Beyond the Sky: Chapter 25
Confrontation
The makeshift door to Udan’s office slammed shut.
“I am disturbed,” he went around behind his desk, “by your lack of information regarding your abduction by the Black Triangle, and the apparent inconsistencies in your story.”
Velli had half the mind to open the communicator Benson had given her and call for help then and there, or try to enlighten Udan. But that’d just as easily get her branded a crazy-case, and the alien device proof of spying.
Udan noted her non-answer. “You say they threw you off over a field.”
“I guess I wasn’t who they wanted. Thankfully there was a hay pile below.”
“Yet numerous witnesses say the Triangle flew almost straight up, and never returned near to the ground. It was not seen anywhere else in the province, at least not that day.”
“I... I can’t say, I don’t remember it all that well. They had that thing, the metal tube that puts you to sleep.”
“You were missing for over a day. No one saw or heard from you, and I get the distinct impression if I start questioning farmers outside Trez Yafan, none will remember a JNF girl falling from the sky. You met Naaca at the market, passing at least three of our shelters.”
“I needed to make sure—”
“Enough.” He lifted a hand. The other remained in easy reach of his sidearm. “I want to know why you’re lying.” A less-trusted fighter might’ve already been driven away and given a warning to never return. Or simply killed, and buried in a shallow grave. It happened before. People tried not to remember when their suspicions had proved wrong. “Are you being blackmailed by Mespreth? We can help.”
“It’s not Mespreth!” she exclaimed, on reflex. “The Black Triangles, that is.”
“How can you be so sure?” He stared, then his eyes widened. “You learned what they are! The things with one thumb and no tail!”
“I can’t say. I mean, I could, but you’d call me crazy.”
“Try me.”
Velli almost did. But what had Captain Benson said? How would Udan react, and who else might he tell? “I’m sorry, sir, I can’t. It needs to stay secret.”
“So now you’re taking orders from someone else? Or will you tell me the Black Triangle is sent by Headquarters?”
“I’ll tell you everything, eventually. But I swear to you on my brother’s life this is not treason, or anything dangerous to the Front. The... Triangle Masters are trying to help us. In a way.”
“They told you about the bombs, didn’t they?”
Velli let her ears rise a bit.
“That sounds awfully close to treason.” He folded his arms.
“You have doubts about that, you said it yourself! If we were working on that, why bother kidnapping Princess Takji at all?”
“Only a handful of people—outside this unit, that is—know about the bomb plot. The kidnapping got too much momentum, we’d have had to reveal ours if we wanted to stop it.”
“And then word would reach Mespreth.”
“You’ll understand if I’m close to ordering your indefinite confinement, so long as you withhold the truth.”
“You’ve known me since I could barely walk. It would never, ever betray the Cause, whether to the Occupation or anyone else!”
“Nor were you all that patriotic. You were happy to collaborate with the Regime until it took your family.”
“I was wrong then. Confine me to camp, have someone watch me or declare I can’t leave alone, I don’t care. I’m just asking for trust—stop this insane plot and, in the end, I promise it will all make sense.”
“In the end? I’ll hold you to that.”
These low human ceilings were not made for Leapers, Takji’s first bounds out of the engine room sent her head bashing against the light-panels amid strings of curses and explicatives. Correcting quickly, she kept her neck low and jumped off a wall to round a corner. Alien crewmembers yelped and split.
She needed stairs. Where was that door? There! Back towards the ship’s center, she pounded on the little control stripe until it slid open, and vaulted the railing. The top was two decks top.
They’d make the escape pods easy to find, she realized. Like exit emblems or traffic signs, brightly-colored and readily apparent. Trouble was the alien pictographs—human body structures and ways of thinking were different enough their meaning would take time to puzzle out. An orange arrow pointed right, she tried that.
This hallway was narrower, and deserted. Ranks of hatches lined each side, with more pictographs below each one’s window. She leapt to the nearest and turned its lever as the diagrams indicated. It swung up and open. Inside was a second hatch, like a more-advanced cousin to the airlocks and docking ports aboard Mespreth reconnaissance satellites, it opened inward into a small compartment with human-shaped seats. Writing on the wall above a display panel was probably operating instructions.
The pictographs gave an abridged version: close the hatch, strap in, press this button and pull that large orange lever overhead. The seats wouldn’t fit her, she folded up the bottom of one, strapped in by her arms, and hoped for the best. She pulled the lever, and nothing happened.
She pulled it again. What did she miss? The outer hatch! Right now, the hallway would be left open to space if the pod launched. Unstrapping and opening the inner hatch, she reached up and swung the second one down. It locked shut with a satisfying clunk. Repeating the process, she tried the lever again. Still nothing.
Tap-tap-tap.
Craning her neck, she saw Captain Benson smiling down from behind two sets of hatch windows.
“The pods can’t launch with the observation shield deployed.” He finished opening the inner hatch. “They’d fire right into it.”
The guardian drone, controlled by Carter, floated beside him. “And where would you have landed, if it did work?”
Takji climbed out. “Somewhere with allies? I wasn’t thinking that far ahead.”
“I informed you of the pods deliberately, to see what you would do.”
“Figures. I had to try, for honor’s sake.”
“Now that that’s satisfied,” Benson said. “Can we get back to work? Velli’s report just came in.”
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