Beyond Our Stars

by Marie Langager

  “Yes it does,” he said back. “Yours?”

  This was the root of it, the thing he’d wanted to test, to really know.

  “Always,” I answered.

  Chance’s eyes met mine and I knew everything was going to be okay.

  He let go of me with one arm and reached into the collar of his shirt. He pulled out a chain I hadn’t noticed, with a ring sliding down it. My ring.

  “I— you’ve been wearing this?” I asked.

  He looked away, cocking his head to the side. “I’m not proud of it. I didn’t want anyone to see.” He ran a finger over the crude eternity symbol etched into the inside. “Best I could do onboard for an inscription.” He looked at me. “I know we’re not getting married, Hope. But I still like what it means. We should always be together.”

  I kissed him softly on the cheek. “Yes, we should.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  THREE WEEKS LATER

  The construction of the jail was underway, with Legacy already stowed inside it. Chief had put Morgan in, too. The only thing keeping me sane was that Chance was by my side again. He was my protection from the demons that tried to make me spin back into the depths of self-loathing. His kiss stopped me from thinking about old Abel saying we should kill Legacy to save ourselves. It stopped me from thinking that no matter what I ever said or did, it would always be the wrong thing.

  The sessions had stopped completely. Usually this would have been a welcome respite from the constant state of fear, except now we were worried about what it might mean. Our crops were dwindling. The supplies we’d brought had lasted us this far, but we wouldn’t be able to stretch them much further. And worst of all, the water supply we’d been dipping into had been cut off. We still had our own water treatment system but it wouldn’t last forever.

  The stop of the water meant no more irrigation. So we harvested what was left of the crops and watched as everything else began to brown at the edges, crackling and shrinking under the sun.

  And still no more sessions.

  Chief called for an ‘All Voices’ meeting. The engineers had it set up to broadcast to every auditorium aboard every ship. I was nervous for him. Over the past few weeks Legacy had become Morgan’s martyr. Even in custody Morgan was gaining more followers, especially as food became scarcer.

  I found Chance by the doors to auditorium 4B, where we’d arranged to meet.

  “Hey,” I gave him a kiss and nodded at Weeks.

  My other Specs were here, too. Even Boston. Chief had told me that Boston wasn’t who I thought he was. He’d been worried about Morgan overthrowing Chief, and what his plans were, so he kept going to meetings with Legacy to get information, and had secret meetings with the Chief.

  I took Boston to the side for a moment.

  “Hey, did you have any idea Legacy would do what he did?” I asked him.

  “No. I thought he might kill Cole someday. But not this.” Boston shook his head.

  “Kill him?”

  “Because of what Cole did back on Earth.”

  I stepped closer to Boston. He took a deep breath.

  “They were fleeing together, all of them, Cole, Legacy, and his mom. She got hurt. Not bad, not like she was going to die, but she couldn’t walk as fast, she was slowing them down when they were trying to get to the ships in time.”

  I gulped. No. “Cole left her behind?”

  Boston nodded. “Yeah. While Legacy was screaming to stay with her.”

  I didn’t know what to say. What kind of man did that?

  “Cole has always blamed Legacy, said he’d given her up to keep him safe. That’s a lie. He did it for himself.”

  It sounded exactly like the Cole I knew, shifting the blame, taking credit.

  “I feel so bad,” Boston said, and I looked up to see emotions wrestling on his face. “I didn’t know he’d do that.”

  I shook my head. I hadn’t either. And now I was overcome with the same guilt. “Let’s just go in,” I said, motioning to the meeting.

  We found seats in the swiftly filling room. Pilgrim hopped around people’s feet so he could squirm into a chair next to mine. We all exchanged nervous glances as the screen lit up a bright white, and then Chief Up’s face appeared on it. There was a microphone and a moderator, one of Chief’s engineers, up at the front of the room. A line with red tape on either side marked the place you were supposed to go if you had something you wanted to say. There were people already lined up, stretching past the red tape. If the other rooms were like this it was going to be a long night.

  The screen would show the person asking the questions then go back to Chief. And during big meetings there was also the matter of translations to deal with. Aboard Reflection we had a system that automatically translated other foreign languages into English and Spanish for us, and there were hand held devices you could use if you needed a different translation. Aboard other ships the questions were being translated into whatever languages were most common to their occupants. So once the person asked their question in whatever language, there would be a delay until a voice robotically repeated the question over the intercom and into the hand-held translators so we could understand. Almost all of the first people up to the microphone were worried about food.

  “The food supply is my top concern. From the beginning I’ve had people working to see if there’s any way we can penetrate the force field. But as you know, we have no other home to escape to. All food is now on strict ration. Since the water was cut off the Steves disappeared, so I’m working out a system to distribute any water we can spare from our systems to them, hoping they’ll come back.” Chief said. He sounded calm, commanding.

  “Hope isn’t really a luxury we have, though, is it,” the next person asked. “You don’t have a family to provide for. How do you think the rest of us feel?” The man asked.

  Chief cleared his throat. “I don’t have family, per se, but most of you know that I consider some of you to be like my own children. So I know what you’re feeling. And we’re all in the same boat. We must persevere together.”

  A woman in another auditorium went on for a long time in Russian about the demolition of the Memory. It was a minor ship, its core no longer functioned anyway. It was being used to supply materials for the construction of the jail.

  “But why do we need a jail so large?” the woman asked a second question after criticizing the destruction of the ship.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, only one question,” the moderator told her in English, which the system translated into Russian for her, even though she was still trying to talk.

  Chief Up interrupted. “Yes, only one question but I’ll answer that one,” Chief said. The woman stopped talking.

  This one had me paying attention. They could have built a small jail, just for Legacy and Morgan. But instead of a small jail, Chief was having a structure erected that could house hundreds of people. “I haven’t addressed this specifically yet, so I’ll take this opportunity to do so. The jail is intended to pacify the Locals. Let’s pray it works. In that same regard I will use it to jail any citizen who conspires to commit violence, against the aliens or anyone else.”

  There were shocked gasps. A buzzing murmur spread throughout the room. I looked over at Chance. That sounded like a direct threat to any of Morgan’s followers.

  A man in another auditorium took the microphone. “I know the idea of offering Legacy as a…as a sacrifice has been previously postulated. May I ask why this has not been revisited?” The man was trying to make execution sound very civilized, but still the crowd hushed.

  “That isn’t something I think will help us,” Chief answered. “Next question.”

  I thought about the man’s question, and the Chief’s response. I didn’t think the people knew what was right, either. But each day that there was no contact with the Locals, each day that the food supplies dwindled, people got more and more desperate.

  But Chief still didn’t want to kill Legacy. He’d told me rec
ently, “There are so few of us left. I don’t want to be responsible for any more dying.”

  In fact, it might already be over. Maybe the discontinuation of the sessions and the shutting off of the water had been their final decision. If what they wanted was Legacy, they could have come for him.

  The next questioner was up. An older woman with frizzy hair who looked vaguely familiar. “I think what we all need to ask ourselves is what connection the girl has to these creatures. They talk to her, that much has been admitted. So why are we not wondering if she’s completely under their control?” The woman I now recognized as the loon who’d been in that first meeting with the Thirteen swiveled around dramatically. She pointed a shaking finger at me. This wasn’t the first time someone had looked at me funny. I knew they whispered about me.

  “I think I have to leave,” I whispered to Chance.

  He grabbed my hand as I stepped over him, “We’ll all go with you.” The rest of our group nodded.

  I appreciated that. It really was better that I left with a group and didn’t sulk out of the room by myself like I had something to hide. I could hear the Chief saying, “Hope is not a target in this. She is as much a victim as any of you.”

  We reached the doors of the auditorium and I sprinted down the hall to get away from that room, to feel free for one moment.

  “Damn it,” I said. I didn’t know why that one Local had picked me.

  Weeks, Pilgrim, Chance and the others caught up to me in the deserted corridor.

  “If this goes on much longer they’ll call for Legacy’s execution,” Gaia said.

  She was right. But that might not even work, and even though I was angry it felt wrong.

  “We have to do something,” I said.

  “What can we do?” Weeks asked. “We can’t do anything.”

  I sighed. What could we do? A bunch of teenagers, all of us so beaten down by our experiences. I led everyone out of the ship and over to the tree that was my place. They all knew where it was now and some of us perched on the plank, some on the ground, staring at the sky and ignoring the endless rumbling in our stomachs.

  I flopped down in the dry grass thinking about Legacy. It was a darker night, and I thought the planet’s seasons must have been changing. It was even cooler now and I could see a few stars.

  I sat up. “There are so few of them…”

  Then an idea began as a spark in my brain and I searched, trying to make it take shape. Suddenly, it exploded into a fire and ignited everything in its path. “There are so few!” I exclaimed to the others.

  “What are you talking about?” Chance asked. The others were sitting up to watch me.

  I rubbed my face. “We need to tell the aliens that there are only a few of us left.”

  I was met with bewildered faces.

  “Because they don’t know that,” I said.

  I saw understanding dawn on Chance’s face. “They don’t know what happened on Earth. They know nothing about us. For all they know there’s another wave behind us, a whole planet of people looking to take over theirs.”

  “How do we tell them anything?” Cairo spoke up in his halting English. He still had difficulty explaining himself in our language on occasion. Cairo had been living on our ship for years and he still messed words up. Even if they could possibly speak it, which didn’t seem likely, I couldn’t teach the CR-3ans English in a few days. They’d been watching us for months now and didn’t know a single word. Maybe because they thought our human languages were beneath them, maybe because their speech simply didn’t work like ours, I didn’t know.

  “I can draw it,” Weeks said quietly. I turned my head to him. I remembered his drawing from the slamming final.

  “Draw it?” asked Marseille.

  “Yeah, I mean, I don’t know if it would work. But if they can see this spot, then we can show them things, if they’re still watching. I could draw it.”

  “You really think this could work, Hope?” Chance asked. “Telling them that there’s only us left?”

  His question left me cold. “We can’t tell anyone else.” I said. “Some people might think this isn’t a good idea.” I looked around the group. People might not want the aliens to know. But we had nothing, so why not show the CR-3ans that?

  A faint sound pierced the darkening night sky. It was soft from where we were but…it sounded like the warning alarm, like the one I’d heard blaring through the halls of Reflection when we’d landed.

  “What is that?” Gaia asked, sitting up on the plank in the tree.

  I took off toward the noise, the others scrambling after me.

  As we neared I saw some of the engineers exit the Reflection and run toward the jail. There were groups of people gathered everywhere and they seemed to be arguing. Chance grabbed the arm of someone nearby.

  “What’s happening?”

  “They broke Morgan out.”

  “How?” Chance asked.

  “During the meeting. The guards were shot. They’re dead.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Grab those blankets, too,” I told Chance and pulled my long sleeve uniform over my head. It was hours after the meeting and Morgan’s jailbreak.

  Morgan was being hidden somewhere. They’d left Legacy behind. Chief hadn’t ordered a search party yet. There was nothing we could do about Morgan.

  Except for one thing. We’d split up to gather supplies. Weeks was getting his drawing stuff, we were getting whatever food we could, and stuff to keep warm.

  Chance and I were in my quarters now and I reached down and piled my own blankets high in my arms and waited for him. I couldn’t see above the pile of fabric.

  “Hey, can you press the code and open the door?” I asked, trying to balance the blankets. I felt warm hands gliding up my thighs.

  He scooped my hair from my neck and began kissing me softly, his hands on my hips.

  “We have things to do,” I reminded him.

  “I’m in the middle of something,” he murmured.

  “Chance…”

  “Almost done,” he said, continuing to nuzzle my neck. I was considering dropping the blankets and being very late when he suddenly pulled away.

  “All right, let’s go,” he said.

  “Cute,” I grumbled. He’d been doing this ever since we got back together. Taking small moments to kiss me and touch me. Then he’d make me come after him.

  “Oh, she’s playing like she doesn’t like it now? The look on her face says otherwise…” Chance said, his eyes daring me to contradict him.

  He was right, I’d always been addicted to him. And it was even worse now that we were back together. I wondered if everyone could see it, and tell what I was thinking.

  “I’m waiting on you,” he called me from the hallway with his pile of blankets in his arms.

  I shook my head.

  We met back up at the tree house at the perfect time for watching the skylights. Right after midnight, and for the next few hours, the lights intensified and rippled and merged, soaking the sky with color.

  We put out blankets as beds in the dry, crunchy grass and Chance and Cairo made a small fire. Weeks had a large paper drawing tablet, lots of colored pencils and some tubs of paint.

  “I brought the pencils and paint in my backpack when we boarded. Had to fight a guard to bring the paper on, too,” he told me when he saw I was looking.

  “You paint?” I marveled.

  “Not really so much as I draw, but I’m thinking of an idea so I brought it along in case.”

  I gave him an appreciative look. My friend of many talents.

  Boston had his copy of Time magazine that he’d brought in his backpack with him aboard ship. It was a photo of a mudslide covering a huge expanse with the tops of skyscrapers poking through. He showed us some of the other pictures inside, of natural disasters across the U.S. and the world. The mood of our little group changed quickly.

  The issue of Time was the magazine’s last, right before the Eart
h went into its downward spiral. Others had brought photographs of family members who had died, and some had pictures of devastation near their homes.

  Tonight we brought anything that reminded us of life back on Earth and it wasn’t much, only had what we’d managed to bring aboard ourselves. It would have to suffice.

  Weeks spread one of the large, thick sheets of paper over a broken piece of crate on the ground. He took the Time magazine and started sketching.

  The rest of us put the food into a pile and started to rummage through it. A can of beans, a can of rice soup, a few very stale, funny smelling crackers, and three pieces of fruit from the CR-3an’s crops. They were already turning bad.

  While Weeks did his work some of the others began to share their stories about what they’d brought. Faith and Gaia had a photo of their parents. They’d died in a Tsunami off the coast of Britain on vacation. The girls had been home with a babysitter. They didn’t get to have a funeral.

  Marseille had a newspaper clipping of her hometown in Arizona before the damage showing happy people at a local event for children in the park. She remembered going to it with her mom. Marseille didn’t know the name of the disease that had killed her mother. Hospitals were abandoned long before the very end.

  Boston revealed empty hands. “All our stuff got destroyed, so I don’t have a picture of my Mom. But she left when I was just a kid, I have no idea what happened to her.”

  “So you’re an orphan?” I asked. That was odd. I’d thought Boston must have a parent even though I couldn’t remember seeing him with one, because I thought his quarters were on a family deck.

  “No, but me and my dad, we’re not real close. He spent most of his time with Morgan.”

  I stared at him. I took a deep breath. “Your Dad was in that meeting.”

  “Yeah. He asked me to go. He’s friends with Cole, too.”

  “So you and Legacy, that’s because of your fathers?”

  Boston gave me a frustrated look. “They wanted us to be friends. They’re all friends, Hope. You don’t know how long this has been going on. Since way before we landed. They thought whoever was in power would basically be king of a new planet. They don’t want it to be Chief. They want it for themselves.” Boston sighed. He rubbed a hand over his close shaven head. “I thought they’d stop when the planet was already inhabited…”