Gem nods. “Wait. Please.”
FORTY-ONE
Mykal
Sirens burst my ears, the hollering even louder. “Do not climb that ramp!” people yell from all sides, but, with our arms over each other’s shoulders, we’re already climbing this damned ramp together.
We’re not the only ones.
Candidates start racing up behind us, but Kinden suddenly sprints ahead, bowling their bodies backward and shoving them off the metal grate. No one attempts to rush on again.
Gods bless.
His eyes meet mine. “Help my brother!” As though that’s not what I’ve been doing.
My features grow harsher, and I do even more—I heave Court’s body into my arms, cradling him. He complains instantly.
“Set me down…,” he pants. “I’m better—”
“Shut up,” I growl, “that’s what you’ve always told me. How about you listen to your own unkind words?”
Court coughs instead of laughs.
I stagger once because of the link, not because of his weight or height, but I trudge forward into the starcraft, leaving behind the infuriated yells and demands to cuff Kinden Valcastle.
FORTY-TWO
Court
“Retracting the boarding ramp now,” Padgett announces.
I’m slumped in the captain’s chair. I reenergize from Franny and Mykal’s senses, just enough to remain coherent and shift my head and arms. Anything else might cause me to faint again.
I had to have been half unconscious to agree to this impossible plan.
Franny casts looks of concern from the cockpit, but I mouth, I’m fine.
She mouths, Liar.
We both try to smile, but we equally struggle to produce one. She confronted Bastell and risked her life. My gratitude and admiration floods me with warmth. I can only nod at Franny, and she nods back, knowing what I feel and everything I’d like to eventually say after this is all over.
We’re not safe yet, but to strengthen them, I have to heal. I inspect the sodden makeshift bandages on my hip and shoulder. “Needle and thread,” I tell Mykal.
Kneeling at my feet, he rummages through a med kit. His guilt is a silent and cold passenger inside him, and every second or two, he balls his blood-stained hand into a fist. Anger contracts his muscles, and if we had time, he’d yell and yell, veins popping from his neck.
“It’s not your fault,” I whisper. “You did more for me than you’re accepting.”
His eyes redden and he nearly chucks the med kit. He must remember what I need, so he clings onto the white box. “I promised you—”
“To hells with that—”
“Leave it alone,” he cuts me off all the same. “You’re the one we need to be fussing over.” Then he tosses gauze and pill bottles—I point.
“That.” Pain meds.
Mykal doles out a few. “Open your mouth.” He gently places two pills on my tongue, and I swallow while he digs through the kit.
“Auto-locking the starcraft’s entrance.” Padgett’s announcement seizes my mind.
I think of my brother. “Did Kinden…?” I trail off as Mykal shrugs. And then I think of the worst. Kinden jumped on the ramp and protected us from candidates and StarDust directors who would’ve thrown us off, but by guarding the entrance, they’ll send him to Vorkter for aiding our crime.
My face grinds into a wince.
Don’t think about him.
I focus on Mykal. On his fingers threading a needle. He’ll stitch me. He’s sewn enough clothes to do well.
“Heya, did you all really believe you’d fly this starcraft without me?”
Our heads whip up.
Kinden slinks onto the bridge. My brother made it. My chest swells. Up close now, he cringes at my beaten state and inhales sharply.
“Ugh,” Gem complains. “Not you.”
I’m thankful for the distraction. Kinden removes his concern off me and mimics Gem, “Not you.”
“Take a seat, Saga 1,” Padgett calls, lip quirked.
“You’re on comms,” I add.
“My specialty,” he says, sinking into the silver communications chair and fitting on a headset. “Though I’m great at everything.”
“Problem,” Franny calls out, and the air strains. “They’ve locked the sky port.”
FORTY-THREE
Franny
“Father, open the sky port!” Kinden shouts into his radio headset.
My sweaty palm cements to the joystick, my other hand on the keyboard. We’re running out of time. Through the windshield, more and more bodies flood the launchpad.
“I told you this would happen,” Padgett says from her pilot’s seat, more frustrated than I’ve ever seen her.
I crane my neck over my shoulder. “How are you doing, Gem?”
Gem types feverishly in the MEU station. “Manual override of the sky port may take another ten to … fifteen minutes.”
Padgett shakes her head. “We don’t have that long.”
“I can’t force the processors to run any faster than they’re capable of,” Gem huffs. “Technology has limitations, and a system reboot would take hours.”
“Father, listen to me!” Kinden yells and slams his hands on his station’s desk, partially standing.
Burning pain blooms in my hip and shoulder. Without looking, a needle pricks me—or Court, rather. Mykal sews up his deeper wounds.
We need to leave now and my mind races like I push my whole weight on a gas pedal.
“Father, Etian is here,” Kinden says frantically. “He’s hurt. He’s dying and this is the only way to save him. Do you hear me?! Don’t you want to save your son?!” At the static silence, he pounds his palms again.
Padgett and Gem exchange an unreadable look, but they’re both too concentrated on leaving to ask questions. I breathe through my nose. Think, Franny.
I haven’t botched everything yet. I can plan. I can even execute one, so I think hard.
And a voice booms through the starcraft’s intercom system. “All of you must calmly evacuate the Saga starcraft,” Tauris commands. “If you do not cooperate, we will have no choice but to charge you with high treason.” A capital punishment.
Court licks his cracked lips. “They’ll charge everyone regardless.”
“We’re not going to Vorkter,” Padgett says adamantly. “Gem!”
“I’m trying!” Then Gem balks. “Oh Holy Wonders … something or someone triggered a sensor in the east wing. They’re headed to the bridge.”
“That’s impossible,” Kinden combats, yanking his headset to his neck. “I saw the entrance auto-lock, and I’m the only one who entered after Court and Mykal.”
“It’s still closed,” Gem verifies. There are no weapons on the starcraft since we’re supposed to be ambassadors of peace.
I’m about to unbuckle and check the bridge door, but Padgett clasps my wrist. “We need you here,” she tells me.
And then Mykal pushes to a stance.
FORTY-FOUR
Mykal
“Ten meters away,” Gem calls.
I guard the bridge door, needle between two fingertips. Ready for whoever believes they’re gonna imprison us. With my last dying breath, I’ll be ensuring we’re all free.
“Four meters … two…”
The door slides vertically open, and instinct propels me, not thinking long. I push the lightweight body up against the wall. Thump. I jab the needle at an eye and the tip pierces and slides into … an apple.
I register who I grip by the throat, his half-bitten apple raised to protect his face. I let go instantly.
“Zimmer?!” nearly everyone yells. I dunno what to think. He’s not someone I’d toast with ale, but he’s better than all the other people outside.
Zimmer spits out a chunk of apple and coughs once, lifting his hands in surrender. Just noticing the needle. “Dodged that one.” He bites around the needle like nothing happened. “Heya.” He waves. “Thought I’d drop by.” He pats m
y arm, and I shove him hard.
Zimmer stumbles toward the comms station.
“Where’d you come from?” I growl.
He gawks and catches sight of Franny, both nodding in recognition, and then he flashes a wily grin at me. “I stole a keycard about an hour ago, boarded the starcraft, and hung out in the sleeping quarters. I was going to fly away with the Saga 5 whether they wanted me or not.”
“Wait.” Franny scowls. “You planned to stow yourself away like luggage and wait around for three months before takeoff?”
“Yeah, that sounds about accurate. Wise, aren’t I?”
“Fool.”
He touches his heart and mouths, Chump not fool. Not many see his lips move, busying themselves with the sky port problem.
Intercom crackles. “This is the last warning,” Tauris says. “Remove yourselves from this vessel now.”
FORTY-FIVE
Franny
“What is the sky port made of?” I ask Padgett quietly.
“Plexiglas.” Hope glimmers in her eyes. Plexiglas is breakable. Maybe not by my blistering Fast-Tracker fists, but a vessel of this size and power could shatter clean through.
“Preparing for vertical lift?” I ask, about to shift the joystick, but one pilot can’t function without the other.
“Preparing for vertical lift,” Padgett agrees.
We both work fast, the starcraft engines heating. Bodies bolt toward the hallways and off the launchpad, realizing that we plan to take off, regardless if the sky port opens or not.
“Shut off all comms with Saltare-3,” Court tells his brother, both slumped in their chairs. “You have to … Kinden? We can’t let any of them track us.”
Kinden fits on his headset again.
The starcraft begins to tilt. “Everyone strap in for vertical lift,” Court commands. Mykal and Zimmer unleash two jump chairs by the bridge door and buckle in. I hear the med kit sliding as the vessel angles upward.
From the windshield, the sky port slowly skates into view. Lilac smoke clouds the Plexiglas dome. No one on Saltare-3—not a Babe, not a Fast-Tracker, not an Influential—has ever seen what exists beyond the haze.
Now all three kinds of people will.
Kinden hesitates for one second to cut all ties and the intercom booms again. “Kinden,” Tauris calls. “I’m ordering you, son, to disengage right now. Please.”
“No.” Kinden speaks into his headset.
“Don’t be a madman!” Tauris yells, panicked. “Don’t be like your brother!”
Court barely flinches. He left his father behind long before this day, and after his interview with Tauris, I sensed closure that has no reason to open again.
“Amusing,” Kinden breathes, tears surfacing, “considering all you ever wanted was for me to be just like him.” The starcraft reclines, almost completely vertical.
“Kinden!”
“It’s you who’s mad, Father. Not us.” Fingers to a switch, he says, “May the gods be in your spirit.” The intercom silences, static vanishing.
We’re on our own. At ninety degrees. “Engaging the thrusters,” I say. “In three … two…”
Padgett wrenches her joystick toward her chest, and I drive mine outward. Violent streams of fire roar from the triple-barreled engines.
“Engaging acceleration,” she announces. We coordinate our movements like we were paired from the very start, and in seconds, the starcraft ascends. The windshield is so vast—it stretches from my feet and toward Gem and Kinden. I feel like I’m floating and flying all by myself. No massive starcraft beneath my boots.
I smile, thrill screaming in my lungs, and we speed faster and faster. In one boom and rumble, we break through the dome. Plexiglas rains down on the Saga starcraft, but we never decelerate.
“Vessel is intact. No harm,” Gem reads off her screens.
The sheer force of the starcraft splitting through the atmosphere overwhelms all of us for a moment. We fall to silence, the rush of power pressing on our chests and thundering around us.
Lilac smoke slaps the windshield. Bulleting through, we suddenly breach the smoke, flying through bright blue sky, and then we accelerate into blackness. As gravity alters, I tilt the starcraft upright, a flat saucer again, and the pressure ekes from my shoulders and chest.
My lips part and I reach out and put my fingers to the cold windshield. In the calmest moment of my life, I feel three hearts beating peacefully against my ribs. I hear only awed breath and the unclipping of seat buckles.
Is this our universe, gods? Our stark white and purple world falls behind us, and I stare out at endless darkness lit with hopeful, glittering stars.
I dreamed of beauty once or twice—maybe a thousand times more than I’ve admitted. I dreamed of an oil-painted sky and rich tapestries and woven rugs. They said I dreamed big—but if a room at the Catherina was big, then this view from this very seat must be absolutely, breathtakingly limitless.
Nothing compares to the beauty of the universe.
I hear the pitter-patter of boots, and then Zimmer sidles to my chair, propping his elbow on the top.
“Look at them,” he breathes in soft wonder.
Look at the stars. “I see them.” I wipe a slipping tear. It’s not my tear.
I touch my lips. It’s more than just my smile. Feeling their happiness, I burst into a much greater one.
FORTY-SIX
Mykal
I sit on the armrest of the captain’s chair, entranced by Court’s overcome smile. I hardly even stare out the damned window. Truth being, space is maddeningly dark—but that smile … Gods, that smile.
It brightens my whole wide world.
Tears drip down all three of our cheeks, and Court looks to me, searching my eyes for the name to my expression.
I lower my forehead to his and clutch the base of his neck, breathing in the warmth of our bodies, and he clasps my jaw between bandaged palms.
I whisper, “You’ve stolen my heart, you little crook.”
His smile only stretches further and brighter. “My most valuable theft.”
We shut our eyes, love and peace washing over us. But not for long—fear spikes, and our eyes snap open again.
Franny notices the interior bridge lights flickering before we do, and in one quick moment, we’re all plunged into darkness.
FORTY-SEVEN
Court
The power cuts out and I muster strength to yell the protocols that rip through my brain. Emergency grav shield and air pumps kick in so we can breathe at least. Everyone moves. Even me.
I bear my weight on my good leg, but mostly, I lean against Mykal’s chest.
“Sit,” he growls in my ear.
“Later. We have no time.” Bridge lights flit in and out. Screens flash but then fade to black. Gem huffs loudly, and Kinden flicks switches left and right.
And then the starcraft lurches away from Saltare-3 like an invisible rope lassoes our vessel and pulls.
Franny and Padgett fall back into their seats, checking their controls. “It’s not us,” Franny says. “It’s…”
“Someone else,” I finish, my gaze narrowing at a massive starcraft that looms in the distance. Outsizing the Saga by ten times. Our starcraft matches the mass of its docking port.
“It cut our power,” Gem proclaims.
“Comms are down,” Kinden adds. “I can’t alert or connect with it.”
The weak navigation of the Saga starcraft only detects incoming objects or vessels. No extra details, no information about what or who is on board. Other starcrafts probably have more advanced systems than ours, and I can only hope this is another Saltare ship.
Our sister planets are the only ones nearby in this galaxy, so it’s the most obvious answer.
Mykal holds me upright. “We don’t have any weapons.”
“If it’s a Saltare starcraft, we shouldn’t need them,” I say.
Padgett stands, her velvet gown from the StarDust ceremony sweeping the floor. “So what ar
e we supposed to do? Pretend to be ambassadors of peace? The moment they hear our decrees, they’ll call us cowards and throw us out the port window.”
I hang my arm around Mykal’s waist, a stabbing pain radiating from my hip bone. I stifle a wince and say, “If this is Saltare-1, then they believe we’re here to join forces with them. We don’t argue. We take the path of least resistance.”
Kinden rocks backward. “That is beyond treason, little brother. It will put our entire world at war.”
I’m the enemy.
I’ve always been the enemy of our world. I’m not a martyr. I won’t sacrifice my life for hundreds of people on Saltare-3. Hundreds who recognize the exact day they will die. The last time I tried to save them, I was called a madman.
My heart will not bleed for the people of Saltare-3. I’m sound and clearheaded, and I choose to survive with Mykal and Franny. Even if that means starting a war.
I meet Kinden’s indecision. “Our father will contact Saltare-1,” I tell my brother. “He’ll let them know that seven outlaws just commandeered the Saga. Unless we align with Saltare-1, we’ll be seen as adversaries.”
The bridge quiets, air vents humming.
Gem is the first to speak. “I suppose we’re the Saga 7 then.”
Zimmer peers out the front windshield. “And what if that isn’t a Saltare starcraft?” To me, he asks, “What then?”
“Then you all stay silent and let me talk.”
“You can barely stand!” Padgett shouts like this is the worst idea.
“Then I’ll speak,” Kinden says.
“Maybe if our goal was to be loathed,” Gem says pointedly.
“Let me.” I release my hold on Mykal. Standing on my own accord. My confidence is not just a front this time.
Either they all take pity or they recognize why StarDust named me their leader, but everyone nods in agreement.
Franny and Padgett unbuckle their harnesses, no longer needed in the cockpit. As Padgett retreats to her sister’s side, Franny joins ours.
She crosses her arms. Blood speckles her bra, and we need to bandage the bullet-graze on her shoulder. A third erratic pulse belongs to Mykal, and my stiff body refuses to bend.
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