Vera tosses her a look from the front passenger seat. “I think you mean straws.”
“No, I meanknives. Then we’ll duel to the death.”
“Hey,” I tell Avi from the row ahead, “I’m stuck in the middle seat, too. You don’t see me complaining.”
“That’s because you’re next to Lament.”
This conversation has taken a dangerous turn. I should redirect it. “So?”
“So you’re in love with Lament!”
I flush bright red. To my left, Lament gives a little cough.
“Vera,” I complain. “Aren’t you going to scold her?”
Vera only smiles.
Caspen hits the gas, and we lurch forward with a collectiveAck!It doesn’t take long before we’re blasting out of the woods, speeding across the terrain back toward the A-Line. On the horizon, Mount Kilmon has started smoking in earnest. The volcano looks far away, but in Caspen’s overland, the trip will probably take less than an hour. I think about traveling from here to there. Then I tell myself to stop thinking about that.
The Determinist deployer emerges in our view once more. I note the thick landing gear, the shiny body, the single row of windows curved around the ship’s nose like beads on a string. As we careen toward the craft’s smooth underbelly, I get my hand on my ray gun, listening for the sound of an alarm, shouts, or the blast of enemy fire, but there’s nothing. We drive right up under the ship and hop over the rover’s open sides, moving quickly, quietly now, tensed for what’s to come.
“Don’t forget your headsets,” Vera instructs.
We snag our sets from under our seats while Avi pulls out a small metal disc and makes grabby-hands motions at Toph. He picks her up, raising her easily over his head. Avi reaches up to attach the disc to the A-Line’s metal belly. “No need to stand back,” she says, tossing her ponytail. “This shouldn’t—”
There’s a miniaturepop, which ripples outward across the deployer’s bottom. A panel falls off a few feet away, revealing a dark hole that leads into the ship’s lowest compartment.
“—take long,” she finishes.
“Neatly done,” Toph says as he sets Avi back down.
“You have a spy’s finesse,” Youvu Hum agrees.
Avi gives a bow.
I frown. “Soisshe actually—?”
“Onto the ship!” Avi hollers.
Avi, Toph, Caspen, and one of the Youvu Hums haul themselves up through the opening first and dart away to commandeer the control center. (Caspen has assured us she knows how to fly an A-Line so many times that I am beginning to suspect she does not, in fact, know how to fly an A-Line.) Meanwhile, Vera, Jester, the other Youvu Hum, Lament, and I race to hunt for the ship’s central supply of neutralizer.
Vera checks her watch. “Four hours until eruption.”
“Not much time to steal this ship, battle any opposition, and release the neutralizer all across the planet before Ran Doc Min figures out what we’re up to and launches a counterattack,” Youvu Hum notes.
That’s the spirit, Jester says.
The A-Line is a freighter, meaning it has a small control center on the ship’s upper level and tons of cargo room below. We spend the next few minutes racing through dimly lit corridors, using Avi’s liquid lock dissolver to open door after door, hoping to find the mother lode. Or signs pointing us toward the mother lode. Or clues about signs that will point us toward the mother lode. So far, though, all the rooms in this section of the ship have already been cleared out.
We keep searching, the five of us on high alert, though we don’t run into any Determinists. No guards, no crew. Which prods at something in the back of my mind, something that insists I should be asking questions, only I don’t have time to examine those thoughts because Jester pushes open a door to reveal an enormous cargo hall. It’s the biggest room we’ve found yet, a cavernous chamber illuminated by intermittent orange light. We step inside and my stomach flutters at what I see. The space is filled with rows upon rows uponrowsof wooden crates, each one stamped in big red letters with a single, bold word:NEUTRALIZER.
Jester produces a crowbar, which he uses to lever the lid off the nearest crate. There’s a creak, and the splintering of wood, and at last the top pops off to reveal…
Nothing.
I blink.
There’s nothing inside the crate.
