Zodiac

by Romina Russell

  “Shockwave from the explosion!” Mathias calls over the noise. “Hold onto something!”

  Nishi shrieks, but Deke steadies her. I grip a handrail and close my eyes. If we’re having moonquakes, what must be happening on Thebe? Close to three thousand people work at the moon base there.

  Stanton told me they have shelters—please let him be in a shelter right now. . . . He has to be in a shelter right now . . . please.

  With one last convulsion, the shaking ends as abruptly as it started. I watch Mathias move his lips, speaking soundlessly to someone we can’t see. Only the Zodai can communicate that way. When his invisible conversation is over, he says, “A meteoroid may have struck Thebe. This ship is launching now. We’re heading home to Cancer.”

  4

  THE TRIP WILL TAKE TEN HOURS.

  Mathias moves us into the crew’s bunkroom, where we’re belted into oil-stained hammocks that stink of mildew, while he goes to the bridge. When we’re alone and buckled up, I can’t look my friends in the face. Somehow, seeing them will make the bodies on Elara real.

  Every House has a different outlook on death. We Cancrians send our dead into space, toward Helios, the gateway to the afterlife. We believe those who pass on with settled souls are at peace and gone for good, while the unsettled soul lives on in the stars as a new constellation.

  The hope is that one day, the unsettled soul can return to live again on Cancer.

  I picture the girl in the pink space suit. Where will her soul go?

  I chase the thought from my mind by trying to Wave Stanton and Dad, but there’s still no connection. I wonder if Dad even knows what happened. He doesn’t watch the news, and his Wave is so old he sometimes has to open and close it twice to get the holographic menus to pop out.

  G-forces press us down as we lift off Elara. The ship’s engines rumble, loud and ferocious, but I can already hear the ocean’s everlasting breath. Maybe Stanton wasn’t on Thebe. Maybe he’s home right now, waiting for me. The last time we spoke, he told me he was visiting Dad soon.

  The hull of the mining ship groans and creaks as we accelerate upward from the moon, leaving the past five years of our lives behind.

  “It’s okay, Nish,” says Deke, squeezing her hand. She gives him a weak smile, her eyes rimmed red and puffy.

  At last, the engines cut off, signaling our escape from Elara’s gravity, and in the sudden quiet, my ears tingle. Gripping my Wave, I unclasp my belt and float out of the hammock, weightless. So do the others.

  “I don’t understand why Mother Origene didn’t warn us,” says Kai, speaking his first words since waking. He tries Waving his parents, but there’s no connection. “The stars must have shown signs.”

  “To see a meteoroid that big, I doubt you’d even need an Ephemeris,” says Deke, scrolling through his Wave contacts, trying to get through to anyone on Cancer. “Any telescope should have caught it.”

  I’ve been wondering the same thing. The Guardian has two main duties: representing her House in the Galactic Senate and protecting her people by reading the future. So what happened?

  “Rho.”

  Nishi’s whisper is so frail, it’s the first thing about tonight that seems real. “The omen you saw during your test, the one you’ve been seeing when you read my future for fun, the one you won’t talk about”—she chokes back a sob, tiny weightless tears slipping from her amber eyes and scattering through the air—“could it be . . . real?”

  “No,” I say quickly. Her expression hardens with distrust, which hurts because Cancrians don’t use deceit. “It can’t be,” I insist, spilling my evidence: “When I saw the black mass today, at my retest, even Dean Lyll said it was nonsense. He made me use an Astralator, and it confirmed—”

  “You saw it again today,” says Nishi, like she hasn’t heard a word past that admission. “You’ve been seeing it for days, and then you saw it again today, and now this—Rho, take another look in the Ephemeris.”

  “Why don’t one of you look, you’re better with an Astralator—”

  “Because we didn’t see a dark mass in our readings.”

  “I failed and had to take the test twice, Nishi,” I argue, my volume rising. “My reading was wrong.”

  “Oh, really? So nothing bad happened tonight then?” Her voice breaks, and more tears slip into the air, like tiny diamonds.

  I look over at Deke, hoping he’ll disagree with her. After all, he’s always the first to dismiss my reads as silly stories.

  Only he’s not paying us attention. He’s just staring at his Wave blankly.

  He couldn’t get through to anyone.

  “Okay,” I whisper with a sigh. “I’ll do it.”

  I scroll through my Wave and find my copy of the Ephemeris. It’s just a tutorial version, so it doesn’t have all the detail of the Academy’s, but it still works. Stanton gave it to me last year, for my sixteenth birthday. When I whisper the command, the star map swells out in a holographic projection the size of a puffer fish. I relax my vision until my eyes cross, and then I reach into my pocket for my drumsticks.

  Only they’re not there. Like everything else I own, they’re gone.

  My eyes burn.

  “I’m sorry, Rho, I shouldn’t have asked,” says Nishi, hugging me in midair. “Just forget it.”

  “No, you’re right.” My voice comes out steady and determined. I give Nishi a squeeze back, and then I face the map again. “I have to do something. I have to help—if I can.”

  I summon up one of my usual melodies, sans sticks—but the music reminds me too much of our show. I can’t find anything in me to call on.

  A blaze of blue flashes through the cabin’s small window, and I look up from the map to the real thing.

  Even from this far, after so long of only seeing it in the Ephemeris, Cancer is breathtaking. Ninety-eight percent water, our planet is painted every shade of blue, streaked with barely perceptible slices of green. Cancer’s cities are built on massive pods that float calmly on the sea’s surface, like giant, half-submerged anemones. Our largest structures—buildings, commercial centers, schools—are secured with anchors.

  The pods that hold the most populated cities are so vast that whenever I visit one I forget I’m not on land—except when a shift in the planet’s core triggers powerful ripples. We have security outposts in the sky, reachable by aircraft, and a handful of underwater stations that have never been used. They were mainly built for protection, in case life above water is ever threatened.

  My home is my soul: Cancer is my Center.

  I turn back to the star map, and I gaze into the blue orb as though I could see every detail, down to the tiny whirlpools of color that fleetingly form on the sea’s surface. The longer I stare, the deeper and wider the map seems to grow, until I’m Space-diving through the stars.

  All around me, millions of celestial bodies ascend and decline, and as their paths shift in response to distant events like gamma bursts and supernovas, they leave faint arcs in the sky. They almost look like musical notes.

  Music of the night, Mom said the ancients called it.

  I look to the side of Cancer. Thebe is gone. Then I survey the moons we have left—and all three begin to flicker.

  Like any one of them could be next.

  Pulse pumping, I pan away from our House and search beyond the twelfth constellation, where the omen appears. It’s not there.

  Has it finally disappeared? Or has it moved closer?

  I scan the whole solar system, desperately searching for a hint of the writhing blackness, a sign of the opposition in our stars.

  Nishiko glides over to me. “You see something. What is it?”

  “I . . . don’t see the omen anymore. . . .”

  As soon as I leave my Center, the map shrinks back down to the size of a puffer fish—the way it’s appeared to the others this
whole time.

  “But?” she asks. “Why do you sound bothered by its absence?”

  “Because I still felt the sense of danger, only I couldn’t see the source. And there’s . . . something else.” I dread speaking the words, but I have to. Maybe if I’d spoken up earlier, we would have had warning. If I’d just told Instructor Tidus—

  “What else? Rho, tell us!” Nishi squeezes my shoulder urgently.

  “Sorry—I didn’t mean to keep you in suspense, I’m just—okay, listen. Earlier today, at my retest, I saw . . . I saw Thebe’s light flickering, and then it vanished. Like, disappeared from the map.”

  My three friends exchange awed looks. Deke is the first to turn away. “Rho, this isn’t time for one of your tales.”

  “Deke, you’re my best friend. Would I really be messing with you after what’s happened?”

  He glares at me but doesn’t say anything. He knows I’m right.

  “And what’d you see now?” whispers Nishi.

  “Thebe is gone . . . and our other moons have started to flicker.”

  None of us speaks. My friends are still caught in the gravity of my revelation, but I’m thinking of Instructor Tidus. She was the first grown-up since Mom who saw any potential in me.

  Please let her have survived the blast.

  Kai floats away from us, to a corner of the bunkroom. “I hope you’re wrong,” says Deke, following Kai and offering words of comfort.

  “Maybe you’re not wrong,” whispers Nishi. “The omen and the flickering of the moons could be connected. Did you see anything else?”

  “Nish, I don’t know anything,” I whisper back, growing unexpectedly angry. “None of what I saw was real. The Astralator proved I was wrong. I have no clue what you expect me to do.”

  Deke frowns at us from across the room. “What are you gossiping about now, Nish?”

  “I’m being serious,” she says. “I don’t care how, but Rho saw a threat, and we can’t ignore that.”

  “It wasn’t in the stars, it was in my head,” I say, my words fueled by more hope than certainty.

  “What about all the tragedies in the news?” she asks. The last couple of years, there have been a slew of natural disasters in the Zodiac. Mudslides in House Taurus. Dust storms and drought in the Piscene planetoids. Forest fires raging out of control on a Leonine moon. The past year alone, millions of lives have been lost.

  “Maybe it’s the Trinary Axis again,” whispers Kai, like the thought itself is dangerous.

  “Don’t even say that,” snaps Deke. “Events go in cycles, Kai, that’s all. It’s nature.”

  We fall silent, and I wonder if we’re all still thinking about the Trinary Axis. A thousand years ago, the axis started a vicious galactic war that raged out of control for a century. When we studied it at school, it seemed unreal—just as unreal as the bodies on Elara.

  “Those terrorist attacks in House Aries,” I say, “and those suicide bombers on the Geminin space freighter—that’s not nature’s way.”

  “Fringe fanatics,” says Deke, sounding just like Stanton. “We’ve always had our share of lunatics.”

  Nishiko draws me to the far end of the bunkroom, darts a wary glance at Deke and Kai, then whispers in my ear. “What if there is an enemy? Think about the timing of the blast.”

  “You mean the Lunar Quadract?”

  “Almost every Zodai and high-ranking government member in your House was on Elara tonight to hear your Guardian’s speech—”

  “And our moons were at their closest conjunction,” I say, completing her thought. I chew on my lower lip as the full magnitude of her theory sinks in. If someone planned this, they really thought it through. A well-timed blast in exactly the right place, and our moons could crash into each other like marbles.

  I feel myself blanch. I don’t want to consider this. Cancer has no enemies. Humanity has been at peace for a thousand years. “This was a tragedy . . . no one could have orchestrated it.”

  Nishi frowns at me. “You’ve been seeing an omen.”

  “Yes, and the experts at the Academy who teach classes on this stuff don’t find my methods reliable, so neither should you.”

  Nishi’s voice rises higher, and now Deke and Kai are listening again. “Rho, they just don’t understand your methods, that’s all! I know you’ve been taught to trust your elders, but on Sagittarius we’re raised to question everything—it’s the only way to get to the truth of a thing. You and our instructors are being blinded by prejudice right now. You’re so distracted by how you got the right answer that you’re missing the point that you are right—”

  An alarm blares across the room, and an automated voice echoes through the ship: “Debris field ahead. Brace yourselves.”

  A heavy object jolts against our hull, and Nishi and I grasp hands just as the retro engines fire, flinging all of us to the ceiling. We must be flying through Thebe’s rubble. “Grab something and hang on!” I shout, wrapping my fingers around a handrail.

  The engines thunder so loud, my teeth vibrate. We hear the thuds of more space rocks striking our hull, and we cling to our handrails while the ship veers in every direction, blowing our bodies around like seaweed in a riptide.

  Kai looks green, so I pull myself over to him and tug on his elbow. “Come on!” I call over the thunderous rumbling. “We have to belt in.”

  As the ship rolls and swerves, I help him into the nearest hammock and squeeze in beside him, hooking the belt tight across our ribs. An especially large chunk of debris slams our hull, and Kai clutches my hand so hard, I wince.

  The ship keeps lurching unpredictably, the wreckage so extensive it feels like we’ve been bumping through it for hours. After a while, Kai starts singing an old Cancrian seafaring song:

  “The wind she blows from north to east.

  Our schooner flies ten knots at least.

  So ever forward we shall roam,

  Until the sea shall bring us home. . . .”

  I join in, flat and off-key. When Deke’s voice seeps in, he meets my gaze for the first time. His eyes look like dying stars, nebulas of turquoise whose lights are fading.

  Now I’m the one crushing Kai’s hand.

  We sing the song so many times that Nishi memorizes the words. After so much crying and shouting, her voice is nothing more than a soft purr, but it’s still beautiful. Gradually, the rest of us drop out so we can listen to her mournful tune.

  The ship’s trajectory starts to smooth out. When the engines cut off, Nishi’s voice fades away, and we wait in tense silence.

  “All clear,” the automated voice announces.

  I take a deep breath, free my fingers from Kai’s grip, and undo my belt. When I’m in the air, Nishi’s already by my side. “Let’s find the Stargazer and tell him what you saw.” Stargazer is the Sagittarian word for Zodai.

  “He told us to stay here,” interrupts Deke.

  “Nishi’s right,” I say, taking her hand and digging into my pocket for my Wave. “Besides, I want to know what’s happening.”

  Nishi and I zip up to the hatch in time to barge right into Lodestar Mathias Thais. With a frown, he motions us back into the bunkroom. Inside, dim light falls across his face, shadowing his cheekbones. “We’re making a course change.”

  “The other moons?” I ask, my breath catching. “Did something happen to them?”

  He stares at me, and I get the sense he’s observing me for the first time. He looks for so long, I begin to feel uncomfortable, but I don’t turn away. The same instinct that helps me read the stars seems to be whispering to me now. If I want him to treat me like an equal, I need to act like one.

  He swipes the Wave from my hands and opens it. I don’t protest. He scans the holograms surrounding him and pulls up the Ephemeris. When the spectral Space map blossoms out, he asks, “You can read the stars with thi
s?”

  He sounds so doubtful that I blush. “Not very well. It’s just a tutorial version.”

  He tips his head to one side, searching my face, continuing to float in the same steady position. “Your reading’s correct,” he says, his voice stony. “Our four moons have collided, and the rubble is streaking through our atmosphere. In the next few hours, it will strike our ocean and cause planet-wide tsunami waves. We can’t land on Cancer.”

  The edges of my vision darken. I feel like he’s sucked the light from my world with his words.

  Everything that happened tonight was almost endurable at the thought of setting foot in the Cancer Sea, of sleeping in my old room, of hugging Dad and saying all the things I never said. I take a ragged breath, and Nishi steadies me with her arm. Dad—Stanton—the Academy—home—everything I know is sinking away.

  I’m Centerless.

  Mathias clears his throat, and I realize he isn’t finished. Lowering his eyes, he whispers, “Our Guardian Origene is dead.”

  5

  THE SHOCK ROBS ME OF speech and thought, almost of breath itself.

  My mind is blank.

  My classmates and teachers, maybe my brother and Dad, now Guardian Origene—so many of our people lost in one night. I feel as if their screams are still echoing through the universe, filling my head with their voices.

  Nishiko and Deke are as frozen as I am, and the three of us listen to Kai’s quiet sobbing like it’s an alien language we’ve only just begun to learn.

  Mathias continues in a low baritone. “We’ll dock at a satellite called Oceon 6. Admiral Crius is there, organizing our House’s disaster response. He’s Guardian Origene’s Military Advisor, and he’s ordered all surviving Cancrian Zodai to report, and that includes you Acolytes.”

  “Who’ll be our Guardian now?” asks Kai.

  “We’ll find a new one. It’s our first priority.” Mathias turns to Nishi. “You’re Sagittarian?” She nods. “See me after we dock. We’ll try to arrange your transport home.”