Spark: A Sky Chasers Novel (32 page)

“Can I offer you tea?” Mather asked.

“You can offer me access to the prisoners,” Kieran said.

“First I want to talk about your proposal. It’s simply not acceptable.”

“It’s not negotiable,” Kieran said.

“You can’t expect me to guarantee that my crew will stay on a separate continent from yours. We have only a vague idea of the climate of each geographic region, as I’ve said before. It’s possible that there’s very little habitable landmass on New Earth.”

“I don’t want you anywhere near us.”

“We have another forty-two years to get over past wrongs before we get there.”

“You say ‘past wrongs’ as if you had nothing to do with them.”

“I’ve made mistakes, Kieran. As a fellow leader, I’m sure you understand how easily small miscalculations can result in catastrophe.”

He stared at her. At some point, his fear had left him entirely. Now all he felt was a bottomless rage. “If you don’t take me to see the prisoners
now,
I’m going to leave.”

She stared back at him, her eyes narrowed to flinty gray pinpoints. “You’ll forgive me, Mr. Alden, if I want to see what your friends do first.”

“Friends?”

“The landing party you just ordered? They’re on their way. What they do will help me decide whether to let you see your mother or not.”

“They’re injured,” Kieran said. He tried to sound indignant, but he knew his voice was damp with fear. “They can’t do anything.”

“We’ll see about that,” she said with an amused grin.

BEST-LAID PLANS

Waverly leaned over Sarah’s gurney and tucked the bed linens around her legs. The shuttle bay was filled with a buzzing expectancy as the members of the Central Council loaded their guns.

“Alia put on makeup,” Sarah said under her breath. She cocked her head to where Alia was standing by the shuttle. Her eyes were outlined with thick smudges of charcoal, which made her huge dark eyes seem like two black holes. She looked beautiful, and frightening.

“War paint,” Waverly said to Sarah, who chuckled.

“Do I look wounded?” Sarah asked, squeezing the reddened bandage to the side of her head.

“Let’s see your game face.” Sarah squeezed her features into a mask of pain. “Good enough,” Waverly told her. “We don’t need to fool them for long.”

“Is it wrong of me to say that I’ve been looking forward to this?” Sarah asked with an evil grin.

“Yes, it is,” Waverly said quietly. “Where’s your gun?”

“Sticking in my thigh.”

Waverly wheeled Sarah into place in the cargo hold and strapped her gurney to the wall between Debora Mombasa and Randy Ortega, who also wore bandages that had been soaked in chicken blood. Debora seemed coolheaded, but Randy was panting with fear.

“Doing okay?” Waverly asked him.

He gave her a steady nod.

Waverly went into the cockpit and took the copilot’s chair next to Arthur, who was nervously fiddling with dials and knobs. Waverly wondered if he was really adjusting anything or if he was just making himself busy to take his mind off what they were about to attempt. “Ready?”

He licked sweat from his upper lip and nodded. He tapped his headset and instructed Sarek to open the air lock for the shuttle. Waverly watched him carefully, ready to take the controls if he made a mistake, but his performance was exemplary. She would have thought he’d flown a shuttle many times before.

Once the outer air-lock doors opened, Arthur eased the craft out of the bay and turned it around. They’d chosen the port side to launch from because it was nearer to the infirmary and would make their ploy seem more real, they hoped. The deception felt rather thin to Waverly, now that they were on their way.

Arthur flew the shuttle over the curve of the Empyrean. The many domes covering the hull reminded Waverly of the pictures of sand dunes she’d seen from Earth. Amanda, the New Horizon crew member who had taken Waverly into her home, had shown the pictures to her and had tried to describe the ever-changing desert landscapes of Old Earth. Waverly wondered what had happened to Amanda, and to Jessica, Mather’s personal secretary, after they helped Waverly escape. Anne Mather might have imprisoned them, or worse. She realized she hadn’t let herself think of them at all. They were part of that horrible past she’d wanted to leave behind, so she’d banished them from her mind, though in truth, she owed her life to them.

The New Horizon rose like a misshapen moon over the hull of the Empyrean. It dominated the black sky with bubbling gray metal. As they approached, Waverly could see the outlines of people passing by portholes, none of them turning to notice the approaching shuttle.

It made her sick to look at that ship. It was identical to the Empyrean; why then did it look so evil to her? Everything about it—gray skin, misshapen hull, the light emanating from its hundreds of portholes—all of it was forbidding and awful to her. She concentrated instead on Arthur’s progress as he piloted the shuttle to the enormous bay doors, which slid open before he could even request to dock.

This is it,
she told herself as the shuttle eased inside the New Horizon. Her heart felt as though it were skipping beats, and her hands felt like ice carved into the shapes of brittle fingers.

The inner air-lock doors opened to a group of medical personnel wearing scrubs and white gloves. Strangers with strange faces. She hated them all. She scanned the rest of the shuttle bay for armed guards, but saw none. Could it be this easy?

No,
she told herself.
Nothing is easy with Anne Mather.

Arthur looked at Waverly nervously before he pushed the button to lower the shuttle ramp, and Waverly heard the gush of air as the hydraulics engaged. She went to the passenger section of the ship, where already the assault team had stood up from their seats. Sealy was clicking off the safety of his gun and peering through the sights. Harvey Markem held his gun across his chest, squeezing the metal with his hands until his knuckles turned white. As the largest team member, he’d been chosen to carry the bag of extra guns, which was strapped tightly to his back in a compact mass. Melissa Dickinson had already taken her position at the top of the stairs, the muzzle of her gun pointing down, ready to cover the team as they descended the stairs.

“Let’s go,” Waverly whispered to them, and started down to the cargo hold, where already doctors and nurses were entering to look at the patients. A small male doctor leaned over Sarah and peered into her eyes, only to find the muzzle of a gun jammed into his face. Two nurses screamed when Randy sat up, pointing his gun at them. The rest of the medical team, about six in all, stood staring, their mouths hanging open.

Waverly jumped down the last few stairs and grabbed one of the nurses by her collar. “Where are the guards?”

The woman only looked at Waverly, working her jaw but unable to speak. Waverly pointed her gun at the woman’s neck. “I said, where—”

“There are no guards,” the woman said, breathless.

“Bullshit!” Waverly yelled in her face.

“It’s true,” one of the doctors piped up from behind her. “Pastor Mather didn’t order guards to accompany us.”

Waverly looked from the doctor to Sarah, who had stood up from her gurney and was eyeing the man suspiciously.

“Everyone grab your hostage!” Waverly shouted. She pulled the male doctor by the collar, making him walk in front of her, pressing the muzzle of her gun into the hollow of his back. His dark hair was shorn close to his head, and she could see sweat trickling between the hairs and soaking the collar of his shirt. His fingers were trembling, and she heard his shallow, jagged breaths as he stumbled ahead of Waverly down the ramp and onto the shuttle-bay floor.

“March!” Waverly yelled, though it hurt her throat, and they were off.

Each time they passed a shuttle, Waverly turned, expecting to see guards hiding there but finding no one. She hadn’t thought about her emotional reaction to being back on this ship. She felt claustrophobic, hemmed in, and panic threatened to overtake her. This was where they’d done it to her. She shouldn’t have come. She gulped air, fought down the panic, and tried to focus on the task at hand.

They reached the shuttle-bay doors without incident, and Sarah went ahead to open them. Waverly braced herself, expecting guards to burst into the room, shooting away, but the doors opened to a peaceful corridor.

It was the same the whole way. Around every corner, at every doorway, the team took positions, shielding themselves with their hostages, but they met no resistance whatsoever. They didn’t even find regular maintenance workers. The corridors were deserted.

Waverly knew this was a part of the ship that would be rarely visited by crew members. On the Empyrean, few people went to the sewage plant unless something had gone wrong and repairs were needed. Otherwise this entire area of the ship was fully automated. Still, Waverly had a sinking feeling. Her heart thrummed in her chest so hard she wondered if her hostage could hear it. She could hear his breath, the way air rasped through his throat like rough yarn. His steps were halting, but he let her steer him through the turns in the corridor, keeping his hands at shoulder level.

When the doors to the sewage system came into sight at the end of a long corridor, the team paused to listen for signs of life. The corridor was eerily silent.

“What do you think?” someone said right next to Waverly, making her jump.

She turned to see Alia next to her, holding on to the tunic of a medic, her gun jammed under his shoulder blade. Her dark eyes brimmed with concern.

“I don’t like it,” Waverly said.

“Are we walking into a trap?” Alia asked, her voice low.

“If we are, we’re already in it,” Waverly said.

“Where are we going?” asked the medic being held by Randy. “Where are you taking us?”

“Shut up,” Randy snarled.

“But this doesn’t make sense!” the man cried, near panic.

“I recognize you,” Alia said to him with a deadly tone. “You sedated me so they could steal my eggs. Give me a reason to shoot you.”

At this, the man quieted.

“Come on,” Waverly said softly to the team. “Let’s move.”

The team members took their positions outside the doorway to the sewage plant, and Sarah stepped forward to work on the lock, only to find the doors unlocked. She looked at Waverly, surprised.

“What does this mean?” she said under her breath.

Waverly shook her head.

Sarah pressed the button for ingress, and the doors slid open. Waverly was assaulted by the sickly, moist air of processing sewage, the deafening thrum of the pumps and filters, and the sound of gushing water.

The team walked into the room, fanning out, pointing guns into every corner.

There was no one here. The room was empty.

“What?” Waverly heard someone say.
“What?!”

“No!” cried Sarah. She pushed her hostage away from her, and the woman fell onto the floor.

Waverly turned on the doctor and pointed her gun in his face. He whimpered, his hands high above his head. “Where are they?”

“Who?” he asked, tiny-voiced. “Who do you want? I’ll tell you what you need to know.”

“Where are our
parents
?!” Waverly screamed, and took two steps forward, forcing the man back against the wall behind him.

The doctor shook his head, mouth hanging open. “They’re not here. They were never here.”

“Then why would Jake—” she began, but stopped herself.

“Waverly.” Sarah stepped forward. “What now?”

“They recorded you coming here,” one of the nurses piped up. She was of medium height, and she held her shoulders square as she looked at Waverly defiantly. “Security forces will be on their way.”

“Where are they?” Waverly yelled at the doctor she held at gunpoint. “Tell me, or I’ll make an example of you.”

“Oh God,” he said. A spot of wet formed on the front of his scrubs, and a puddle spread under his feet. “They’re in the brig, I think.”

“The
brig
?” Sealy whined, and slammed the butt of his gun on the floor, making a booming echo in the large room. “We’ll never make it there!”

“We have to go,” Alia said, defeated. “Waverly, we must go.”

“She’s right,” Sarah said, looking grave. “They’re on their way.”

Waverly screamed in frustration and fired her gun again and again into the wall right over the cowering doctor’s head. Her ears rang with the sound of it. The doctor hid under his arms, his entire body in terror-stricken spasms, until she finally stopped. She had that same feeling as when she woke from her nightmares—that awful satisfaction of having punished someone. But along with the satisfaction came a sour taste in her mouth, and she looked at her trigger finger, which twitched against the hot metal.

“Okay,” Waverly finally said, her voice hoarse. “Let’s go. Leave your hostages. We’ll be faster without them.” The terrified doctor closed his eyes with relief, until she added, “Not you. You’re coming with us.”

His face crumpled, but he let her push him in front of her. Crescents of sweat had soaked through his scrubs, and he emitted a musky, fearful odor. He trembled, and his hemp shoes, sodden with urine, made a squishing sound as he walked.

Waverly and her hostage led the way out of the plant, but once in the corridor, she pushed him against the wall and stood aside until the last of her friends made it out of the room, then she closed the doors and shot the lock with her gun so the other hostages couldn’t leave. Dragging the man along helplessly by his collar, she ran after the team, which was already way ahead of her. “We’re too spread out!” she called to them, and Randy Ortega, who was in front, stopped to wait near a turn in the corridor that led directly to the shuttle bay.

A shadow passed over Randy, and Waverly pushed her hostage in front of her. “Look out!” she cried.

Randy whirled around, but from around the corner a hand grabbed the barrel of his gun and twisted it away. Randy fell backward but struggled onto his knees until he found himself staring into the muzzle of a black gun. A scrawny man wearing a shirt and pants a size too large for him emerged from around the corner. His gray eyes met Waverly’s, and with a deep voice he said, “Drop your weapons.”