glanced toward the debris again. “Chaser!” a new voice said over the radio. “Chaser, you there?”
“Mongrel?” Father said, flipping a switch and raising his radio. “I’m up on the surface.”
“You need to talk some sense into Banks and Swing. They’re saying we need to flee.”
Father cursed under his breath, flipping another switch on the radio. A voice came through. “—aren’t ready for a head-on fight yet. We’ll be ruined.”
“No,” another woman said. “We have to stand and fight.”
A dozen voices started talking at once.
“Ironsides is right,” my father said into the line, and—remarkably—they all grew quiet.
“If we let them bomb Igneous, then we lose the apparatus,” my father said. “We lose the manufactories. We lose everything. If we ever want to have a civilization again, a world again, we have to stand here!”
I waited, silent, holding my breath, hoping he would be too distracted to send me away. I trembled at the idea of a battle, but I still wanted to watch it.
“We fight,” the woman said.
“We fight.” said Mongrel. I knew him by name, though I hadn’t met him. He was my father’s wingmate. “Hot rocks, this is a good one. I’m going to beat you into the sky, Chaser! Just you watch how many I bring down!”
The man sounded eager, maybe a little too excited, to be heading into battle. I liked him immediately.
My father debated only a moment before pulling off his light-line bracelet and stuffing it into my hands. “Promise you’ll go back straightaway.”
“I promise.”
“Don’t dally.”
“I won’t.”
He raised his radio. “Yeah, Mongrel, we’ll see about that. I’m running for Alta now. Chaser out.”
He dashed across the dusty ground in the direction he’d pointed earlier. Then he stopped and turned back. He pulled off his pin and tossed it—like a glittering fragment of a star—to me before continuing his run toward the hidden base.
I, of course, immediately broke my promise. I climbed down into the crack but hid there, clutching Father’s pin, and watched until I saw the starfighters leave Alta and streak toward the sky. I squinted and picked out the dark Krell ships swarming down toward them.
Finally, showing a rare moment of good judgment, I decided I’d better do what my father had told me. I used the light-line to lower myself into the cavern, where I recovered my backpack and headed into the tunnels. I figured if I hurried, I could get back to my clan in time to listen to the broadcast of the fight on our single communal radio.
I was wrong though. The hike was longer than I remembered, and I did manage to get lost. So I was wandering down there, imagining the glory of the awesome battle happening above, when my father infamously broke ranks and fled from the enemy. His own flight shot him down in retribution. By the time I got home, the battle had been won, my father was gone.
And I’d been branded the daughter of a coward.
PART ONE
1
I stalked my enemy carefully through the cavern.
I’d taken off my boots so they wouldn’t squeak. I’d removed my socks so I wouldn’t slip. The rock under my feet was comfortably cool as I took another silent step forward.
This deep, the only light came from the faint glow of the worms on the ceiling, feeding off the moisture seeping through cracks. You had to sit for minutes in the darkness for your eyes to adjust to that faint light.
Another quiver in the shadows. There, near those dark lumps that must be enemy fortifications. I froze in a crouch, listening to my enemy scratch the rock as he moved. I imagined a Krell: a terrible alien with red eyes and dark armor.
With a steady hand—agonizingly slow—I raised my rifle to my shoulder, held my breath, and fired.
A squeal of pain was my reward.
Yes!
I patted my wrist, activating my father’s light-line. It sprang to life with a reddish-orange glow, blinding me for a moment.
Then I rushed forward to claim my prize: one dead rat, speared straight through.
In the light, shadows I’d imagined as enemy fortifications revealed themselves as rocks. My enemy was a plump rat, and my rifle was a makeshift speargun. Nine and a half years had passed since that fateful day when I’d climbed to the surface with my father, but my imagination was as strong as ever. It helped relieve the monotony, to pretend I was doing something more exciting than hunting rats.
I held up the dead rodent by its tail. “Thus you know the fury of my