Spark: A Sky Chasers Novel (36 page)

He screamed. He screamed and screamed through his damaged throat, hoping that somehow someone might hear him. But then his voice seemed to burst in two, and he collapsed on the floor.

He’d felt afraid before, but it was nothing to this terror. He was an animal. He was trapped. He was going to die.

PANIC

“Where do I go? Where do I go?” Arthur kept screaming. Waverly could see almost nothing out of her right eye, but with her left she could see well enough to pull herself back to the cockpit. Arthur sat shaking at the controls, panting, his eyes shocked wide.

“How does the rest of the Empyrean’s hull look?” Waverly asked him. She thought she could still see the hulk of the great ship sliding under the shuttle, but she no longer trusted her vision.

“This side looks okay, but that was a massive explosion.” Arthur’s voice cracked.

“We have to help the little ones get off.”

“But what if they’re already—”

“Don’t even say it!” Waverly screamed. “Just shut up and get us there!” Arthur wiped a tear from his cheek, and Waverly took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

“The port shuttle bay is probably still intact,” Arthur said. He sounded calmer now, and when he pressed the accelerator, the flight felt smooth and confident.

“Can you see?” Waverly asked, blinking. All she could see were dark shapes, but slowly they were resolving into color and texture.

“I saw the explosion in the video display. My eyes are fine.”

“Where’s the other shuttle?”

“I think they’re gone,” Arthur said. “It looked like the explosion swallowed them up.”

That other shuttle had been a few hundred yards to their right. With a jolt, Waverly realized their own shuttle had narrowly escaped the same fate.

She picked up the com headset and hailed the Empyrean Central Command. “Sarek?” she called.

“Where are you?” came Sarek’s frantic voice.

“Are you okay?” Waverly asked. “What’s going on there? Where’s the crew?”

“I’m fine, and I’ve called everyone to the central bunker.”

“Has the port shuttle bay suffered any damage?”

“I don’t think so. The explosion happened along the starboard side.”

The brig was on the starboard side.

“Sarek!” Waverly shrieked. “What about the brig? Is it intact?”

“I can’t tell for sure. The ship is very unstable.”

“You’ve got to let Seth out of there!”

“I’ve sealed all the bulkheads, Waverly. There’s no way to let him out.”

“Unseal them!”

“Then what? He’s locked in a cell, and there’s no one down there to let him out.”

“Someone’s got to go down there!”

“Who?” Sarek said bitterly.

“I’ll do it, then. Just send everyone else to the port shuttle bay. We need to get the kids off the ship.” She said this with a sinking feeling. There was only one place to go: right into the clutches of Anne Mather.

“Okay,” Sarek said doubtfully.

“This must have been part of Mather’s plan all along,” Arthur said grimly.

“And we walked right into it.” Waverly punched the seat of her chair. “Now she’s got everyone under her control.”

“No,” Arthur said. “She’s going to get the fight of her life. Right?”

Waverly studied his profile. Everything still looked dim to her, but she could see the way his lips were bunched together and how his fists gripped the controls. “You’re right, Arthur.”

“We’re going to get that evil woman.”

“And I’m personally going to kill her,” Waverly said, making a fist.

Arthur glanced at her but said nothing.

Arthur followed the curve of the Empyrean until the shuttle bay came into view. He looped the craft around and aimed for the huge doors. Waverly saw that his fingers were trembling, and he bit his lower lip until it turned white between his teeth, but he guided the shuttle into the air lock with the assurance of an experienced pilot. Once the shuttle touched down inside the bay, Waverly leapt out of her seat and skidded down the ramp into a scene of chaos.

Already many of the children had been evacuated from the central bunker to the shuttle bay. The littlest boys and girls were huddled in bunches, crying. Some of the older kids were kneeling next to them, trying to keep them calm, but almost all of them seemed to be in shock. Several had trickles of blood coming from their ears. Though the explosion had been inaudible in the vacuum of space, it must have been deafening aboard the Empyrean.

“I want to get my diary!” a little girl wailed—Maysie Fisher, a nine-year-old who’d been orphaned in the attack. “My pictures of my mom and dad!”

Sarah appeared at Waverly’s side, her face pale. “Do you feel that?” she asked with dread.

“What?” Waverly asked her.

“That breeze,” Sarah said distantly.

Sarah was right. There was a slight motion to the air, brushing gently by Waverly’s face. There were no wind turbines in the shuttle bay, and they weren’t standing near a ventilation duct. If the air was moving it was escaping out of the Empyrean. The ship was dying.

“Oh God,” Waverly said. “I have to go.”

“What?”
Sarah shrieked after her as she ran toward the door. “Where are you going? Are you
crazy
?”

“Seth is trapped!” Waverly screamed over her shoulder, and ran in the direction of the rushing air. “Don’t wait for me!”

“I won’t!” Sarah yelled, furious. “Idiot!”

The floor shook under Waverly’s feet as she ran for the elevators. She pushed the call button again and again, but the elevators were stuck where they were, wouldn’t move.
Must be some kind of emergency protocol.

The stairs, then.

She sprinted for them and started down, taking two at a time. She ran faster than she ever had, making her bad leg sore. She ignored the pain. All she could think was that Seth was trapped and alone, and she couldn’t let him die like that.

Her heart wanted to crash through her rib cage, and her legs felt shaky, as though every nerve in her extremities was being fed electricity. She couldn’t breathe fast enough to keep up with her feet, but she kept on until she met the first bulkhead. Two steel doors had slid closed to create an impassible floor beneath her feet. She found the emergency intercom display by the door and pressed the call button. “Sarek?”

“What?”

“Open the bulkhead on level twelve.”

“No.”

“Just for a second so I can slip down?”

“Waverly, you’ll endanger the entire ship.”

“Endanger? Seriously? This ship is sunk, Sarek. It’s over. You didn’t see the explosions from outside, but I did, and I’m telling you there’s no way to repair the hull. All we can do is save as many people as we can.”

She heard him sigh, but then the metal bulkhead doors creaked open and slid away to reveal more stairs beneath them. The breeze was stronger now, and her ears popped, but the air was still good.

She had the same conversation with Sarek five more times. At every level, he protested, and at every level, she begged until he’d reluctantly open the bulkhead and let her through. Each time, the doors closed above her with a chilling finality, and she realized what a risk she was taking. The deeper she went into the ship, the harder her breath came, the more her head swam, the dizzier she felt. The air seemed thinner, and it was much colder.

What if he’s already
— She wouldn’t let herself complete the thought.

This made her run even faster, but she could hardly focus her eyes. Just above the last bulkhead, she tripped over her own feet and fell down half a flight of stairs. She lay on top of the bulkhead doors, dazed. The trickle of blood running down her forehead stirred her, and she sat up. She had a bad gash on her knee from the sharp corner of the metal stairs, and when she reached up to her forehead, she was surprised to feel a deep cut right at her hairline. With trembling hands she felt her limbs, her trunk, her spine. Nothing was broken.

It took her so much time to stand up and limp over to the intercom.

“Sarek,” she said breathlessly. “Open the last bulkhead.”

“Waverly,” he said, “I can’t.”

“Do we have to go through this every damn time?”

“No. You don’t understand. This time I really can’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a short between here and the lower levels. The sensors aren’t operating.”

“But you can move the doors?”

“I can’t tell if there’s any air for you on the other side.”

Blood dribbled into her right eye, and she slapped angrily at it. “Can’t you just open them and we’ll see?”

“I don’t want to kill you.”

“Sarek. As a member of the Central Council, I am ordering you to open these doors.” Blood blinded her again, so with her fingernails she tore into the gauzy fabric of her tunic and ripped a strip from the bottom. As she tied it around her head, she yelled, “Sarek, I’m not kidding. Open these damn doors!”

“Waverly—” Sarek’s voice broke. “The shuttles are leaving.”

“This is the last thing I’ll ask you to do.”

“How will you get back up if I leave?”

“Open all the bulkheads before you go.”

“I can’t do that.”

“I’ll close them as I go.”

“Waverly, you’re sacrificing this ship for one guy.”

This stopped her. She was wrong and she knew it. Nothing was more important than the mission, and so nothing was more important than the variety of life-forms on the ship, many of which would not be duplicated on the New Horizon. Not to mention all the chickens and goats, the bees and ants and fish. All of them would be doomed. But it was Seth down there. He might be dying right now. “He’s an important guy,” she finally said.

“No one is that important.”

“They are if the ship is already done for, and it is, Sarek.” She punched the keypad of the intercom with her fist, nicking her knuckles on the buttons. “Open the damn doors!”

There was nothing but silence from Sarek’s end for the longest time, so long that Waverly began to think he’d left her to die. But finally the doors began to edge open. At first she thought they were opening to a vacuum because the air rushed at the widening crack with furious velocity. But she could breathe. The air was whisper thin, and frigid, but it would keep her alive.

She started down the final set of stairs, heading for the entrance to the storage bays. She opened the door to the enormous room, where the huge shapes of the storage containers, stacked on top of one another, made tall, deep canyons. The emergency lights blinked on and off, casting the containers in an ethereal, unreliable light. She started across, limping as quickly as her pounding heart would allow. She could feel the blood from the gash on her knee soaking into her sock, but she paid no attention. It didn’t matter how badly she was hurt. Once she got to Seth, it would all be okay.

The closer she got to the starboard side, the closer she was to the gaping hole in the hull. She could feel it in the distance, waiting to swallow her up.

It felt like an eternity crossing the huge bay. She wanted to run. She tried once, but black spots fizzed and popped before her eyes. She had to stop and rest. If she pushed her heart and lungs any harder, she’d faint, and then she’d be no help to anyone. So she took it slow, keeping her eyes focused on the place where the rows of shipping containers seemed to meet at the end. What was the word for it? From art class?

The vanishing point. She kept her eyes fixed on the place where space seems to disappear into smallness.

I’m not thinking clearly,
she told herself.
My mind is running in loops.

One foot, then the next, then one foot, over and over. Her steps were so small. The room was so big. She just had to make a lot of steps.

She fell once and rolled on the floor. Her tongue was numb; it felt like a sodden lump of cloth in her mouth. She licked her lips, which had gone dry and crusty.

Next thing, she was walking. Back on her feet and walking. The vanishing point had widened. She could see the place between shipping containers where they divided. She was almost there.

The end of the canyon came before she expected it. She stood looking at the wall.
I’m there,
she thought vaguely.
I made it.

She didn’t know for sure which door led to the brig, so she headed for the nearest one to get her bearings. When she opened it, she got such a blast of cold, for a moment she thought she’d opened it to outer space. It was the starboard side stairwell. One flight down ought to open to the corridor that led to the brig.

It seemed so far away, but her feet stumbled down the stairs, then her hand was reaching for the door latch and she walked through it. The door opened to a corridor. The empty guard post at the entrance to the brig seemed endlessly far away.

“Can you hear me?” she whispered into the darkness, and started forward.

She had to prop herself against the wall as she walked. She looked at the ceiling just ahead of her because she was afraid if she looked at the floor she would fall onto it. When finally the door to the brig appeared to her right, she blinked, unbelieving. How could she have done it? It was impossible, she realized, now that she knew the thinness of the air and could feel the lightning-fast beating of her heart. How could she ever get back up to the shuttle bay like this?

Seth first.

“Can you hear me?” she murmured again. She’d meant to yell. The brig looked ghostly and abandoned, like a mausoleum, and she was afraid she was too late. But then she was standing outside of Seth’s cell, looking into it. She couldn’t see him.

“Seth,” she whispered.

A shape unfolded itself from the far, dark corner of the cell. She was looking at Seth Ardvale. He’d been huddled in a tight ball.

“Waverly?” he said. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I came here,” she said with someone else’s voice, someone who was papery thin. “I’m here.”

“You idiot,” he said, but he was laughing. He jumped to his feet and rushed to her. “You stupid idiot.”

“You’re welcome, you jerk,” she managed to say before she finally passed out.

BLADE