“Whatever it is, it’s coming at us from all angles!” I shouted.
“Losing control,” Kasha announced calmly, as if she were actually not losing control. “Twenty feet. We’re over land.” “Put it down!” Boon called.
Kasha dropped the bottom out. We half fell, half descended under control. I grabbed on to anything I could find to brace for the impact. We were hit one last time. The force knocked the gig onto its side. We were so low, the overhead rotor hit the ground and tore apart.
“Cover up!” I shouted.
Boon and I huddled down into the cockpit, desperate to protect ourselves from flying shrapnel. Kasha didn’t flinch. She maintained control until the end. The gig hit the ground with a violent thud that felt as if it shook my teeth loose. We were down. Dazed, but down. What followed was a jumble of hands and feet and paws and fur. The crystal engines whined louder for a few seconds more, then calmed down. We weren’t moving anymore. I took mental and physical inventory. Was I alive? Yes. Was anything broken? I didn’t think so. What about the others?
“Kasha? Boon?”
“I’m all right,” Kasha answered.
“I can’t move my arms,” Boon announced, scared. “I’m trapped.”
The gig was on its side. The rotor was gone. The side rotors were winding down. The fuselage walls were crushed in around us. We were all still in our seats, held in by seat belts.
“We gotta get out of this,” I said.
No sooner did we start to pull ourselves out of the wreck, than the scene turned chaotic. The attack came from everywhere. We were descended upon by a group of gars that screamed and yelled to intimidate and confuse us. They didn’t have to bother. I was plenty confused as it was. I have no idea how many there were. Ten? A hundred? They wore hoods, much like the gars I had first encountered on my original visit to Black Water.
“Friends! We’re friends!” I shouted, but I didn’t think they heard me. Or understood. Or cared. They were too caught up in their attack. They moved quickly, as if not wanting to let us get our wits back. As chaotic as it seemed, I got the feeling that it was being orchestrated. I guess you’d call it organized chaos.
They first went after Boon. They violently pulled out the chunk of fuselage that had pinned him inside and dragged him out of the gig. He didn’t fight back.
“We’re here to help you,” he called in desperation. “Listen to me!”
They didn’t. Boon was a klee. Klees were bad. That’s all they cared about. Kasha was yanked from her pilot seat and pulled away the same as Boon. She didn’t try to speak. She knew it was futile. As the gars hauled her out, they cheered at having bagged another klee.
Finally they came for me. I felt hands reaching in to grab at me, and 1 was rudely pulled from the wreck. They dragged me out and threw me on the ground next to the destroyed gig. I think it wasn’t until then that somebody realized they weren’t dealing just with klees. I heard somebody shout, “It’s a gar!”
The chaotic screaming suddenly stopped. A confused rumble followed, as word spread that a gar had been pulled from the wreckage. Nobody made a move for me. Instead, they formed a protective circle, staring in at me like I was some kind of freak. My cheek was on the dirt, which meant a lot of dirt was in my eyes, which meant I couldn’t see all that well. I made out the fact that all the gars wore brown cloaks with hoods that covered their faces. It was a frightening sight. I wasn’t sure if they were going to welcome me as a friend… or tear me apart.
“Leave the klees alone,” I coughed. “They’ve come as friends.”
Someone pushed through the crowd. He was a tall guy with his head completely covered by the hood. He stood over me, looking down. It seemed like whoever it was, he was in charge, because nobody pulled him back. He stuck the tip of his boot under my chin and lifted it to get a better look.
I squinted up, but saw nothing more than a shadow, because the sunbelt was high in the sky behind his head.
I squinted and croaked out, “Sorry for dropping in like this, but you’re ah in danger.”
I sensed the guy stiffen, as if I had said something earth shattering. Or Eelong shattering. As it turned out, I had. But it wasn’t what I expected. I had rocked him all right, but it wasn’t because of what I said. It was because of who I was.
He knelt down by my head and said, “Tell me something I don’t know.”
I knew that voice. It wasn’t a he, either. It was a she. The hood came off and I was faced with a vision. It was a girl with long, brown hair and amazing gray eyes.
“Cutting it kind of close, aren’t you, Bobby?”
Yeah. I found Courtney.
Chapter 30
If I were a crying kind of guy, I would have cried.
Okay, maybe I did anyway. A little. But I’m not admitting to anything for certain. Courtney held out her hand and helped me to my feet. I wrapped my arms around her and held her so close I was afraid she might break. Oddly, I thought of a line from a Marx Brothers movie I had seen on First Earth. “If I held you any closer, I’d be in back of you.” If I could have squeezed her any tighter, I would have. Seeing her was not only a complete surprise, it triggered a feeling that I never would have expected.
It gave me hope. The last time I’d seen her, she and Mark were being herded into the flume on Second Earth. I feared they had both been killed. But Mark turned up alive. And now, so had Courtney. Knowing that my two oldest and best friends in Halla were okay re-energized me. After all I had learned about my true origins, holding Courtney reminded me that I had another life. A much more familiar, comfortable, and yes, understandable one. I was Bobby Pendragon from Stony Brook, Connecticut. As much as I believed all that I learned on Solara, I couldn’t imagine turning my back on the person I had always been. Being with Courtney centered me. It brought back my base. For those few seconds I didn’t think about how impossible the battle was that we were about to face.
I thought about how I wanted to win it more than ever. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she whispered. “Sorry it took so long.”
“Doesn’t matter. I always knew you would come,” she said, breathless.
“I was afraid you were killed.”
“I came close. A couple of times. I still don’t know what happened to Mark.”
“He’s okay. He’s on Third Earth.”
I felt Courtney shudder. I wasn’t sure if it was a laugh or the physical release of tension she’d been holding for a long time. She pulled away from me and looked me right in the eye. Like Mark, Courtney was older. By how much, I couldn’t tell. A few years maybe. She had been through a lot. I could see that just by looking into her eyes. They were hard. They had seen things. Courtney had always been intense. When she played, she wanted to win. But the look she had in her eyes just then showed more than that. The stakes were higher in this particular game.
And she was more beautiful than ever.
“They’re coming, aren’t they?” she asked straight out. The joyous reunion was over.
I nodded and looked at the sky. “They won’t reach the mountains before dark. I’m guessing the earliest they would attack is sunrise.”
“How many?”
I took a breath before answering. She wasn’t going to like what I had to say.
“It’s an army.”
She shrugged and sighed. “We’ve been expecting this. We’re ready.”
“You are?” I asked, surprised. “How?”
“Come with me,” she said, and started to walk off.
I reached out and stopped her. “Wait. Are they here?”
“Who?”
“The rest of the people from Second Earth who were pulled into the flume. The exiles.”
