Storm Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 4) by Aaron Ritchey (best books to read for students TXT) 📕

sewn into the fabric. It was the old arrowhead one, before they reorganized the league into mixed-gender teams. Sticking out of her coat pocket was either a stick of dynamite or a road flare.

Right then clouds eclipsed the sun, covering us all in darkness and shadow, but the Plainville Salvage Yard shined in the sunlight, like the Promised Land full of milk and honey.

On their horses, Marie Atlas and June Mai approached the old woman from one side, Pilate on the other. The other soldier girls were spread out in a line behind them. Micaiah and I pulled ourselves back a bit. Miley drug a hoof across the dirt, wanting to run.

“I’m Mabel,” the old woman said in a scratch of a voice. “I believe you have two things that belong to Tiberius Hoyt. One is his son”—he gestured to Micaiah—“the other is a chalkdrive.”

My stomach jittered up. My voice left me. She wasn’t an old woman; she was a Severin.

“Hey, Grandma,” Pilate called out. “What are your terms? We give you a fruitcake, and you let us pass? Or are things going to get ugly?”

“Hello, Father Pilate,” Mabel said. “Or should I call you Peter?”

“Pilate’s fine, Grandma,” he said evenly.

From the Moby, a flare came flaming out, our signal that things were bad and about to get worse. Well, duh.

“Pilate.” Mabel said his name like she really was a grandmother about to ask him if he’d like tea and some fruitcake. “All we want is the chalkdrive and Micah. But we are willing to negotiate. If you give us the chalkdrive, we will let you keep Micah.”

“What if we don’t want him, but we want the chalkdrive?” Pilate asked. “Can we mix and match?”

“No, dear,” Mabel said.

“How about we keep both, and I blow your head off?” Pilate asked.

All around us, the ground moved, shivered, and for a minute I thought I’d lost it. Then hundreds of soldiers emerged from their camouflage. Cuius Regios. We were surrounded. We were outnumbered.

Once again, we found ourselves looking down the gun barrels in the hands of genetically modified women looking to kill us all dead.

Mabel drew the stick from her pocket. She had a flare of her own. She sparked it into life; red fire sparked and hissed.

Even a kilometer away, we all heard the engines roar to life. The sounds came from the Plainville Salvage Yard. Hidden there were M1 Acevedo tanks, A3 Athapasca Armored Personnel Carriers, armored UHV Humvees, running on growling diesel engines. The convoy roared out of their hiding places, moving toward us.

And in the distance, a line of dots in the sky started moving forward, coming closer, and I knew what they were: Y-shaped Kestrel 15.2 gunships coming to kill us and cart off Micah and the chalkdrive.

The Kestrel project had been a joint U.S.-Japanese project mingling corporate interests and military technology and the result was the world’s first blue-fire engine aircraft, using hyper-electricity and anti-gravity technology. The Marine Corps switched over right away, and I knew Tibbs Hoyt prolly bought a bunch of them as well. Those were ARK aircraft all right, full of Regios.

Lucky for us, the Kestrels ran on great big Kung Pao Eterna batteries, which wouldn’t work in the Juniper. But they would keep us on our side of the fence line.

The Moby drifted overhead. Peeperz finally saw the gunships and ground forces and had sent the flare out to warn us. Too late. It was all too late.

We were caught.

All of her soldier girls looked at June Mai Angel for orders, but she didn’t move, didn’t speak. She was pale, swallowing hard. And I knew she was desperately trying to think of a way out of our no-win situation. I hoped she did. I was all out of ideas.

Pilate winced. He let the smoke drift off his lips. The wind caught the smoke and whirled it into nothing.

“The chalkdrive please,” Mabel said.

Cold, the wind, the entire world, froze right then.

We were doomed. We’d failed.

And then I laughed, out loud; laughed, until I fell off my horse. Miley stepped back, eyes wide and white.

Still I laughed, lying on the ground, tears streaming down my face.

No one else joined me. All the ARK soldiers took a fresh grip on their guns, and I knew they all thought I’d lost it, or that this was some ploy to throw them off guard.

I stood up and approached Mabel. “Mr. Tiberius Hoyt is scared of us. He thinks we have a shot at getting the chalkdrive out into the World. He really does.” I tittered some more and had to wipe my eyes.

“Come again, Miss Weller?” Mabel asked.

“You have brought enough firepower to level Houston, and for what? Twelve soldiers on horseback? One of whom is me, a girl who, by all accounts, should be studying civics in high school. You’re scared to death of us! I find that funny.”

Mabel reached into her coat and pulled out a Desert Messiah, a weapon I knew, especially from that angle. Once again, I was peering down its very familiar barrel.

“It’s déjà vu all over again, Pilate,” I said lightly. “These things just don’t learn.”

She was going to shoot me in the head, and I didn’t care all that much. ’Cause I knew we’d win. Didn’t really know how, but I knew we were going to get through this, and do you know why? I believed in our story. Hope was in me, a bindweed, clinging to the foundations of my soul, and my laughter and faith and love were all morning glory flowers.

Even if I was killed, our cause was righteous, and our silent God would provide.

Even as the noise of the engines of the ARK vehicles came barreling down on us.

Even as their Kestrel gunships roared at the border to pick us up.

Even as another flare flashed across the sky from the Moby.

Even as Mabel cocked that pistol, like Reb Vixx had done on the Scheutz ranch. Same position. Same crappy odds. Same everything.

Only this time, I was