I don’t have long to malinger. Unexpected victory or no unexpected victory, I’m still my mother’s daughter and she will always be able to find me.

Sometimes I suspect she put a tracking chip under my skin. But I know that those are easy for the Troos to pick up and she wouldn’t be letting me leave the base if I were so compromised.

I’m found hiding in the office of the man who is supposed to be my commander. In truth, none of his agents are excellent at following his orders, but he’s our idea guy and he comes up with some truly excellent ideas sometimes. I have a folder in my hands that lists all the details of the mission to regain control of the global positioning satellite that was so recently an utter disaster. They were good plans. Shame I couldn’t execute them correctly.

Mom barges into the little room like she owns the place. And while under some technicalities, maybe she does, it’s still not very polite of her to do this on the regular. It’s not a very big room, after all, and the low stone ceiling does not help with the vague claustrophobia. The walls here have been covered with a cheap looking woodgrain contact paper, likely scrounged from the back stock of a craft store, and even that does not do well to disguise the rough cuts of the team that hollowed out a hill in a hurry.

Elmer isn’t here right now. If he were, Mom would have hit him with the door.

Instead it’s me suffering a near miss. I’m somewhat smaller than Elmer and less likely to sit with my back to the door.

“Oh good, you’re here.” Mom makes herself comfortable by taking the only available seat in the room: the top of the desk.

“What do you need?” I realize that I’m responding to her with unnecessary harshness, but I’m having some trouble dealing with the scope of my personal failure right now.

Mom just gives me a smile and a pat on the shoulder.

“They’re talking about hosting a liberation celebration in town. I want you to go.”

I blink.

She nods, her hand settling on my shoulder in half of a hug.

I blink some more. If it signals an SOS then that was a happy accident.

“You’re not going to say anything?” Mom leans into the hug. “I was hoping you’d get some quality time in the open air out of it.”

I look around the room at the close walls and the ceiling I could hit my head on if I jumped. We try not to bring up my fear of small spaces. Living in a cave is not kind to me, but I can get by if I pretend hard enough that this cave is not a cave. For her to use this against me feels like a low blow.

“You know that really doesn’t sound safe,” I try to argue. The evidence in my hands suggests that any surface movement will always be able to be tracked by a diligent enough Troo. “We haven’t liberated anything.”

“That’s part of the point.” Mom crosses her arms over her chest.

“I don’t follow?” I really don’t.

“We suspect that they don’t have the manpower to prevent the town from just declaring itself liberated without a real fight.” Her grin is predatory. “If they throw a liberation celebration then there won’t be enough of a Troo presence to put a stop to it. That gives us the first real change in territorial holdings in months.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Taking out that fortress put a pockmark deep in their controlled territory. The bulk of their forces are too far away from here to respond with anything less than an orbital strike.” She pauses to wink at me. “And that hasn’t happened.”

And then it hits me. Not the orbital strike, but the lack of an orbital strike.

I had gone into that fortress via an incredibly risky tunnel. If the drill hadn’t punctured an occupied bathroom we might have been entirely successful in getting in, getting the satellites under control, and getting back out again. But I escaped on an easily tracked tank. A tank, with tracks, that plowed a hole through the forest it initially rampaged its way through.

This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

If they could track us with the satellite imagery that they undoubtedly still have access to, then why had they not already turned the roof over our heads to glass? We’re secure enough that we’d probably survive one of their energy weapons and have to tunnel our way out before we suffocate completely. And now my heart is racing and my mind is churning at a million miles a second. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can’t breathe.

We’re going to die down here.

Mom grabs my shoulders and hauls me out of the room. I’m not a tiny person anymore that she can just scoop into her arms and carry, but that does not prevent her from doing the next best thing.

My mother pulls me out of the small, close room, and stands me directly under one of the ventilation shafts that constantly blow cool air throughout the miles of tunnels and natural caverns. It isn’t the freedom of fresh air in the outdoors, but it comes at a fair second place.

I breathe. I breathe.

One. Two. Three. Four.

Okay. I’m back. And she’s right. I’ll take any excuse to get out of here for a few hours.

“We weren’t followed at all?” It feels like releasing a steam valve in my flight or fight response.

“We have no evidence that you were followed at all.” Mom pets my hair and kisses the crown of my head. It’s every bit as reassuring now at twenty-three as it was at three.

I hadn’t wanted to voice the fear. I hadn’t wanted to admit that I had probably doomed every last one of us to a death so terrible that it haunts my nightmares.

If I let on that I believed that all I’d accomplished was our deaths, then how could I have possibly slept, or eaten, or ever spoken with my friends again at all. It’s good that Elmer isn’t here. He’d never let me out of his sight again.

“So,” Mom gives me a gentle hug, “will you be willing to attend a party for me?”

I nod.

“Excellent!” she cheers, “we’ll get your costume ready to go this afternoon.

“Wait, costume?”

Mom nods excitedly.

“Are you for real?”

“Of course!” She rubs her hands together conspiratorially. “We don’t want any of our people to be targeted for specific violence, so everyone is getting dressed in fancy costumes. It’ll be exciting. The wardrobe requisitions team has never had so much fun.”

This does not fill me with confidence.

That, of course, turns out to be a true premonition of the danger into which I tread only a few hours later.

The requisitions department handles procurement of all varieties of goods that one may need for a modern life in a dank tunnel in the ground. I could ask them for bananas in February and they would move heaven and earth (though probably a lot more earth) to make it happen. They’re not always fast, but they’re always efficient.

And somehow, they have acquired large quantities of what they assure me are dyed goose feathers. And undyed goose feathers.

Of course it would be Mik that meets me there with my mother. He holds up two options: a blue feathered number that would be hard to walk in, and a white dress that looks somehow familiar.

I reach out and run a finger over the tulle and netting on the white skirt.

“Great choice!” Mik responds enthusiastically. “I wasn’t sure if the right way to go for you would be to stick with the Carnival theme most of the other costumes are running with or something more old school.”

“It’s from a ballet, right?” I ask, only half-remembering the videos watched on the studio floor long before the invasion happened.

“Right again,” he answers, “This was pulled from a theater in Fort Worth a while back, and it’s one of the only two options I’ve got in your size that don’t require a lot of alterations.”

I look again at the blue feathered dress with its corseted bodice and wide fanned tail.

“And this was?”

“Carnival. Very Rio. Some people have amazing taste. It fits you because it fits anyone. I could wear this and it’d squish me down into the right shape.” Mik briefly pats his belly.

I am not convinced. I indicate the white costume with great skepticism.

Mom is apparently relieved by my choice. She probably did not relish the mental image of her daughter dressed in something that so completely placed so much of my cleavage on display. The much more demure white swan costume comes with a high collar and concealing mesh sleeves. I could not be more covered if I showed up in a onesie.

Mik hands over the matching stockings, mask, gloves, and a pair of shoes that intimidate me more than I prefer to admit. I had not really thought this all the way through. I did not think I would be expected to walk outdoors in soft ballet flats. At least they are not actually pointe shoes. That would have stretched the far limits of my dance experience.

With the costume in arms, I retreat back to my own room with Mom. It isn’t much of a place, but it’s mine. And unlike any other room in the entire building, I’ve plastered every spare inch of the natural cave walls with photos of clouds.

I want to be anywhere else. At least I should be able to escape and feel fresh air again for a while soon.

The costume hangs carefully over the back of my single wooden chair. I feel like I have been entrusted with a small fortune. I hope I can be worthy of it.