Chasing the Stars

by Malorie Blackman

  Why did I join with Nathan? It’d been such a rash thing to do. Why did he join with me? I mean, why go along with it in the first place? A new sexual conquest? A brand-new adventure? A ship and his freedom at stake?

  Nathan couldn’t keep his hands off me. I’d been stupid enough to mistake a high sex drive for an extremely loving nature. I’d seen in him what I wanted to see and had believed that I’d be enough for him.

  And yet . . .

  And yet I would’ve sworn he only had eyes for me. I thought he was all mine, just as I was all his. I guess not all of him was mine alone. He felt free to satisfy his sexual appetite with anyone he wanted, he was just trying to be discreet about it. Discreet? Not if everyone knew what he was except me. What had Anjuli called him? A whoremeister. A master manipulator. Someone who wasn’t above using sex and playing on the feelings of others to get what they wanted.

  Stupid. I was so very stupid.

  Reckless.

  Foolish to join with him.

  Now I couldn’t get the image of him and Anjuli out of my head. It was poisoning my mind, cell by cell. I closed my eyes and I could see them kissing. I opened my eyes and I could see them in bed together. In her bed or in the bed Nathan and I shared, the one that was supposed to be exclusively ours.

  I sat up slowly, self-loathing scorching through me.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ I asked Aidan. ‘There’s fifteen of them, not including their children, and only the two of us.’

  ‘Does Nathan know you’re on to them?’ asked Aidan.

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘As long as he and the others don’t know for sure, then we do to them what they wanted to do to us, only we do it first – starting with Nathan.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning we do whatever is necessary to survive,’ said my brother.

  ‘What about the ones who were killed? D’you know who was responsible for that?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m still working on that,’ said Aidan. ‘Though I suspect they were got rid of because they refused to go along with the plans to dupe the two of us.’

  Appalled, I stared at him. ‘You really think that was the reason they were killed?’

  ‘What other reason could they be? They lived on Callisto together, they travelled on the transport ship Galileo together, they lived on Barros 5 together. So why would someone suddenly decide to bump them off one by one now? The reason must have something to do with us and our ship. We have it, they want it.’

  I hated the fact that Aidan’s logic made sense.

  ‘Vee, I hope you’re not going to argue with me on this,’ Aidan replied. ‘It’s us or them. We need to neutralize Nathan, his mum, Darren and Sam. They are the refugees’ leaders. We get rid of them, then we strike at the others before they have a chance to regroup.’

  No!

  Think, Vee. Think.

  This was all moving way too fast.

  Nathan was my husband and that meant something to me. I wasn’t going to rush to believe Nathan could be such a treacherous rat. Our time together deserved more than that. Nathan smiling at me, hugging me, holding me, feeding me when I was almost too tired to hold my spoon – they were all images that played in my mind. I shook my head. I couldn’t give up on us that quickly. I just couldn’t.

  ‘I’m not going to move against anyone without more proof,’ I said at last.

  ‘How much more proof do you need, Vee?’ Aidan asked, exasperated.

  ‘More than I’ve currently got.’

  ‘Do we have to be floating out into space before you believe Nathan is no good?’ asked Aidan. ‘Nathan is cheating on you, and not just him but everyone on board is having a good laugh about it at your expense. He’s using you to get what he and the rest of the drones want. And once they have this ship, they’ll have no further use for either of us. It’s us or them.’

  Everything my brother said made sense, I still wasn’t prepared to believe it. Not yet. I had to think rationally about this.

  ‘Let me speak to Nathan,’ I said. ‘Then we can decide what our next move will be.’

  ‘If you insist on speaking to him first, then do me a favour. You’ll know exactly where you stand if you ask Nathan one simple question,’ said Aidan.

  ‘What question?’

  ‘Ask him where the pendant is you gave him?’

  ‘I know where it is – round Anjuli’s neck,’ I said bitterly.

  ‘Yes, but Nathan doesn’t know that you know that. Ask him. See what he says. If he’s honest, if he respects you, he’ll come right out and tell you the truth. But if he lies or, knowing him, tries to change the subject . . .’ Aidan left the rest unsaid.

  I nodded reluctantly. Aidan smiled, satisfied.

  I stood up, more tired than I’d ever been in my life. Every part of me was folding in on itself and I wasn’t fighting it. I wanted to be as small as possible until I faded away from all the sorrow, the pain overwhelming me.

  ‘Vee, you know I love you, right?’ asked Aidan.

  I turned to him and dragged a smile onto my face. ‘Yeah, I know.’

  I headed back to my room, sealing the door. I sat on the bed, my knees drawn up, my head resting on them. Every hope and dream I’d had which featured Nathan and me together was slowly but surely withering inside.

  64

  What the hell was going on? I placed my hand against the palmlock for a third time. Once again the door failed to open.

  ‘Computer, put me through to Vee in room U-02,’ I ordered.

  The image of Vee’s face appeared on the control panel in front of me beside our door. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Vee, I can’t get into our room.’

  Damn! What was that look Vee giving me all about? Her eyes were narrowed and there was no spark of warmth or welcome in them. I must’ve been mistaken because, a moment later, she’d moved away from the screen and I heard our door unlock. I entered the room.

  ‘Why’re you here, Nathan?’ Vee’s voice dripped with enough venom to kill at twenty paces. So I hadn’t been mistaken.

  I frowned. ‘Why did you lock me out? I live here now. Remember?’

  ‘I remember. You obviously don’t. Could you get whatever it is you came for and leave please?’ Vee turned to walk away from me but I grabbed her arm, spinning her round.

  ‘What’s going on, Vee? Why’re you mad at me?’

  She looked me up and down in the same way that her brother had done when he’d barged into our room and found me naked. It’d irritated me when he did it and it was doing the same thing now. Vee was looking at me like I was somewhere beneath contempt.

  ‘Where’s my dad’s pendant that I gave you as a joining gift, Nate?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me. Where is it?’

  Shit! I’d lost that thing and still hadn’t found it yet. Time for some fast talking.

  ‘Never mind the pendant, why did you seal the door against me?’ I asked, figuring to get Vee’s mind on something else.

  ‘Where’s the pendant I gave you, Nate?’ Vee repeated with slow deliberation.

  ‘Don’t try to change the subject,’ I said. ‘Why did you seal the door? If Darren or one of the others has threatened you then you need to tell me. We have friends on board, Vee, friends who won’t let Darren or anyone else harm us. And talking of friends, when are you going to get round to recalling Anjuli to the bridge? Seriously. Don’t you think she’s suffered enough?’

  If I thought Vee’s look was cold before, it was at absolute zero now.

  ‘Nathan. Where. Is. The. Pendant?’

  ‘We’re talking about Anjuli here.’ I blustered. ‘Not some stupid pendant—’

  Vee’s hand flew out as she went to slap my face. I grabbed her wrist, but only just before her palm made contact with my cheek.

  ‘If you slap me, I warn you, I’ll slap you back.’ I was just as pissed off as she was now.

  ‘Let go of me,’ Vee ordered, her voice low.

 
I let go of her wrist as if it was red hot. Vee had actually tried to hit me. I swore when I left Callisto that no one would ever strike me again. No one.

  ‘I’d appreciate it if you got your shit together and left,’ Vee told me.

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Just like that.’

  We scowled at each other, neither of us moving, neither of us saying a word. Something ugly was in the room with us and it was writhing, coiling ever tighter around us. Was that it then? Was our joining over before it had barely begun? It couldn’t be because I’d lost the pendant she gave me. No one broke up over the loss of a piece of jewellery, for God’s sake. Had Vee finally woken up to the fact that I was a drone and she’d realized just what she’d tied herself to?

  An alarm blared. It sounded like it was coming from the upper deck. God forgive me but my first thought was, ‘Thank God!’ Closely followed by, ‘Now what?’

  I ran for the door, closely followed by Vee. Our issues would just have to wait. We both sprinted along the corridor to where the alarm was coming from – the mess hall.

  65

  We entered the mess hall to a scene of absolute chaos. Max, Dooli, Rafael and a number of others were doubled over, clutching their stomachs. Simone and Khari, the children, stood beside Dooli, crying at her evident distress. Simone tried to stroke Dooli’s hair as the woman groaned in agony. Others were actually being physically sick where they sat. The smell was horrendous, bad enough to make me recoil the moment I entered the mess hall.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

  ‘Vee, get over here,’ Doctor Liana called to me. ‘That utility dispenser over there has laced every meal that came out of it with some kind of poison. Everyone who was sitting at my table has fallen ill.’

  What on earth . . .?

  ‘Everyone?’ I frowned.

  The doctor nodded.

  ‘Did everyone eat the same thing?’ I asked.

  ‘No. We all had different meals.’

  ‘Which table?’

  The doctor pointed to the nearest one. ‘It must’ve been that particular utility dispenser,’ she insisted, pointing at the nearest one.

  But there was no way any utility dispenser on board could do that. There were too many checks and balances that had to happen before the food was produced in the first place. And if there was something wrong with the programming of the dispensers, then every dispenser throughout the ship would be affected, not just one. So either one particular utility dispenser had been sabotaged, or there was a much simpler solution.

  I ran over to the nearest table and retrieved an empty cup. Hedda sat with her head on the table, lying next to a pool of foul-smelling sick beside her face. Her skin was pale, almost translucent. I used the cup to scrape up some of Hedda’s vomit which was mixed with blood. Hedda’s eyes were beginning to roll back in her head.

  ‘Doctor, you’re needed over here,’ I called out.

  Doctor Liana spoke briefly to Mike before coming over to Hedda. Those present who weren’t ill were helping the sick in any way they could by wiping their faces and trying to make them comfortable. I took the cup containing Hedda’s vomit and ran out of the mess hall to the science lab opposite. The lab was empty, everyone having hurried across the corridor to help out in the mess hall in any way they could.

  I needed to hurry, to confirm whether or not my suspicions were correct. Once at the nearest control panel, I placed some of the vomit on one of the specimen plates beneath the panel and pushed it into the elemental spectrograph inlet that was a feature of the panels in the science lab. It provided a fast way to analyse any substance, no matter how minute, which wasn’t exactly the problem here.

  ‘Aidan, analyse this sample and tell me if it contains any poisons or pathogens that are dangerous to humans,’ I said to the ship’s computer.

  The answer came back almost at once. ‘This sample contains Aetonella bacteria, species A. pentadensis,’ said Aidan’s voice.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I said, horrified.

  ‘Positive. This sample contains five per cent Aetonella bacteria,’ said the computer.

  The lethal dose was less than one per cent.

  ‘Aidan, what’s the treatment for Aetonella bacteria poisoning?’ I asked.

  ‘It depends on the amount ingested and the time since ingestion. If the amount swallowed is small and recent, an emetic is suggested. Otherwise make the patient comfortable until they die.’

  The computer knew nothing of euphemisms or breaking bad news gently.

  I ran back to the mess hall. The cries of agony and the sounds of retching hadn’t faded. A couple of bodies lay on the floor. Others at the tables or kneeling on the floor were not in a good way. Aetonella bacteria poisoning was a swift but brutal way to die. I looked around, trying to ascertain the possible source of the poisoning, ’cause it sure as hell wasn’t the utility dispensers. There were jugs of water on each table but the water would’ve come from the same source, unless the bacteria had been introduced into one particular jug. But who would do such a thing – and perhaps more importantly, why?

  I ran over to the table where people had got sick. Half-eaten plates of food were at every place setting. And half-full cups of water as well as other drinks like Prop, that nasty purple stuff some of them drank once their shifts were over. There was a tablet next to one place setting and it was showing the film Dead Poets Society. I recognized it at once. That had to be where the doctor was sitting. Had she decided to watch the film again after our conversation about it? Her plate contained a half-eaten baked potato with cheese. The glass of water beside her plate was three-quarters full, water stained to the rim. At the next place setting someone had been sick. There were patches of vomit scattered over this one particular table and some on the floor around it.

  More people ran into the mess hall, assessing the scene of pandemonium at a glance. Amongst them was Darren, who took a swift look around before his gaze landed on me.

  ‘This is your doing,’ he shouted, pointing straight at me. ‘You won’t be satisfied until you kill every last one of us. Well, I’m not going to stand around waiting for you to decide when it’s my turn to die.’ He turned to those around him. ‘It’s too late for Max and Dooli – look, everyone, look at their bodies! And it’s her fault. She needs to be put in one of the detention cells and to stay there until we get to Mendela Prime or none of us will get there alive.’

  If Darren had come at me by himself, I could’ve kicked his arse. Three or four of them against me would’ve been a fair fight. But suddenly I was surrounded. Where was Nathan? My instinct was to search for him in this sea of hostile faces but I couldn’t see him. Four of them came at me at once. A roundhouse kick sent Harrison spinning, as did an upward palm to Maria’s chin. I punched and kicked as more piled in. If I was going down, then these bastards would know they’d been in a fight. I held them off for as long as I could but I was simply outnumbered. It didn’t take them long at all to get the upper hand, but get it they did. My limbs were grabbed and I was being held by at least three of them.

  ‘Let go of me!’ I shouted. ‘Have you lost your minds? Let me go at once!’

  It was no use. Though I bucked and heaved and kicked out, I was carried like a rabid dog to one of the four detention cells down on the starboard side of the cargo hold. Darren held my arms, smirking down viciously at me, whilst Maria and Harrison held onto my legs. I was gratified to see that Maria’s nose had been bleeding and Harrison already had a huge lump on his forehead and his eye was swelling shut. They must all have had glue on their hands though because I couldn’t get out of their grip no matter how much I writhed.

  When we reached the cargo hold, I was not placed but thrown onto the floor of the detention cell, before those carrying me legged it out of the room. Darren activated the nano-field as I jumped to my feet, my blood racing. In a number of the old films I’d watched, steel bars, thick walls and reinforced doors were used to keep people locked up. Now my way was barred
with an adapted nano-field which gave out a non-lethal but still significant plasma shock. I wiped the back of my hand across my bottom lip. Blood.

  I was bleeding.

  They’d pay for that!

  ‘Let me out of here,’ I demanded.

  ‘You’ve been indulged for long enough,’ said Darren. ‘You can stay in here until you rot. At least this way, we’ll know where you are at all times. You won’t be picking off any more of us.’

  ‘You’ve been patiently waiting for this moment, haven’t you, Darren? Any excuse to get rid of me,’ I said with contempt. ‘You know as well as I do that all these incidents around the ship have absolutely nothing to do with me.’

  ‘There were no unexplained deaths until we came on board this damned ship. Now we’re dropping like zapped flies. You do the maths,’ Darren replied icily.

  The cargo bay doors hissed open and Nathan came running in. I hadn’t seen him since we both entered the mess hall. He stopped abruptly when he saw where I was, only to then sprint across the hold to the cells. He made for the panel in the wall beside my cell, reaching out to tap on the command to drop the nano-field and release me.

  Darren pushed him aside to stand in his way. ‘What d’you think you’re doing?’

  ‘What does it look like?’ Nathan tried to push past him again, but Darren shoved him back. ‘Listen, Darren, no way am I going to let Vee spend another moment in there,’ Nathan insisted. ‘Move.’

  ‘She’s in there and that’s where she’ll stay until the commander says otherwise,’ said Darren. ‘We’re all in danger with her on the loose. You did see what just happened in the mess hall, didn’t you?’

  ‘This was my mum’s idea?’ Nathan said, shocked. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘The commander knows how dangerous Vee is, and like the rest of us she’s had just about enough of this one and her brother,’ said Darren. ‘That girl will stay in there until we decide what to do with her.’