Spark: A Sky Chasers Novel (3 page)

“I thought you didn’t like Kieran’s little cult, either,” Waverly said, knowing she was getting defensive but unable to help herself. “After Anne Mather, how could you?”

Debora shrugged, sullen. A hunk of her springy hair moved into her eyes, and she impatiently jammed it behind her ear. “Megan isn’t Anne Mather. Neither is Kieran. You of all people should know that.”

Sarah and Alia looked at Waverly with sympathy but dropped their eyes to the floor rather than join the discussion.

Waverly opened her mouth to protest, and shut it again.
I didn’t overreact,
she told herself.
Kieran is dangerous.

But Anne Mather was worse. And maybe she
had
found a way to sneak up on the Empyrean. Maybe she was boarding the ship with her thugs right now.

Waverly doubled over, leaned her forehead against her knees.
I won’t go back there,
she promised herself.
I’ll die first.

THE BURDENS OF LEADERSHIP

From his simple podium, under soft yellow stage lights, Kieran looked out over his congregation. The numbers had dwindled over the weeks, as the crew became increasingly demoralized, choosing to sleep in on Sundays rather than bother to attend. Now Kieran was left with about half the crew—the true believers—and they stared at him with light in their eyes.

“I know we had high hopes that increasing our acceleration over the last month would bring us closer to the New Horizon and our parents.…” He swallowed. Suddenly these words sounded like defeat—the opposite of what he’d meant to write last night. Kieran smiled, and some of his congregation leaned forward in their seats. He caught the eye of a little black-haired boy in the front row chewing on his bottom lip.

“We want the battle to begin,” Kieran said with a confidential tone. “But I must ask you to be patient. We’ll catch up to them when God wants us to, and not before.”

That was all he’d written; they were the last words on the portable reader in front of him. But the energy in the room still hung suspended, waiting to be released.

“We
will
catch them!” he said, and raised his arms over his head, fists clenched. “The deaths of our loved ones
will
be avenged. We’ll triumph over our enemies and land on New Earth with the memory of victory in our hearts!”

His congregation jumped to their feet, chanting, “Kyrie Eleison! Kyrie Eleison! Kyrie Eleison!” It was an ancient benediction, in Greek, that meant “Lord, have mercy.” It also happened to be the origin of Kieran’s name, and he knew it was no accident that his congregation yelled this at the end of all his sermons. He smiled humbly and held up his hands to speak over the din: “Thank you! Thanks! Everyone!” But they just kept on cheering.

Was it wrong for him to love this?

Not so long ago, he sat on this very stage on trial for his life. Seth Ardvale and his thugs had orchestrated one sham witness after another, and for a while, it looked like the crew of boys wanted to throw Kieran out an air lock. He still had nightmares about it and awoke swimming through damp sheets, screams caught in his throat.

Now they loved him. Now they cheered, and he was safe.

But he never forgot that the tide could turn against him once more.

Suddenly a deep, roaring boom seemed to hit Kieran in the middle of the chest. He staggered. The floor under him rumbled, and the wooden podium seemed to dance away from him. Several crew members cried out, holding on to their chairs. The curtains on the stage of the auditorium swayed.

“We’re under attack!” someone screamed.

“Get to the central bunker!” Kieran cried. He catapulted himself off the stage and took off running down the aisle, pumping his legs as hard as he could, though the floor swayed in front of him. He moved so fast he was stepping onto the elevator for Central Command before the first of them even reached the hallway.

He hit the com button in the elevator. “Sarek? Arthur? What’s happening?”

“I don’t know!” came Arthur’s panicked voice over the speaker. “I don’t know if there was an explosion, or—”

“Where’s the New Horizon?”

“They’re still way ahead of us! I don’t think it’s them.”

The elevator was moving with agonizing slowness, and Kieran punched the metal wall next to the intercom speaker. “Could they have sent an attack force in a shuttle?”

“Without our sensors picking them up?” Sarek put in. “Impossible.”

Sarek and Arthur were good officers, but they were only thirteen. What if they missed something? What if the more-experienced New Horizon crew had fooled them somehow? If so, where would they attack first?

“Check the engines!” Kieran shouted into the intercom as the elevator doors opened. He sprinted down the hallway, his heart pounding painfully, his breath out of control.

An even larger tremor moved through the ship, and he fell against the wall. “Oh God,” he said under his breath as he righted himself and lurched to Central Command.

“Seat belts!” he yelled into the room.

Arthur and Sarek buckled themselves in. As he strapped himself to the Captain’s chair, Kieran made a ship-wide announcement, ordering the entire crew to the Central Bunker, then swiveled to face Arthur, who looked shaken. “What have you found out?”

“The engines are operating normally,” Arthur said. His glasses slid down his sweaty nose, and he jammed them up again. “The computer is acting like there’s no change at all.”

“Coolant? Reactors?” Kieran barked.

“All fine. I can’t find anything wrong!”

“No problems in the hull, either?”

“No!”

“The nav system isn’t showing a problem, either,” Sarek said, shaking his head.

“What is it? What’s happening?” Kieran asked. His entire body shook, and he grabbed the plastic arms of his chair with clawlike hands as he stared out the blast shield at the sky.

And he noticed, along the edge of the large square portholes, the stars were winking out, one by one. He collected himself with a deep breath.

“Those weren’t explosions. They were thruster bursts.” Sarek and Arthur looked at him blankly until he added, “We’re turning. Check the nav system again, Sarek,” he said grimly. “Manually this time.”

Sarek shook his head, impressed. “You’re right. Those were thruster bursts.”

“Can you correct our course?”

“I’ll just reengage the nav system,” Arthur said. “The course will correct itself automatically.”

“At least we’re not dealing with a decompression,” Kieran said with intense relief. He pressed the com button on the arm of his Captain’s chair. At first he’d been nervous to make ship-wide announcements, but now he liked the knowledge that his voice was filling the entire vessel—his whole world. “Attention, crew. We are not under attack. I repeat, we’re not under attack. Those disturbances were unexpected thruster bursts, nothing more. We are safe, and the New Horizon is as far away as ever. You can go back to what you were doing.”

Kieran turned to Arthur. “How did this happen? The nav system should have prevented this.”

Arthur looked at the computer screen in front of him, flipping through the ship’s intricate control programs with mechanized efficiency. Something caught Arthur’s eye, and he squinted, reading the computer language. “Someone tampered with the programming.” He looked at Kieran, wide-eyed. “Sabotage.”

For a moment, no one in Central Command spoke or moved.

“Call the brig,” Kieran said quietly.

Sarek whirled back to his com display, a hand on his earpiece. “Harvey? Are you down there? Can you give me a status on our prisoners?”

No answer came.

“Check the vid display,” Kieran barked. He
knew
it! He knew in his bones Seth had done this somehow.

Sarek flipped through the various views of the brig, both inside and out. “I can’t see anyone down there,” he said, defeated.

“Send down a team of Command officers,” Kieran said, but he knew what they’d find. Harvey Markem injured or dead, and Seth Ardvale gone. Kieran’s pulse quickened, and a cold sweat chilled his skin. “How did Seth do this?”

“I don’t know,” Arthur said as he fast-forwarded through video images of the brig. “The last thing the video shows is Harvey sitting in his chair where he’s supposed to be. Then the screen flickers, and suddenly you just see an empty chair. No recording of an attack or Seth leaving.” He turned around to face Kieran, his features narrowed with concern. “So the video surveillance system was disabled
before
Seth escaped.”

“Someone on the outside helped him escape,” Sarek said ominously.

A frigid dread moved through Kieran’s limbs. By himself, Seth Ardvale was dangerous enough, but with a crew of followers? He’d nearly killed Kieran once. He could do it again.

“Arthur, can you call up the visitor logs to the brig?” Kieran said on impulse. “See if anyone has been down there lately?”

Arthur tapped at the keyboard in front of him, scrolled through a list of names reflected in green lines of text in his glasses. His boyish face was thinning out, taking on the harder angles of a young man. He looked serious, and burdened. “They’re all just people authorized to bring meals, and…” Arthur looked at Kieran in surprise. “Waverly Marshall visited Seth about a month ago, before we put him in isolation.”

Kieran felt as though he’d been turned to stone. Arthur and Sarek looked away, embarrassed.

“Get her. Bring her here,” Kieran said, but before Arthur could react, Kieran got out of his chair and marched out of Central Command, calling over his shoulder, “Never mind.”

People were still hovering in the central bunker in groups, talking in whispers about the thruster bursts. The little ones were pale and quiet; the older kids were red faced and angry. Kieran scanned the crowd until he found Waverly in the corner of the room talking to a group of girls huddled around her, among them Sarah Hodges.

Kieran marched up to Waverly. “We need to talk,” he said, his voice tightly controlled.

The girls all looked at him, alarmed.

“What’s wrong with the ship?” Waverly said. She sat on a cot, her body hidden by a shapeless white tunic, hair pulled into a hasty ponytail. She looked like she’d just rolled out of bed. Naturally she’d chosen to sleep in rather than get up early to attend services. It didn’t surprise him, considering they weren’t even talking to each other, but it still hurt. And plenty of kids were following her lead.

“Come with me,” Kieran said to her, and took hold of her elbow.

She jerked from his grasp but stood. “I’ll see you later,” she said to Sarah, who stared at Kieran with distrustful eyes.

Kieran led Waverly through the crowded bunker and across the hallway to his office. The large oak desk, the leather chairs, the multicolored Persian rug, the small oval portholes looking to the stars—all was the same as it had ever been, but Kieran had stopped thinking of it as Captain Jones’s office a long time ago. It no longer even smelled like the old man’s pipe tobacco; it had taken on the aromas of Kieran’s spiced teas.

“What’s
wrong,
Kieran?” Waverly demanded as he closed the door behind them.

“Why did you visit Seth Ardvale in the brig?” Kieran said, his voice a slow simmer. He nodded toward the chair facing his desk and took the Captain’s seat.

She watched him warily, eyes wide.

“Waverly, answer me.”

“I wanted to get his side of the story,” she said, her mouth set in a stubborn line.

“He tried to kill me. Doesn’t that matter to you?”

“Of course it does. But we’ve known Seth since we were babies, and I just can’t imagine—”

“Where have you been over the last two hours?”

This got her attention. “Kieran, you don’t think I had anything to do with—”

“Answer my question.” His harsh tone clearly humiliated her, and for a moment he wasn’t sure she was going to answer him.

“I was in my quarters.” She gave him a wounded look. “How can you—”

“No, Waverly, how can
you
?”

“There’s suspicion on me because I went to see Seth? Last I knew, he’s entitled to visitors and medical care. And a trial, incidentally.”

“Put yourself in my shoes. My fiancée, or ex-fiancée”—he stumbled here but regained his composure—“goes to visit my worst enemy. How would you feel?”

Waverly softened at this and reached for his hand. He pulled away.

“Kieran, I’m
confused.
You have to give me a chance to understand everything that happened while I was away.”

“If you ever loved me you should believe me without question.”

“That’s not who I am. I’ll never be that kind of woman.”

“Then you can never be my wife.”

The last time they’d spoken, they’d said everything to each other except these final words. Now, with the truth hanging between them, Kieran realized that he’d known already for a long time: He and Waverly were over for good.

For long moments she stared at him, expressionless, then she turned on her heel and started toward the door.

“Waverly, wait,” Kieran said. “I’m sorry.”

She looked at him skeptically.

“Please, come sit down. Okay?”

Slowly she walked back to the chair across from Kieran’s desk and sank into it, her feet planted on the ground as though she planned to bolt back out of it again. She was still lithe and graceful, he couldn’t help noticing, with those long, sturdy legs and her delicate wrists that always seemed so heartbreakingly small and beautiful to him.

“You’re right. It’s not fair to accuse you.” Kieran threw up his hands. “It’s just … so much has changed, and we’re all catching up to it. I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

She bent her gaze toward the floor. “I know.”

“But whatever happens,” he said, “we’ve got to keep up a united front.”

Her eyes snapped to his. “What do you mean?”

“You don’t know how fragile things are. If I lose my influence over the crew, if they start playing hooky and doing all the other things a bunch of scared kids are liable to do, you know what will happen, don’t you?”

“The ship will die,” she said quietly. For the first time, he thought he saw a hint of remorse in the curves of her face. He made note of it.