Spark: A Sky Chasers Novel

by Amy Kathleen Ryan

  Both guards looked at Kieran as though they expected to be rapped across the knuckles with a ruler. They’re kids, Kieran thought. They’re little boys afraid of getting into trouble.

  Kieran closed his eyes and sighed. How could he run a ship with guards who acted like eight-year-olds?

  “Give me your walkie-talkie,” Kieran spat. Hiro handed his over, and Kieran spoke into it. “Sarek, send two fresh guards down to the brig.”

  “Are you giving us a break?” Hiro said hopefully.

  Kieran laughed as he jerked the keys from Ali’s belt, then from Hiro’s. He took each of their guns and locked them in the metal cabinet behind the guard desk. “I’m relieving you of duty. You’re back on farm work.”

  Hiro dropped his eyes, seeming to accept that he deserved to be punished, but Ali glared at Kieran.

  “If you weren’t such a jerk, people wouldn’t be so afraid of telling you the truth,” Ali said.

  Kieran ignored him and went back into the brig. The terrorist hadn’t moved a muscle.

  “Kieran, please,” Seth whispered, reaching for him through the bars. “I know some things that you need to know.”

  “So tell me,” Kieran said without looking at him.

  “I can’t here,” Seth said, his eyes on the prisoner, who was stirring from sleep.

  “Jake?” Kieran called loudly through the bars. “It’s me, Kieran.”

  The man didn’t move. Quietly, Kieran let himself into the cell, careful to stay near the door in case he bolted. “Jake,” Kieran whispered.

  The man’s eyes popped open, and he gasped as though he were finding himself in the brig for the very first time.

  “Jake, I’m sorry. I didn’t know they were going to do that to you.”

  The man’s eyes rolled in his head until they found Kieran, then he stared.

  “You’ve got to believe me. Waverly didn’t have permission to do that. I’m very sorry.”

  “No you’re not,” the man said, sounding tearful.

  “I don’t believe in torture. I haven’t laid a hand on you, have I?”

  “Good cop, bad cop. That’s what they call it.”

  “What?”

  “One is your enemy, one is your friend.” He spoke as though he’d repeated this over and over to himself, preparing himself. “That’s how they do it.”

  “Waverly is no friend of mine,” Kieran pleaded. All his work trying to build a bridge to this man was finished. “We’re not working together.”

  The man looked at him, eyes and face blank.

  “I’m going to get you some medical attention, okay?” Kieran said.

  Jake closed his eyes, shielding them from the light with his hand.

  Kieran stepped back out of the cell and locked it behind him.

  “Kieran, please,” Seth said. “I need to get out of here for a few minutes. Just to talk.”

  “Go to hell,” Kieran said to him, and left.

  Once he gave orders to the new guards for a medical team to come check on the prisoner, Kieran went directly to the Central Council chamber. It wasn’t until he saw Arthur sitting at the table with the rest of them that he realized his trusted friend hadn’t told him what happened with the prisoner, either. When Arthur saw Kieran standing in the doorway, Arthur’s face drained of color and he looked into his lap. Soon the rest of the council sensed Kieran standing there, and the conversation trickled to a murmur, then ceased altogether into an embarrassed silence.

  “Hello,” Waverly said to him. She was the only one who looked defiant.

  “I heard you visited the brig,” Kieran said.

  “That’s our legal right,” Waverly said, sticking her chin out.

  “And torture? Is that your legal right, too?”

  Her face changed; he could see she didn’t like the word.

  “I caused him no permanent harm.”

  “Not to his body, maybe.”

  “I did what needed to be done.”

  “We do not torture on this ship, you once told me,” Kieran said, his voice deadly quiet. “You’re a hypocrite.”

  Waverly looked down at her hands, which were wrestling with each other in her lap.

  Finally Arthur piped up. “Don’t you want to know what we found out?”

  Staring at his friend, Kieran felt racked with betrayal. He’d never have thought it possible that Arthur could side with Waverly against him.

  “Kieran,” Arthur said, “Mather’s situation might be politically vulnerable. She and the church elders aren’t on good terms.”

  Kieran wanted to deny the value of this information, but he couldn’t. This could be useful.

  “Also,” said Waverly, “our parents are being held in the sewage plant.”

  “So what?”

  “So it’s not a bad place to fight,” Waverly said.

  Kieran looked at the table and saw that the council was looking at schematics for the New Horizon.

  “We’re not going to fight them,” Kieran said quietly.

  The room was quiet as they all looked at him, until finally Alia Khadivi said, “You aren’t suggesting that we negotiate with Anne Mather?”

  “It’s the only way,” Kieran said. He met Arthur’s eyes, but the boy was unable to hold his gaze and looked instead at the blueprint in front of him.

  “She’ll trick you, Kieran,” Waverly warned.

  “She thinks she’s going to,” Kieran said.

  “She’ll never give us what we want,” someone said from the corner, and Kieran looked to see Sarah Hodges scowling at him. Her ruddy hair was pulled away from her face in a sloppy ponytail, and she sat hunched in her chair, glaring at Kieran like she used to glare at the physics teacher. She wasn’t even on the Central Council! Why was she privy to this ridiculous meeting and he wasn’t?

  “You cannot win a battle against Mather’s crew,” Kieran said.

  “With good planning, we might—” Waverly began.

  He cut her off. “You say she’s so tricky. You think you can beat her in a war?”

  “She won’t expect—” Alia said, but Kieran cut her off, too.

  “I had a front-row seat for the original attack, and I’m telling you, Anne Mather is tactically ingenious. We’ll never win a battle on her turf, with her crew. Not without getting a bunch of kids killed. Are you prepared for that?”

  His voice boomed, magnified by the glass paneling that formed the domed ceiling. The stars over their heads looked cold and remote.

  “You might be right,” Arthur finally said. He stood up, leaning one hand on the table. “But we think there’s an excellent chance that Mather plans to take over this vessel when we rendezvous. She’s hungry for power, and we know that she wants to set up a theocracy on New Earth like the one she has on her ship. Could you live under her rule? Because I don’t think I could.”

  Kieran stared at Arthur, shocked. That Arthur would defy him openly, in front of his political enemies, was unforgivable.

  The council seemed to sense the tension between the two boys. There was an awkward pause while they looked from one face to the other, until Waverly stood, too.

  “Diplomacy might be a good plan A, Kieran, but we need to be prepared for the worst. That’s what we’re doing now,” she said quietly, making eye contact with each council member. The room seemed muffled, and everyone held their tongues, even Sarah, who looked at Waverly in a studying way.

  “So this is plan B? You’re saying you won’t attack unless my diplomacy fails?”

  Waverly looked at each face around the table. Reluctantly, each member of the council nodded.

  “Okay, make your little plans,” he said to the room at large, but his anger was directed at Arthur. “But I’ll have to think long and hard before I give you access to the guns.”

  “That’s okay,” Waverly said with a mysterious smile.

  This startled him, but he tried not to show it, and whirled on his heel to go back to Central Command before they could say another word.

/>   When he arrived, Sarek looked up excitedly from his com console. “Kieran, we’ve just received a huge video file from the New Horizon.”

  “Send it to my office,” Kieran said, and ran down the corridor. With shaking fingers he keyed in the lock code to his office, bolted to his desk, and activated the file.

  Dozens of thumbnail pictures filled his screen, faces he hadn’t seen in months, and a vast well of sadness surged inside him, filling him with longing. He counted them—forty-six survivors.

  Only forty-six? Out of over three hundred and fifty crew members? For a time he was paralyzed by the enormity of this, his heart thumping powerfully in his chest, the rest of his body weak. He’d known their losses had been huge, but … he couldn’t grasp that over three hundred people he’d known his entire life had been snuffed out in a matter of minutes. He relived those awful moments in the starboard shuttle bay, his helplessness in trying to convince people that they shouldn’t load the bay full of so many crew members, and then the horror of the air lock doors opening to the vacuum of space, sucking almost the entire crew out to their deaths. Spinning forever in the cold. They’d never stop spinning.

  Snap out of it, Kieran.

  He took deep breaths until the old feelings of shock and loss subsided, and made himself look more closely at each thumbnail. Now that this moment had arrived, he found he dreaded knowing the truth. If his mother’s face wasn’t among the survivors …

  Regina Marshall, Harvard Stapleton, Kalik Hassan, Gunther Dietrich—the faces of his friends’ parents popped out at him, and he was relieved by each one. But as he scrolled through the thumbnails, his heart weakened, and he felt hot tears burning his eyelids. She wasn’t here. His mother’s face wasn’t among the survivors. Neither was his father’s, but he’d expected that.

  At the bottom of the screen was a thumbnail of Mather’s face, and he clicked on it.

  “These are all the survivors from the Empyrean on our ship, Kieran, except for one,” Mather said with false regret. “I’m withholding the video of your mother until you meet us at the coordinates I’m transmitting now.”

  The screen went blank.

  His mother was alive. She was alive! But quickly Kieran saw the other side of this message: His father was not.

  He’d suspected for a long time that his father hadn’t survived the initial attack. But knowing for sure … it made him feel frozen inside.

  He couldn’t begin to deal with his feelings about it. He wanted to cry. He knew he should cry, or scream. But instead he played the videos of the captives, one by one, watching them for signs of duress. All the captives looked well fed and clean though haggard, and all of them spoke to the camera, telling their children how much they loved them, don’t worry, I’ll be home soon. Don’t be afraid.

  Harvard Stapleton’s video was especially haunting. The man had aged, with deep creases in the skin under his red-rimmed eyes. His voice had changed, too, hoarser, weaker, more plaintive. Kieran felt deep pity for him; Harvard had taped this message for a daughter and wife who’d been dead for months.

  “You’re strong, Samantha,” Harvard said bravely. “I don’t fear for you. I know you made it out, and that you’re doing all right. But I know you and your mom are worried about me. I’m okay. It’s been hard, but they feed us and give us medical care. Physically, I’m fine. The hardest part of this is missing you and your mom. I just can’t wait to see your faces again.”

  Kieran buried his face in his hands and cried for the families destroyed, for the young minds so deeply scarred by what had happened. And for the future. He hadn’t given voice to his fears for what would happen next, but he couldn’t keep them at bay any longer. How was he going to pull this off? How would he get them back? And even if he did, how could they ever coexist on New Earth with the evil people who had destroyed so many lives?

  By the end of the videos, Kieran’s mind had settled back into familiar territory. He had things to do, tasks to complete, and he couldn’t let his grief get in the way of the job he was here to do. He sent the video files to Sarek with instructions to contact the families of the captives so they could view them. “But don’t tell them these are all the captives.”

  “This is all of them?” Sarek asked, incredulous.

  Kieran looked at the younger boy’s wide eyes in his monitor. “Yes.”

  Sarek sat shaking his head, mouth open.

  “Hail the New Horizon,” Kieran said. Sarek didn’t move. “Sarek?”

  “Okay,” the boy said quietly.

  Only after the com blinked off did Kieran realize that Sarek had just found out his mother was dead. And Kieran hadn’t said a word of condolence.

  I’ll make it better, Kieran thought, but he felt he’d lost his chance forever to tell Sarek how sorry he was, and to be heard. I’m becoming hard. I’m not the same person anymore.

  His com link beeped, and he was looking at the hateful face of Anne Mather once again. She took in his dark expression and raised an eyebrow. “This is what I was afraid of. Those videos awakened some demons.”

  Kieran ignored this. “I’ve looked at the coordinates you sent and they seem fine. We’ll head for the rendezvous point tonight and should arrive within a few days.”

  “As soon as I’ve confirmed your course change, I’ll send you the remaining file.” She moved to sever the com link, but Kieran rushed to speak.

  “I’ve been thinking about your terms for a treaty.”

  Her eyes flicked to his.

  “I can’t agree to making you immune to criminal charges,” he said.

  She leaned back in her seat, eyes narrow. “My people will be very disappointed.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so.” He spat out each word like a bitter seed.

  Her expression betrayed nothing, but her cheeks grew pale.

  “You see, Pastor Mather,” he said with quiet vitriol, “I think there are plenty of people on your crew who don’t like what you did to the Empyrean.”

  “They understand I did what I had to do.”

  “They understand that you’ve orphaned two hundred kids?” Kieran said. “Your entire crew would have to be as morally bereft as you are. I think that’s unlikely.”

  For once, she seemed to have no idea what to say; her mouth hung open, and she stared into the screen, her eyes two watery blobs.

  “Now you have to decide how much of a hypocrite you’re willing to be. Are you going to jeopardize the entire peace treaty on the single condition that Anne Mather be held above the law?”

  “I—”

  “How is that going to look to your crew?”

  “Now wait just a minute.”

  “How is it going to look in the history books, do you think?”

  She was silent, her face frozen as she looked at him anew. I’ve surprised her, he realized. She’s not used to being surprised.

  “All right, Mr. Alden,” she said, her cool composure already regained. “You’ve made yourself heard.”

  “We’re going to start from scratch. I’ll be transmitting my terms for peace. And we’ll begin to discuss how to deal with your war crimes only after every single Empyrean crew member has been returned safely to my ship. Am I making myself clear?”

  He hung up on her dumbfounded face before she could respond.

  PART FOUR

  SPARK

  It is the flash which appears, the thunderbolt will follow.

  —Voltaire

  PRACTICE RUN

  The conifer bay was frigid. Waverly hated coming here when the heat lamps were off, but she needed cover of darkness. She carried a lightweight collapsible shovel under her tunic and strolled between the stands of fir and pine, aware that surveillance cameras were capturing her every move. Though she wore a hooded shirt, she thought she was probably still recognizable from the way she limped. At least her throat was mostly healed. It had been over a week since she’d been choked, and every day she felt stronger.

  When she reached the juniper grove, she duc
ked out of view between the branches and turned on her flashlight, training the yellow circle of light on the floor, searching the ground for a holly branch.

  There were fifteen species of juniper here, each represented by several specimens, and it took her a long time to find the holly branch Seth had left between two Rocky Mountain junipers. The place smelled piney and fresh, and though she shivered against the terrible cold, she liked the crisp air on her face. She kicked the holly out of the way and jabbed the blade of her shovel into the hard frozen ground, hacking at the mat of needles and then the cold earth below them. She hadn’t thought of how frozen the ground would be, and cursed Seth under her breath as she leaned all her weight into her work. Soon she had a fine film of sweat that made her even colder. It was numbing toil, so her mind wandered back to the same thing it had been stuck on for the last two days.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” her mother had said in her video. Waverly had watched it over and over again for hours, looking for some hint of her mother’s true state. Regina smiled bravely at the camera, and her voice was modulated at an almost cheerful timbre, but there was something off about her. The way her left eye twitched. The way she kept glancing off to the left of the camera, as though seeking the approval of the person taping her. Waverly hadn’t known what to expect when Sarek sent her the video file with a note that said Kieran had forced Anne Mather to send these communiqués. Her heart had soared at first, but the more she watched the video, the more she worried. Something in her mother’s manner appeared coerced.

  All the more reason to get what she came for now.

  Waverly’s shovel struck something hard about a foot down, and she worked around the shape of the thing, at first chipping the hard dirt away with her shovel, but finally kneeling on the ground and brushing away clumps with her fingers until finally she felt the strap. She pulled on it as hard as she could, prying it out of the ground, until it came loose, and she fell backward, hard.

  She put the end of the flashlight in her mouth and opened the zipper, finding exactly what she expected: two dozen guns and countless rounds of ammunition to go with them.