“What if they didn’t?”
“Then they’ll be back,” Kieran said simply. “And we can change course then.”
“God! You’re so—” Seth slammed his shoulder into the metal wall, then slid down to crumple by the door. For a guy like Seth, waiting, doing nothing, was near impossible.
“Kieran!” someone shouted through clenched teeth. “Kieran Alden!” Mason Ardvale, Seth’s father, scowled into the vid screen. He was transmitting from an elevator that was speeding down to the engine room. “You’ve got to seal off the lower bulkheads. Seal them off!”
Kieran ran to one of the terminals and punched through the menus in front of him, searching for the bulkhead controls. He felt Seth behind him, watching everything he did. He finally found a folder marked “Meltdown Containment Protocol.”
Could it be so simple?
“Wait,” Seth said, and reached a hand toward the keypad, but Kieran batted him away and tapped the button. A list began scrolling through a series of automatic functions, completing each as it went.
“Kieran! Stop!” Mason Ardvale’s face, twisted with anger, appeared again in his vid console. “What are you doing?”
“You said to seal off the lower levels!”
“You stopped the elevators! We’re stuck in level two!”
“Oh God!” Seth snarled.
A sinking feeling seized Kieran. Had he killed them all? “How do I undo it?”
Just then the whine in the alarms changed. A piercing tone drilled into Kieran’s ears. The vid screen had blanked out, and two words appeared: “Containment Critical.”
“Oh God, it’s happening!” he heard Mason wail. “Never mind, Kieran. We’ll have to force bulkhead one open. But we won’t be able to seal it again.”
Kieran buried his face in his hands. He’d screwed up everything. He couldn’t do even a simple thing like seal off the doors to the engine room. It would take them twice as long to get down there.
“You might have killed everyone on the ship,” Seth said, his eyes fixed on Kieran like pebbles in cement. “You don’t listen.”
“Get out of here,” Kieran told him. He thought he might beat Seth to death if he didn’t go right now.
But he didn’t leave. “You shouldn’t push buttons if you don’t know what they do.”
“There wasn’t time. The leak was going critical. You saw!”
“You panicked,” Seth said.
“Go away,” Kieran spat at him. “Have someone look at that cut on your forehead.”
Seth’s fingers went absently to the cut, and when he saw the blood coating his fingertips, he got woozy.
“Go on,” Kieran said more kindly. “There’s nothing more we can do from here.”
Seth hobbled to the door, his hand pressed against the cut.
Kieran closed his eyes. Images of everything that had happened fluttered through his mind: Waverly turning away to go into the shuttle, friends and neighbors being shot and crumpling to the floor, the decompression, his mother struggling into a shuttle.
Mom.
Clumsily, he activated the com system and searched for a signal from the second shuttle, the one that had his mother, but there was no communication at all. He enabled all frequencies and, his voice husky with the strain, shouted into the microphone, “Any and all Empyrean shuttles, please make contact. Where are you?”
He paused to listen but was met only with silence.
Where had his mother’s shuttle gone? And when? Kieran tried to think, going over everything that had happened. That shuttle must have left when he and Harvard were trying to rescue the girls. Whoever was in it might be trying to surprise the New Horizon by approaching the enemy ship unheard and unseen.
Or the shuttle could be floating in space, its crew injured by the decompression and unable to make contact, or already dead. There was no way of knowing.
His mom. His mom might be dead.
And his dad probably was.
He got up in a daze and wandered into the central bunker, where the other boys were huddled. Many of them were curled into lumps on their cots. Some of them sucked their thumbs. Arthur Dietrich was pacing in a circle in the corner of the room, muttering, his blond hair mussed, his spectacles askew on his face. He looked as though he were either trying to solve a complicated puzzle or raving.
Arthur needed time to calm down, Kieran knew. Arthur was a coolly intellectual boy of thirteen with a freckled moon face and large blue eyes. When he spoke he sounded as though he had a stuffy nose, so his extraordinarily bright observations often took people by surprise. He was slated by the Central Council to work as the ship’s head engineer, a job that suited him. Arthur seemed capable of living with great responsibility, for he thought about things before he felt them. He was thinking now, so Kieran decided to leave him alone.
Seth and several of the older boys were bunched in a group in the corner of the dormitory, and Seth was whispering to them. His head was wrapped in gauze with a spot of blood seeping through, and his eyes were glazed over. He must have taken a pill for his pain. Kieran couldn’t hear what he was saying to the other boys, but he could guess. Seth was telling them how Kieran had disabled all the elevators at the crucial moment. He was turning the boys against him.
Kieran knew he should confront Seth to set the record straight, but he didn’t have the strength.
Seth had always annoyed Kieran, even before his interest in Waverly became apparent. As two of the oldest boys with the highest aptitude scores, Seth and Kieran had grown into a natural rivalry. But where Kieran was easy to train and likable, Seth was sullen, recalcitrant in his lessons, and scornful when his teachers didn’t know all the answers. Though nothing had been made official by the Central Council, Kieran was the presumed successor to Captain Jones, and he knew this drove Seth crazy.
Kieran remembered walking with the Captain to the studio for one of his broadcasts, and he’d said something to make the Captain laugh and pat his shoulder fondly. Just then Seth had turned into the corridor, and as he’d passed, he’d shaken his head at Kieran, contempt in his eyes. Ever since then, Kieran noticed that the closer he got to the Captain, the more Seth seemed to resent him.
But Kieran knew it was Waverly Seth really wanted. He knew it from the way Seth’s eyes followed her through a room, his face long, looking away when she glanced at him. Waverly had seemed airily oblivious to Seth’s feelings for her, but now Kieran wondered. That last look before she’d boarded the shuttle had been for Seth.
Seth was more handsome than he was. Kieran’s amber eyes were nice looking, but did they compare with Seth’s laser blue? Seth was taller and broader in the shoulders, and his movements were forceful. Kieran wasn’t short, but he had a slight build, and though he was well coordinated and strong for his size, he knew he didn’t have the same masculine fierceness that made girls watch Seth as he worked in his garden, whispering to one another and giggling.
Kieran shook his head. After everything that had happened, how could he even be thinking about this? What was wrong with him?
My mind wants something trivial, he told himself. I don’t want to think about what’s happening in reality. I’d rather invent petty little love triangles.
He wandered through the dormitory aimlessly, between cots holding trembling boys, crying boys, shocked boys. Kieran barely saw what was in front of him, and he knew there were a thousand things he needed to do, but he was unable to think of a single action that would make a difference in what was happening. Until he reached the galley kitchen.
Whenever she was upset, Kieran’s mother would make cocoa.
He’d make cocoa. And then he’d be able to think.
He took a mug from the long line of cabinets, filled it with boiling water, and, after searching through the huge amounts of emergency rations stuffed into the deep cabinets in the walls, found a box filled with cocoa packs. He dropped the brown powder into the steaming mug and sat on one of the metal stools that were bolted to the floor, st
irring compulsively. He sipped at the hot liquid, letting it burn his lips and tongue, until he felt someone standing behind him. Seth’s bitter voice asked, “Who’s in Central Command?”
“No one,” Kieran said. When he heard himself, he realized how it sounded. “I was just going back.”
“No, you weren’t,” Seth said. Kieran heard a snicker and turned to see that four other boys had followed Seth in. “You’re just sitting there.”
“If you think it’s so important, then you go,” Kieran said.
“I will,” Seth said over his shoulder as he left the kitchen. The other boys followed him out. Sealy Arndt looked at Kieran and shook his potato-shaped head in disgust. These traumatized boys needed to believe there was someone in charge taking care of things. If it wasn’t Kieran, they’d settle for Seth.
Kieran picked up his mug and walked across the tomblike corridor back to Central Command, where he found Seth and several other boys watching a monitor. Kieran leaned in to see what they were looking at, hoping that it would be an image of his mother’s missing shuttle. But no. They were watching Mason Ardvale’s crew as they feverishly worked in the engine room. Several of them wore radiation suits, but most worked in their regular day clothes. They were running back and forth, jabbing at controls, reading dials, adjusting valves. One woman ran, carrying a box of tools. She tripped on the clumsy boots of her radiation suit and fell, sprawling across the floor, tools flying out of the box she carried. No one stopped to help her.
They were frantic.
“They’re trying to fix the mess you made,” Seth said.
“I didn’t cause the meltdown, Seth.”
“You slowed them down. If they’d gotten to the engine room sooner—”
“If I hadn’t sealed off the doors, the whole ship would have flooded with radiation,” Kieran said.
“Big hero,” Seth spat. “They had to force the doors open to get into the engine room, and now they’re damaged and they can’t be sealed off. All of level one is full of radiation. You should have sealed off the levels one at a time.”
“That would have taken more time,” Kieran said, but he knew that in the other boys’ eyes, he’d lost the debate. They all glared at him. Sealy’s eyes were hard like cracked mud. Max looked Kieran up and down as though choosing where to punch him, but when Kieran met his eyes, he scoffed and looked away. “I did the best I could.”
“Not good enough,” Seth said.
Kieran knew there was nothing he could do to contain the resentment that was spreading through the central bunker like a cancer. He was too tired and too sad to care what the others thought of him. He went to the Captain’s vid screen, knowing that sitting in the Captain’s chair would provoke Seth, and found the feed to the engine room. He watched, helpless, as the few remaining adults aboard the Empyrean struggled desperately to save the ship.
ZERO GRAV
For hours, Kieran, Seth, and several of the older boys watched the crew in the engine room as they worked at an increasingly feverish pace. Kieran sat at his own screen while Seth and his friends huddled at another across the room, glaring occasionally in Kieran’s direction. Hours in front of the vid terminal made his eyes burn. It was futile to watch because it was the same thing over and over. The crew would be working on clamping down a coolant leak when someone would call them over to take readings on some dials, and then they’d abandon the leak to deal with something even worse. They scrambled over one another like rats, accomplishing nothing.
Discreetly, Kieran flipped the switch to the port shuttle bay where the shoot-out had occurred, and he gasped. So many dead. At least three dozen, lying on the floor of the bay, totally still. He studied each and every shape, looking for some sign of his father, knowing that he’d find none. He recognized most of the bodies; many of them were parents of the boys in the bunker. They would have to be told. Kieran shuddered.
Quickly, he cut power to the cameras in the shuttle bay, hoping none of the other boys would enable them. He had to think how to break the news.
In the meantime, he should check on the little ones. Kieran got up from his seat, stretched his stiff back, and walked out of Central Command.
Little Bryan Peters was going on his third hour of screaming for his mother. Kieran walked between the rows of four hundred metal cots and took the baby from Matt Allbright. Kieran tried to sit the little tot on his lap, but the boy just went on screaming. He wished he knew where Mr. or Mrs. Peters was, so at least the little boy could see them on a vid screen, but either they were on one of the shuttles or they were … gone. They weren’t on the crew trying to repair the engines, of that much he was certain.
“Try hugging him,” Timothy Arden suggested with one finger stuck up his nostril. Timothy was eight years old, but he was reverting to the habits he’d had in kindergarten. A lot of the boys were doing that, sucking thumbs or dragging around a pillow and hugging it to their chests. Some of the older boys, like Randy Ortega and Jacque Miro, were able to put aside their fears about their families and help the littler boys with rehydrating emergency rations. But as Kieran looked around the dormitory, he could see that the boys were confused, terrified, and horribly worried about their parents and sisters. Kieran knew someone had to take control and bring back order to the boys’ lives. That’s what Captain Jones would do. But as he looked around him at the chaos and fear, he had no idea where to begin.
“Get on com console six. Dad wants to talk to you,” Seth snapped as he came across the hallway from Central Command, rubbing at the blue circles under his eyes. Everything about Seth was sullen: the dark look in his eyes, his hunched shoulders, his abrupt stride as he crossed the room. Kieran knew it probably bothered Seth that his own father wanted to talk to Kieran instead of him.
Kieran went into the dark Central Command room and sat at the Captain’s console. He saw Mason in the vid display, panting. He looked pale, his cheeks and eyes hollow, his lips dry and cracked.
“How are the boys?” Mason asked.
“Not so great. I wish we could get some of their parents to them.”
Mason shook his head. “We’d flood the ship with radioactive particles if we opened up the bulkheads. We can’t chance it.”
“I know,” Kieran snapped. He was irritable, and it was hard to keep his feelings inside. “I’m sorry I closed all the doors. I was just—”
“It was the right thing to do.” Mason coughed into his palm.
“Put on a radiation suit, Mason!” Kieran said, knowing what the man would say.
“There were only enough for the regular engineering crew of six. We’re taking turns.” The man’s face dissolved, and for a frightening moment, Kieran thought he might cry. But Mason pulled himself together, biting hard on his lip. “Listen, we need you to prepare the ship for an engine shutdown.”
“There’s no other way?” Kieran knew that shutting down the engines was a measure of last resort. The engines not only moved the ship, they kept everyone and everything on the Empyrean alive. “For how long?”
“We’re hoping we can get them working in six hours.” Mason coughed into his palm again. “Listen, with the engines off, we’ll no longer be accelerating. That means no inertial force.”
“Which means no artificial gravity,” Kieran finished for him. He imagined one hundred and twenty-two boys floating around the bunker, and he cringed. Things were already chaotic with gravity, but without it, things would be truly crazy. “Are you sure there’s no other way?”
“With the engines on, everything is too hot to repair.” Mason held up his knuckles, which were blackened and blistered. “I got these wearing two pairs of thermal gloves.”
Kieran cringed.
“Listen. You’ve got to get all the boys to go through every room in the central bunker and fasten down anything that’s not attached to the walls. Seal the fishery tanks. Close every door on the ship, except for the ones down here. And shut down ventilation. We can’t have a thousand tons of topsoil floating into th
e air filters in the living quarters.…” He seemed to swoon for a moment, and a sickening terror swept through Kieran. How were the other adults doing? Were they all this sick already? The radiation must be very strong if it was already poisoning them. Mason gathered himself and said quietly, “You better take notes.”
For twenty minutes, Kieran feverishly wrote down everything Mason told him to do, asking questions along the way. He had only three hours to get everything done before they powered down the engines. For a few minutes, Kieran stayed in Central Command to draw up categories of tasks and decide which boys to send where. Then he swallowed hard. He’d never been in charge like this before.
When Kieran went back to the dormitory, tiny Bryan Peters was still screaming his head off. Ali Jaffar was bouncing the baby on his knee, talking quietly in his ear, but the toddler didn’t seem to hear. His face was purple, the tip of his nose was white, and his tears had dried into salty stains on his fat cheeks. Kieran called into the room, “Hey! Everyone! I need your attention!” But the boys farther away couldn’t hear him over the baby. In frustration, Kieran cried out, “Can someone please shut that kid up?”
Seth stomped across the floor, grabbed Bryan’s fat arm, and shouted in his face, “Shut up! Just shut the hell up!”
The baby was startled into silence.
Kieran knew that Seth was unraveling in his own way, just like everyone else. Still, yelling at a baby like that was wrong, but Kieran was too tired to deal with anything but the task at hand. He called into the room, “We’ve got some important stuff we’ve got to do! Gather around!”
Some of the boys approached him, but lots of them didn’t even seem to hear. He yelled louder, and that seemed to get their attention, but already his voice was giving out.
“We’ve got orders from the repair crew, and we’ve got to work fast. I need all the boys over the age of ten to come to the front of the room. You’ll be the crew leaders.”
It was clear the boys in the back hadn’t heard a word of what he’d said.
Glow Page 11