Tangled Planet

by Kate Blair

  “Better?” Astra asks.

  “A little.”

  “I’m glad. Now, what on Beta happened? Where’s Jovan?”

  She doesn’t know. Of course she doesn’t know. There hasn’t been time for anyone to write a report.

  I don’t want to tell her. Don’t want to remember his mangled body. The genelab he must have built. I pull myself up to a sitting position in the air facing her and force the words out.

  “There was a genelab on the planet. The creature was made there. It killed Jovan, and we killed it.”

  Astra’s eyes are wide. “Jovan’s dead?”

  I nod.

  “I’m so sorry, Ursa.”

  I swallow hard. Try not to think about his body. About our kiss.

  “Was he visiting Maia’s grave?”

  Deep breath. “No. I think Jovan made the creature to scare people off the planet.”

  Astra shakes her head, mouth open. “I’m sorry, Ursa.”

  “It’s dead now, at least. It can’t hurt anyone else.”

  Astra nods. Considers for a moment. “Are you sure? Couldn’t Jovan have made more?”

  “I only saw one womb unit. It would take a couple of months to grow something like that, even with the cell division accelerators.”

  Astra is tapping her chin. “But we can’t be sure, right?”

  “No, I guess we can’t.”

  “There may be enough to breed. We need to warn the colonists. We can stretch our resources to send the shuttle down for the people who change their minds.”

  I hug my knees. “Sabik is badly hurt. He might lose his hand.”

  “They can grow a new one for him, but it’ll take a while. Your mother is the best with grafts and transplants, and she’s already back on board. Do you think you can convince her to stay to help?”

  “Not unless Celeste and the baby come back.”

  “I’ll talk to Celeste. She’ll want what’s best for Sabik.”

  My stomach is warm, despite the horror of the afternoon. Sabik, Celeste, and Mom, all back on the Venture. Life will be normal again.

  “How did you kill the creature?” Astra asks.

  “Jovan had a pulse gun. I found it in the mud.”

  She’s silent for a moment. “You still have it?”

  “Um … I …” I fumble in my landsuit. It’s in my back pocket, next to the blowtorch. “Yeah.” I get it out, feeling the sharp edge of the chipped casing against my thumb.

  Astra swings out from the wall and takes it from me, then returns to her seat. “Good. It’ll be evidence for the investigation.”

  The pain in my thigh is a dull throb. It’s good to be back here. But I replay the events of the last few days in my head as I float, and I feel queasy.

  “Yuri was right,” I say. “Someone was killing the colonists in order to scare us all back on the ship. He just got it wrong when he thought it was me.”

  The alarms of the engine room are silent, but the displays still flash to one side of Astra, lighting her cheekbone blood red. “Yuri planted bombs on this ship,” she says. “He put us all in danger. Jovan was misguided, but I’m sure he did it for his sister, to stop other people dying.”

  There’s something not right. I stare at the feeds. All the numbers are wrong since the bomb went off, so there’s no comfort there. Astra’s not meeting my eyes. It’s as if she’s waiting for me to say something else. There’s cold spreading through my stomach.

  A sensory memory comes back to me. My thumb brushing over the chip on the pulse gun I just handed over. The one I found by Jovan’s body.

  It was chipped. I chipped it when I was adjusting the blowtorch casing.

  It’s Astra’s gun.

  How did Jovan get it? I put it back in Astra’s safe. She’s staring down into her lap. The world shifts around me. Things click into place, forming a new and horrible shape.

  She told me she’d been spending time with Jovan. Talking to him. How could she not realize what he was up to? She’s better at spotting a lie than anyone I know.

  My mouth is dry. Astra. My Astra. She would have suspected, at the very least. But it was more than that.

  After all, who loves this ship more than Astra? I’ve lived here for seventeen Alpha years. Astra’s been here for over fifty. Her husband, my father, devoted his life to keeping her in the sky. Everything I feel for the Venture is magnified in Astra.

  She looks up. Sees my wide eyes.

  “You worked it out, didn’t you?” she says. “How?”

  I consider denying it. But I know the shock is written on my face.

  “That’s your pulse gun. You lent it to Jovan.”

  Astra looks almost relieved. “Oh, Ursa. You understand, don’t you? We had to do something. People were dying. Maia and Seginus were only the start.”

  “Cassius and Orion are dead,” I say. “Not because of the planet.”

  Astra lets her gaze drop to the pulse gun in her hands. “We were hoping Orion’s death would be enough. But Cassius was talking about accelerating the colonization. I had to act.”

  I need to stop floating. “Get me to the side.”

  “Let’s talk this out.”

  My jaw clenches. The thing is, I almost do understand. But Cassius and Orion didn’t deserve to die. Especially not like that. I’m wishing she’d tell me it’s a mistake. That I’ve misunderstood. All around me the lights of the wounded Venture flash.

  Everything is wrong. Everything is broken.

  “You … you let me go into the forest on the night Orion was killed. It could have been me.” It’s hard to get the words out. They feel absurd in my mouth.

  “I tried to stop you. But you were never in danger. The creature avoided humans.”

  “That’s not what we saw.”

  “Jovan engineered a pheromone that drove the animal crazy. Everyone was safe as long as they weren’t marked with it.”

  “I was safe? Sabik was safe? And Jovan?”

  “Jovan went to kill the creature. It had done its job. He wanted to keep the village safe. Jovan was a good man.”

  I want to laugh at that. But then I remember him setting up the genelab in the hospital to give Celeste and Beta the best chance he could.

  “Perhaps the storm spooked the creature,” Astra says. “Or it attacked Jovan in self-defense. Or perhaps he got some of the pheromone on himself.”

  The jar I slipped on. The stinking oil in it. It was on Sabik’s hand. I wiped it on my thigh. The smell of urine and sweat.

  Oh no.

  I remember Astra at the bonfire, putting a hand on Orion’s shoulder as he headed into the forest. The smell of sweat as she wiped her hands. Astra, stinking of urine on the night Cassius died. I told her he was going into the forest. Perhaps she caught up with him and laid a concerned hand on his back.

  She marked them both for death.

  I look up at her face, soft skin folded into familiar wrinkles, and see the fear in her eyes: fear of the planet, fear of losing the ship, fear of losing what’s left of Dad.

  “It’s done now,” she says. “We can convince everyone to move back on board now.”

  I’m numb. The whole ship together again. It could be like it was. We’d be safe.

  Wasn’t that what I wanted?

  “Please, Ursa. I need you to support me.”

  I cover my face with my hands. Breathe into their warm darkness. Lies and deceit have been tearing this colony apart, turning us on each other, fighting over the future of the ship.

  Circles of death. Over and over.

  I’m quiet for a long time, thinking over my options. She would never hurt me. And anyway, she can’t. Not in the engine room. Aldrin saw us come here together. She couldn’t cover that up.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “You killed people. You hav
e to face the consequences.”

  She stares for a long time, eyes wide. She looks like I’ve stabbed her.

  “I am willing to face the consequences,” she says. “Willing to face the Exit to save the ship. It’s the death sentence I’ve passed on myself. Please, Ursa, keep this secret and I’ll face justice in a few months.”

  “We can’t keep the ship together by lying to people.”

  Tears gather in her eyes. “You’ve made up your mind?”

  I nod.

  Astra swallows. “I don’t want to do this.”

  My breath stops. She grips the pulse gun in her lap.

  “No,” I say. “You wouldn’t.”

  “I have to, Ursa. For your father. For the Venture. For my daughter and her baby. I have to keep them safe. I have to get them back on board.”

  “People will know you killed me!”

  Astra shakes her head. “An electrical accident in the engine room while you were fixing damage from Yuri’s bomb. I’m sorry.” Her words come out in a sob. “I have to keep this ship together. If there were any other way …”

  I try to twist around, try to reach the side. It’s no use. I’m stuck in the middle of the engine room. I’m a sitting duck.

  “No, Astra, please!”

  “I have to save the Venture. I can’t be selfish.”

  I kick at the air, pointlessly. “Okay! Okay! I won’t tell anyone. I’ll keep it secret.”

  “You’re lying. I know you, Ursa.”

  I can’t reach the sides. I let my hand drift slowly toward my gear bag on my hip. Perhaps I could get my linkcom, hit the alarm. But Astra shakes her head.

  “Hands behind your back, Ursa.”

  I do as she says. Then my fingers feel the bump in my back pocket, and I have a plan. I stop kicking and hang there.

  “I thought you loved me,” I say. I let tears well up.

  “I do. I love you, Little Bear. So much.”

  Her hand wavers, but she still points the pulse gun at me.

  Astra has to think I’ve given up. I have to time my move just right.

  I hang there, floating helplessly in the middle of the engine room while one hand works behind my back, positioning, preparing. I open my eyes as wide as I can, try for my best little-girl look. Let the tears show.

  “I love you too,” I say. “Please don’t do this.”

  Her hand shakes. She raises her other one to join it, to hold the pulse gun steady, aimed at me, finger on the red button.

  “Please, Astra.”

  She swallows. “I’m so sorry. I really am.” She closes her eyes.

  That’s my cue.

  I turn the blowtorch on. It’s pointed toward the side wall: a mini rocket pushing me out of the center as Astra fires. Her gun’s pulse shoots past, just wide of the mark. It burns through the edge of my landsuit, scorching a patch of skin on my hip. I gasp. The pulse zaps into the console behind me with a crackle, and I smell smoke.

  Astra’s eyes open. She bites her lip and aims the gun again. Before she can shoot, the deafening alarm blares, then a stream of fire-suppressant gas hits us both, hurling me across the engine room and into the wall near Astra’s chair. I scream as my bad thigh hits a control panel. But I grab a display screen and hold on with one hand as the carbon dioxide buffets us.

  A few seconds, then the air pressure normalizes. I’m dizzy from the gas and my hip and thigh are alight with pain, but I’m no longer stuck in the middle. No longer a sitting duck. I’ve got a tight hold of the wall. I shove the blowtorch in my pocket and start clawing my way toward Astra, hand over hand around the curve of the engine room, grabbing on to familiar screens and input boards.

  Astra is gasping. She got more of the CO2 blast than I did. She’s trying to raise the pulse gun. Her eyes are unfocused, but she’s gulping in air. I have only seconds.

  The alarm keeps blaring, the ship crying out in panic. The pulse hit the elevator controls. They won’t run until they’re fixed. Astra’s lucky she didn’t hit the air circulators.

  Wait. The air circulators. My heart beats faster. No, there has to be another way.

  Astra’s aiming again. I reach into my gear bag, grab the first thing my fingers touch, and hurl it at her. My linkcom. She dodges it easily, but it buys me a few seconds.

  I kick off from the wall hard, flying toward her. I grab her arms and wrestle them back against her. I get hold of her hands, seizing the cold metal of the pulse gun. But her fingers are tight around the slender cylinder. I can’t get any purchase on it. She won’t let go, and she’s trying to push it toward me. She grunts as she strains against me, but I’m younger, stronger. I push it away, twisting her hands back little by little until I’m forcing her to point it at her own chest.

  Our eyes meet. I stare at the woman who raised me. Who just tried to kill me.

  But I can’t kill her. Not Astra.

  She won’t let go of the gun. I can’t get my fingers in there, can’t pry it away from her without risking getting shot. What do I do?

  There’s one thing I can do. One thing that will end this cycle of violence, of death. One way to honor Cassius, Orion, and Vega. One way to keep the colony together.

  I push the gun to the side, away from me, away from Astra. She doesn’t fight me at first. Doesn’t know what I’m doing. I keep pushing the pulse gun. Inch by inch toward the wall. Astra’s eyes go wide as she realizes. She starts struggling and kicking, but the zero-G prevents her getting any force in the blows. Her face is red, her breath coming in gasps.

  I press the pulse gun against the air circulation controls. Move my grip. Grab her fist.

  “No!” she screams.

  I close my eyes. Pray for forgiveness from the Venture.

  My hand tightens, pushing Astra’s finger down on the red button.

  Another zap, and we’re thrown apart by the new blast of fire suppressant. The gun floats off across the engine room. I lose my hold on Astra and swing against a nearby console. Pain explodes in my burned hip, and I cry out. The alarms rise in pitch. The Venture is screaming, too.

  The central air circulators are offline. The bypass is down. Air can’t circulate around the wheel of the ship because of Vega’s bomb and the hull breech. Now it can’t circulate through the center. Soon there will be too much oxygen in the ecocarriages. Not enough in the rest of the ship.

  The sound of the air rotors is wrong. The Venture is wheezing, fighting against her death. But she can’t find a bypass route. I blew it out.

  Her voice comes over the intercom, too calm in the chaos.

  “Air circulation failure. Betafall failsafe activated. Evacuate central core. Air diversion to carriages imminent.”

  I grab hold of the back of Astra’s chair. She unstraps herself, pulls herself over to the main display panel. “What have you done?” She scans the readings. “Our home! Your father’s work!” Her voice trembles.

  I reach for her shoulder. “We have to get out of here. Now.”

  She stays at the main display as the meters turn red and error messages fill the screens.

  “Astra!” I pull at her, trying to drag her away, toward the elevator. But she clutches tight to the handholds, and her back shakes. I lean forward, so I can see her. She’s weeping. Eyes scrunched shut, tears escaping from her lashes, forming droplets that drift away from her face.

  “Air circulation failure. Betafall failsafe activated. Diverting air to carriages. Carriage containment in thirty minutes.” The Venture again, calmly counting down to her own death.

  “Please, Astra. Or we’ll die here!”

  “I want to die here! I’ve earned that! Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve given to this ship! I should get to die where I belong!” She waves a hand at the window, at the dark reaches of space.

  The planet moves into view as the ship rotates: th
e bulging curve of it. It’s a mess down there. I’ll be trying to adapt to it for my whole life. Life will be scary and difficult. But it’s our only future.

  “I don’t want to die, Astra.”

  She turns to me then, and her gaze is full of sorrow.

  “Then go, Little Bear. I won’t stop you.”

  “I love you,” I say. But she turns back to the monitors.

  I kick off the wall toward the elevator as fast as I can. I hit the door release.

  Nothing happens.

  Oh no. The first pulse gun blast. It took out the elevator controls.

  I grab the side and swing myself back over to the control panel next to Astra. But the Betafall protocols have taken over, overriding the maintenance system. I punch in my engineer’s code. The system won’t accept it.

  “I can’t fix the elevators. It won’t let me in,” I say.

  Astra keeps staring at the monitors for a long moment. Then, finally, she straightens up, kicks off the wall, glides to the elevator we came up in, and punches in her protector override code. The doors slide open. “You still might have time to get down the service ladder. Give me your screwdriver.”

  I push off the wall, floating to her side as she glides into the elevator.

  “There won’t be enough air. They’re diverting it away from the spokes.”

  “Give me your screwdriver, Ursa, for Beta’s sake!”

  I reach in my gear bag and hand her the screwdriver. I watch as she unscrews and pulls up the square in the center of the floor. She tosses it into the corner of the elevator, where it floats, bumping against the walls.

  “Get down there,” she says.

  I don’t know if I can trust Astra. But does it matter, since I’m going to die anyway? I peer down the hole, plunging through the spoke. A kilometer-deep drop to the medcarriage. Even if there’s enough air, will I have time to get there before the separation? I swing myself through the hatch, push myself to the wall, and start gliding down, holding on to the rungs.

  Astra’s head appears, framed by the hole in the elevator floor. “I’ll send you the air from the engine room.”

  I look up at her face. At the lines around her eyes. “But you’ll suffocate.”