The Clouded Sky

by Megan Crewe

  I can’t avoid running into her here. I have to leave.

  But as the men saunter off, Silmeru leans close to her friend, saying something too low for me to hear. They were talking about the rebels—they must have been. Thlo said Silmeru’s the only one who knows who our traitor’s been talking to. I can’t leave when I am so close.

  I sneak a peek in Kurra’s direction. The man said she insisted on coming, but she seems to be surveying the partygoers at random. The winding route she’s taking shouldn’t come near me, not yet. I swallow thickly, and step toward Silmeru to offer her and her companion a drink.

  “They won’t accomplish what they want,” Silmeru goes on as if I’m not there, while her friend takes one of the cups. “We’ll make sure of that.”

  “It would be easier if . . .” her companion says, followed by a phrase I can only tell has something to do with greed. Then, to my dismay, they start to amble away, heading toward Kurra. I glance around. She’s facing the opposite direction. If I keep Silmeru between me and her, and my head down . . .

  I creep along, losing a few sentences of the conversation before I’m near enough to make out their voices again. “Even if it takes time,” Silmeru says, “we’ll get everything we need. I just hope he’s not too unstable, with all the . . .”

  The last word I don’t know—something like chamari. Whatever it is, Silmeru crinkles her nose as she says it. Interesting. I lean forward, and glimpse a pale figure just beyond them.

  Kurra’s turned this way. I sidestep, my pulse hiccupping, hoping she didn’t see my face.

  “I don’t even want to think about it,” Silmeru’s friend says as they drift on. I don’t dare follow them any farther. I’d have to look around to check where Kurra is. If I look around, I could find myself staring straight into her eyes.

  My heartbeat rattles on, making me dizzy. If I had a moment to collect my thoughts . . . I squeeze between two tables, as quickly as I can without dropping my drugged act. My tray is still half-full, but I duck into the kitchen area, thinking maybe I can hide in there long enough to gather myself.

  The hostess is standing near the buffet, examining the new platters. She glances at mine, and frowns.

  “Why are you back here?” she demands. “Finish that one first.”

  My tongue stumbles. “I, um, I don’t feel very well.” I make a face I hope expresses illness convincingly. I can’t go back out, not right away with my nerves scattered like this.

  Her frown deepens. “What? Are you—”

  I double over slightly, letting the platter wobble, as if only just catching the urge to puke. She leaps forward to snatch the drinks from me. “Oh no, you’re not serving like that,” she mutters to herself. “Defectives.” And then, to me, “Keep away from the food!”

  She glances around, and her mouth flattens. “I won’t have you making a mess here. Your owner will have to take you back early, and take a cut on his fee. Come on, quickly.”

  She rushes me back out into the party before I have a chance to prepare. There’s Kurra, standing at the fringes, her profile to us. I stare at the floor, pressing a hand to my stomach—which really is churning now—making the hostess hustle me even faster to the door. For a second, I think I hear the tread of boots following us.

  Then the hostess has dragged me out into the hall. She rushes to the inner-shuttle stop. No one follows us out. Her hand flicks over the command panel. The second the shuttle arrives, she shoves me in. I start to protest, just then—I hardly heard anything. Maybe Silmeru would have said more. Maybe if I’d waited, steered clear of Kurra and come back around when she was farther away . . .

  But it’s too late. I slump against the pole as the shuttle whisks me away.

  16.

  Jule’s jaw flexes when I tell him why I’m back early. “You should have signaled me,” he says.

  “Right,” I say. “Because you bursting in wouldn’t have drawn any attention.”

  “I could have come up with a story,” he says flippantly, but his tone doesn’t match his expression. “You know it doesn’t matter, don’t you? If you’re in trouble . . .”

  “If I’m really in trouble, I’ll use the bracelet,” I say before he has to finish.

  I’m disappointed with the little information I was able to gather, but the next few days are full enough to distract me. The jaunt down to the planet’s surface to collect kolzo has been scheduled for later that week, and I put in dozens of hours on the navigation simulator to prepare. Britta comes by to touch up my disguise and check my progress, and gives me a thumbs-up. But my lungs still tighten as Jule and I hurry to the control room Thlo was able to arrange a slice of time in. It’s on Isis and me to make sure Britta and Odgan come back safely in their little pod with the last of the materials we need.

  The control room is only slightly larger than the other workrooms we’ve used, crammed with one long desktop that stretches through most of the space. Indicators and readings glint on its surface, and a couple of floating displays already glow in the air above it. The walls are lit with screens: four small ones off to the sides, and a broad one opposite the console that shows only a shifting haze of gray. Thlo’s standing by it, talking to Win. Isis, who’s sitting by the far end of the desk, spins on her stool as we come in.

  Win bobs his head to me as he smiles in greeting. It seems like ages since I last talked to him. I smile back, but I don’t know what to say. After so much time with Jule and Isis and Britta, I realize, he’s starting to feel like a stranger. That sense, contrasted with the memory of how close I felt to him our last few moments on Earth, sends an ache through me. Has he sorted out his concerns about his parents? Is his brother doing all right?

  There isn’t time to ask. Thlo comes around the desk. “A moment?” she says to me, in a way that’s not really a question.

  Since I didn’t hear anything of obvious value the other night, Jule and I didn’t break the ban on nonessential communications to report my observations to her. As soon as we’re a little apart from the others, I relate the few bits I did pick up—the group talking about Earth, Tabzi’s mother, Silmeru. “I wish I had more to tell you,” I finish. “But Jule’s looking into sending me to another, and—”

  Thlo interrupts me with a flick of her hand, her gaze elsewhere. “We’re going to put a hold on that enterprise for now,” she says. “In the present circumstances, it’s not worth the risk. You should stay away from anyone outside our group.”

  “But—” I say, startled.

  “I’ve decided,” she interrupts, her voice firm, her impenetrable eyes sliding back to me. “But I did want to ask you about something else.”

  “All right,” I say, smothering my frustration. The whole point of my attending the parties was to change present circumstances, to identify the traitor and eliminate the risk. But I suppose, if today’s part of the mission goes well, soon it won’t matter anymore.

  “I’ve been continuing to study your re-creation of Jeanant,” she says. “I wondered . . . What was your impression of his mental state during your conversations with him?”

  “His mental state?”

  “Did he strike you as thinking clearly or being more . . . disordered?”

  Thinking back to those moments with Jeanant, I can see why she might ask. “He was exhausted, and physically weakened,” I say. “I’m sure that affected his judgment a bit. But he still had focus. He never seemed to stop thinking about sticking to his plan as carefully as he could to set things right on Earth.”

  “On Earth,” Thlo repeats.

  “You’ve seen how he talked. It bothered him so much that he was the first person to try to put an end to the Traveling and the damage it was doing to us—I think he cared about making up for that at least as much as what his mission would mean for Kemya.”

  “Yes,” she says.

  “Even at the end,” I say, “he knew exactly what he was doing. He knew the chance of escaping was so slim, and that dying was the only way to make sur
e he didn’t jeopardize the rest of the mission—”

  “Yes,” Thlo cuts me off. Her gaze has drifted away again, her mouth tight. “Thank you,” she adds, though I have no idea how what I’ve told her is useful. “You’d better get ready.”

  Isis motions me to the seat next to her. The display there is lit, with a set of patterns and characters that’s now completely familiar to me. The little triangle of Britta’s jet-pod lies still against the arced line that symbolizes the station.

  “Everything looks as it should,” Isis reassures me. “All going to plan.”

  My thoughts slip back to the traitor. “Are we the only people who know about this?”

  She shakes her head. “Unfortunately, to pull off a maneuver this big, we needed a little extra help. Odgan, obviously, because he’s the only one who’s familiar with the mining equipment—but it’d be nearly impossible for him to be leaking information, as separated as he usually is from the station here. And we held off on involving Mako as long as we could, but arranging everything wouldn’t have worked without her expertise. We gave her as little detail as possible. I’ve been monitoring her movements and communications, and the others, and I haven’t seen anything concerning.”

  Mako’s probably smart enough to figure some things out, though. And the traitor might have already realized we’re suspicious, and found ways to ask about our plans that wouldn’t tip Isis off.

  “We’re watching the Enforcer channels too,” she says. “If someone’s notified them, if they take some sort of action, we’ll know.”

  Despite that, there’s a thread of worry in her voice. I swallow, resting my hands on the cool surface of the desk. I doubt there was any perfectly secure way to continue the mission. It’s not as if I’d have wanted them to put the entire thing on hold.

  “When do we start?” I ask.

  She checks her display. “Two minutes now.”

  I study my own. Britta and Odgan are down there, about to cast off into the vacuum of space in that little shell of a ship. It looks so fragile.

  Isis gestures to Thlo, who claps her hands.

  “Let’s begin,” Thlo says. “All eyes where they need to be.”

  Isis motions to her display and says, using Britta’s code name, “All right, Stell, we’re ready to go on my count.”

  “I hear you, Shep,” Britta’s voice replies. “Ready here too.”

  Isis pauses, following the flow of numbers. “Three, two, one . . . Hit it!”

  The triangle on my display twitches and creeps forward, into the maze of sensor lines and satellite trajectories. As the ship leaves the arc of the station behind, the hazy screen on the wall ahead of us clears, revealing the view Britta and Odgan will be seeing right now. An edge of starry sky, the curve of an immense sunlit sphere below. Clouds tinted scarlet and purple bunch and swirl over its surface, offering tiny glimpses of brownish land below.

  That’s it. The planet of Kemya.

  I realize I’m staring, and jerk my eyes back to my display. The pod has cleared the first band of sensors, following the path Britta and Isis charted ahead of time. The figures look exactly as they should. Britta and Odgan just need to get to that point near the top right corner, by the edge of the planet’s main ocean, and then they’ll be within the industrial time field there, where they can jump back and start the kolzo mining. They’ll be safer within the time field, able to hop to another hour, another day, if they run into trouble—Britta plotted out several escape points just in case. And they’ll return in what will be only a few seconds for us.

  “Sensor 362 is extending,” Isis says. “Stell, adjust right five degrees.”

  “Done.”

  The pod shifts off its original course, narrowly avoiding a sweep I noticed a second after Isis did. Not fast enough. I scan all the lines, the flickering bits of data. For an instant, my vision blurs. I drag in a breath. I have to stay calm and alert.

  A twitch at the edge of the screen catches my eye. “There’s something at 12-7-3-9,” I say quickly, before I’m even sure what it is.

  “Stell, wait,” Isis says through the communication link. She touches her section of the desk. “Another ship is passing into your space . . . A cargo hauler.” She falls back into Kemyate with a string of technical terms, but I gather she’s directing the pod to retreat closer to the station, where its emissions will blend in.

  “Good catch,” she says to me when she’s done. “If you hadn’t spotted it right away, they might have ‘seen’ the pod before we could pull them back.”

  I can’t quite feel good about it. “That ship wasn’t supposed to be passing by right now, was it?”

  “No,” Isis says. “It must have been a last-minute change.”

  A large, chipped-looking shape like a giant arrowhead is cruising into view on the large screen. Thlo frowns at it.

  “Can’t they go around?” Win asks from where he’s standing by one of the side screens.

  “Too difficult to avoid the sensors of a ship that large, along with the station’s,” Thlo says. “We’ll wait until it’s fully passed.”

  “It’s going slow enough,” Jule remarks. The terseness of his voice makes me glance over. He’s watching the large screen from where he sits farther down the desk, his body tensed.

  “The wait is going to throw off our previous calculations,” Isis says. “We’ll have to keep an even closer eye on the readings.”

  I nod, trying to block out the thudding of my heart. Jule’s right—the hauler is moving incredibly slowly. The minutes tick by as it slinks across the screen. Thlo paces back and forth a few times before forcing herself still. The rest of us stay braced in our positions.

  Finally, the tail end slips out of view. Isis consults her display. “Nothing concerning on the communication channels or the logs?” she asks.

  “Nothing,” Win says, and Jule shakes his head.

  Isis gives Britta the go-ahead, and the little triangle creeps forward again. I catch a shift in the sensors just as Isis does, and she calls over a change of course. The starry sky disappears on the screen, the image tilting as if we’re falling with Britta and Odgan into the rippling clouds.

  We make another tweak at the halfway point, and have them adjust their speed as they approach the target spot. Otherwise it’s all clear. My pulse is just starting to settle when a new shape blinks into the corner of my display. Isis makes a noise of dismay.

  “What is it?” I say.

  “Enforcer carrier,” she says, as a band of light sweeps from its symbol to the pod. “They’ve identified the ship. Stell, hold. Enforcers have a trace on you now.”

  My stomach sinks. “It’s possible they’re just surveying,” Win suggests, but his face is drawn. “I don’t see any Security alerts.”

  Britta’s voice breaks from the speaker. “They’re hailing us. They want our authorization codes.”

  Isis swears under her breath. “You’re going to have to get out, both of you. We’ll lose the ship.”

  “I have to wipe the course information,” Britta replies. “They’ll know—”

  Thlo has marched to Isis’s side. “Stell, you clear the caches. Ven, feed this information to the Enforcer ship. It should keep them occupied for the minute you’ll need.” Glancing at a palm-size device in her hand, she starts rattling off a series of numbers and syllables.

  Jule’s hand darts across his display. “The Travel bay Mako set up is ready when they are.”

  “Get in position for emergency jump,” Isis instructs.

  “Just let me . . .” Britta says, and her voice descends into a series of mutters. Thlo keeps reading out data. I lean against the desk, my throat tight. What are the Enforcers going to do if they realize the ship is unauthorized?

  All I can see on the big screen are the same congealing wisps of red and purple. The pod was so close. It might have been a matter of seconds, and then they’d have jumped to another time and there’d have been nothing for the Enforcers to detect.

&nbs
p; On my display, the Enforcer’s ship is edging closer to Britta’s. I watch the shivering characters around it, the numbers rising and falling as the sensors continue their sweeps—

  A reading next to the Enforcer’s ship surges, tripling. “Isis!” I snap out, jabbing at it as a spark lights at the tip of the symbol. “The Enforcers—”

  Isis’s shoulders stiffen. “Stell, Ven, out now. Or they’ll have you.”

  There’s a crackle through the speaker, but no response. Then the spark flares on our displays, a wave of light shooting out across the empty space and washing over the little ship. The planetary image on the large screen blinks out. Thlo stops talking, her lips pressing flat. Jule raps at his controls.

  “Two arrivals in the Travel bay,” he says, exhaling sharply.

  Isis leaps up to join him. “Stell?” she says with her hand over the display. “Ven? Report. Are you both all right?”

  I stand up, glancing between them and my own display. The Enforcers’ ship has drawn up beside Britta’s. “What did they do to the pod?” I ask.

  “That was a . . . stun beam,” Win says when the others don’t answer. “It’ll have disabled all the tech on the ship, and it knocks anyone on board unconscious for an hour or two. But they got out.”

  An image flashes on Jule’s display: the face of the man who joined us remotely for that one meeting. Odgan. His light hair is askew and his mouth twisted.

  “We made it,” he says. “But Stell jumped a little late. The beam hit her in the middle of transport—I don’t know what to do. Someone needs to come down. She doesn’t look good.”

  17.

  She’s still breathing,” Thlo says. After a rush to the tiny Travel bay to collect Britta and Odgan, we’re clustered in the main room of Isis and Britta’s apartment, which thankfully they moved back into a few days ago. Britta is slumped on the floor, the bluish pallor beneath her usually rosy brown skin making the tattoo along her hairline look like threads of rot. Her eyes haven’t opened once. She hasn’t made a sound.