Daughter of Nox

Chapter Fourteen

"A secret mission?" Freya said as they hurried back toward the reception hall alongside Etta. "Seriously?"

"I know, right?" Etta showed her a devious smile. "I thought maybe it was a little over the top, but it worked perfectly." Etta held up her datapad and tapped out commands. "I just hope none of them thinks to respond to the message or the whole thing might blow up in our faces."

Freya shot her a confused look. "What do you mean?"

"Well," Etta said with a grimace, "I may have had to send the message from an official Ministry comm account so it would look authentic."

"But you don't have an official Ministry comm account."

"That is very true," Etta said. "However, both our dads have official Ministry comm accounts."

Freya stopped Etta with a hand on her arm. "Please tell me you didn't hack into your dad's comm account to send that message."

"I didn't hack into my dad's comm account to send the message," Etta said. "But I might have hacked into your dad's."

"Oh no." Freya shook her head. "Oh, no, no, no." She dragged her palms down her face. "Etta, he's going to murder us when he finds out."

"I know. I know." Etta's voice was frantic. "But I only had one shot at getting them to release you, and I had to be sure that it would work. I probably sent my dad about a dozen waves telling him what you told me, but both their comms are closed for emergency messaging only."

Freya fought the panic rising in her chest. Her father would find out that Etta had hacked his account, and when he did it would be bad. Very bad.

Etta's mouth turned down in a pained expression. "Maybe we could find him around here? Explain what happened?"

Freya was about to say something, when the sound of plasma fire split the air from the direction of the Sphere.

"I think it might be too late for that."

#

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Etta said in a low voice as she followed Freya through the shattered remains of the window Freya had blasted earlier in the night.

Freya knew how Etta felt. The reception hall had been nearly bursting with life less than an hour before. Seeing it now, all deep shadow and blackened windows, made the place look like the husk of some long dead creature.

They'd tried to access the MinNet node without actually having to go into the reception hall, but the range on Etta's datapad was too short to hack into the system. And so, against their better judgement, they'd been forced to into the building.

"I don't want to be here either," Freya said as she stopped just inside the window, "but so long the Caretakers think the Separatists are attacking the Sphere they'll never listen to anything we have to say."

"Stupid Caretakers and their stupid orders," Etta said through gritted teeth. "If they ever put me in charge, my first order will be to make all orders optional."

"As much as I'd like to spend time pointing out how little sense that makes, I think we should focus on not getting discovered and, or murdered by Separatists for now," Freya said. "Try the datapad again and see if we're close enough for you to access the node."

Etta frowned as she tapped at the datapad's screen. "I don't understand." Her fingers fluttered over the pad's surface again. "I can see the node on my pad, but I can't get into the node's matrix."

"What do you mean, you can't?" Freya said. "I thought you just needed to get close enough to make this thing work."

"I did too, but every time I think I'm getting about to get into the system, another firewall jumps up to block me." She gritted her teeth. "It's actually really annoying."