‘Come on,’ I told Te’rnu. ‘We’re sitting ducks out here.’
‘Sitting-’ Te’rnu began to ask.
‘Come on!’ I repeated, moving now towards the shuttle bay with a sprint.
Mel and Te’rnu also picked up the pace, and we charged down the final corridor and into the shuttle bay. We were fortunate that this building was as large as it was - the few Iyr inside could not hope to cover every room.
When Te’rnu, the last to enter, was safely inside the shuttle bay, I closed the door behind him and locked it from the inside - just as a precaution.
I rushed to a nearby docking terminal.
‘OK, Mel,’ I instructed, trying to make my voice sound as assertive as possible. ‘I’m pulling an empty shuttle in for you now. Get on it. It’ll take you to the nearest GMU station, and-’
‘You aren’t coming?’ Mel asked, her mouth open with disbelief.
‘We’re not done here.’
‘You’ve learned the truth! Your job is done! Your debt is paid! They could kill you if you stay here!’
I shook my head.
‘No.’
‘We need to tell my people,’ Te’rnu interrupted, talkative again for the first time since he returned to us. ‘We can’t let them live on like this.’
‘You can message them from the station!’ Mel pleaded.
‘No. The settlement screens are wired into Central Command only. We can’t do it off-planet.’
‘Te’rnu,’ Mel continued to beg, ‘Tell her, please. This is your fight, not her’s!’
‘There’s more,’ I continued, ‘There’s more I need to do here.’
The shuttle docked and the doors opened behind her.
‘What do you need to do? What’s so important that’s worth risking your life for?’
I shook my head. ‘There’s no time to explain. Get on the shuttle. With any luck… I’ll catch up with you.’
Mel went silent, shot me another perplexed face. As she entered the shuttle, I closed the door, but she shot her hand out to stop it.
‘Come with,’ she said, one last time.
I shook my head, and Mel removed her hand, allowing the door to close. The shuttle undocked and I wondered, for the briefest of moments, whether I would live to see her again.
‘Are they outside?’ I asked Te’rnu. He looked at me blankly in response.
I rushed over to the security terminal and tapped to bring up the closed-circuit monitoring system.
‘They’re not. Not yet.’
‘OK,’ Te’rnu replied. ‘Let us take a moment, gather our-’
‘No,’ I interrupted.
‘No?’
‘At the moment, they only know that we’re in the building. Soon as they see a shuttle leaving the atmosphere, they’ll know what room we’re in. We need to be as far away from here as possible.’
Te’rnu nodded. ‘I understand.’
I tapped at the terminal once more, bringing up live feeds to the screens. Tens of Iyr guards filled the images.
Hm. Just how much did I really want this journal decoded?
‘It looks as though our path to the mainframe room is clear for now - most the Iyr are at the cells still, retracing our steps.’
‘I shall keep my hand on the Incapacitate function.’
We nodded to one another. This was it, then: our big shot.
Te’rnu and I rushed for the doors, sprinting down the corridors that were, according to the screens a few moments earlier, devoid of any enemy presence.
On we ran, fighting our breath as we ploughed down corridors, and praying with every corner that we turned that we weren’t about to run into an Iyr - and our almost-certain deaths.
17
Closing In
As we entered the mainframe room, I stopped and turned for one last look. To my disbelief, there was still nobody on our tails. I did some mental maths - we had left the shuttle bay about five minutes ago, and it had taken us the same length of time to get there from the cells. If the Iyr were following in our footsteps, then they were arriving at the shuttle bay at that moment. We didn’t have long.
I rushed to the nearest security terminal and tapped to bring up the live feeds once again. I was right - the Iyr were in the shuttle bay already. The Head of Guard pointed at their own security terminal, images of Te’rnu and me on their screens. We couldn’t count on having more than a couple of minutes to finish up in here.
‘They’re coming.’
Te’rnu whipped his head around to look at me, face going white. ‘How long?’
‘Maybe a hundred seconds.’
Te’rnu nodded. ‘I will speak as quickly as I can.’
I rushed to the main terminal, bluffing my way through the user interface until I found the network communications package. As I worked, Te’rnu sat on his shaking hands.
‘Do we have time? To decode Leya’s journal?’
I glanced at the security terminal. The Iyr were close already, wasting no time in getting here.
I shook my head. ‘No. I don’t think we do.’
Te’rnu sat aside. ‘Go ahead.’
I turned to face him, brow furrowed. ‘But if we get caught, your people… they might never learn the truth.’
Te’rnu took my hand and looked into my eyes.
‘Syl, if it were not for you, I would never have gotten this far. I would never have learned the truth. You deserve this.’
‘No, I-’
‘Decode the journal. Then we run. And-’
I interrupted my friend’s honourable rambling, exasperated in tone. ‘No, stop! Listen! We both saw that statue of Leya. We both heard about what she did for Nu’r’ka. She recognised the brilliance, the greatness of your people, Te’rnu. And so do I. Get ready to speak.’
I set the screen ready to record Te’rnu.
‘On my mark.’
‘On your what?’
‘When I say “go”, you speak. Tell your whole world the truth. Got it?’
Te’rnu nodded.
I got ready to press the broadcast button, but Te’rnu’s hand shot out to stop me.
‘Are you sure about this? What if you never find your sister because of this?’
I forced a smile, and it came out sadder than I had intended. ‘If I’m gonna find her, I’m gonna find her. We have a saying on Terra: whatever will be, will be.’
Te’rnu returned my smile. His was more sincere than mine was. ‘We have that expression here too.’
‘Ready?’
He pulled the head
