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“You shouldn’t have sent that lunatic,” he said to Mather through gritted teeth. He remembered the man who destroyed his home—Jacob Pauley—the brutish size of him, his calloused hands, the simple expression in his piggish eyes.

“I didn’t send him. There was too much chaos during Waverly’s escape for me to come up with anything like a plan.”

“Then why was he contacting you?”

She picked up a pen and played with the cap, pulling it off, screwing it back on. “I believe he wanted to brag.”

“After the way you attacked us, why should I believe anything you say?”

“When I became Captain, the church elders pointed out that the nebula would be the only place we could hope to get near the Empyrean. What choices were left to us, Kieran? We were facing extinction! What would you have done?”

Kieran didn’t want to get sucked into this game.

“I want you to consider something.” She fingered the padded arm of her chair, picking at the fabric with an oval fingernail. “You were the leader of the Empyrean for a few short months, were you not?”

“Yes.” Kieran sighed. Why couldn’t he wake up from this nightmare?

“Did you never cross the line yourself?”

“You mean did I kill anyone?” he asked angrily.

“Tell any lies? Compromise your morals? To get yourself out of a tight spot?”

Kieran tried to be impervious to what she was saying, but his mind picked at the time he’d told his crew that Seth Ardvale had turned traitor and was working with the terrorist Jacob Pauley, a statement Kieran had known to be untrue. Was he really in a position to judge Anne Mather?

I never killed anyone,
he reminded himself,
but to get Mom back in one piece, with her brains right? I would. I’d kill this liar with my bare hands.

“What do you want?” he spat. He felt he was in a trap, but he couldn’t see the walls or feel the chains, as though Mather had somehow gotten him to lock himself in.

The smile faded from her lips. “What do you mean?”

“You’re not making friends with me because you’re lonely. There’s some reason you’re cozying up to me.”

She pinched the end of her index finger as she considered him. “Okay, Kieran. The truth is, I’ve lost some credibility with my people. I’ve given them everything they wanted, but their enthusiasm for my leadership has faded.”

“They probably think you’re a hypocrite,” Kieran spat.

“Maybe I am a hypocrite. Does that satisfy you?” she snapped. “I’ve racked my brain trying to think of a way to unite our two crews. You’ve been a leader through dangerous times. You understand the need for a common purpose.” She bobbed her head at him, willing him to agree. “I believe you and I can work together to bring peace to our people. We both have a duty to make certain that our crews can live together safely. Can you agree to that?”

He didn’t want to work with this despicable woman. But was there any other way to protect the Empyrean crew? He nodded and made himself say, “I can agree in principle.”

“I want you to help me lead them to peace.” She appeared absolutely earnest.

The room was so quiet he heard the air moving through his nostrils as he studied her. “Do you expect me to believe that you’re offering me power on this vessel?”

“Not right away,” she said, a hand held up to slow him down. “As a
start,
for now, I’m offering you
influence.
Your influence will be unavoidable, actually.”

“What are you saying?”

“I want you to come to services this Sunday so I can introduce you to my congregation. Eventually, you could become a kind of junior pastor. And when I’m either ousted, or…” She waved a hand grimly. “You’ll be poised to take over as the pastor and hopefully captain of the New Horizon.”

For long moments all he could do was stare at her before he said, “Is this a joke?”

She smiled indulgently. “I assure you I’m serious.”

“I don’t see why you want
me.
”

“
Don’t
you see? After what Jacob Pauley and his wife did to your ship? The only way to incorporate your crew into ours is to give a representative from your vessel a leadership position here.”

Kieran started to shake his head. This was a trick. It had to be.

She placed her palm on the desk between them. “Kieran. Think about it. My generation is aging. Your parents’ generation has been at war, with a long list of grievances on both sides.” She pointed a finger at him urgently. “Your generation can give us a fresh start. And if you haven’t noticed, there aren’t many of you. Given how remarkably well you’ve done on the Empyrean, you’re the logical choice to take this crew forward when my time comes to step down.”

Kieran looked at Mather’s large desk, the way the intercom rested within a hand’s breadth of her seat, the artful tapestries hanging behind her. He’d never imagined himself in the Captain’s chair of the New Horizon. Was God working through Mather, trying to reach him? Had this been the plan all along to unite the two crews under one banner of leadership? He shied away from these ideas. This kind of thinking had gotten him in trouble before.

“We’ll have to play our cards right,” she was saying. “The church elders no longer believe that a faith-based government can peacefully lead a blended crew. They are actively working to minimize the political power of any pastor on this vessel.” She tented her fingers, staring at him over the steeple shapes of her hands. “I’m convinced they want to enforce atheism. We can’t let them destroy our faith.”

“Which would destroy you, too,” he pointed out.

She nodded, not even trying to hide her fear. “I want to use what’s left of my leadership to shape the path forward. Despite my mistakes, I believe I’m the only person who can.” Mather raised her eyebrows. “Will you join me?”

“If I don’t?”

“You and your crew will become a powerless minority.”

“Then I have no choice, do I?”

“Get used to it. The longer a leader is in power, the fewer choices we have. What do you say? Can we learn to work together?”

Kieran took in a long breath through his nose. He felt as though he were about to plunge off a cliff. “All right,” he said quietly, hating himself. “I’ll work with you.”

“Thank you,” she said, looking visibly relieved. Her com station beeped, and she read a short text from someone.

“I’ll have a guard escort you back,” she said, raising her finger, indicating for him to leave.

“I can find my own way, “Kieran said to test her.

She contrived a quick smile. “I’ll contact you later, then.”

“All right,” Kieran said and walked out the door, right past her guards and down the hallway. As he passed by Central Command, the door slid open, revealing, for just a moment, the empty Captain’s chair.

SPIES

On the Empyrean, Arthur Dietrich crouched, hidden inside a ventilation duct, watching the crew chief from the New Horizon do his work. Arthur was sweating profusely, so his glasses kept sliding down his nose. He pushed them up with his knuckle, afraid even the faint rustle of his shirt sleeve would give him away. He’d been hiding here for nearly a full day, his only protection a flimsy vent screen. He was thirsty and starving and his back hurt him horribly, but he had no idea what they would do to him if he were caught, so he stayed put.

For most of the morning, Central Command had been bustling with activity, but most of the crew had left for maintenance tasks in various parts of the ship. Right now there was only one man here—the crew chief named Chris. He sat at Arthur’s old post near the Captain’s chair, using Arthur’s old com screen.

“Pressure in the conifer bay is still dropping,” Chris was saying into his headset. Everything about the man was square shaped—his shoulders, his blockish head, his cropped haircut, his jawline, his big meaty hands. “There must be at least one more pinhole in the bulkhead.”

“My sensors aren’t picking it up,” said a woman over the com system. Her voice had the muffled quality of someone speaking from inside a OneMan.

“Okay, then, Marcy. I’ll need you to go outside and look for it from there.”

“There’s no air lock between here and outside. I’d have to go all the way around, through the orchards, and then up through the hatchery.”

“I know,” Chris said. “Some of those trees might be the last of their kind in the universe.”

“Thanks for the guilt trip, Chris.”

“Sure thing,” Chris rejoined before sitting back in his chair, rubbing his palms on his knees.

You’re thirsty,
Arthur thought at him
. You need to go to the bathroom! You need to leave! Go!

But Chris started flicking through options on his com screen before holding the mouthpiece to his chin. “Hello, there, Greg. You in yet?”

From the other end came what sounded like a group of children moaning. Arthur stifled a gasp. He thought he and Sarek had gotten all the children off the Empyrean! “Yeah, Chris,” a man answered, “we’re in.”

“How are they looking?”

“Skinny. We’ve got several goners, but most of them seem healthy enough.”

Arthur shoved his fist in his mouth to keep himself quiet.

“Can you make a path to the granaries? Let them graze in there?”

Arthur suppressed a sigh of relief. Those weren’t children crying; they were goats and sheep! He was surprised any of them were still alive.

“We’re already working on it. We’ve just got to fix a fist-size hole in the bulkhead to pressurize the corridor. Should take an hour or two.”

“Those animals don’t sound happy. Is the water system working?”

“By drips and drops, Chris. And someone left a whole mound of hay in here. I think that’s what’s kept them alive this long.”

“Okay. Well, get to work.”

“Will do, boss,” the other man said, and after a brief burst of static, the link was severed.

Chris was silent for a long while, tapping at a keyboard, then started flipping through video views of the ship, but he paused at one screen and leaned in for a closer look. Arthur could see only about half of the screen from around the man’s shoulder, but it looked like the corridor outside the infirmary. There was no light whatsoever coming from inside. Next Chris flicked to a display for the sensor readings.

“Hey, Greg,” he said into his headset. “Where are you?”

“I’m knee-deep in chicken crap, Chris.”

“You’re a couple levels under the infirmary, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you detected any signs of decompression on that side of the ship? Any pinholes?”

“Nah,” Greg said. “So far so good here. But the infirmary’s been showing no signs of life support, right?”

“Right,” Chris said thoughtfully and peered closely at the screen.

Arthur racked his brain. Had Sarek evacuated the infirmary? He must have!

“You want me tracking chicken crap all the way up there, Chris? Because when I say knee-deep…”

“Nah,” Chris responded and flicked through different displays, all of them showing stats on the infirmary level. “Low priority. I’ll put it on our to-do list, okay?”

“Yeah, Chris. Put it at the bottom.”

Chris sighed, rubbing the back of his neck, and then to Arthur’s great delight, he stood up from his chair. Arthur was surprised to find that though Chris was broad and strong-looking, he was actually quite short.

“Got to see what’s doing,” Chris muttered to himself, patting his belly as he limped out the door in the stiff way of an adult who had sat for too long.

Arthur listened for a minute more, but he was too thirsty to wait any longer. He worked the ventilation screen out of its casing and wriggled onto the floor of Central Command.

Hiding in that cramped space had been horrible, but he’d been lucky to make it into the duct before Chris and his helpers had come in that morning earlier than usual. Arthur had had just enough time to back his way into the duct and pull the grate in after him. There he’d sat, all day long.

Now Arthur’s back complained painfully as he stretched. He could hardly stay on his feet, he was so stiff. He reminded himself of his father, the way Hans Dietrich was always a little hunched from working into the wee hours on his various projects. This brought a pang of guilt to Arthur’s middle.
Dad probably thinks I’m dead. Mom …
He wouldn’t let himself finish the thought. His mother’s name hadn’t been on the list of survivors on the New Horizon, and there had been no video from her among the communiqués from the captured Empyrean crew. She was probably gone, but he couldn’t allow the thought into his conscious mind.

Arthur missed his parents with every part of him. Once upon a time he’d felt smothered by his mother, but now he’d give anything for more of her tireless love. His father was even dearer to him. He would let Arthur stay up late reading to indulge his interests in writers like Proust, Hawking, and Goethe. The two would spend hours talking about existentialism, quantum mechanics, or the ancient Greeks. What Arthur learned during his time in classes was minuscule compared to what he absorbed on a daily basis from his brilliant father. There was no one in Arthur’s life he enjoyed talking with as much as his dad. He had to get him back. And maybe his mother
was
still alive on the New Horizon …

He was tempted to hack into the com system to see what he could find out, but he didn’t dare linger. He’d come to do one simple thing and get out, and that’s what he had to do now. From his pocket he pulled a walkie-talkie and knelt under the com desk that Chris used. It was a simple matter of hooking the unit into a power source, then connecting the transmitter up to the audio signal that came through the computer. Once it was in place, Sarek and Arthur would be able to monitor all the voice communications that went through Central Command. Arthur was just finishing wrapping electrical tape around the loose wires when he heard Chris’s voice in the corridor outside.

“I know that, George,” Chris was saying, “but the Pastor wants us to secure that equipment first.”

Arthur stood to look at the video screen that monitored the corridor. Chris was holding a small tray of emergency rations, standing just on the other side of the door.