The Clouded Sky

by Megan Crewe

  The man looks up as Win’s mother goes to one of the bedroom doors. Like his wife, he’s wearing clothes of an Earth-like design: Kemyate pants but a collared, button-up shirt with billowy sleeves.

  “Hello,” he says with wary eyes, setting his hand almost protectively between me and the painting on the easel. I remember the way Jule mocked this “hobby.”

  “I like your style,” I offer. I don’t know enough about painting to say anything more profound, but his work looks good enough to me. Especially for someone who’ll have been discouraged from doing that work every step of the way.

  Win bursts out of his room with an almost feverish flush in his cheeks. If he’s been on edge knowing what we’d be attempting today, I’m about to make the situation even more complicated. Seeing me, his expression stutters from confusion to concern.

  “Hi,” he says, managing to keep his voice even, as if this is a perfectly normal visit. “Here, I can show you.” He gestures me into his room, away from the curious eyes of his parents and brother. As soon as the door shuts, he turns to me. “What’s wrong?” he asks quietly. “What’s happened?”

  An embarrassing impulse surges through me: to collapse onto his shoulder and bawl until I’ve let out all the hurt and fear I’ve been carrying alone. I grit my teeth, restraining myself. There’ll be time for bawling once we’ve made it off the station.

  “It was Jule,” I say. “Jule’s the one who was leaking information.”

  Win stares at me. “What? Are you sure?”

  The fact that he obviously never suspected should comfort me. I nod, lowering my eyes. “I got him to admit it,” I say, my voice rough. “He’s— I’ll explain later, but he’s knocked out right now. He won’t be able to alert anyone for at least a few hours. But we’ve got to go, right now. I almost ran into Kurra when I was leaving his apartment—she’ll have realized something’s up.”

  Win drags in a breath. “All right,” he says. “So . . . We go to Isis and Britta. They’ll be able to organize what we need for the ship and get ahold of Thlo faster than anyone else. Then we gather the others and leave. You’ve got everything you need?”

  I heft my sack in answer. He pauses until I meet his eyes again. “Are you all right?” he asks.

  The tears I was trying so hard to contain seep out. I wipe at them, swallowing thickly. “I will be,” I say. “As soon as we’re out of here.”

  “Right,” he says with a gentle squeeze of my arm. “Let’s go.”

  We hurry through the apartment, Win tossing out an excuse to his parents that I hardly hear. “Nice to meet you!” his mother calls to me, and I raise my hand in acknowledgment. Then we’re hustling down the hall to the shuttle stop.

  “We’ll talk later,” he says in a hushed voice as we step onto the shuttle he summoned. I restrain a glance toward the ceiling. The public shuttles are under as much surveillance as the halls. I cross my arms over my chest, looking at the floor. Win fidgets with his sleeves in the silence.

  “Skylar—”

  Whatever he was going to say is interrupted by a siren blaring through the shuttle. I clutch the central pole, my stomach flipping. Win’s mouth presses flat.

  “Kurra must have convinced Security to upgrade the lockdown,” he says.

  The shuttle hasn’t stopped. “Will we still have a chance?” I ask.

  “Everyone will have an hour to get back to their apartments,” Win says. “The shuttles will keep running that long. As long as Isis’s ‘adjustment’ to the surveillance feeds is going, we’ll just have to keep clear of patrols—and hope she can break any extra restrictions on the Travel bay.”

  The shuttle drops us in Isis’s sector in the midst of flashing lockdown lights. We run to the apartment door. Britta opens it, looking steadier than she did when I talked to her yesterday but still weak.

  “This has something to do with you,” she says.

  “I found our traitor,” I say. “And the Enforcers know we’re on the move. We’ve got to leave as soon as we can.”

  She ushers us in. Isis ducks out of the bedroom where she must have been napping after her late night, her hair a wild nest of curls.

  I give them the most important parts of the story—including Jule’s claim that he hadn’t passed on any of our current plans. Then Isis hurries back into the bedroom to access the network. She’s frowning when she comes out again.

  “The only area that’s completely closed off right now is the eighth level of wards,” she says. “That’s where you were seen?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “When I was leaving Jule’s.”

  “All right. Then I can get us a Travel bay, as long as we make it out of here before the lockdown’s fully in place. I reached Tabzi, and Emmer to help with the piloting. No need to complicate this by contacting anyone else. But I couldn’t find Thlo. She could be in a meeting, or caught up in the lockdown.”

  “We can’t wait,” I say. We can do this without her. The plan’s already in place—and it was Jeanant’s plan, really, not hers.

  “I know,” Isis says. “We’ll have to make do with the four of us. She’d understand.”

  “Five,” Britta says firmly. “I’m coming.”

  Isis looks as if she might argue, but stops. “Of course,” she says. She grabs a satchel from the floor, and we hurry out.

  The siren keeps wailing as we pile onto another shuttle, which deposits us near the Travel bay, down a dim corridor. Tabzi’s already there. “I hailed my brother,” she says a little breathlessly. “He should be in Travel range in fifteen minutes.”

  Isis consults a tech piece on her wrist. “That’ll work.”

  Emmer shows up as we’re opening the storage room where Isis stashed the equipment we’ll need. He helps us maneuver four floating platforms draped with metallic fabric into the bay. Then we take our places around them. A hum fills the air as the bay powers up. Light swirls around Tabzi, and she vanishes.

  Win reaches out to grasp my hand. “We’re going to finish this,” he says. I manage a smile.

  A signal beeps. A flood of light surrounds me. And with a lurch I’m shooting across space onto the ship that’s going to take me home.

  29.

  The moment we arrive on the ship, Britta and Emmer dash to the navigation room. I hurry behind them down halls cast in a hazy light that prevents the gleaming metallic walls from reflecting anyone moving past. The floor feels odd, so spongy it seems to push my feet forward at twice their usual speed. Tabzi’s brother has left a sound system on, delicate notes tinkling out around us.

  The music cuts out, and the air shifts. When I reach the navigation room with the others, Emmer and Britta are already hunched over the consoles, the huge screen filling the wall ahead of them dappled with the accelerating figures of flight. The transition was so smooth I hardly noticed it.

  “Are we okay?” I ask.

  Isis checks a panel in the corner. “No one’s tried to hail us,” she says. “And I don’t see anyone pursuing. But they may not have had time to respond yet. It’s unlikely no one caught this ship’s sudden departure.”

  “My brother will think it’s strange that I could . . . jump here even in a full lockdown,” Tabzi puts in. “But he is . . . discreet. He will not want to risk getting our family in trouble by speaking up.”

  “I’m setting us on a slightly indirect course,” Emmer says. “That should let us avoid any ships on the usual route between Kemya and Earth.”

  “But it means we won’t know who’s chasing us either,” Britta warns us. “When we’re out of their sensor range, they’re out of ours.”

  “At least we got a head start,” I say, my heart still thumping from our rush through the station.

  “Britta, you said this is one of the fastest ships available?” Win says beside me.

  “Top of the line,” Britta says. “My respects to your brother, Tabzi. This darling should get us Earth-side in three days even with the roundabout route.”

  “All right,” Isis says.
“That means we have three days to prepare. I’ll finish assembling Jeanant’s weapon. The rest of you, I’m going to set you up with simulators. I want all of us trained in every aspect of this mission—ready to react to any problem we might face. If we’re going to pull this off and make it home safely, we need to be completely prepared.”

  So as much as my mind wants to leap ahead to my home, to the people I’ll be seeing again so soon, I find myself without much time for thinking. Isis gets me refamiliarizing myself with the navigation system and the piloting controls, and running through a module she’s created to teach us how to direct and fire Jeanant’s laser. I won’t be around for the final strike, but I might need to pitch in somehow before we get our opening.

  There are certain thoughts I’m happy to be distracted from. On the evening of the first day, Britta comes into the cafeteria as I’m gulping down a quick dinner, and sits next to me. Her eyes look clearer than they have since the incident with the jet-pod. Getting back into the pilot’s seat must be good for her.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” she says gently.

  I don’t have to ask what she means. The last bite of my ration bar sticks in my throat. I choke it down. “Not really,” I say. In a couple days, I’ll be back on Earth, away from alien politics and surrounded by people I understand. It’ll be easier to forget Jule then. I’m going to have to pretend he and his whole world never existed anyway.

  “None of us knew,” Britta says. “Any signs you missed, we missed them too, and we’d all known him a lot longer than you.” Her mouth slants. “You have no idea how angry Isis is with herself.”

  But I was the one sharing his apartment. His bed. At times his breath. I was the one who decided not to dig deeper, to just enjoy what he offered. Maybe if I’d tried to draw him out more, I’d have been able to tell he cared about me so little he was willing to throw away everything I was working for. All those times he claimed to be worried about me, about the danger I was putting myself in, when all he had to do to keep me out of it was admit the truth . . . The knowledge still stings me. I believed him in that moment when he said he loved me.

  I look away. “At least we found out when we did. It’s over now.”

  After that she leaves it be.

  The next morning, I’m working side by side with Win in a recreation room we’ve converted into a training area. Win’s brushing up on basic piloting skills while I’m practicing the hair-trigger aim and fire sequence of Jeanant’s main laser. There’ll be less than five seconds to take down all three power sources—less than five seconds in which we can be sure the Enforcers on the adjoining satellite won’t have time to respond. My fingers keep tripping on the last one, sending the virtual blast into an inessential clump of tech plates instead of the core. After the tenth time in a row, I swear at the display and slump onto one of the tall cushioned chairs, gathering myself.

  “It’ll be Isis handling the laser, or Emmer if for some reason she can’t,” Win points out. “And you’ll be home by then.”

  “I know. I just want to do something right,” I snap, and immediately regret it. “Sorry. I’m not angry at you.”

  “No offense taken,” he says. He pauses his simulator and takes the chair across from mine, resting his hands on his knees. He looks at them, and then at me. “I’m sorry.”

  I blink at him. “For what?”

  “It was my idea for you to come to the station,” he says. “I said I’d look out for you. But I hadn’t really thought through the problems that could come up, the possibility that I might not be able to be around most of the time, to help . . . I should have seen just how dangerous it could be for you.”

  “I didn’t hook up with Jule because you weren’t protecting me enough, Win,” I say. “It was a mistake, obviously, but I’m the one who made it.”

  “I know,” he says, looking startled. “That’s not what I meant. I was thinking—if I’d taken the time to consider the possibilities beforehand—if I hadn’t rushed in—then maybe I could have been more of a part of your plans, offset the risks you took. Maybe we’d have figured it out sooner, and we wouldn’t be stuck with only half our group on a ship none of us is familiar with, with the Enforcers not far behind us. With Jule, it’s not as if I could have told you what he was doing.” He pauses, and draws in a breath, his cheeks pinking under the golden brown of his skin. “I admit I’d hoped you’d want me, if you were going to turn to someone . . . that way. But it’s not as though I couldn’t understand you making that choice.”

  It takes a moment for his confession to sink in, like a little clamp squeezing around my heart. He’d hoped—he’d wanted—

  “I didn’t realize,” I say. “I . . . got the impression you weren’t interested like that. On the ship, on the way to Kemya, it seemed to bother you when I got too close.”

  Win frowns. “Bother me?”

  “In the lab, after the meeting where we decided I’d stay with Jule. We were talking, and I thought . . . I moved toward you, and you looked like . . .” My throat closes up trying to find the words for the flash of repulsion I’d seen on his face. “Like you had to get away.”

  “Oh.” He winces, dropping his head. His voice drops too. “That wasn’t you. Some of the others—when I was arguing against you pretending to be a pet, they made comments about my intentions, that I’m such an ‘Earth-lover’ I must have brought you along just so I . . . It’s not worth repeating. It wasn’t true. But afterward, with you, it was in my head, what they would think if I made a move—whether you would think the same thing. I was trying to be careful, after the way I screwed everything up before. I wasn’t sure if you’d even be considering me, or anyone, that way, with so much else going on.”

  I remember now, the aside in Kemyate in the middle of that conversation, Win’s defensive reaction. It’s not hard to guess what the content of those comments might have been, given everything else I’ve heard said about Kemyates who show any interest in Earthlings.

  Win swallows audibly, and glances up. “You were thinking about it. So if I had . . .”

  The rest of the question hangs in the air, as if he’s not sure he wants to ask it. I’m not sure whether it would hurt or help to answer. If he had. If he’d kissed me then like I thought he might. If I’d made what I was feeling clear. A twinge of that attraction flutters inside me as if it’s been there all along—pushed aside and then overwhelmed, but there.

  I spent so much of those first few weeks waiting for other people to take action, to guide me. But as much as Kemyates like to pretend otherwise, they’re just as human, and can be just as fallible, as I am. On Earth, I saw it in Win, in Jeanant, in Kurra. It was just easy to forget that on the station, that unfamiliar world that was far more theirs than mine. To leave the responsibility in their hands.

  What would the last month have looked like if I’d remembered sooner? Would my emotions have been so focused on Win that Jule didn’t affect me? Would I have seen through his act?

  I almost wish we could go back and shift this one thing to find out. It seems impossible all of us wouldn’t be better off than we are right now.

  But there is no time field here, no turning back the clock and unshattering my heart and beginning over again. It hurts, this rekindled tickle of longing, already bumping up against bruises and uncertainties I didn’t have before. The ache of recent betrayals leaves no room for it.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say. Tomorrow I’ll be home. That’s all I can really bear to let matter.

  I hold out my hand, tentatively. When Win leans to take it, I tip forward, letting my forehead rest against his, closing my eyes. He curls his fingers around mine, accepting the little I can offer. And the slow-burning pain inside me eases fractionally.

  After a few seconds, I pull back. “You don’t need to apologize,” I say, speaking to his earlier remarks. “You said I’d be able to help see Jeanant’s mission the rest of the way through. I got that. I’m still glad I came.”

  His hand
tightens around mine. I let them hang there a little longer in the space between us. Then the display chimes at me, reminding me of the simulation waiting to continue. Of the dangers still ahead.

  “Better get back to work,” Win says, but the small smile he gives me is warm enough that I can hold on to it even after I’ve let go of his hand.

  Isis calls for a halt the next day when we’ve reached the edge of my solar system. On the navigation room’s immense screen, that star shining brighter than the rest is my sun, my planet a gleaming speck to its right. I’m so close. I twist a strand of my hair, which has crept back toward its normal light brown over the last few days now that I no longer need the attentions of Britta’s appearance-wand. I look almost like my normal self, enough that I should be able to explain the difference away as a spontaneous haircut. We’ll zip into the time field and Win will take me back to my true present, and everything in my life will go back to the way it should have been. And seventeen years in my future, what’s the present for everyone else on this ship, I’ll know he’s out here with the others, destroying the time field that’s kept Earth captive for so long.

  “Emmer, take the safety pod for a discrete close scan of the area,” Isis instructs. “While we hold steady here, we’ll install the weapon on the hull,” she goes on. “Win, Tabzi, you can help with that. Skylar, keep an eye on our sensor screens. We’ll keep all communication channels open.”

  I sit down next to Britta as the others file out. Now that we’re not moving, the floating display shows only the slow trajectories of the nearest planets, their moons, a speckling of debris to the right, the jet-pod as it eases away from the main ship.