Spark: A Sky Chasers Novel

by Amy Kathleen Ryan

  But of course, phyto-lutein must have come from plants. Where else did any medications come from? And if her father had been part of the team that discovered the miraculous compound, why would Regina hide it? It didn’t make sense.

  Waverly looked pensively at her mother’s old com station, which was draped with scraps of material that had overflowed from the sewing table next to it. She cleared away the fabric and turned on the computer. A smell of burned dust filled the room, and Waverly realized that this machine had not been used since well before the attack.

  Waverly searched back through the ship’s logs, cursory records of every day since the beginning of the mission almost forty-three years ago. She scrolled to the date of the air-lock accident that had taken her father’s life and read the entry.

  Air lock 252 malfunctioned during routine maintenance mission to repair particulate damage to radio antenna 252. Dr. Galen Marshall, Dr. Melissa Ardvale, Dr. James McAvoy were sucked out of the lock in resulting explosive decompression.

  That was all?

  It was the most serious accident to have occurred on the Empyrean. There ought to be more written about it.

  Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, poised to start a search for any and all information about the accident, but this was precisely the sort of thing she didn’t want to think about, so she tucked the strange photo under a pile at the bottom of the box. Waverly spent the rest of the night sorting through old photos, arranging them in piles until her eyelids were impossible to hold up.

  The next moment, it seemed, she awoke on the couch surrounded by photographs. Her limbs felt loose and weak, her head bleary. Her stomach rumbled from emptiness, and she stood and stretched.

  She frowned as she looked over the piles she’d made, then quickly stuffed them into the box in no particular order. With everything going on, the last thing she needed was to be digging around in the ancient past. Besides, she needed a good breakfast. She had a tractor to repair in the cornfield—probably a busted gear shaft—and then she had to change the lubricant on three separate combines, all in different parts of the ship. It was a lot of work, and she was already tired. Plus, judging from the stress in her knees and the ache between her shoulders, Kieran had ordered another increase in acceleration. The excess gravity was getting to everyone, but no one complained. More than anything they wanted to catch up to the New Horizon and get their parents back. If they had to wear out their joints in the pursuit, so be it.

  As she dressed, her mind turned back to that photo of her father with Captain Jones, and that cursory report about her father’s death. It seemed as though details about the accident had been covered up, by Mason Ardvale, the Captain, even her own mother. Waverly left her quarters in a fog, walked with arms folded, head down, gaze on her own feet, remembering something Seth Ardvale had said to her before the attack: Friends of Captain Jones lead complicated lives.

  She was so preoccupied she never saw the slip of a boy who left the doorway opposite hers to follow her down the corridor.

  THE PAST

  Kieran stood over the lifeless form of Max Brent, staring at the drawn, cold face. The boy looked as though he’d been molded from gray plastic. Deep circles ringed his eyes, and his purple lips were pulled back in a mask of pain. A film of dried spittle had collected in the corners of the corpse’s mouth, and the artificial gravity pulled on his skin so that it collected in wrinkled bunches at the base of his jaw. He was being kept in one of the small private rooms in the infirmary, away from the eight-bed main room where most of the patients were. The few adults who had survived the original attack were kept apart, too, in the long-term care unit, so sick from radiation poisoning they couldn’t be a help to anyone. If Victoria Hand, the one surviving nurse on board, could have helped, would Max be alive now?

  “What happened to him?” Kieran asked, looking away, horrified.

  “I don’t know!” cried Tobin Ames, who’d been charged with running the infirmary. “It’s not a sickness, I don’t think. I can’t find any holes in him, either.”

  “Could it be poison?” Arthur asked from behind Kieran. Arthur had taken one look at Max’s awful visage and backed away in dread.

  Tobin nodded, overwrought. There’d been plenty of death on board the Empyrean, but no one ever got used to it. Tobin looked like he hadn’t slept all night, and he chewed his cuticle as he stared at Max’s body, clearly tormented that he hadn’t been able to save him.

  “You did the best you could, Tobin,” Kieran said.

  “I can’t even figure out how Max got up here,” Tobin said. He ran his fingers through his wiry light brown hair, making it stand on end. “Someone put him on that elevator.”

  “It’ll be easy enough to find out,” Arthur said. “I’ll just check the video for that elevator on all the levels.”

  “Also look for evidence of Seth poisoning him,” Kieran said.

  “Where would he have gotten poison?” Arthur said.

  “There’s a maintenance closet on every level,” Kieran said. “Maybe a cleaning solution?”

  “Yeah,” Tobin said. “I’ll check the ingredients on those, see if they match Max’s symptoms.”

  “Which were…?”

  “Blue fingernails and lips. Convulsions. Coma.” Tobin shook his head. “I thought it was alcohol poisoning. He smelled like it, anyway. I used charcoal to try to treat him. It took me two hours to figure out how to do it! The manual was really confusing. If I’d been faster…”

  “You don’t know that,” Arthur told him. “It’s not your fault.”

  But Tobin didn’t seem to believe it.

  “Even real doctors lose patients sometimes,” Kieran said.

  Tobin nodded and marched back to his office, distracted and burdened.

  Kieran tapped Arthur on the shoulder. “Let’s go.” Kieran and Arthur left the infirmary and stood outside the elevators to head back to Central Command. Kieran felt light-headed and wondered if he looked as disturbed as Arthur, who swallowed as though trying to keep from throwing up. Kieran wondered if Arthur was remembering that awful night, months ago, when the two of them had cleared the bodies out of the port-side shuttle bay. Kieran shuddered.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Arthur finally said as the elevator doors opened and they stepped on. “Why would Seth let Max out of the brig only to poison him?”

  “He tried to put me into an air lock, or did you forget about that?” Kieran snapped. He realized he was trembling. Was he angry, or afraid, knowing that his enemy was on the loose? He pressed the button for Central Command, tried to calm down. He’d be no good to anyone if he panicked. I can handle this, he told himself.

  “I’m just trying to make sense of everything,” Arthur said softly.

  “I’m sorry,” Kieran said, and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. The pressure of running the Empyrean was starting to get to him, and he found himself snapping a lot lately at people who didn’t deserve it. The elevator doors opened to the busy corridor, and the boys headed for Central Command. On the wall just to the right of the door Kieran saw a stick-figure drawing of a figure with wavy, trembling arms and a grimace of fear on its face. Underneath, the caption read, Our fearful leader, Kieran Alden.

  Kieran felt his palms grow cold. He heard whispers behind him and turned to see a couple of little girls watching him. When their eyes met his, they pretended to be talking about something else.

  “Clean this up,” he said to Arthur, then went into Central Command. Sarek turned in his chair to nod hello. “Any luck tracing Seth through the surveillance system since last night?” Kieran asked him.

  “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that,” Sarek said, pivoting back and forth in his swivel chair. “I haven’t been able to see anyone on the vid system for the last eighteen hours.”

  “What do you mean?” Kieran settled himself in the Captain’s chair.

  “I mean all the system seems to be recording is empty corridors and ag bays. If someone were to lo
ok at our vid logs for today, they’d think this ship was deserted.”

  “That’s odd,” Arthur said, taking his seat near the windows. There were dozens of chairs and com stations arranged in a crescent beneath the large square portholes, all of them empty except for the stations occupied by Arthur, Sarek, and Kieran in the Captain’s chair at the head of the room. “Seth must have disabled the motion detectors.”

  “Damn it.” Kieran punched the air. “I knew if that son of a bitch ever got out…” He faded into a brooding silence.

  “Kieran.” Arthur leaned toward Kieran over the back of his chair. “You have too many friends. It won’t happen again.”

  Kieran didn’t have to ask what Arthur was referring to. “I never could have imagined them turning against me the first time.”

  They’d just stood by as Seth injected Kieran with some paralyzing drug and slammed him in the brig. And as Kieran lay starving in that small, cold cell, had any of them come to his aid? They’d all been too afraid of Seth and his thugs to try to help Kieran. And now they were calling him a coward!

  “Okay, so what now?” Arthur said patiently.

  “Call up the Command officers,” Kieran said to Sarek, who turned to make the announcement.

  The Command officers were a detail of a dozen boys, all older than thirteen years, whose overt job was to keep the crew on task throughout the day and keep the peace when fights broke out. But they had a covert assignment as well. They reported any untoward activities to Kieran, kept him apprised of the mood among the crew so he’d always be aware of any malcontents. They were armed only with batons. Kieran didn’t want any guns in use on the Empyrean and had scoured the storage bays for all the weapons and locked them away in a secret place only he knew about. The stockpile felt woefully small, though, and he suspected he’d missed some of the weapons in his search. But if he couldn’t find them, probably no one could.

  Except Seth.

  “Arthur,” Kieran said. “Help me work up a list of suspects to be taken in for questioning.”

  “Suspects?” Arthur’s eyes widened. “So if we find out who let Seth out, we’re going to throw them in the brig?”

  “Well, yes,” Kieran said, trying to sound calm. “That’s what you do when people break the law.”

  Arthur swallowed audibly. “What law?”

  “What?” Kieran regarded Arthur with a studying eye.

  “What law was broken by letting Seth out?” Arthur said, visibly cowed but steeling himself. “Specifically?”

  “It’s illegal to release someone from the brig without due process.”

  “Okay.” Arthur leaned his chin on the back of his chair. “But it’s illegal to keep someone in the brig without due process. You never held a trial for Seth.”

  “What are you saying, Arthur?” Kieran barked. “That I should let Seth wander around after he tried to kill me?”

  “I’m saying that if you’re going to start questioning people and throwing them in jail, you can’t be seen to be making up the law as you go along.”

  “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

  “No,” Arthur said, but he cast a nervous glance at Sarek, who stared stubbornly at his screen.

  “I seem to remember you suggesting I get rid of Seth not too long ago.”

  “That wasn’t a suggestion. That was…” Arthur fingered the padded edge of his station.

  “What?”

  “I wanted to see what you would say.”

  “And did I pass your little test?”

  “You did, like I thought you would.” Arthur leaned forward, elbows on his knees, palms pressed together, all his energy focused on Kieran. “I remember you saying you thought Seth was bluffing when he threatened to throw you out an air lock.”

  “He might have been, but I’m not willing to bet my life on it.”

  “It’s just that right now the crew believes in you because they think you’re a good guy.”

  “Okay.”

  “If you start putting people in the brig, you need a solid reason for why you have the authority to do it.”

  “Arthur, are you proposing we try to run an election in the midst of all this?”

  “I think it would protect you.”

  “I don’t. We’re in pursuit of the New Horizon, and we’ve got a dangerous person loose on the ship.”

  “If you’re elected Captain, Seth’s supporters couldn’t say you have no legal right to lead.”

  Kieran wanted to scoff at this. Much had always been made about how the Empyrean was a democracy built on humanist values. But the elections had always seemed more like a formality, because Captain Jones and the same people on the Central Council had always been reelected since the mission began. People talked about democracy, but what they really liked, Kieran always thought, was consistency. Maybe this crew of kids had other ideas, though. “Is that what people are saying, Arthur?”

  Arthur only looked at Kieran, mouth closed.

  “I can’t handle an election right now, Arthur!”

  “I could take care of it for you.”

  “Not now, Arthur.” Kieran leaned back in his seat, tapped at the edge of his com screen. “We can run this investigation without accusing anyone. We won’t mention Seth at all. We’ll get a picture of where people say they were, compare stories, and see if anyone’s lying.”

  “Makes sense,” Arthur said. “But I still say—”

  “I know what you say,” Kieran said, irritated.

  His Command officers began filing in one by one and stood in a semicircle along the curved wall of windows that looked out to the constant night sky. Matt Allbright was the de facto leader, partly by virtue of his being the oldest, having just turned fourteen, but also because he wasn’t afraid to take initiative. He had a quick glance, and he seemed to think before he spoke, and when he did speak, his words were forceful and well chosen. He even looked like an officer, with his broad shoulders and straight bearing and the way he fastidiously kept his hair cropped close to his head. Still, Kieran was never sure he could absolutely trust Matt, or any of the guards for that matter. They were in a position of power, and he knew how easily power could be abused. That’s why he’d chosen boys who, even if he couldn’t be assured of their character, were at least predictable. None of them were particularly creative thinkers. Even Matt had a plodding kind of intelligence—careful, linear, and purposeful. He seemed incapable of deceit.

  “What I am about to tell you does not leave this room,” Kieran said to the officers, who all stood straight like Matt, listening. “Someone tampered with the video system the night Seth escaped. I want you to try to find out who.”

  “Excuse me, sir.” Hiro Mazumoto rubbed his hand over the faint shadow of whiskers that grew on his boyish chin. “Are you saying we were sabotaged by a member of our crew?”

  “By Seth Ardvale, obviously.” Kieran walked along the row of officers. They stood at attention, shoulders back, hands clasped behind their backs. Kieran liked the discipline it conveyed; it made him feel authoritative. “But we know he had help.

  “What I want you to do,” he continued, “is to move out among the crew, listen to conversations, keep your ears open. Matt?”

  The boy’s head snapped to attention.

  “I want you to organize a detail of several teams to scour the ship for signs of Seth. Where he might be camping, what he might be planning. Finding him and his accomplices is our top priority.”

  Matt nodded.

  When the officers had all filed out with their new orders, Kieran noticed Arthur brooding in the corner. He knew Arthur was right about the election in principle, but practically speaking it would be a huge mess, because it wouldn’t just be about holding an election. He’d have to hold trials, too, not only for the people who released Seth but for Seth himself. There would be no way to avoid giving Seth his say in front of the entire crew, and Seth could be very persuasive. The whole thing could blow up in Kieran’s face.

  “Whoa,”
Sarek said from his com station. He pulled his headset off and turned, his dark eyes round with surprise. “We’re being hailed by the New Horizon.”

  “What?” Arthur said.

  Kieran stood up. “Who is it? Who’s calling?”

  “Anne Mather,” Sarek said in awe.

  All three boys froze, staring at the flashing red light on Sarek’s com station. Kieran felt weak limbed. He’d tried to contact Anne Mather almost daily to demand the release of the prisoners, and all his hails had gone ignored. Why should she contact him now?

  “Send the link to my office,” Kieran said quietly, and stalked out of Central Command, down the corridor to the Captain’s suite, where he sat at the desk and put on his headset with trembling fingers. He took several deep breaths, then flicked the switch to enable the signal.

  His vid screen flickered to the image of a plump, middle-aged woman with abundant white hair swept into a bun on top of her head. She wore spectacles on the tip of her nose, and she had smooth skin, though her features were careworn. “Whom am I addressing?” she asked with clipped words.

  “Kieran Alden,” he said, trying to sound authoritative.

  “I’m Anne Mather,” she said with a cool smile.

  “What do you want?” Kieran said, his eyes on the porthole that looked out to a thick coating of stars in a black sky. He did not like looking at her. She was too poised, too confident. And her smile disgusted him.

  “There are no adults I can talk to?” she asked innocently.

  “No. You slaughtered our crew.”

  The glib smile fell from her face, and she bowed her head. “You’ll never believe me, but I didn’t expect so many of your crew to be in the shuttle bay. I thought loss of life would be minimal.”