Battle Born Read online

  “I’ll pay you separate. Don’t let Max try to claim halfsies on it.” He grinned. “Use it for a haircut.”

  Dorian rolled his eyes. “Rider in the usual place?”

  “Sure is.” Mr. Garzon threw the key at Dorian, and it blinked, recognizing his fingerprints. Dorian tossed it up, caught it, then made his way over to the hangar next door. The scud-rider wasn’t much—the cheap thing couldn’t even leave atmosphere. But Dorian had learned to fly on it. He had a soft spot for the old pile of junk.

  The key opened the warehouse doors, letting in the gray light from outside. Inside was a small, solitary aircraft—scud-riders were single-pilot puddle jumpers originally designed for monitoring coastal territories, and fitted with buoyant skids to take off and land on the water if necessary. Dorian hopped up into the rider just as the hatch creaked open. He slipped easily into the worn-out seat and shoved the key into place. The controls booted up immediately, but the engine rumbled in distress until Dorian reached out the open hatch and thumped the side of the rider hard with his free hand. Lights flickered into place on the controls and along the side of the rider’s interior. His heart thudded in his chest, the same thrill he got playing in the shelter last night, seeing all those people jumping around in the dark to his music. Flying and playing both took over his whole body. They made it so he didn’t have to think about anything else in the universe. Not his parents, not Uncle Max, not school, not anybody. He could just plug himself in like a machine and do something he wasn’t a total screw-up at.

  He eased the throttle forward, and the rider glided out of the hangar, into the gray curtain of rain. He pulled the rider over to the launchpad and slapped his palm against the glowing Ignite button. The rider jerked straight up in the air, rain spattering across the windows. Low visibility. A challenge—just the way he liked it.

  Dorian punched in his course—he had the path to the light signals memorized—and then brought up the holo-map and set it over the rain-soaked windshield. He always started with the light signal that was the farthest away, the one out in the deep ocean. It was nice to get some real flying in before he had to stop every couple of minutes and run diagnostics.

  He pulled back on the throttle, twisting it with the weight of his body, then took off following the holo’s trajectory, heading out to sea. They’d be playing somewhere around here tonight—Tomas Reynés’s boat shows were unauthorized, so you never knew the exact location until you got the message from Tomas himself. But they were always at sea, as far from the land as he could get them. No sound restrictions out there. No chance of the cops shutting you down for other reasons either.

  Dorian pushed the scud-rider up to a higher altitude, plunging into the gray rain clouds. He had no real reason to go this high, not with as short a distance as he needed to cover, but he kept climbing in altitude anyway, the rider rattling around him.

  Then he erupted out of the clouds. Sunlight poured through the windshield, drowning out the holo. Dorian straightened the rider and cruised forward, over the clouds. They looked like the ocean, gray and churning. He tapped the holo, adjusted for the sunlight. He’d already overshot the light signal.

  So Dorian yanked back on the throttle again, pulling the rider around in a tight, thrilling loop. Bits of cloud whipped up around him. Then he pointed the rider in the right direction and killed the ignition; the rider dropped with a sickening lurch, plunging him down into the clouds again. Dorian whooped with exhilaration as the g-forces of his plummet pressed against his skin. He closed his eyes, and the pressure throbbed against his temple like music.

  Then he reached down and activated the engine and pulled the rider up just as he dropped out of the clouds, swooping up, leaving a parabola of smoke in his wake. The first light signal was up ahead, close enough that he could see it through the rain-smeared windshield, a smudge of darker gray against the endless sweep of gray ocean.

  Dorian glided the rider to a stop on top of the waves, then threw the stabilizers into place. He told the hatch to open and crawled out, his whole body electrified after flying through the cloud layer.

  Rain and seawater sprayed against his face, bringing him back to his dreary reality. It was easy to feel like Brume-sur-Mer was a distant dream when you were up in a scud-rider. Sucked that he only really got to do this when Mr. Garzon needed help around the docks.

  Time to see what was wrong with these light signals.

  Dorian balanced in the hatchway, the wind whipping his hair into his face. He took a deep breath and then jumped, landing easily on the side of the light signal. The thing was dead for sure. No humming from its generator. Dorian crawled around the circumference of the signal until he found the service panel and flipped it open.

  Stopped.

  Blinked the water out of his eyes.

  No, he’d definitely seen correctly—the wiring inside the signal was nothing but crispy black twists, already washing away in the rain. Dorian slammed the panel shut. The wiring in those things was literally fried.

  He opened the panel again, trying to shield it from the rain with his body. He knew better than to stick his hands in there while it was raining, but something told him there weren’t any electrical currents to zap him anyhow. He peered inside, lighting up the blackened wiring with the light from his comm pad. It wasn’t just the wiring. The circuit board, the metal casing—all of it looked burned.

  Dorian closed the panel and took a careful step back. There didn’t seem to be any damage on the exterior of the signals. No black scorch marks. And Salome supposedly hadn’t seen anyone out here when they blinked out.

  Dorian crawled back into the rider and pulled the hatch down. He sat dripping in his seat, looking at the coordinates for the next signal glowing on the holo. Something told him he’d find the same thing there. A fire in the interior. A fried system. Why would someone knock out the signal lights? They were just there to help guide boats back into the docks—it wasn’t like they cast enough light to see by, if you were out here screwing around. Tomas didn’t even worry about them blowing his shows’ cover.

  This town is falling apart, Dorian thought, hitting the ignition and jerking the rider off the water. The whole place was a relic, a memorial to some long-ago time when it was just humans killing other humans and people still flew down here to lay in the hot sun during the dry season.

  He wondered how long until the town crumbled back into the jungle. Wondered if he’d be out of here by then.

  The rain had stopped. Victor threw open his bedroom window and stuck his head out. The air had that heavy feeling of impending rain, mixed with the salt from the beach, and there was even the faint golden glow of late afternoon sun coming around the clouds.

  He whipped out his comm pad and checked the precipitation report—it looked like they had a good three hours or so of clear weather before the rain would pick up again. Perfect.

  He pulled up Evie’s name and sent her a message: MEET ME AT THE TREE. I NEED YOUR HELP WITH THE FILM. Then he dragged his equipment out of his closet—the spotlights, the high-quality holo-camera his parents had bought him for his birthday last year, the little model of the town he’d built out of wood, and, of course, the monster.

  The monster was the star of his film, a glittering aluminum dragon he and Evie had made at her house after school. He’d designed the hardware and she’d done the software, programming the dragon so that it could fly, roar, shoot fire out of its mouth (which reminded him, he needed to grab a power cell before he left), and generally destroy his model village and terrorize his characters as needed.

  Victor’s comm pad chimed. It was Evie, and she was, unfortunately, being a drag.

  I DON’T KNOW IF I CAN COME, she wrote. DAD USUALLY DOESN’T LET ME GO OUT TWO NIGHTS IN A ROW …

  Victor sighed with frustration. BUT YOU’RE THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN FIX THE DRAGON IF ANYTHING GOES WRONG! TELL YOUR DAD IT’S PROGRAMMING STUFF!

  In Victor’s opinion, Evie’s dad was pretty unreasonable about letting
Evie be normal. Not that Victor’s parents were much better, always fussing over him since his two sisters had both joined up with UNSC, like they were more afraid he’d get killed here in the middle of nowhere than they were of his sisters getting killed fighting the Covenant. Fortunately, his parents were both at the motel tonight, which meant he had some freedom, assuming he made it back before ten o’clock.

  Another chime on his comm pad. Evie: FINE. I’LL BE THERE. DAD’S GOT A MEETING TONIGHT, SO I HAVE TO BE HOME BEFORE HE IS.

  Victor laughed. He couldn’t believe she was actually sneaking out.

  YOU WILL!!! Victor wrote back. Then he tossed all the supplies into a box and headed down to his car. It was only a five-minute drive to the banyan tree, and sure enough, Evie was waiting for him, leaning up against one of the draping vines, the strange, cloud-filtered sunset blurring the colors of everything. Perfect light, Victor thought. Although they would need to hurry.

  He didn’t bother getting out of the car, just pulled up to her and waited for her to crawl in.

  “Rebel, rebel,” he said. “Actually sneaking out this time?”

  Evie glared at him. “Just promise me we’ll be home by nine.”

  “I promise. Your dad’ll never know you slipped out.”

  Evie sighed and gazed out the window. “I was hoping I’d see another sardans cat while I was waiting.”

  Victor grinned. “Yeah, that was a once-in-a-lifetime shot, I think.”

  “Have you put it on your channel yet?”

  Victor shook his head. “I decided to work it into the footage of the concert. Pretty cool, huh?”

  “Is that what Dorian would want?” Evie lowered her voice and batted her eyes when she said Dorian’s name.

  “Stop it.” Victor swatted at her. “I don’t know where you got this crazy idea that I’m into Dorian Nguyen.”

  Evie laughed. “It’s just weird, you two talking.”

  “He likes my channel!” Victor shook his head. “Anyway, I’m tired of talking about this. We need to focus on the film. Honestly, filming that concert was kind of a distraction.”

  Evie let up then, thank god, and Victor pulled out into the road, heading toward the beach at the edge of town. He’d scoped it out a few weeks ago, for reasons that had nothing to do with Dorian Nguyen and everything to do with Saskia Nazari, not that he was going to tell Evie about that. She would never let him live it down if she knew that he’d actually gone driving around the woods on the edge of town trying to run into Saskia. He knew she hung out here—he’d seen her once or twice lounging by the rocky shoreline or winding her way through the forest. She probably lived nearby, but he wasn’t sure.

  It definitely hadn’t been one of his prouder moments. It was just that he’d failed a chemistry test and his parents had gotten after him about it, and then he’d received word that his oldest sister, Camila, had been hurt in the fighting—she was okay now, but it had been like a punch to the side of his head. And he’d been lying in his room, listening to music and feeling sorry about himself, and he just thought, Maybe I could see her, and decided to be a creep for an evening.

  It worked out, though, because while he’d been driving on those narrow, ancient forest roads, he’d stumbled across a secluded little cove, too rocky for swimming but filled with shimmering tide pools that would make a perfect location to set up his little seaside village.

  “Where are we going?” Evie asked, peering out the window. “I thought the film was supposed to take place on the beach.”

  “You’ll see.” Victor turned down another narrow road. Vines and ferns scraped against the side of his car.

  “Are we even supposed to be driving out here?” Evie asked.

  “There’s a road!” Actually, Victor wasn’t so sure of that himself, given how overgrown and crumbling the road was. “Besides, we’re here.”

  The cove looked even more spectacular in the sunset than it had the night he discovered it. Even Evie sat up and took a sharp breath, leaning against the car’s dash with wide eyes. The tide pools all glowed orange and pink, and the sky above the water was a swirl of gray clouds and brilliant light.

  “We’ve got an hour till this light runs out,” Victor said. “We better make the most of it.”

  “No kidding!”

  They climbed out of the car. The wind blowing in from the sea was cool and damp and felt like a rain cloud. Victor pulled his box of supplies out of the car’s trunk, and the two of them traipsed down to the shoreline. Victor set the box next to the largest tide pool he could find.

  “This one,” he said. “Okay, I’m going to set up the village, and you set up the dragon.”

  Evie nodded and lifted the dragon out of the box of supplies. Then she carted it over to a clear spot on the rocks and pulled out her comm pad. Victor left her to work on it while he set up the village. He tipped the box and dumped its contents out on the sand: a cornucopia of miniature wooden buildings, hand painted and installed with tiny electrical lights that were controlled by the same program Evie had designed for the dragon. The film—still currently untitled—was set on Earth, back during the pre-space-exploration era. He wanted to capture that era’s tone as best he could, from the practical effects all the way to the design of the buildings: flat and angular, with no metal reinforcements squatting on the roofs. Victor had designed the houses after spending hours on the school’s library channel, looking up old 2-D photographs of Earth housing. So much of this work could be faked with bootleg rendering software, but Victor wanted to channel his favorite indie directors by using real 3-D printed models.

  He arranged the model buildings around the edge of the tide pool, flicking bits of seaweed and rock out of the way, making sure that everything looked exactly right. He’d set the village up so many times he was able to get it done in just a few minutes, right as Evie came trotting back over with the dragon cradled in her arms, its eyes glowing bright red.

  “Got him working!” she announced. “Where do you want him?”

  “In the water, there.” Victor reached over and adjusted one last building before straightening up and surveying the whole scene. In the eerie orange light, all the pieces seemed to glow. He grabbed his holo-camera out of the box and steadied it on his shoulder. He wasn’t going to bother with the stand—he wanted that jittery look for the dragon attack.

  “Did you remember to pop in the dragon’s power cell?”

  “Sure did.”

  “Okay. Let’s do this.”

  Evie scurried over to his side, comm pad at the ready. He counted down with his fingers, hit Record, and then pointed at Evie. Immediately, her fingers flew over the comm pad. Out in the tide pool, the dragon unfolded the thin, gossamer wings Victor had made out of synthetic silk. They caught in the sea breeze and shimmered, throwing static shadows across the sunset-filled tide pool. A glow grew up from the dragon’s belly, red-hot and molten, and the wings pumped once, sending tiny ripples across the water.

  “Looks fantastic,” he breathed.

  Evie grinned at him.

  “He needs to swim toward the village.”

  Evie attacked the comm pad again, switching up the dragon’s programming.

  “Make them bigger too,” Victor called out. “Like sails.”

  Evie hit a few more keys. A sudden strong wind blew in from the ocean, bringing with it the metallic scent of rain. Victor’s muscles tightened with anxiety—the rain was supposed to hold off for a couple more hours. But then, rain always did come in fast and unexpected this time of year. They would just have to work faster.

  “How’s that?” Evie hit one final key.

  The dragon’s wings stretched to their full size, round and pale. Another warm blast of wind pushed across the beach, and the dragon jerked forward in the tide pool, wings furling and unfurling as it glided slowly toward the blinking village. Victor zoomed in on it with the camera, following its movement across the glassy, bright water. Evie had programmed it to move slowly, ominously, a threat dri
fting inexorably toward the village—

  A sudden sharp crack sliced across the beach. Victor yelped and the holo-camera slipped out of his fingers for a few horrifying seconds before his instincts kicked in and he plucked it out of the air.

  “What was that?” Evie squeaked.

  Victor pressed the camera to his chest and looked up at the sky. The sun had dropped lower toward the horizon, leaving bloody streaks in its wake. Hestia V, the gas giant around which Meridian orbited, loomed off in the west, a pale imprint of itself stamped into the heavens.

  “It was probably just thunder.” Not that he saw a single sign of a storm. But what else could it be?

  Evie smacked him hard on the shoulder. “It didn’t sound a thing like thunder. It was like something—ripping. Besides, there aren’t any clouds.”

  “What else could it be?”

  Evie fixed him with a steady, dark stare. “You know what else it could be.”

  For a moment, Victor could only breathe, his heart hammering against his chest. He thought suddenly of Camila teaching him how to fight on the beach in front of the hotel: how to throw a punch, how to handle a knife, how to shoot a gun. His other sister, Maria, had done the same when she came home. They were never on leave at the same time. But somehow they had both shown him how to handle himself if the Covenant ever showed up on Meridian.

  “When the Covenant show up,” Camila had said, the last time she was home, and he had pretended not to notice the change.

  Another crack shattered the twilight. Victor whirled around, away from the sea, toward the jungle, which loomed thick and dark and impenetrable in the twilight. No sign of Covenant ships descending through the painted sky.

  “We should go back,” Evie said.

  “It’s nothing,” Victor said, drawing up his chest. “Probably just Salome dealing with whatever caused the power failure last night. Or thunder.”

  “It’s not thunder.”

  “Fine. But it’s not—” Victor waved his hand around rather than say the Covenant. “You know. C’mon, let’s finish this scene. I’m on a deadline.”