Empress of a Thousand Skies(66)
“Help you?” he repeated, as if the idea had never occurred to him. “My people are being rounded up. Taken to some secret prison. Some rumors say they’re being experimented on. Help you when I have to beat back your army every hour of every day?”
Rhee felt a flare of anger. She hadn’t come all this way just to hit another dead end. “I’m the last remaining princess of the Ta’an dynasty. I’m the only person who can keep the universe from war. If you help me stay alive, if you give me shelter, I will find a way to win the throne back. I can still stop the war. I swear I will keep your people safe.”
He was silent for a bit. “It isn’t true,” he said.
“What?” Rhee asked, confused. “That I can take the throne?”
He looked at her, finally. “No,” he said. “That you’re the last princess.” His eyes were very blue, like chipped ice. “You aren’t. Your sister, Josselyn . . . she’s alive too.”
TWENTY
ALYOSHA
JETH was right. The broadcast tower was unbreachable. A prewar structure made of brick with a narrow staircase winding to the top. Aly could see it through the tiny vertical windows that ran up the tower side. One way in and one way out—with an NX droid standing guard at the base. Pinched speaker grill and narrow infrared eyes, like their faces were designed to look constipated.
The actual satellite dish, though, that was a different story. It was two hundred meters across—and even though it was built in to a massive sinkhole, it still rose above the ground by another fifty meters, taller than a ten-story building. It was accessible via two service ladders, and these, too, were guarded.
But the UniForce hadn’t bothered posting guards anywhere else around it, which was either careless or cocky or a little bit of both. Maybe the army didn’t think it could serve any use to anyone. It was a strategic misstep that they hadn’t just blown the thing up. It’s what Aly would’ve done.
Then again, he felt like making a lot of things explode lately.
Now Aly, Kara, and Pavel crouched on the north side—the farthest point possible from the tower, hidden by the dish itself.
“Jeth’s not coming,” Aly said. He looked at Kara. She poked at one of the levers on the machine he’d built in the past couple of hours. He wondered if she thought he was some sort of nerd. Anything he made in the Wray got kicked around or stolen.
“Shut up already.” She didn’t sound mean, just distracted. Aly knew she was thinking about her mom. He’d asked if Kara was okay earlier, but she’d just pursed her mouth into a straight line and shook her head. “He’s coming. Definitely. If he’d ratted us out they would’ve come for us by now.” Just then, Jethezar came into view, glancing behind him casually. Kara gave Aly a told you so look.
Jethezar broke into a sprint as soon as the tower was out of view.
“Nice of you to show,” Aly said when Jeth dropped to a knee beside him.
“Yeah, sorry I’m late, I was busy trying not to die.” He pulled a shrink-wrapped plastic bag out of his waistband and threw it in front of Aly. “That touched my butt crack. I don’t even feel bad about it.”
“Gross,” Kara said. Her face opened up into an almost-smile, which made Aly feel stupid amounts of happy—but annoyed him, too, because he hadn’t been the one to make her smile.
“Holy taejis, we’ve been separated barely long enough for me to steal a supply or two and take a dump,” Jeth said, pointing to the machine. “You built this from all the stuff I pulled out of your pockets?”
It was just a small platform with a stand and some other things. Aly was still trying to calculate how far back to pull the lever for it to force the spring.
“Pavel had to give up some pieces too. For the greater good,” Kara said, raising an invisible glass.
The droid hinged open the front of his inner compartment and showed how half of his attachments were missing. “Worth it,” Pavel said. Aly felt a twinge of pain. Pavel had learned that phrase from Vin.
Aly picked up the corner of the bag. He made a show of wiping it on the grass while giving Jeth the finger, then ripped it open. Immediately a twist of strings as thin as shoelaces expanded and grew quickly, until it looked like a massive, coiled snake. Compressed synthicone rope, courtesy of the UniForce.
“Good looking out, Jeth,” Aly said.
“You can thank me after it works.” Jeth looked up. From here the satellite dish blocked out half the sky. It was a monolith. It’d been built so people could talk across planets, maybe even understand each other. Depressing to think all it’d been used for in the past few years were some DroidVision reruns.
But today they’d see something worthwhile.
“It’ll work.” Kara ran her fingers alongside the metal edge. There were flecks of blue polish on her nails, and for some reason, he thought it made her cooler, out of his league. “And he’s right, you know?” she said to Aly. “It’s pretty incredible you built this.”
Aly shrugged and ducked his head. He made himself busy by looping the rope through Pavel’s claw attachment and setting it on the platform. He could barely spell, couldn’t draw for taejis or hold a tune. But sometimes he thought in blueprints, like he’d get an idea and see everything fitting together, all the little pieces encased, the edges smoothed, the hinges oiled. It embarrassed him, sometimes, how his mind didn’t work like anyone else’s.