“Gather everyone in the nose. I’ll be out in a moment.” I remain in my cabin, the same one I stayed in the last time I was on this ship, a little while longer. In spite of everything that happened then, I was almost happy here . . . in the company of two men and comrades whom I loved, on a mission I believed in wholeheartedly, fueled by an idealistic certainty that we would prevail. It’s the way I know Nishi and Deke must feel now.
I can’t let anything happen to them.
I join the others in the nose as we leave hyperspeed. “Let’s get as close to the asteroid belt as we can without putting ourselves in danger,” I tell Twain. “We’ll explore the area until we find someone—or someone finds us.”
He nods. “You got it, Captain.”
Nishi takes my hand, and the six of us wait in silence for someone to attack.
Three galactic hours and four path variations later, there’s still no sign of the master’s army. “I don’t like this,” says Aryll, voicing what we’re all feeling. “Maybe we should raise our Psy shield.”
I shake my head. “We can’t appear as if we’re prepared for a fight. The whole point is to seem nonthreatening—we have to keep the channels open.”
“There’s something on the radar,” says Twain. “A ship. It’s heading for us at—holy Helios, it’s impossibly fast!”
’Nox starts shaking violently. A screeching noise grates my ears, like a Psynergy attack from Ophiuchus. The six of us shuffle from side to side, trying to cling to handrails and each other.
Every screen on the ship goes blank and glows white. Then the same black letters begin to form across all of them—a message from Ophiuchus.
The master’s minions are here. They will board your ship by force. If you want to meet the master, you must face them . . . but remember what I told you. Death’s hand will reveal your true enemy—and Death is what you are inviting on board.
18
THE SCREENS GO BACK TO normal, and the shaking and shrieking stop. Everyone faces me with expressions slack and lips parted, awaiting my response to Ochus’s warning.
“There are enough escape capsules for all of you,” I say quickly and calmly, just as I rehearsed in my cabin this morning. “You’ve gotten me this far—now please, abandon this ship and reconnect with the others. It should be easy to locate Marad headquarters now that you have a path to follow.”
Nobody moves.
“That’s an order,” I say, my voice hard. I glare at Stanton and push against him, but he stays still. I tug on Nishi’s arm, but she doesn’t budge either.
“Give it up, Rho,” says Deke, his face set in a determined Lodestar expression that reminds me of Mathias. “This is what you want. This is unity—get used to the sight.”
Equinox jolts forward as something hooks onto us. “They’re overriding the system,” says Twain, feverishly clicking through holographic navigational screens. “I can’t stop them!”
Their ship has suctioned onto ’Nox, merging us together. “We’ll have to fight,” says Deke, raising his Arclight.
“We can’t fight,” I say, hoping my leadership doesn’t kill the people I love. “The plan has always been for them to take me to the master, remember? There’s no reason for the rest of you to come. Take the capsules—”
“You’re surrounded,” says a booming voice, the same one that spoke from the sky on Tierre. It’s coming from ’Nox’s own sound system.
“We are coming in. If you resist, we will be forced to kill you. Stand back and lay down your arms.”
Deke reaches for his weapon. “Deke, don’t,” I whisper. He seems hesitant, but when no one else follows his lead, he lowers his hand. “We’re unarmed,” I say in a loud, trembling voice.
Suddenly the ship’s door opens, and three people stride in. They’re wearing white space suits and holding long, black cylinders—certainly weapons of some sort. All of them wear the porcelain face masks of the Marad, with holes for their mouths and no other features visible.
“Hold out your thumbs,” says the same voice, but this time in person instead of over the speakers. It seems to be coming from the smallest of the three.
We do as the Marad soldier commands. When it’s my turn, an identity hologram pops up. Rhoma Grace, Former Guardian of the Fourth House, Cancer. The soldier who screened me silently gestures to the other two, who join their comrade in front of me.
There’s a palpable change in the air as they realize who I am. Then the smallest one—who seems to be in charge—steps up to me and breaks the hesitant atmosphere with one quick, purposeful gesture.
The mask comes off to reveal a teenage girl.
She has features that seem to belong to different faces from all over the Zodiac—and some features that I’ve never seen before in any other human. Her eyes are large, dark, and close-set; her lips are pale, thin, and long; and her skin is a gray, ashy color, so dry it looks like levlan. She has all the markings of an imbalanced Riser.
From what I know about Risers, this one seems to be going through the shifting process. Her old skin is molting off to make way for new.
“We’ve captured Mother Rho,” she says, now using her own voice to speak. It’s raspy and low, almost reptilian. “And right as we’re transporting—” She smiles a cold grin, stopping herself from finishing her thought. “I mean, it’s almost enough to make you believe in true love.” She runs her tongue over her cracked bottom lip. “Then again, I could just be having a good day.”
“Please,” I say, my voice low like hers, “take me to see the master.”
She laughs. The sound is mousy, as if she’s someone who’s used to laughing only in the dark. “‘The master . . .’ You do love your boogeymen, crab.” She looks to the two masked soldiers behind her. “We won’t have enough air. Keep her alive, for now—kill the rest.”
“NO!” I shout, holding my arms out to shield my friends. “We have enough air on this ship for all of us!”
“Why would we need the others?” she asks, looking at my friends as though they’re expendable. She doesn’t see their humanity because she can no longer feel her own. Her soul is so twisted and deformed she probably can’t even Center herself. But if I’ve learned anything from all of this, it’s that people who can’t see the future are usually the ones who fear it the most.
“I’ve seen something,” I say, trying to sound as ominous as possible. “A vision. It involves the people I’ve brought on this ship. Your master will want to meet them.” While speaking, I surreptitiously twist my Ring. Hysan, are you there?
I can’t feel a connection—the soldiers must have their own Psy shield.
“Well, then,” says the Riser, inspecting my face closely. “If they’re so important, we’ll get rid of you instead.”
I force my features to stay fixed and unflinching. “I think your boss will want to hear the details of what I saw.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll relay your message.” She raises the large, cylindrical weapon and points it at Stanton’s chest. My whole being freezes, as if I’m trapped in one of Ochus’s Psynergy icebergs.
“Start talking, or Blondie dies along with you.”
Suddenly, a beam of red light shoots from Deke’s wrist. One of the masked soldiers falls over, writhing and screaming with pain. Blood spurts from his knee, soaking his white suit and spilling out onto the floor.
It takes everyone a moment to understand exactly what just happened, and then we all react at once. The Riser girl pivots to aim her weapon at Deke, but he ducks out of the way before she can fire. Yanking on Nishi’s hand, they dart deeper into the ship, and Stanton and I chase after them.
Behind us, in the ship’s nose, the wounded soldier is shouting unintelligibly, but I’m momentarily relieved that I don’t hear the sound of their weapons discharging. As we race toward the escape capsules, Stanton takes my hand, and I hear footsteps falling behi
nd us. I glance back, further relieved to see Twain.
“Stop, or he dies.”
The voice is once again coming from ’Nox’s own sound system. Around us, every wallscreen powers on and projects the same image: the Riser, pointing her weapon into Aryll’s chest. His eyepatch slightly askew, Aryll looks two steps beyond terrified. His chin is trembling, but he’s not crying. He looks like he’s trying to be tough.
Immediately, Stanton and I turn back.
“No, you can’t!” shouts Twain, grabbing my arm. “Our only choice is to take back control of the ship. We have to fight.”
“Go with Nishi and Deke. Get inside the capsules,” I say, freeing myself from his grip. Nishi and Deke double back to see why we’re not with them.
“They hijacked the ship’s controls. We can’t access the capsules,” says Twain, crushing my last hope.
“What’s the plan?” asks Nishi. Her cinnamon skin looks pale, and her amber eyes are glassy with fear. She’s not the assertive, sharp, quick-reasoning Nishi she is in everyday life. I need to get her through this. I can’t make the same mistakes all over again.
“Tick, tock, tick, tock, little crab . . . come out from your shell. . . .”
I look up at a screen. Aryll is facedown on the floor, trying to speak. “Rho—don’t do it—”
The Riser is sitting on his back, and she pushes down on his head with her weapon until he can’t speak. “Sixty seconds before I’m angry . . . another thirty until I’m really angry—and then Red’s time is up.”
I turn back to my friends. “Get into Hysan’s cabin and hide. Keep your weapons on the door. The moment it opens, you fire.” I look to the screen again. The Riser is brushing Aryll’s red hair with the butt of her weapon. “I’m going back for Aryll.”
“I’m not leaving you,” says Stanton, his first words since the Marad invaded our ship. “And I won’t desert Aryll. He saved my life.” He looks as frightened as Nishi, but his complexion is regaining color. From a quick glance at the others, I know they’re not leaving me either.
Arguing will be useless, and a waste of precious time, so instead I focus on the fight ahead. “Fine. If we’re all going back in together, we first need to get a message to Brynda and the others so they’ll know we made contact. There’s a Psy shield up, and I bet they’ve cut off hologram transmissions, too. We need to think of something else. Fast.”
Immediately, Deke opens his Wave, Nishi flicks on her Tracker, and Stanton clicks menus on a monitor in the wall. Twain pulls me aside.
“Hysan told me about Aryll, how he doubts him,” he whispers hurriedly. “I know you think Aryll’s your friend, but Hysan is the fairest judge and best reader of people I know. You should trust him.”
“I know all about that, and I’m not abandoning Aryll,” I say, louder than I intended. I look over at the others and the holographic lights reflecting on their faces. “Any luck?”
They shake their heads without looking up.
“Say your goodbyes, crab.” The Riser is standing over Aryll, her weapon pointed at his red head. She looks ready to shoot.
Without any more thought, I rush forward into the nose, followed by my friends. We get there and see the uninjured soldier bandaging his comrade’s wound, and then the Riser, who is still standing over Aryll. She laughs softly on seeing me and kicks Aryll in the stomach. He groans in pain and curls into a fetal position, and Stanton dives to the floor to pull him from her reach.
“When we captured you, our orders were to keep you alive,” she says to me. She licks her chapped lips, cocking her head as she examines me. “But I don’t like you. And since you’re going to die soon anyway, it might as well be at my hand.”
So quickly that there’s no time for me to react, she raises the black cylinder, and a blue light flashes from the end pointed at my chest. I hear my friends’ screams and feel a hard shove on my side as I fall to the ground, the searing heat of the blue ray grazing my arm.
I look up and see Twain where I was standing just seconds ago.
The shot hits him in the chest, and for a moment he looks frozen and shocked, suspended in time. I almost think he’s okay, that the weapon misfired and he’s merely stunned but not wounded. Then his body trembles violently as he falls to the floor, his eyes open but clearly unseeing.
The silence that follows is sickening. This doesn’t feel real.
“Another boyfriend of yours?” asks the Riser. She lovingly caresses the polished black surface of the weapon that just stopped Twain’s heart forever. No mess, no noise, no collateral damage.
She readies herself to aim at me again, but before she can, the uninjured soldier springs up and wrenches the weapon from her hands. He doesn’t speak out loud, but I can tell they’re communicating silently.
“Fine,” she says at last, all pleasure gone from her voice. “I’ll bring her alive. But we can still have fun with her friends.”
The soldiers bind our wrists and ankles together and remove our Rings and devices. They toss us to the floor and roughly shove us against the wall. No one speaks or resists—we’re barely even breathing.
I can’t take my eyes off Twain’s body, still lying where he fell. His mossy eyes are shiny and bright, his olive face and windswept hair still beautiful, even in death.
Nishi’s sudden sobbing disbands my disbelief. The sound brings the scene into focus, and everything becomes harshly and bracingly real. Twain gave his life for mine.
The reality of his death blocks up my throat and crushes my heart and coils around me like a snake, constricting the cells of my soul. He couldn’t have been older than nineteen. He knew how dangerous this trip would be, but still he wanted to come. He wanted to die for something worth living for.
“It’s time for your close-up,” says the Riser now, twisting my arm and dragging me over to ’Nox’s transmitter near the controls. She fastens my hands and feet to a chair, paralyzing me. Stanton and the others struggle to free themselves, but the uninjured soldier raises his weapon threateningly. The one with the wounded knee sits at the helm, his weapon trained on me as he plugs in new coordinates. I hope Brynda and Rubi have a way to track us despite all the Marad’s shields.
“Let’s open with a bang,” says the Riser in her reptilian tone, surveying my friends like she’s at a buffet line and they’re the feast. The soldier watching over them stands beside her, and they seem to be communicating silently again. “Yeah,” she says after a moment. “Yeah, she does look like the Sagittarian Guardian.”
Nishi’s eyes widen, and she edges back against the wall. Deke tips over, trying to block her with his body.
“You don’t need any of them!” I call desperately. The injured soldier grips his weapon tighter and aims it at my knee.
“We did promise to take their Guardian’s head,” muses the Riser, still contemplating Nishi. Deke is using the wall to sit upright, his hands moving up and down, as if they’re working behind his back. “It would get their attention . . .” continues the Riser, oblivious to Deke.
“Kill me!” I shout, ignoring the gun pointed at my leg. “Leave her alone!”
The Riser grabs Nishi. Deke bursts forward, his hands suddenly unbound, and head-butts the masked soldier in the stomach, knocking his weapon free. While the soldier tumbles, Deke scrambles forward to grab the black cylinder. He wraps his fingers around the trigger just as the soldier regains his balance.
Deke fires. The soundless blue shot hits the soldier in the chest, and he flops to the floor with a shudder, then lies eerily still.
Screaming, the Riser tosses Nishi at Deke, causing him to drop the gun as she falls on top of him, and they crumple to the ground. Before the Riser can shoot, Stanton slams his head into her midsection, his wrists still tied behind him, and they both fall.
In all the chaos, no one notices the injured soldier dragging his right leg around the control helm
and over to Deke, who’s helping Nishi use the same screw in the wall to undo her own binds.
Nishi looks up and sees him first. She screams. From where I’m sitting, I can see only the soldier’s back as he raises his gun.
I don’t know when he fires—all I see is Deke’s face in the gap between the soldier’s legs.
He’s wearing the same expression as Twain.
19
NISHI THROWS HERSELF OVER DEKE’S chest in one final attempt to protect him, but his eyes are already unblinking and lifeless.
The Zodiac stops spinning. Time isn’t cyclical or linear or multidimensional—it isn’t anything anymore. All of existence has ended forever, and I feel like I’ve been sucked into a Snow Globe from my life, a memory where I can live out my remaining minutes.
Suddenly I’m twelve again—small body, big hair—and choking back tears as I part with Dad and Stanton to board a ship to the moon. I was heading to the Zodai Academy on Elara.
While hugging my brother, I spotted a sandy-haired boy in the distance bidding his parents and older twin sisters farewell. The women and girls were weeping, but the boy was in good spirits—he kept making them laugh through their tears. I couldn’t imagine being funny in that moment—this was the second-worst day of my life.
“You’re shivering,” said my brother, gazing concernedly into my eyes. “Are you sure you want to do this, Rho?” He’d been asking the same question ever since I received my acceptance from the Academy.
“I’m sure, Stan.”
He took off his favorite gray jacket, the one I was always begging to borrow because my frizzy blond curls fit comfortably inside its oversized hood. Also because it was his.
“I want you to have it,” he said, helping me into it.
“But you love it! You never let me—”
“It doesn’t fit anymore,” he said, even though it looked fine on him. “Now go, before the ship takes off without you.” I gave Stanton another hug, and then we both pulled away quickly to avoid tears.
Wandering Star: A Zodiac Novel Page 17
