“We’ve got them hooked up!” a cry came from beside the simpods.
Tera felt a hand on her shoulder.
“It’s time to leave,” Gauge told her, his own pulse gun clutched in the other hand. “You ready?”
The young woman nodded.
She turned and watched the engineers disconnect the simpods from the array in the wall and lift them three feet into the air with the jacks. The rebels cast her and Gauge expectant looks, and the rebel I.I. led the charge through the opening in the wall. Tera followed after him.
It was like someone had turned the volume up on the battle when they passed through the jagged hole. The blasts of electricity and bullets hitting steel rang through Tera’s mechanical skull. She wanted to clasp her hands over her ears to shut it out, but instead raised her weapon and dropped another Council soldier. A beam of light zipped over her shoulder, and she adjusted her aim and deactivated the bodyshell that had fired at her.
Gauge was unleashing an energy pulse every second or so, keeping up a steady staccato as he covered the engineers. The other rebels lit up the Council troops, scattering the Pavilion with a number of hollow and lifeless bodyshells. Every now and then, Tera heard a shriek come from beside her as one of the rebels or Opesian soldiers were hit. She wanted to reach out and catch their bodies as they fell, but she had to keep moving forward.
It was only a dozen meters or so to the gunship, but it felt like miles across no man’s land, darting from trench to trench. The aircraft dipped into a low hover, continuing its assault on the swarming Council troops. No one said a word as they exchanged fire with the bone-white bodyshells, closing in on the gunship. A walkway started to unfold itself at the rear of the vehicle, exposing a bay door. It dropped to the Pavilion floor just long enough for the engineers to push the simpods aboard. It started to lift up again, but the ramp didn’t start retracting just yet.
Tera ducked as a machine gun started to cut in at head-level. Some of the other rebels weren’t as fast, falling to the steel in a bloody or wiry mess. The others fired back while she recoiled, concussed by the sheer volume around her.
“Come on!” Gauge cried, offering her a hand.
She took it and he heaved her up onto the dropship. She looked around, her brain trying to process how she was moving as she was loaded aboard. A mass of other rebels piled in behind her before the door shut. She stared at the hatch with wide eyes. Gauge didn’t wait with her, rushing instead up to the gunship’s cockpit. Once the panic of the moment passed, she shuffled to join him. All the while, the ship rocked around her as it jetted up into the sky.
“What about the others?” Tera asked as she approached her comrade.
Gauge cast her a plain look, his artificial features devoid of any emotion. “There will be more gunships coming as well as other planned escape routes,” he replied. “They didn’t all fly in, after all. They will find a way out.”
“Can’t we go back and help them?”
“No,” Gauge said. “We’ve got to keep flying and get those two back to the Furnace. Otherwise, everything we did here was for nothing.” He turned to the ship’s console, which the pilot was working with like a pianist at a recital. “Punch the cloak.”
The pilot nodded and activated a function on the console before her that Tera couldn’t read. Though she couldn’t see the effect, she could certainly feel it. It was like someone turned the gunship into a large speaker and someone hit the deepest, lowest note she’d ever heard through it. Tera could almost feel a small trickle of electricity course through her feet and around the rest of her bodyshell.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“We’re using another sensor blocker,” Gauge answered. “This time large enough for the whole ship. Aside from looking straight up, there’s no way they’ll be able to see us. Any kind of automated weapons they have should have a hell of a time locking onto us.”
“Jesus,” Tera said.
“I know. The Clevingers probably spent their entire fortune on this mission.”
They continued to fly on, the cloaking process causing the ship to hum as they did. There were no windows which Tera could look out through, but she had a feeling she didn’t want to see anyway.
It seemed like they flew for hours, but only twelve minutes passed before a blip on their sensors alerted the pilot and Gauge. Tera turned terrified eyes to her companion, hoping he’d be able to translate the computer chime.
“We’re closing in on the vent,” the pilot said.
Gauge looked up at Tera. “We’re almost home,” he said.
Tera still wasn’t able to calm down from the escape when the ship lighted down within the Furnace. They flew into the city’s geothermal network through a large vent on the outside of the walls. Thanks to the cloaking device on the aircraft, they were able to enter without any kind of pursuit. No one had seen where they went.
Everyone else started moving before the engine was even deactivated. They were like a racetrack pit crew, setting into motion to unload the simpods and get them hooked up to the machines in the rebel base. The jacks were pushed out of the gunship as soon as the bay door opened. People shouted orders to each other as they coordinated to move it over the aluminum-and-steel floor. Tera followed them out with Gauge, who moved with similar fatigue. She watched as they pushed the simpods up to the nearest wall, where a mechanical array not unlike the one
