Stone in the Sky

by Cecil Castellucci

  I nodded.

  “So you joined up with Pirates,” I said.

  “We switched sides. I think that was the only thing we agreed on. We were a good team for a while then. Eventually, we joined the Noble Star. Our Imperium Youth training came in handy out there. I could always find the littlest ships, the ones that tried so hard to fly under the radar and usually had the biggest loot. One day we hit a small ship and Reza went in first to scout it. Once he got on board, he took off and left me.”

  He closed his eyes. When he did, everything about his face looked soft. His blond curls. His long lashes. I think it was hard for him to talk to me when he saw my eyes. It was natural for Caleb and I to talk of serious things, but this was hard for him. Confessions are sometimes better when no one is watching. Darkness makes it easier to speak from the heart.

  “After he left I thought to myself I am so far away from anything that I care about. It was easy to lose myself and to rise in Pirate ranks. You just have to not care about anything and always win.”

  “You care about things,” I said, thinking about the way that he cared enough about us to make sure we had a ship. About the way that while he had ignored my messages, he came through when he knew I was in danger. About how he had loved Myfanwy with all of his heart. “You wouldn’t have convinced your crew to let us keep this ship otherwise.”

  He stiffened as though I had revealed something in him that he didn’t want out in the open.

  “Sometimes I think I don’t feel anything anymore,” he said.

  I sucked my breath in. That was how I had felt for years.

  “Me too,” I admitted.

  “That’s why you just now helped hundreds of Humans save themselves?” he asked. “Because you don’t feel? I think your problem, Tula Bane, is that you can’t hide behind coldness. You care too much.”

  Something shifted in me. I had held back from truly caring since I’d been abandoned. But I could not deny that I cared about people. I was glad to be standing here on a ship with a friend, knowing that my sister was safe. I warmed at the thought of Tournour, Thado, and Reza who were far away and yet always in my thoughts. I had to admit that I did care much more than I allowed myself to show.

  “Why have you been sending me messages?” he asked.

  All of the walls between us were finally stripped away.

  “I have a trial with a possible execution order on me, and I had to leave the Yertina Feray. I had nowhere to go, so I thought I could join up with you.”

  “I’m a Pirate. You don’t have it in you to be a Pirate.”

  “I could be if we could hit Brother Blue’s ship,” I said.

  “What?” he said. I had surprised him again.

  “We could go and attack his ship when he leaves the Yertina Feray to go to Bessen or Earth. We could get the alin. And if he died in the process, well, that’s not a coup. That’s just bad luck.”

  “That’s not who you are,” Caleb said.

  “I want Brother Blue dead,” I said.

  “You can’t abandon these people. If you abandon them, then it will be the same as killing them,” Caleb said. “And you won’t do that.”

  “I don’t want to be responsible for these people.”

  Every choice was the wrong choice.

  “But you are.”

  “Why did you bother tracking me down?” I asked.

  “I kept seeing all of these other Humans that I let go, but I missed seeing a Human face that I knew. You are the closest to home that I will ever get.”

  “I’m coming with you,” I said. “I’m not a Wanderer. I can’t be aimless the way that these people are. I have to go somewhere. Do something.”

  “Pick another path,” Caleb said. “I won’t let you become a Pirate.”

  I could tell that he was serious. And then it struck me. If I could not attack Brother Blue from a Pirate ship, and if the Yertina Feray was denied to me, maybe I could get these Humans back to Quint. They were not safe in wandering in space. They needed a sanctuary to ride out Brother Blue’s run on power. Maybe they could work the Human claim. Or Reza’s. I could take Brother Blue down in a different way. From within his own ranks.

  “If you won’t take me with you, then help us to get back to Quint.”

  “Quint? Why?” he said.

  “These people are in danger out here, they’ll be picked up again. You know they will.”

  He nodded in agreement.

  “On Quint there is an infrastructure. There are resources coming in to build up a temporary colony. The area of a claim is only good if you have people from your own species working it. They need workers there. Here are workers.”

  “Why would I want to help them?” Caleb asked.

  “When I first met you, you wanted to help to bring down the Imperium collaborators. Here’s your chance to help do that.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  He turned and left. But I could tell that he was buzzing.

  30

  Bitty had insisted that we share quarters, even though she was the leader and could be alone if she wanted. I did not refuse. We could barely let the other out of sight, too afraid that we’d lose each other again.

  “There you are,” she said when I entered the room. “I saw you sneak off.”

  “I needed to be alone,” I said. “Is the celebration done?”

  “There are some people still there,” she said. “Usually I’d stay, but as journey leader, I thought I should get some rest.”

  She was younger than I was and yet wiser than me in so many ways. She was brawn and brain. I was heart and hate.

  It was strange to share a room with Bitty. There was none of the ease that we’d had when we were young. Not that being sisters was ever easy, but she and I were very different from who we were then. Now we were no longer children. Our divergent journeys had marked us, and I was not used to sharing my space with anyone but Trevor, who was now no longer in my possession.

  As she prepared for bed, I could see her burns and tattoos. There were scars on her body I could not help staring at. Her body was tight and muscly, and she looked fit in a way that I never had been. She seemed ferocious, like a wild cat. Her body was a map of her life without me. Her first mark, of course, was the burn from the exploding Prairie Rose.

  “Was it quick?” I asked.

  I couldn’t bear the idea of my mother dying slowly.

  “It felt quick,” she said. “I don’t remember much.”

  She came over to me and sat on the bed.

  “Don’t be afraid to look,” she said. “These are scars. You have yours too.”

  She put her hand on my heart. Was I that easy to read?

  I put my hands on her face and arms. I felt each ridge and wondered if I were as mottled as that on the inside.

  “I’m not embarrassed by these,” she said. “I’ve had to fight to stay alive. We all do when we’re out here.”

  Then she pointed to each tattoo, each scar, and told me the story of her voyage since we’d parted.

  “The Dinear. Sunburst. Quantam Grain. Bellio Cane…”

  She listed the ships. So many ships.

  “You never landed?” I asked. “The Wanderers don’t ever just settle on some corner of a planet?”

  “No,” she said “You know that’s not allowed.”

  It should be, I thought.

  “We wander till we go home.”

  She’d not been on a single planet since she left Earth. I wondered how she would take to my idea of bringing them all to Quint.

  “What was it like? Always moving?” I asked.

  “You know,” she said. “You’ve been wandering yourself.”

  “It feels different. I was traveling, not wandering.”

  “But you’ve seen how beautiful the galaxy is,” she said.

  I thought of Quint. And Tallara. And the space elevator to Bessen. I thought of the suns that I’d seen on this journey. All different sizes. Different colors to my eyes. I
thought of the gas giant we were near. There was so much to see.

  And still, compared to Bitty, I had seen so little.

  We settled down, but I had trouble finding sleep. Bitty’s every move at night, her every breath, every sigh kept me awake. My arm was still buzzing from the sting of the tattoo, and my brain was troubled at the burden of being responsible for this ship and these people.

  I could not stop thinking about Brother Blue.

  I wanted to be home on the Yertina Feray. There was an ache in me that was shaped like the station. Like Tournour. I tried to picture his face. He was the one that I wanted most to talk to about what was happening. I thought of ways that I could get back or get a message to him that was more detailed than a shipping manifest, but I knew that was impossible.

  I was sure of only one thing. Quint was the solution. It seemed as though all of the action, the whole center of my universe, was there.

  31

  The Noble Star was leaving us. Caleb was leaving. He had not come to say goodbye.

  I was hurt. Knowing he would be gone felt like losing a battle in this long war that I had declared.

  I stood on the bridge with Bitty, Ednette, Traynor, Siddiqui, and we watched the Noble Star as it uncoupled from the Hort ship.

  “There she goes,” Bitty said.

  I felt a twist as I watched it gain acceleration and move away.

  “We need to find a destination,” Bitty said.

  I wanted to put forth my idea of going to Quint, but without Caleb it would be too dangerous, so I stayed quiet.

  Siddiqui was leaning over the navigation console, taking his time to study it.

  “I’m working on trying to figure out what our best jump will be,” he said.

  “Do we know where we are?” Bitty asked. “Do we have an idea of where we should head?”

  The door slid open. Caleb and a group of three other Pirates came in.

  “What’s going on?” Bitty said. “You gave us this ship.”

  Her hand went to her hip to grip the handle of her knife. I put my hand on her shoulder to relax her.

  “I thought you were abandoning us,” I said.

  “You have a way of getting under my skin,” Caleb said. “Friends?”

  He stuck his hand out to shake.

  “Friends,” I said as I pulled him in for a hug, relief flooding me. I knew he’d come back because he knew that there was something right in going back to Quint. Having a friend by my side made everything I was hoping to do seem possible.

  “We’re one skip away from the system that Marxuach is in,” Caleb said when we broke apart. “I think we should go there first. See for ourselves what’s going on there.”

  “I’d like to go to Marxuach,” Siddiqui piped in. “I have to know if you are telling the truth or lying about the colonies.”

  There was no need to take a vote. We all wanted to see a Human colony with our own eyes.

  “Then let’s go,” Caleb said.

  He snapped his fingers, and the Pirates joined Siddiqui and started preparing the ship.

  “What about being a Pirate?” I said.

  “The code says that if you leave all of your possessions but the clothes on your back you may leave the crew without punishment.”

  “What about them?” I asked.

  “I told them about the riches that could be had on Quint. They were the only ones smart enough to follow me.”

  32

  Nothing could prepare us for Marxuach.

  When we skipped into the system, we rushed by the outer planets. We watched the sun, a G-type star grow larger as we closed in on the planet.

  “We’re receiving a transmission,” Siddiqui said.

  “Put it so we can hear,” Bitty said.

  Approaching ship. Please be advised that Marxuach is currently experiencing severe weather conditions. Communication and landing at the colony is not authorized at this time. We expect to be up and running in six months’ time. We welcome you to visit us again then.

  The messages kept coming, one after the other. Until, as we got closer to the planet, they started to be threatening.

  Please be advised that the planet is currently not issuing landing codes.

  Turn your ship around or else we will be forced to launch counter measures.

  Approaching ship. You are now considered a hostile entity. This is your last warning.

  Space cannons are now armed. You are now under attack.

  “Keep going,” I said.

  “They’re going to shoot us down,” Siddiqui said. “I’ve seen what those space cannons can do.”

  “There is no one there to fire them,” I said. But we all looked uneasy as the planet came into view.

  Marxuach was the fourth planet from its sun. It was gray and covered in mountains cut by large rivers and dotted with small seas. There were small green zones hidden in the enormous valleys, and that was where the colony was supposed to be.

  No cannons were fired.

  “Let’s go,” Caleb said after we all breathed a collective sigh of relief. “Feet on the ground.”

  In two hours we would know for sure if we’d been chasing lies or chasing the truth.

  Only Caleb, Siddiqui, the Pirates, and I had the nanites that would let us breathe the Marxuachian atmosphere, so we went down, taking Trevor with us. We were quiet as our shuttle entered the green valley on its bumpy descent through the stratosphere.

  “There,” Siddiqui said pointing out the shuttle window. “I see something!”

  I leaned forward and was able to just make out a small set of four buildings.

  “There is something there,” Caleb said.

  “But there’s no sign of activity,” I said. No one was outside. No vehicles were moving. No land had anything that looked like a farm. No one came outside to look up at our ship, which was landing.

  The door hissed open, and we stepped on the ground. We were all a bit wobbly.

  Marxuach.

  “Let’s check it out,” I said. We headed for the first building. The windows were dirty, so we couldn’t see anything inside. I knocked on the door. There was no answer. We tried the door. It was locked. The same was true for the other three buildings.

  “Trevor,” Caleb commanded. Trevor rolled to the door and blasted it open. Stale air escaped. We went inside.

  It was the base camp for a colony. It had all of the basic equipment to set up a first wave of colonists. But except for two skeletons with guns in their hands, it was empty.

  “There is no one here,” I said. There was a strangeness to having hoped in a tiny way that I was wrong.

  “Where are the people we brought here?” Siddiqui asked furrowing his dark brows. “There were hundreds that I personally sent.”

  “Let’s split up and do a search,” I said. I knew we would find no one, but Siddiqui still needed proof.

  We each headed in a different direction, making sure that we could keep each other in our sights. In front of me there was nothing but mountains and vegetation.

  “Here! Here!” called one of the Pirates. He’d taken the southern direction, heading toward a line of trees. The smell that seemed to stick onto everything thickened as we got closer. When we joined him, we saw what he saw. Beyond the trees was a field, and it was full of decomposing Human bodies.

  “Oh my God,” Siddiqui said as he heaved.

  “We can’t leave them like this,” I said.

  “No, we can’t,” Caleb said. He called Trevor.

  None of us objected when he commanded Trevor to burn the trees. We stood and watched as they caught fire and spread to the field, burning the bodies along with it.

  Silently we boarded the shuttle and returned to the Hort ship. Sobered from our visit to the planet below. As we blasted off and hit the outer atmosphere to join the stars, we could still see the smoke rising below.

  Even though I knew that there would be no colony on Marxuach, I was still in shock at what I’d seen.

&nbs
p; We all wanted the same thing now.

  We all wanted Brother Blue to pay.

  33

  We were shaking as we told them what we had witnessed on the planet below.

  Every Wanderer gathered in the mess hall to hear our report from Marxuach. They hung on our every word, their eyes stealing glances at the column of smoke that still rose off of the planet.

  Disbelief. Despair. Disgust permeated the room as we haltingly told them. Faces found shoulders to sob on. Hands covered eyes as if to unsee the horror. I wondered if it was worse to have to imagine it. Shocked faces stared blankly as they realized that sons, daughters, husbands, wives, friends had been lost. There would be no reunion with them.

  “It’s too dangerous to live as you have lived,” I said to them. “We must not let what happened on Marxuach happen to us.”

  A murmur of assent washed over the crowd.

  “I am taking suggestions as to where we might go to be safe,” Bitty said. As strong as she was the burden of this was weighing on her heavily.

  I stepped forward.

  “We’re going to make the dead speak,” I said.

  There was a collective shout of agreement from the crowd. I raised my hands up to quiet them down. When they were settled, I continued.

  “Brother Blue is making his money from alin on Quint. If we can get back to Quint and destroy his source of income, then it won’t be so easy for him to ship Wanderers to those colonies to die like that.”

  “The aliens who collaborate with him will get angry if he can’t pay,” Caleb said backing me up.

  “And that will chip away at his reputation,” I said.

  “It isn’t his death, but it’s a start. We have to start somewhere.”

  “And how will we do that?” Traynor asked.

  “Brother Blue is a sucker for a deal,” I said. “When I was assisting him on the Prairie Rose, he was always going on about the deals that he’d made. We could have Caleb sell us to him to work Quint.”

  The crowd roared in disagreement.

  “We won’t be slaves!” an old woman yelled.

  “Why don’t we just kill him?” someone else shouted.

  Others agreed or yelled insults.