“But I haven’t been trained.”

“The only thing any of us really need to know is to always put our Garde’s survival ahead of our own.” Brandon cast a glance back at the boy. “And it looks like you’ve got that part down.”

Another explosion rumbled about a mile off, bringing our gaze across the sky to the approach of a massive Mogadorian ship. What looked like little wisps were parachuting out of the ship and landing gently, soundlessly on the ground.

But of course, that was a trick of distance and perspective. They weren’t wisps. They were Mogadorian ground troops. And there was nothing gentle about them.

My fate had been decided. We rushed to the rest of the group to board the ship and leave our beloved Lorien before it was too late.

CHAPTER 16

“Oof.” Barely awake, I was already in agony.

The boy had just stepped hard on my legs, and was now jumping up the rest of my body, crushing my stomach, then my ribs.

“Wake up,” he said, still jumping painfully all over me. It was a hell of a way to wake up in the morning, but I was starting to get used to it.

“Wake up,” repeated the boy, who we had all started to call “Nine.” He was bright-eyed, playful, and so full of energy that five minutes in his company was enough to make me pray for his bedtime.

Nine and the other young Garde had made a quick recovery from the horrors of that awful night, barely a month ago, when Lorien had fallen to the Mogadorians. The other Mentor Cêpans couldn’t believe the childrens’ resilience. We envied it. None of us would ever get over what we’d seen.

“I’m getting up,” I said, swinging my legs over the bed and swiping my Kalvaka T-shirt off the hook on the wall. All of the other Mentor Cêpans were stuck with their LDA tunics, but I had only my street clothes from my last night out in Lorien.

“You’re too slow,” said Nine, yanking my arm as I tried to finish dressing.

“Sorry, buddy,” I said. “Had a late one last night.”

“What else is new?”

I looked up to see Brandon, smiling at the edge of the partition separating my sleeping quarters from the rest of the ship. Brandon was always getting on my case for being a late riser, for always being the last Cêpan socializing into the wee hours in the ship’s canteen. If Brandon had gone to bed there was always Kentra, or one of the others.

“Today’s the first day of pre-combat training,” he said. “I’ll take Nine, it’s not a problem.”

“Pre-combat? Already?” I had a hard time understanding that they were already going to start conditioning some of the Garde as warriors. Brandon and Kentra had explained it was just simple calisthenics and drills at this point, but still. The kids were so young.

I saw Four, Brandon’s Garde, poking his head out from behind Brandon’s back. He shyly put his hand out for Nine to take, inviting him to walk to pre-combat together.

Seeing this, I hoped Nine would take Four’s hand. It was a sweet gesture.

“Prucawbat! Rawr!” squealed Nine, and jumped back onto the bed, either unaware of Four’s overture or too keyed up to notice.

I smiled, simultaneously exhausted by and proud of my Garde’s hyperactivity. I scooped Nine off the bed and put him on the floor.

“You go off with Brandon and Four, okay? I’ll see you at One-on-Ones after.” One-on-Ones were training and development sessions between Mentor Cêpans and their Garde. It had been decided that my One-on-Ones with Nine would be overseen by another Mentor Cêpan, owing to my inexperience and lack of training. But even with Brandon or Kater breathing down my neck, One-on-Ones were my favorite time of the day: just me and the kid.

The large ship had an open plan with no walls, but in the interest of our privacy and sanity, programmable holographic partitions separated areas of the cabin into “rooms.”

The canteen was one such space, located close to the ship’s cockpit. It was nearly empty when I finally got there, and the food options were slim: a packet of freeze-dried karo fruit; a plate of mushy, lukewarm flurrah grain.

Ah, I thought. The perils of oversleeping.

I settled for the Karo and took a seat next to Hessu, the only Cêpan there. Hessu was the oldest of the Cêpans, and shy to boot. I never knew what to say to her so I just nodded at her and ate my breakfast in silence.

As tended to happen when I had a moment to myself, my thoughts drifted to the events back on Lorien, both the things I had witnessed—the destruction of the capital; those heartbreakingly muddy tears on Nine’s grandfather’s cheeks—and those I had only imagined: my parents’ chalet in Deloon blasted by Mog missiles; Devektra, finally succumbing to the Mogadorian ground troops while valiantly defending her beloved city.

I also thought back to the ship’s takeoff, watching out the window as we pulled up and over the airstrip. The Elder Loridas, who had insisted not to be taken on board, faded to a dot on the ground as we breached the planet’s atmosphere, with the fighting Lorien Defense Forces and Kabarakians still down there, holding off the advancing Mog horde.

The first few days in space had been the worst. We Mentor Cêpans had all huddled in the canteen together, our impatient, traumatized charges in our laps, waiting for word from the ship’s pilot about the fate of Lorien. Brandon had explained that the vast majority of the council, the academy and the LDF had been killed in the first wave, but there were bound to be survivors, heroes like Devektra who would fight off the invading forces no matter how bad the odds. It had been decided by a vote that once we had reached a distance of relative safety, the ship would hang back, watch, and wait. If there were any sign that the defeat of Lorien was incomplete, that whatever resistance movement had formed stood even a meager chance of survival, we would turn back and aid however we could.

But after many sleepless days and nights, the pilot emerged into the canteen from the front of the ship and shook his head. “From the ship’s scans …” he said, fighting back tears. “There’s nothing. Nothing’s left.”

For every horror I had endured, that was the worst, the most devastating.

Slowly but surely, things improved. And as dark as my thoughts got, it was hard to stay down when we had nine rambunctious, energetic kids all around us, every second of the day.

“She’s sick,” announced Hessu. I almost did a double take: Hessu never spoke without first being spoken to.

It took me a second to realize she must be talking about her Garde, the girl we called “One.”

“I woke up in the middle of the night with a bad feeling, so I went to the children’s quarters to check, and sure enough when I touched her forehead it was hot. A bad fever.” Hessu’s aversion to eye contact was just part of her personality, but the intense way she avoided my look made me fear the worst.

“Where is she?” I asked. “Is she okay?”

“She’s in the Autodoc.” Because no one on board had any medical knowledge, the ship had been outfitted with a small climate-controlled area called an Autodoc. It monitored a patient’s vital signs and administered medicine as needed through the air vents. “Machine says she’ll be fine.”

“Well then,” I said, relieved. “That’s good.”

Hessu merely shrugged. Her mouth was pursed, bitter-looking, like she’d been sucking on something sour.

“She’s going to die,” she said.

I froze in my seat, speechless. It felt like Hessu’s words had sucked all of the oxygen out of the room.

“She will die. I’m certain of it.”

“Hessu, I’m sure she’ll be fine—”

She turned at me, a look of rage and contempt burning on her face. “I don’t mean now, you idiot!” She began to laugh bitterly. “Don’t you realize, we’re all going to die?”

My blood turned to ice. What was this woman getting at?

“Right. Right,” she said. “You haven’t been fully briefed yet, how would you know? This is a suicide mission. We are going to some distant planet to hide from the Mogadorians, to run from them, to make whatever pathetic efforts to survive we can make before they hunt us down and kill us. It’s useless. I don’t know why we’re even bothering.”

Her words seeped into my brain like a poison, but I tried to focus on the matter at hand: her hysteria. “You need to calm down,” I said.

“Easy for you to say. You’re last. You and your boy get blessed last out of sheer luck, because you were running late!” The bitter laughter came back. “While me and my girl … we’re first. First blessed, first to die.”

The laughter gave way to tears, and Hessu threw her face into her hands. I fought through my own horror and embraced her.

We stayed like that for a while. I rocked her in my arms while the terrifying truth of our situation bled into my heart.

Later, I made my way down the virtual corridor, towards the empty barrack in which my One-on-Ones with Nine were held. I felt like a fool. For allowing myself to be optimistic about the Elders’ plan for us all, for believing that the road ahead would be any brighter than the one behind us. To hear it from Hessu, it was only going to get grimmer once we reached our destination.

And I felt like a fool for not inquiring deeper into the nature of the ritual Loridas had performed on Nine. I had foolishly assumed it was just some meaningless pagan blessing. But according to Hessu it was much more than that. It was a protective spell that granted total immunity to the children. All except One.

Her blessing was just a link to the others. She was not invulnerable. Once she died, Two would be vulnerable. Once Two died, Three would be vulnerable. On and on up the chain of their precious young Garde.

Put in those terms, it no longer felt like any kind of blessing at all. It felt like a curse. And it made me sick just thinking about it.

I paused outside the barrack’s door and looked out the window of the ship. All I could see were stars. We still had many galaxies to travel before we reached our destination. We were heading to Earth. A planet that was far from perfect. It was nothing like Lorien had been.

But even with all the terrible stories I’d heard about Earth’s misery, about the war, the famine, the pollution, I was looking forward to it, at least a little bit. I still remembered that transmission I’d watched on the night of Quartermoon, before I’d made the fateful decision to take Daxin’s band and leave the academy, and I knew that Earth couldn’t possibly be all bad.

I entered the barrack to find Nine waiting on the floor, his back to the virtual door. Adel, Seven’s Mentor Cêpan, sat in a chair in the corner, having been assigned supervisor duty for the day.

“Hey, Adel,” I said, giving her a smile and a little wave. Adel waved back.

At the sound of my voice, Nine jumped up, whirled around and raced right at me, grabbing me by the knees.

Nine looked up at me, his eyes gleaming. “Sandor?” he asked, drawing my name out and wagging his head back and forth. “Are we going to play today?”

I looked down at him and smiled.