Page 35 of Reformation
The screen flashed on, and Jonah rubbed his hands together. “Good.” He found the dial—an actual dial, a device that only saw regular use on Drifter ships and even there, was considered passé—and began scanning for frequencies. All he got was a lot of static.
Jonah frowned. “Maybe the concrete’s too thick,” he muttered. He’d have to try it outside. He was surprisingly okay with that.
It was still wet, cold, and blowing out there—surprisingly refreshing after the stuffiness of the bunker, which had a circulation unit to keep the air from getting stale but was sluggish at best. Jonah left the door open just a crack to keep the radio plugged in, then propped the tarp he’d taken from the travois up over his head to keep the rain from drenching him and the radio. Then he settled beside it and began to turn the dial.
There—a steadyping, ping, ping. That had to be the emergency beacon. At least it was still broadcasting. Jonah hadn’t been sure it had survived the shuttle’s descent into the ocean. He hadn’t seen a beacon inside the bunker yet, and until he was sure they weren’t going to be shot at again, he wasn’t going to turn it on even if there was one.
He went a little further—these were the frequencies that were dedicated to the Box, the ones that the colony had originally inhabited. They’d expanded since then, but these were the foundations of Pandora’s communications. He should have been able to hearsomethingfrom them. Instead, there was just … an auditory blank. Not even static, just emptiness, like the wavelengths had been destroyed. Or were being blocked.
The shield. If the colony had gotten its shields up, then nothing was getting in or out. That was it. Ithadto be.
Jonah took a deep breath and kept going. He turned the dial as far as it would go, through all the available frequencies and then back again. Nothing but the emptiness and thepingand—wait. There was something else, just on the edge of his hearing. It was so faint he thought he might be imagining it. He increased the power and reached for it again. It was fuzzy, but it was there. And—huh. It was getting clearer.
Jonah turned the power to high and listened closely for a long moment. There was a particular rhythm to the signal, something kind of familiar, almost like—
“Shit!” He shut the power off and pressed himself back against the wall of the bunker as he looked up into the dark sky. Maybe he was wrong, maybe it was just a—nope. That wasn’t lightning, it was too steady. That was a contrail from a ship. It was too far away for Jonah to make out the specs for it, but that wasn’t important. Whatwasimportant was that it was closing in on the coast, heading toward the left of the bunker, near where—
Plasma fire exploded from the nose of the ship, scraping over the cliff’s edge and down into the water indiscriminately. It rained hell down on where they had landed and below it until a fireball erupted from the ocean. It was a secondary explosion—that had to be from the shuttle, it must not have sunk too deep. Maybe it had been caught on some rocks.
Well, it was sunk now.
The ship pulled back, then began to circle. Jonah hoped to whatever god there was that the bunker looked less like what it was from above. At least he’d already proven that signals couldn’t get through the concrete, so even though they had the generator on, they’d be safe.
Only … he’d left a crack in the door.
“Shit!” Jonah pulled the power plug free, reached over, and heaved the door shut. He didn’t have time to get himself inside the bunker; he had to stop any signals as quickly as he could. Even the slightest power signature might cause them problems if the ship was especially touchy, but hopefully there was enough feedback left from the explosion that it hadn’t noticed them.
He watched, breathless and afraid, as the ship circled closer and closer. If it shot them … well. There wasn’t much he could do about that. At least Cody and Garrett would have each other.Lacey’s dad had more family; he’d be all right. Everyone else would survive.
They’d be miserable, though.
Keep moving, please keep moving, keep moving, go, go.Then after a long, terrible moment, when it seemed like the ship was going to come down right on top of them, itdidmove on. Jonah watched it disappear into the clouds, stayed where he was in the rain for another ten minutes, just to make sure he wasn’t going to draw it back when he opened the door, then shakily reentered the bunker, set the radio to the side, and collapsed in a heap against the wall.
They—whoever was attacking them—were actively scanning for new signals. They hadn’t given a damn about the beacon until Jonah had started messing with the radio, and then … better safe than sorry, apparently. Even though the shuttle was underwater, it hadn’t stopped them from eviscerating it.
So. No reaching out, no using the radio, no jury-rigging something that might help them penetrate the energy shield. He and Lacey were most definitely on their own.
“Someone’ll come looking for us.” Eventually. Once the threat was met—ifthe threat was met and contained. And without an emergency beacon, they’d be harder to find. Due diligence would eventually send someone to check the bunkers, but who knew how long that might take?
There were other things in the cabinet that Jonah could look at, down where he’d found the radio: hard-copy maps, a schematic of the bunker itself. Right now, though, he couldn’t bring himself to try and tackle responsibility again quite so fast. Not when his last attempt had led them so close to disaster.
He sighed, got to his feet, and dried himself off as best he could. He grabbed a ration bar and a packet of jerky, checked Lacey’s vitals one more time, and then grabbed the book fromthe table and settled in next to the cot. “The Road,” he said. “By Cormac McCarthy.”
It was time to gain a little perspective.
Chapter twenty
Sigurd Liang
The campus of the Academy felt disquietingly empty. Unprecedentedly empty.
It wasn’t that cadets had never been called to war before. The last time was nearly sixty years ago, but Sigurd could still remember the effects of that battle even though he hadn’t been an admiral back then. That was the battle where Foster Alexander had truly made his name as a military commander and as a leader. His family’s fortunes had risen ever since, continuing even after his death. Or at least they’d risen for one member of the family.
Sigurd settled back into his chair and closed his eyes, thinking. He’d dismissed his staff—there was no sense in keeping around a host of schedulers and secretaries and professors when there was no one around to mind or corral or teach. He was alone in the central office building for the first time in … perhaps forever.
Which was just as well if he was going to be reviewing classified messages from Garrett.
“Mercury, repeat last transmission.”
