These Broken Stars

by Amie Kaufman

  I crouch, reaching out to lay a hand against the stones, warming in the sunlight streaming through the clearing. The surface is rough and smooth at once, irregular but soothing. Nothing like the stones in our gardens, polished and placed with perfect artistic balance. I’m hungry and tired, and there’s sweat rolling down my back. Tears drip from my chin, splattering against the stone, leaving uneven patches of darkness against the gray rock.

  “I could have fit a lot more people in that maintenance pod. Maybe it could have been you. I’m sorry.”

  I straighten and look back, toward where Tarver waits at the tree line, adjusting his pack. From here the trek to the Icarus seems endless—I can’t even see the mountains, much less the plains, or the rest of the forest that lies between us and our only chance at rescue. Maybe it would have been better to have died in this crashed pod. Easier than dying slowly out here, alone but for this man who hates me, so far from the one person who cares about me. Fear, icy and sickening, roils in my stomach.

  Tarver lifts his head as if sensing my gaze across the distance between us. If he heard any of what I said, he gives no indication, merely hefting his pack and inclining his head to suggest we get moving.

  I swallow, glancing down once last time at the freshly dug graves. “I think you might’ve been the lucky ones.”

  We walk.

  My feet are nothing but a dull ache as Tarver marches me through the woods. He takes my hand sometimes to help me over logs and rocks and lifts me over the creek when we cross it. Other times he makes me drink from the canteen. I let him, because what else can I do? The day morphs into eternity, a nightmare from which I cannot wake. As the hours stretch on, not even the sounds of the forest make me jump. I see nothing but the ground before my feet. I cannot turn back because there is no back, only the next step, and the one after, and the one after that.

  I used to think that my name would always keep me safe. That those two words—Lilac LaRoux—would be the only password I needed no matter where I ended up.

  I had been so sure my father was coming for me, but now it’s hard to find that certainty. This is a wilderness waiting to swallow me; I’d barely make a dent trying to fight it. There are no rules for me to learn, no points to be scored, no bluffs to be called. This is a hell I’ve never imagined.

  And I think I’m going to die here.

  “Nothing of note happened when you camped that night?”

  “If you’d tell me what kind of thing of note you’re wondering about, I’m sure I could be more help.”

  “Are you saying that nothing unusual happened?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  THIRTEEN

  TARVER

  The campfire’s down to coals when I wake. My eyes snap open, and as always, there’s that brief moment of disorientation as I soak in everything around me, wait to know where I am.

  This time it doesn’t take long to remember. Our camp is near the end of the woods and the start of the plains. I built the fire up high before we slept, still thinking of the monster that nearly killed Lilac.

  I roll over onto my back to find her blocking out the unfamiliar stars, standing above me like a ghost in the night. Something must have prompted her to come around to my side of the campfire—she’s still insisting on separation—and I’m reaching for my Gleidel as I blink up at her.

  “Miss LaRoux?” I ask, quiet and careful. I don’t want to give her a fright and get a kick for my troubles. Assuming she’s real at all, looming up there like a specter. Even as a ghost, she’s something to see.

  “Major, there’s somebody out there,” she whispers. “Can you hear? There’s a woman crying out there in the trees.”

  A shiver of apprehension runs through me, and I tilt my head to one side, surprised the noise didn’t wake me. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing to break the silence. I shift and sit up, noticing I’ve still got my boots on. I think I remember deciding to sleep in them.

  “There it is again, Major,” she insists, still soft.

  “I can’t hear it,” I whisper, stretching my protesting muscles.

  Her eyes widen as though she’s having trouble believing that’s true.

  “What direction?”

  She lifts a hand to point unhesitatingly toward where the trees give way to the plains, and I climb to my feet, reaching out to scoop up my grab bag and sling it over one shoulder. Oldest trick in the book—lure folks away from their fire, then swipe their stuff. I’ve done it myself more than once, stuck out on the border planets, pitched against the latest colonist rebellion. If they’re lurking out in the woods and not approaching us directly, I don’t trust them.

  It’s my turn to lift my hand, and I raise a finger to my lips to signal she should be silent. She nods and follows as I ease away from the fire.

  Once we’re a short distance from the flames, I pause in the shadows, looking back at her. Miss LaRoux is focused on the task at hand, not even seeming to register discomfort from her bare feet. I tilt my head at her. What about now? Hear anything?

  She shakes her head, perplexed, neat brows drawn together. “She’s stopped,” she whispers. “She sounded like she might have been hurt, Major. She could be unconscious now.”

  I open my mouth to reply—or she could be a trap—but I don’t get a word out. Miss LaRoux’s decided to take matters into her own hands.

  “Hello,” she calls out, stepping away from the tree. “Are you—”

  She gets no further than that. She only makes it to three words because I’m so appalled it takes me a few moments to mobilize. I lunge, clamping a hand over her mouth and hauling her in against me, holding her tighter than I should. She makes a muffled sound, then goes still, frightened and tense. We stand like statues, straining to listen. I keep hold of her, and despite the danger, there’s a part of my mind that insists on noticing her closeness, her body pulled against mine.

  Out in the woods, there’s no sound. Not the snap of a twig, not the brush of one branch against another.

  Very slowly, she presses a finger against my hand in a silent request to be released. I ease my grip an inch or two and she breathes out. I tuck my chin to whisper in her ear. “Still hearing her?”

  She shakes her head a fraction, leaning up to whisper in mine, breath tickling my skin. “Nothing. What if she’s passed out? She could be hurt, she could be—”

  I know what she really means. She could be one of her friends. She could be one of those girls who looked at me like some kind of specimen. If she exists at all. I can’t believe that in a place like this, with my every nerve on edge, I could have slept through what woke Lilac. It’s more likely she woke herself from a dream. Still, there’s only one way to be sure.

  “Stay here,” I whisper, my cheek brushing against hers. She’s still flushed with sleep and her skin’s warm, so much smoother than mine. I’m sure she’s never encountered anything as uncultured as a guy in need of a shave before. But she only nods in silent understanding. She’s shaking violently, and I realize she’s left her blanket behind. I take off my jacket and wrap it around her shoulders, and she sinks down to sit in the shadow of the tree to wait.

  It’s not the worst night of my life. I’m sure that prize will forever belong to a particular night on Avon. The whole platoon, me included, were so green we were practically sprouting leaves, and the night’s entertainment was a group of rebels with an oversupply of pulse lasers. Not a nice thing on watery ground. To top it off, I missed a date with one of the local girls, and it’s not like recruits get a lot of those lined up.

  Still, on my list of worst nights, this comes close.

  It’s almost impossible to move through the undergrowth without making a sound, with great thorny arms reaching up to tangle in the fabric of my pants and dry twigs concealed under the leaf litter, waiting to crack and snap like bones breaking in the dark. On any other planet I’d be confident, but here I know anything could hurt me, anything could be just a little different from the way it’s suppos
ed to be. I’m forced to move forward a fraction at a time, with frustrating slowness. The hairs on the back of my neck are standing up, and I’m alive because I’m not in the habit of ignoring that.

  I pass by Lilac three times in the first hour of searching. She’s obediently huddled at the base of the tree, wrapped in my jacket, her legs tucked up inside it. She insists she can still hear the voice. I stand in the shadow of a tree and look out across the moonlit plain, in the direction she swears the voice is moving. Except that there’s nothing there, and even the smallest critter would cast a shadow by the light of the two moons.

  When I return to her a fourth time she shakes her head at me—the noise is gone. She seems so small inside my jacket, but I can tell she’s trying to look like she’s bearing up well. She doesn’t want me to stop searching.

  I hold up a hand to warn her to remain in place, and she nods as I back away from her. Time to try a different approach. I walk fifty painstaking paces, then settle with my back against a tree, the Gleidel in my hand on full charge. “Is anybody out there? We’re friends.” My voice splits the silence. Nobody within a klick could have missed it. Lilac and I both stay frozen in place, listening as our heartbeats count away the seconds. Nothing.

  So I resume my search. It’s another hour of wading through the undergrowth and past the smooth-trunked trees before I have to concede that if there’s somebody out here, I’m not finding her until daylight.

  I make my way back to where Lilac, miraculously, is actually dozing against the tree. She was trembling for hours—the strain must have finally worn her down. She starts when I crouch down beside her, and blinks at me apologetically—or it could be apology, anyway, and I choose to believe it is. I don’t need to tell her we’re staying away from the campfire, which shines in the darkness like a beacon to anything with sinister intentions that might be out there.

  I ease in to sit beside her, Gleidel in hand. She’s still half asleep, and she shifts her weight to settle her head against my shoulder. Looks like I’ve been promoted from the other side of the fire, for one night only. I wrap an arm around her, and with her leaning against me—small and warm and alive—I tip my head back to rest it against the tree trunk.

  I bite the inside of my cheek to keep myself awake, fighting the urge to lean my head on hers, and settle in to wait for dawn.

  “So then you made your way across the plains toward the mountains?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “What were your thoughts at that stage?”

  “It was clear we were unlikely to find other survivors, but I remained alert. I didn’t expect them to be kindly disposed toward a LaRoux, if they were around.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Her father built the ship we’d been on. Terraforming companies are rarely popular with the colonists, and you know as well as I do that Central sends in the troops to back up the corporations’ rights. Colonists hate us, too.”

  “Did you have any other thoughts?”

  “I was beginning to wonder why we weren’t seeing rescue flyovers.”

  “Did you mention that to Miss LaRoux?”

  “No.”

  FOURTEEN

  LILAC

  “Tell me again what you heard,” he asks for the eighteenth time after we complete another of his ever-expanding search perimeters around our campsite. In the light of morning, it’s hard to keep insisting that what happened was real.

  “It was a woman crying. She sounded desperate, afraid, maybe hurt, I’m not sure. She sounded—” But I cut myself off, pressing my lips together.

  “She sounded?” he prompts, leaning back against a tree.

  “She sounded like me,” I finish, realizing how the words sound— even worse than I’d expected.

  He’s silent for a while, scanning the forest. “Right,” he says after a few moments, pushing off from the tree and leaning down to retrieve his pack. “If there was someone here last night—”

  He pauses a moment, as if expecting me to say something. I want to interrupt, insist I heard what I heard, but something keeps me quiet. I’ve lost the right, if I ever had it, to protest his declarations. I’d die out here if it weren’t for him.

  When I remain silent, he continues. “At any rate, she’s gone now. We need to keep moving. How are your feet?”

  Maybe I did invent her. The admission, even to myself, causes an uneasy tension to settle throughout my shoulders. But I have no choice. If he’s decided it’s time to move on, then I have to move on with him. The worst part is that I have to admit that he’s right. There’s no sign of anyone here, no trampled earth, not even a snapped twig to show someone passed by.

  “They’re fine,” I mumble, despite the throb from the matching blisters on my heels at the reminder.

  “Once we’re out onto the plains, we can find a place to rest, stop a little earlier today. Neither of us is going to have much stamina after such an interrupted night.”

  I know he means that I won’t have much stamina. My jaw tightens in protest, and for an instant I want to retort. But then my ears fill with the memory of a cat’s hunting snarl, and I smell the burning fur and the blood and I close my eyes.

  The voice was moving toward the plains, which is the direction Tarver proposes to hike in order to reach the wreck. Perhaps if we just start moving, we’ll be able to track down whoever I heard.

  “Fine.”

  Silence from Tarver, which stretches long enough that I’m forced to open my eyes again. He’s watching me with an odd expression on his face, one I can’t read—his eyes aren’t quite on mine. With a start, I realize I’m still wearing the jacket he wrapped around my shoulders last night.

  When I start to scramble out of it, struggling with the way the material swallows up my hands, he’s roused from whatever trance he’d been in. “No,” he says abruptly. “Keep it for now.”

  Then he turns his back and moves out, sure in the knowledge that I’ll follow.

  What else can I do?

  Somewhere in the back of my mind, a tiny, unbidden voice whispers, Would you actually want to do anything else?

  The pace seems easier today. Perhaps he’s being gentler on me, but I suspect I’m growing accustomed to walking.

  We make better time on the flat ground of the plains, pausing only to choke down a ration bar each. I choke, anyway; Tarver tucks in as though it’s a three-course steak dinner.

  He calls a halt again after another hour and a half of walking, looking around the plains in each direction. Behind us the forest is a smear of gray-green on a ridge, dropping down into the broad, golden expanse of the plain. I’ve never seen anything so immense as this, such a vast sweep of empty land. The creek we’ve been following fans out into a network of silvery streams, marking the small dips in the land. They’re all small enough to jump across, but large enough that Tarver can dip the canteen into them, filling it up and letting the water filter do its work. The wind ripples the grass of the plains in waves, for all the world like the oceans I’ve seen on the HV. On the far side of all this are the mountains that stand between us and the Icarus.

  But we don’t see any signs of life. No rescue craft roaring overhead, no colony traffic crisscrossing the sky the way the streams divide the plain. I can’t understand why there aren’t colonies here. Where is everyone? Neither of us says a word about it, but I know it can’t have escaped him.

  Tarver makes camp more quickly than he did the night before, and it takes me a few moments to realize why—he hasn’t dug a fire pit this time. No wood on the plains for a real fire. Why hadn’t I thought about that? Until I leaned against him last night, I was halfway to freezing, even with a fire close at hand. And after shoving him away so quickly this morning, I can’t rely on his warmth again. I shiver, my mind on the miserable night ahead.

  Tarver gathers up a bundle of the wire he stripped from the escape pod, mumbles something about setting snares for food, and strikes out across the plain in a straight line. At least I can
see him here, without the trees of the forest to block my view, and know I’m not completely alone.

  I’m watching him and exploring my face with my fingertips, wishing I had a mirror. My skin is warm and flushed despite sitting still; sunburn, something tells me, swimming up from some childhood experience when I got lost on a simulation deck emulating a tropical vacation. Then, my father just summoned a physician, and the burn melted away under her care. Now I trace its damage across my cheeks. The skin around my eye is still painful to the touch, and I imagine that it’s at least a little bruised—it’s had the four days since the crash to bloom. At least Tarver has the decency not to mock me about it.

  I hear his voice not far behind me. Didn’t I just see him in the distance, crouching to set a snare? I turn, chest tightening in surprise, only to find an empty plain. How could he have gotten behind me so fast? I squint back over my shoulder and see him straighten up, too far off for me to have heard him speak.

  The hair on the back of my neck lifts, and I scan the plains behind me. There’s no sign of anyone, and yet as I stand there, heart pounding and ears straining, I hear another murmur. It isn’t Tarver’s voice after all—it’s not quite as deep. It carries some emotion I can’t identify, and I can’t understand at all what it’s saying.

  My body begins to shake, my fingertips tingling and itching, my breath quickening. Fear, I tell myself, but it doesn’t abate even when I force myself to take deep breaths. My skin runs hot and cold and hot again, itching with restlessness until I feel like I must move or explode from the sensation. My head spins as though my blood sugar’s low, as if I’m wearing a too-tight dress, and not enough oxygen is reaching my brain.

  I’m still standing when Tarver returns. I hear his footsteps through the tall grass long before he reaches me, so when he announces with uncharacteristic cheer, “Burrows—we’re in luck,” I manage not to jump.