Sea of Stars (Kricket #2)

by Amy A. Bartol

  “How will they infiltrate the shields?”

  “I don’t know—I didn’t see that part. The fact is that they do, and then they start blowing the crap out of this place.”

  “You said you stabbed Kyon!” he says in an accusatory tone.

  I take offense to the tone. “Don’t yell at me! My head hurts like someone hit it with a golf club! And I did stab him. The Flower-looking freak healed him—err . . . will heal him . . . uh, I mean—whatever! The fact is that by tomorrow night, he’ll be as good as new.”

  “The Flower-looking freak? What’s a Flower-looking freak?”

  “She’s a priestess—she had on an orchid dress—never mind!” I say in exasperation. “I don’t know who she is. I’ve never met her! But they completely knew I was there—will be there—ugh! They could sense me listening. This is such a paradox to think about.”

  “Are you getting this?” the man asks aloud.

  “Yeah, we got it, Giffen,” comes a voice from a small device on Giffen’s uniform.

  “You’re not Comantre,” I state.

  “No, I’m not,” he agrees.

  “Who are you?”

  “No one you know.”

  “Fine,” I retort with growing hostility. “I’ll leave you to it then. I have to go.” I try to move from his lap, but his arms tighten around me.

  “You’re leaving with me,” comes his calm reply.

  “Yeah,” I say with a fake laugh, “that’s not happening.”

  “I wasn’t asking for your permission.”

  “Good, because I’m not giving it. I have to warn everyone—”

  “You’re not in charge,” he says with a snide twist of his lip.

  “I’m not leaving!”

  “Has anyone ever told you that you’re irritating?”

  “No. Everybody likes me,” I counter.

  The communicator on Giffen’s uniform makes a static noise. “Gif, there’s a problem,” the com-link voice relates in a stressed tone.

  “What is it?” Giffen asks.

  “They detected our trift.”

  “Are they moving on you?” he asks.

  “Affirmative. We need to move the ship.”

  “Leave us here. I’ll find a way off Skye.”

  “But, Gif—”

  “Go! Now!” Giffen orders.

  “Happy landings, Gif,” his com-link partner reluctantly says.

  “To you, as well,” Giffen replies.

  “Aww, your ride’s leaving. Looks like you’re toast,” I smirk. “So, let me go and you can save yourself.”

  “You are very strange. I don’t know what bread has to do with this,” Giffen says in confusion.

  “You’re moving things with your mind and I’m strange?” I counter.

  “Shh,” he hushes me as he sizes up the mess he’s in—we’re in. It’s a colossal debacle. The overup jerks abruptly. Giffen rises to his feet with me in his arms. The elevatorlike car begins to descend once more.

  “I think they just noticed us,” Giffen mutters. “This is going to sting a little.”

  My eyes narrow in suspicion. “What’s going to sting a little?”

  He closes his eyes, and his brow creases. I cringe as a shock charges through me the equivalent of touching an electrified fence. The overup trajectory shifts with a jerk and starts moving sideways, and then slantways.

  “Owah! That hurt!” I whine. “What was that?”

  “I redirected the overup.” He frowns at me, adding, “It didn’t hurt that bad.”

  “Yes it did! Put me down!” I demand.

  “You can hardly stand.”

  “I’m fine.” I wiggle in his arms. It’s feeble; I’m weak.

  With a heavy sigh, he sets me on my feet. I pull away from him.

  He reaches for my neck. I shy away from him. “What’re you doing?”

  “Hold still,” he orders, reaching for me again.

  I shy away again. “No!” I give him my severest scowl.

  “I’m going to take off your collar! Don’t move,” he says in frustration.

  “Oh.” I hold still. “Do you know the code?”

  “I don’t need the code,” he grumbles.

  I mock him silently, mouthing: I don’t need the code.

  A click of the metal latch sounds; the collar around my neck slips off me to fall to the floor. The sound of the hardened foam cracking is next. I glance over my shoulder at Giffen; he has his eyes focused on my wrists. Pieces of the foam shed off. The increased circulation in my hands causes my numb fingers to sting as I wiggle them, breaking the foam.

  I turn to face him. “What are you?” I demand as I rub my wrist with my free hand.

  He raises one eyebrow. “What are you?”

  I shake my head, glancing up at the ceiling for a second with a humorless laugh, before I look him in his eye again. “I’m not human, I’m not enough Rafe, and I’m too much Alameeda,” I reply.

  For a moment, he just stares at me, and then he says, “I’m too much Alameeda and not enough Wurthem.” The overup lurches again, making me hold the wall for support. We begin to plummet downward once more. Giffen grinds his teeth in frustration. “There’s too much going on; I can’t control it all. We have to get out.” Giffen puts his harbinger back into his shoulder holster. He summons a soldier’s harbinger by holding up one hand in the air; it flies to his palm.

  “You’re a bit of a oddball,” I observe.

  Giffen frowns. “No more so than you.”

  He lifts his hands again to the doors in front of us. They slide open, but the compartment keeps dropping. Floor after floor streaks by in a blur. I look at him and say, “I’m not going with you.” The overup slows, and then it comes to a stop in front of ten or so Brigadets who appear to be waiting for the lift. They look stunned when they see us. “Not our floor,” Giffen growls.

  The doors snap shut forcefully before they can react. “You don’t know what you’re doing!” I accuse him. “You don’t even know where we are!”

  “Quiet!” he orders, pointing at me belligerently.

  I ignore his suggestion. “You’re going to get us killed! They see me with you and they’ll think, hmm—I don’t know—conspiracy! If I didn’t appear guilty enough before, you’ve pushed me over the edge.”

  “I’ll push you over the edge,” he says as the overup slows down again. He opens the doors and literally pushes me out of it as he jumps. I land hard on my side, bruising my hip. I roll a little, trying to catch my breath that was forced from my lungs. We’re beneath the ship’s main platform, within the half-sphere base. Giffen raises his hands to the lift; closing the door, it activates again, and the overup car leaves.

  I sit up, glaring at Giffen as he gets to his feet and looks around. The corridor is illuminated with sky-blue track lights in the floor and ceiling. It’s utilitarian—unadorned—and by all appearances, utilized only by the drone-bots that carry supplies from storage bays to restock the area up top. I watch the robotic carts move past us with shiny, chrome-plated shells. “Come on,” Giffen says, holding out his hand for me to take. “Let’s go.”

  Another resupply-bot passes us carrying stacks of enticing beverages in colorful bottles. It’s a barback-bot, I think. I remember working at Lumin, the nightclub in Chicago. It’s where I first met Kyon. He’s going to destroy this place and everyone in it.

  “We have to warn them,” I say as I look at Giffen’s outstretched palm in front of me. My eyes travel up him. He’s really tall, like most Etharians. He has the form of someone who scales mountains: all muscle without a trace of body fat. “We have to make them listen.”

  “No,” he says, shaking his head, “we don’t.” Reaching down, he hauls me up with a fistful of my black jacket, popping off a few of the buttons. “We’re getting off this ship if
I have to throw you over the side.”

  As I look him in the eyes, I kick him as hard as I can in the kneecap. His eyes shutter in pain. I wiggle out of his fist, running full out down the corridor.

  I don’t make it halfway before I’m lifted off my feet, and I crash sideways into the wall. With my back to it and my toes nowhere near the floor, I hang on it like a trophy animal. Giffen hobbles over to face me with a seething look.

  “Your gift is more useful than mine,” I grunt, trying to pull my arm away from the wall. It won’t budge.

  “If you want to call it that. I tend to think of it as a curse, since it puts a price on my head,” he replies. “But in this instance, I don’t mind it so much.”

  “Was your mother a priestess too?”

  “She is a priestess.”

  “She’s alive?”

  “Last I knew.”

  “You have the freak gene, like me. I heard that most males don’t inherit it.”

  “They don’t, and when they do, they’re killed.”

  “They didn’t kill you,” I point out.

  “You have a gift for the obvious.”

  “Are you taking me to them?” I will kill you if you try.

  “To whom?” he asks.

  “The Alameeda.”

  “Why would I? They’re my enemy.”

  “Why do you want me then?” I ask in exasperation.

  “You can see the future. That makes you valuable to us.” He places his hand on my throat again, but this time he doesn’t squeeze it; he merely strokes it softly. “If you want to save yourself, start being useful. Otherwise, you’re a danger to us. And we eliminate danger.”

  “Who are ‘we’? I thought that Wurthem is Alameeda’s ally.” I’m so confused.

  “I may be from Wurthem, but that doesn’t mean I subscribe to their politics or their shortsightedness! Whom do you think Alameeda will target once they’ve killed everyone else?” he rails at me.

  “Why would they kill their allies?” I ask.

  “Citizens of Wurthem aren’t part of their master race.”

  “You’re all one race, aren’t you?”

  “Not to them.”

  “Why would the Brotherhood want to kill you? I would think that you’d be an asset to them as well. You can move things with your mind—you’re telekinetic.”

  “That makes me stronger than them, and they fear anything stronger than them.”

  “You’re a lost boy,” I murmur. “I’ve seen your type before in foster care. Run off by a father or stepfather or sometimes just an abusive mother’s boyfriend. It’s in your eyes. I know you.”

  “You don’t know me and I don’t know you. But I will kill you if you try to run from me again,” he states honestly.

  He lets go of my throat. Whatever force he used to hold me up against the wall releases. When my feet touch the ground, he grips my upper arms and yanks me down the hall.

  Skittering around the bot approaching us, we have to grip the wall as another flying bot carrying parcels almost brains us. We pass a corridor with signs marking it as the cookery. It’s the advanced automated area where most of the food is prepared and then conveyed throughout the ship to the commissaries located in private quarters. Winding through corridor after corridor, we turn the corner, stumbling upon sliding doors leading to a loading bay. Access to the bay is restricted, monitored by a holographic soldier and a few mounted guns on the walls that are operated remotely.

  “This way,” Giffen says, tugging me toward the checkpoint.

  I try to tug my arm away from him. “I can’t leave! I have to warn them about the attack!”

  “They’ll never believe you,” he snarls at me, “you just poisoned their defense minister. The best you can expect from them is that they’ll kill you quickly if they capture you.”

  “If I leave then everyone dies!”

  “Everyone dies anyway. You saw it.”

  “I can change that! Let me change that!”

  He stops. “You can change it?”

  “I’ve changed it before.”

  “But you can’t stop the attack.”

  “Maybe you’re right, but Rafe can be ready for it when it comes.”

  He shakes his head. “It’s too great a risk. This house will fall.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Rafe falls. It’s prophesied. One house will rise to rule and one will fall. It’s foretold.”

  “I thought the house was never named!” An incredible ache squeezes my heart.

  “Rafe’s done—Alameeda will begin exterminating them soon. If you want to survive, stop resisting me, because I’m your only chance.”

  “You’re lying! You don’t know it’ll be Rafe!” I shout.

  He covers my mouth with his massive hand. “It’s obvious it will be them, and I don’t care if Rafe falls,” he whispers with a severe scowl. “They’re not my people! I’m here to make sure the Alameeda don’t rise to power, or we’re all dead! So you’re going to go through those cargo bay doors in front of us. You’re going to follow wherever I lead you. We’re going to find a transport that’s leaving and we’re going to get on it. Any deviation from the instructions I’ve just given you will end with me crushing your skull. Nod your head if you understand me.”

  I nod my head.

  “Let’s go,” he orders.

  He removes his hand from my mouth and moves it to grip my hand, tugging me to the door. With every step we take, my panic grows. If I leave with him, I may survive, but Trey won’t. I can’t live with that. For the first time in my life, my survival is not as important to me as someone else’s.

  The holographic soldier that guards the doors doesn’t have a chance to detect our presence, because Giffen raises his hand and the projection apparatus smolders, making short-circuiting noises. Next, he shorts out the cameras and the eyes on the mounted guns; they swivel in several directions, but none of them aim at us. He forces the sliding doors to open telepathically, and then he uses a laser eye on one of his uniform buttons to strobe the security wall. The blue beams that guard the bay disappear.

  Giffen moves his grip to my upper arm again, pulling me into the cargo bay. It’s automated with supply-bots, but at the far end a handful of Brigadets mill around behind the security glass.

  We edge toward the monstrous ellipse-shaped Cargo Goers on the launching pad that are waiting to jettison to the surface of the planet. They all resemble the Bean sculpture from Chicago’s Millennium Park; each one is a massive, chromelike ellipse, weighing several tons. The skins of the vehicles can alter to blend in with the environment, but right now the one we’re heading toward is shiny and new-looking, reflecting everything around it. Supply-bots cruise around the deck, loading them with pallets of medical supplies that need to be transported to the surface of the planet. Giffen pulls me to duck behind a moving bot, skirting between several more so that we avoid detection by the patrolling soldiers near the other end of the hangar. Choosing the Cargo Goer in the center, he drags me over to it. He lifts me up like I weigh nothing and stuffs me into its yawning mouth. Swinging himself up next to me among the crowded pallets and hovering skids, he slumps against a shiny metal crate.

  In a matter of a few minutes, the rumbling of the Cargo Goer’s doors shake the floor. A look of smug relief crosses Giffen’s lips as he stares at me. He breathes out a sigh that makes my heart bleed in fear as he relaxes. I send him a fake smile, and then I bolt to my feet and slide to the right, fitting through the closing doors right before they crush me. I fall hard on the grated floor outside the transport. The doors thump close behind me. Getting to my knees, I cringe, looking down at my shredded palms. The engines of the Cargo Goer fire up; the wind from the forced air that propels the craft to hover blows my hair around, whipping me in the face. Scrambling away from the craft, a loud bang sounds b
ehind me.

  Looking over my shoulder, the chrome doors fling wide open once more. Giffen’s eyes hunt for me, and the moment they find me, my feet leave the ground. Caught in his telepathic gaze, I fly backward toward him. A supply-bot, in route to another junction, gets between Giffen and me. The crab-shaped metal bot cuts off his connection, causing it to careen toward him as I drop to the ground again. On my hands and knees, I crawl behind a stack of metal crates. The crates shake and fly off the stack one by one. Taking a deep breath, I get to my feet and run full out toward the sliding doors where I’d entered with Giffen. Before I reach them, a metal crate skidding into my path broadsides me. It knocks me sideways, pushing me into a wall. The jolt bashes my ribs, but it stops short of crushing me entirely.

  Winded, I cough and gasp for air. Realizing I’m not dead, I glance toward Giffen. He has jumped down from the Cargo Goer and is making his way toward me. My heartbeat pounds painfully in my chest as I wait for him to crush me like he threatened to earlier.

  Shouting abruptly draws my attention from Giffen’s furious face. A soldier barks out an order to him, “Cease! Drop to your knees!” Brigadets call from different points around the loading area, swarming in with weapons drawn. Giffen ignores their orders. Instead, he waves his hand, lifting them into the air and throwing them in the opposite direction. A few Brigadets by the door fire on him, but their projectiles get only halfway to Giffen before the shiny metal ammo stops and rains useless onto the floor, making a twinkling sound that sets my teeth on edge.

  The next shots that come at him are in the form of electricity from the tricked-out black riflelike frestons. He puts up his hand to ward them off; some of the surging, yellow lightning deflects away from him, but not all of it. Energy slips into him in a singeing stream. He stumbles, clutching his sides for a moment as the sizzling current causes him to stiffen. Gasping for breath, he manages to keep on his feet, but he stumbles as he moves closer to me.

  His handsome face is transformed by rage into that of an avenging god. “We would’ve made it!” he grits between his teeth to me. “You’ve just killed us.”

  “You were stupid to come after me!” I retort as I wiggle from between the crate and the wall, holding up my bloody hands so no one shoots me.