good shape, despite sitting in a wheelchair with a cast on one arm.
I started to examine the other figures when the crack of a gunshot echoed through the hallway. I jumped as Inese fired past me. A scuffling sound of feet slapped the tile and I readied my vines, hesitantly moving across the floor.
Something fleshy dropped from the ceiling, smacking my shoulders and throwing me to the ground. I shrieked, sending my vines above me for protection, but the beastie squawked at us and half-flew, half-ran into the darkness of the decrepit hall.
Lily pulled me to my feet. “You okay?”
I nodded, my heart still pounding. Apparently a flight beast had made this their home.
“Come on,” Inese said. “I just thought you might like to see the tower where Jim used to work.”
“Sure,” I said, following her back to the entrance.
Deep breaths... we weren’t under attack...
I stopped at the front doors. On either side of the doors were concrete bases engraved with “2021.” I traced my fingers along the dirt-covered numbers, then hurried to catch up. The tower might have been broken, but what the rebels started fifty-six years ago hadn’t yet ended.
