Free Akaela by E.E. Giorgi

Dad’s not coming back? Every time Mom asks Tahari, he
says he’s been sending regular updates…”
    “I don’t
trust Tahari,” Athel says with a fierceness I’ve never seen in my brother
before. “I don’t trust anyone. Dad’s in danger. What I
saw while Kael was flying over the factory… you have to see it, Akaela! That
thing is immense, guarded by sniper droids. We need to act now.”
    Ash comes
mewing at my feet. He senses the tension between Athel and me, and he doesn’t
like it. I want to jump. I’m mad at my brother and I just want to go get Kael.
But I know that jumping with no wind would get me nowhere. I step away from the
ledge and pick up Ash.
    Without
ungluing his eyes from the screen of his data feeder, Lukas gets on his feet.
“Uh—guys? Kael’s flying back,” Lukas says. “He’s
back over the mesa.”
    “Let me
see!” I say.
    We spend
the next two hours cheering Kael back home and plotting out a plan to get back
to the factory. Lukas shows us the map he’s been able to reconstruct from the
video recording through Athel’s eye. He claims the factory extends at least two
miles out from the bottom of the mesa and it’s at least another two miles long,
with sniper droids posted along the perimeter.
    “What
about the gorge? Do you think they might be deployed along the gorge, too?”
Athel asks.
    “Hard to
tell,” Lukas says. “Kael followed the line of the gorge but never went down. If
they have radars or transmitter detectors they would’ve seen him, but it could
be that he was too far.”
    Ash climbs
up my shoulder and plays with my hair. I watch Athel close one eye and check on
Kael’s progress.
    “How’s he
doing?” I ask.
    “He’s
tired,” Athel murmurs. “He’s slowed down quite a bit.”
    I want to
snarl at him again but I hear the regret in Athel’s voice and for once I keep
my mouth shut. “I can try and glide over the gorge as a look-out.”
    Athel
rolls his one eye. “We’ve been over this already. You know you can’t glide that
far. We’ll take Kael with us.”
    “And risk
getting him shot again? No way.”
    Lukas taps
on his data feeder, taking notes. “We’ll need to bring equipment,” he points
out. “First-aid kits and tool boxes. You guys, maybe we should tell one of the
adults—”
    “No,”
Athel interjects. “The adults do whatever the Kiva Members tell them. Their instructions
were clear: they sent off the ambassadors and ordered the rest of us to sit and
wait.”
      “Ow.” Ash is pulling my hair. I gently
bring him down to my lap, but he climbs up again. “How do you know all this?” I
ask Athel.
    “I
eavesdrop on them. I have a way.”
    “You never
told me!”
    “That’s
because you’ve got a big mouth!”
    We start
bickering again. “You guys,” Lukas interrupts us. “Kael’s almost here.”
    I turn
toward the broken walls. The vines sway gently and beyond them the faint light
of dawn peeks through.
    “He’s over
the waterfall now,” Lukas informs us, following Kael’s path on his data feeder.
    Both Athel
and I run to the ledge. Athel activates his right eye and whistles, stretching
out his gloved arm. I cup my hands around my mouth to call him, but Athel stops
me.
    “You’ll
wake up people!” he says.
    All
windows in the Tower have turned into open holes, the last glass panes
shattered during the Gaijins’ bombardment, the year I was born. Temperatures haven’t
dropped below zero in decades, so the only problem having open windows causes
is lack of privacy. Athel is right. I bite my tongue and squeeze Ash to my
chest, eager to spot Kael’s black silhouette gliding toward us.
    The
rim of smoke blanketing the horizon turns pink, the night quickly fading away.
    “I see him!”
I shout.
    As the
nascent light turns the sky red, the outline of Kael’s tired wings makes its
way toward the Tower, slowly growing bigger and bigger. I jump up and down in
excitement. Concerned, Athel pulls me away from the ledge. Ash