Sea of Stars (28 page)

I set my fork down, knowing I’ve said too much. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I know that I should’ve softened that. I could’ve made something up or omitted parts and made it a nicer version of the truth, but I didn’t want to; I want her to know me for who I am. I don’t want her pity. I just want acceptance. This is my truth. I have entrusted her with it. Now I want to see what she does with it.

Trey reaches under the table and squeezes my knee. He pushes his chair back from the table. “Please excuse me, everyone, I believe my mamon needs help in the keuken.” He nods and then follows his mom into the kitchen.

Wayra calls to me from across the table, “Kricket, I want you with us when we raid the enemy ammo sites. With your size and speed we can fit you between the beam spotters. You can blow the signal seekers and install the scanner jammers without them ever detecting you.”

“That sounds like fun, Wayra. I’m in,” I agree with a smile.

Drex, Hollis, and Gibon agree too, calling out several more things they think my skills as a thief and a grifter would translate into tactically.

Charisma covers my hand that is resting on top of my fork on the table. I glance over at her and see that her eyes are filled with tears, but she’s fighting to keep them from spilling over. In a soft voice that doesn’t carry too far, she says, “Trey gave us the talk while you were sleeping. He told us that you don’t like sympathy, so if you say something that we find sad or troublesome, we should not show you that it bothers us.”

“He told you I hate pity?”

“Yes, that’s right,” she says. “That’s why Vessey left so quickly. She wanted to smother you with concern and love and kisses and cry her heart out for all that you’ve been through, but she didn’t want to hurt you more or offend you, so she left so she could pull herself together.”

“Thank you for telling me; it helps to have a translator.”

“I’m more than that,” she says with a sniffle. “I’m your friend, and hopefully, one day, your sister.”

“I have something for you,” I reply impulsively. Turning to Vanderline, I ask, “May we be excused?”

“Of course,” he nods, as he stands up from the table. All of the other men stand as well. Charisma seems delighted that I’ve freed her from the table early.

I take her with me upstairs. Finding my bag near the bed, I pull out the black lacquer box. When I open it, I show her its contents. Charisma puts her hand to her mouth in shock. “My Crystal Clear Moments! You carried them with you all the way here from the Isle of Skye? And my sonic sayzers!” She picks one up and hugs it to her. “These are my favorite ones! I have another set, but they’re not as pretty. I thought they were gone forever!” She peers into the box and picks up my starcross bracelet. “This is Trey’s starcross.”

I look at it in her hand. “Well,” I say sheepishly, “it’s sort of mine now. Trey gave it to me.”

She looks startled. “Trey gave you this?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“It’s been in his family forever.”

“With luck it will remain in it forever.”

“Here.” She pushes the silver bracelet over my hand, and then gently pushes it over my wrist. The metal grows in size to accommodate the width of my arm as she slides it up onto my bicep. “There,” she says, admiring the look of the silver starcross armband. “Some females wear them there. It’s convenient if you use this hand to throw the starcross.” She holds my opposite hand, crossing it over my chest.

My fingertips touch the etched silver crest on the armband. The panel opens up and a wickedly sharp star-shaped metal disk emerges to sit upon the cradle, waiting to be thrown. I press it back in, and it hides away once more beneath the crest.

Charisma holds up the sonic sayzers. “Did you use both of these?”

“No, just this one.” I indicate the right one.

She hands it to me. “Here. You can practice with this one, then. I’ll recalibrate the left one for me. Do you need to rest or can we try them out now?” she asks me.

I glance outside. It’s really dark with no city lights, but the moons and stars are bright. I shrug. “I’m not tired. Let’s try it.”

She smiles broadly. “We’ll take these and use them as targets.” She picks up the lacquer box with the Crystal Clear Moments figurines inside. “All but this one.” She reaches in and extracts the dancing couple that Trey said she received at her debut swank.

I laugh. “Trey said you hated that one!”

“I did hate it,” she replies ruefully. “I thought it resembled Victus, and so it made me sad. But now, I love it. ”

“Would it be all right if I kept one?”

“Of course,” she says. “Pick whichever one you want.”

“Thank you! Should I change?” I ask while gazing down at the lilac gown I’m wearing.

“We probably won’t practice very long, and it’s not too terribly exerting. I think we’re fine in what we have on—maybe just bring that jacket there.” She points to the black jacket of hers that I borrowed.

“You don’t mind if I use it?”

“No! I have several that are very similar to that one. If you want another one, let me know.”

She gathers the black box and waits for me to retrieve the jacket. When I pull it on, she walks with me to the terrace outside. Taking the staircase that leads to the grounds below, we descend the stone steps to a lovely courtyard. Charisma activates the lighting. Everywhere in the beautiful courtyard, hundreds of floating yellow, round lights the size of baseballs rise up from the ground to hover above us in the air. They hang at different levels in a staggered, firefly pattern; it’s breathtaking and magical.

With the mountain range of the annexed area in the background, beneath the shine of the moons, Charisma sets up the zero-gravity apparatus and frees all the Crystal Clear Moments into the star chamber. Immediately, the figurines start to perform their tricks for us.

“Do you know which one you want to keep?” Charisma asks, watching the trift fly around performing daring maneuvers.

I reach into the pocket of the black jacket and show her the crystal spix that I had previously rescued from the star chamber. “I like the knight.”

“It suits you,” she says with a grin. Placing the box on the ground, she extracts the sonic sayzer cuffs from it. I lift my wrist for her to attach the right one to me. Immediately, the metal of the sonic sayzer grows and lengthens, covering my wrist to my elbow in a framework of Gothic-looking silver.

After the fingerless-glove part of it has grown over the back of my hand, Charisma advises, “Move your fingers to enter your security code.” I do as she says, twitching my fingers so that it looks like I’m playing an invisible piano with my right hand. “You can extract the earpiece now,” she advises as she dons the other weapon.

“Are you ready?” she asks me when I have the earpiece in place.

“Yes,” I reply. We walk a short distance away from the targets.

She lifts her hand and concentrates on the shiny quarry ahead of her. When she fires, she hits the ballerina dead in its center, shattering the glass into showering bits. She squeals like a child! Turning to me, her face is a mask of elation and she smiles giddily. “That felt so good! I never would have dreamed that it would be so good!”

I laugh as she grasps my forearms while jumping up and down. She reaches around me and hugs me impulsively. “You have to kill one too! It’s the best!”

When she releases me, I laugh some more and say, “I’ll try, but I’m not sure what words to say to get it to work.”

“I think you should try to shoot the mastoff first,” she says, referring to the mastodon. “It’s wide and it doesn’t move very fast.”

From somewhere behind us, a fast-moving, falcon-shaped ship sweeps through the dark sky, roaring over the stables and house. It’s hard to see, but the sound of it is like a jet fighter breaking the sound barrier. Trailing it, in definite pursuit, is an Alameeda E-One. The waspish ship shoots blue-colored laser cannons at the falcon ship, trying to bring it down. The falcon ship banks to the left. It comes around to fly directly over the courtyard. As the E-One adjusts to follow it, it suddenly slows its progression when it comes upon us in the center of the courtyard. Allowing the falcon ship to escape, it instead hovers over Charisma and me in an eerie, menacing way.

Shouts from the Cavars come from every direction when a bright white beam of light hits us in a sickening spotlight. Beside me, Charisma glances my way and whimpers, “Kricket.”

An instant later, her skin is melting from her bones from a flamethrower directed at her. I scream her name, but it doesn’t help; she’s on fire. A tractor beam lifts me up into the air and I travel toward the belly of the ship.

“Are you ready?” Charisma asks me. I blink a couple of times. In front of me, the ballerina crystal figurine dances across the zero-gravity sky. I exhale a deep breath, seeing it curl with the icy smoke of a vision.

I shake my head no. When I find my voice, I shout at her, “Run, Charisma! Tell Trey that they’re here—the Alameeda are here!”

Charisma hesitates, unable to process what I just said to her. I have to get her moving, so I push her hard in the direction of the house. “Run!” I shout again.

With terror in her eyes, she asks me, “What about you?”

“Just go!” I plead. This time she listens to me. She picks up the hem of her dress and she runs toward the house.

I pick up the hem of my dress too, as I run around the exterior of the house to the front of the estate. When I reach the orchard there, I try to catch my breath. I scan the hills by the pass where we entered the valley. Lifting my shaking right arm, I try to brace it with my left one. My breath comes out in raspy pants as I wait for what seems like an eternity.

I hear the rumble of the falconlike ship before I see it, but when I do, it flies so quickly over the ridgeline that it is almost impossible to track. Focusing on where that ship had crossed the ridge, I take aim with my sonic sayzer and then a deep breath. As I exhale, I see the Alameeda E-One coming over the crest of the ridge. Breathlessly I say, “The worst, Honey.”

The recoil from the sonic sayzer lifts me off my feet; I find myself flat on my back looking up at the sky. The wind is knocked out of me, but I sit up anyway. Wheezing for breath, I cringe when I notice a hole in the ridgeline.
I missed!
Not only that: the E-One has halted its pursuit of the falcon-shaped ship and is now bearing down on me.

I rise quickly from the ground, lifting my aching arm again and pointing it at the enemy E-One, as it grows closer. “The worst, Honey,” I say the words and I’m knocked over again.

Someone grasps me under my shoulders and lifts me up. Trey’s sexy, masculine scent is as much around me as his arms as they go to my waist. He braces my back against his chest and his voice is calm as he says, “Try again.”

He helps me lift my arm and aim at the Alameeda death ship bearing down on us. I whisper to Trey, “The worst, Honey.”

Trey absorbs the recoil while the rotorless heli-vehicle in front of us explodes into a huge, flaming fireball. As pieces of the ship fall to the ground, shouts from the Cavars come from all angles. Trey turns so that his body is between the E-One and me as it crashes hard into the dirt, shaking the fruit from the orchard.

Trey straightens, before turning me around in his arms. He brushes the hair from my face, scanning it to assess my state of mind. I’m numb. I don’t know how I feel right now, other than scared. A loud
boom
severs the sky again as the falconlike ship circles back around. Bracing myself, I lift my right arm, trying to track it, but Trey grabs my wrist. “It’s a Comantre ship.”

I lower my arm, relieved that I don’t have to try to take it down. It flies overhead; its jets reverse, causing it to hover for a few moments before it descends from the sky and lands in the paddock by the stable. “Go back to the house,” Trey says softly. “I’m going to see what they want. Make ready. Our position is compromised now. We’ll have to leave within the part.”

He lets go of me; I sag a little at the loss of him. He walks toward the Comantre ship, while the belly of it opens like a gaping maw. I lose my breath when Giffen emerges down the ramp with a score or more heavily armed Comantre Syndics in his wake.

I yell to Trey, “Not friendlies!” Lifting my arm, I aim the sonic sayzer at Giffen, whispering, “The worst, Honey.”

Giffen raises his hand, redirecting the killer sound I throw at him. It ricochets off the grain silo, exploding it into a shower of confetti. Giffen retaliates, throwing energy at me so that I’m knocked down once more. I lie on the ground, dizzy and confused, trying to make my eyes focus on Inium, the moon above us, but the blue orb turns dark and fades away before my eyes.

C
HAPTER 15

U
NSPEAKABLE THINGS

I
rouse to consciousness, feeling a tug on my hair. A large hand pulls the shorn strands of my tresses away from me. The blond mass in his palm curls and disappears. A knife passes in front of my eyes, and then disappears as the person behind me moves away. I try to lift my hands, but they’re shackled around the stiff seat back behind me. Someone has removed the sonic sayzer from my wrist, I realize, as I clench and unclench my fingers.

“Kricket,” Giffen says from his chair opposite me. We’re both sitting at the table where I’d eaten with Trey and his family only a few hours ago. “Would you like some water?” He lays his hand on his rough, five o’clock shadow, rubbing it thoughtfully over the sharp angles of his jaw. I assess his beard; it’s more in character for him now than the shaven version of him at our last meeting. His golden-brown dreadlocks are pulled back from his shoulders and secured in a ponytail. The Comantre uniform he’s wearing is all wrong. He should have swim trunks on and a volleyball in his hand so all the girlies on the beach can line up to rub sunscreen on his back.

My mouth is dry. I nod my head. “Water sounds good.” Giffen produces a canteen. Opening it, he takes a sip before setting it down on the table. He pushes it in front of me. I lean forward; my hands behind me rattle the metal shackles against the slats of the chair, causing them to clang. My eyes lift expectantly to Giffen’s, but he doesn’t move to put the canteen to my lips; he slouches back in his seat negligently.

I understand. I lean back in my seat too, squaring my shoulders against the hard wood. I glance at the man with the knife. He’s moving away to stand by the hearth near the head of the table. I’m surprised that I recognize him. He’s the Comantre conscript who was part of the team that came to remand me to Defense Minister Telek’s office.
He called me something when I was with Trey in his apartment on the Ship of Skye. What was it—a baboon—boosha? What was his name—Randal? Rankin? Raspin!

“I would like some water. Could you get some for me, Raspin?” I ask with a tilt of my head.

“She’s a corker, that one! Remember me, do ya?” Raspin asks with an ear-splitting grin. It is quickly chased away by an anxious look.
He’s worried about something.

“I remember everyone who calls me a shefty boosha. How’s your mouth?”

He rubs the auburn-colored stubble on his chin, probably remembering that I elbowed him in the face in the Premiere Palisade’s rail station. “I did not have to cut my hair.” He takes off his cap, and cornrows of wiry copper hair spill down his back.

He’s one of us—a freak. I’d bet a venish on it.
“You’re a lost boy like Giffen, aren’t you? You have the freak gene too, right?” I ask him.

Raspin moves forward to the long, rectangular table where Giffen and I are seated. With one hand he grips the wood, picking it up. Without much trouble, he pushes the table away from him, over my head. The wood splinters as it crashes into the transparent window wall behind me, spilling the water as well. My heart beats painfully in my chest at the sheer strength of him. “I’m not lost,” he glowers. “But me truluv is. You have to get her fer me.”

I blink at him as he scowls at me threateningly. “Your truluv?”

“His girl,” Giffen translates.

“Who’s your girl?”

“Astrid is me truluv,” he breathes heavily, raw emotion in every word.

I blink again.
Astrid?

Giffen clears his throat so that I’ll look at him. “We need you so that we can get Astrid back.”

I feel dizzy. “Who’s Astrid?” I ask, really needing that water now.

Giffen’s steady gaze never wavers from me. “Astrid is your sister.”

“She’s my what?”
I think I hit my head too hard.

“She’s your baby sister.”

“I don’t have a sister,” I whisper lamely.
I have another sister.

“You do. She has risked everything to extract you from the conflict in the Isle of Skye, but she miscalculated the Alameeda and was taken hostage by them.”

He’s not lying.
“I don’t remember her—she’s nothing to me—”

Raspin’s face turns red. He picks up a heavy wooden chair and throws it through the glass wall. So many cracks form in the surface of the glass that I can see what is left of the chair only by looking through the hole it made.

Giffen pulls his wooden chair close to mine; he turns it around so he can straddle it, resting his arms on the seat back. “You’re something to her. You’re her ‘Kick-it.’ That’s what she calls you when she talks about you. If you’d gone with me when I came for you, you would’ve met her.”

“So she wasn’t in on your plan to kill me before?” I ask with a frown.

Giffen sighs heavily. “She knew it was a contingency plan so that you wouldn’t be turned over to the enemy and used against us. She was not in agreement with it—she threatened to cut off my . . . she threatened to cut me if I killed you.”

“Wow. This is quite a change for you, Giffen. Now you’re okay with handing me over to the Alameeda because they have
her
and you want
her
back?”

His eyes narrow at the bad light I just put him in. “We didn’t have any leverage with you before now!” he retorts as justification to his prior plan. “And we didn’t know where your loyalties lie. We had no assurances that you’d work with us. I was not at liberty to tell you about your sister then. We had to protect her identity.”

“You have no assurances now, either!”

“I beg to differ. I have all of your friends. All the ones you risked your life to save before,” Giffen threatens.

“You’re going to blackmail me?”

He scowls. “I shouldn’t have to! You should want to help your sister who loves you!”

My mouth hangs open for a moment before I snap it shut. “Loves me?” I stick out my bottom lip and shake my head with a shrug. “I don’t know her! Where has she been? I didn’t even know who she was until a second ago. Where did she go?”

“She’s been on Ethar—hidden with us since she arrived here.”

“When was that?”

“When your mother died.”

I try to process what Giffen is saying. “If she’s younger than me, she couldn’t have been more than three or four years old. She couldn’t have gotten here by herself.”

“Her father brought her.”

I feel sick and hopeful at the same time, and the fact that I feel hopeful makes me feel sicker. “Her father brought her? You mean
our
father brought her?”

He nods, looking uncomfortable. “Pan brought her here when she was almost four floans old.”

“Water,” I manage to say, begging Giffen with my eyes.

It’s Raspin who brings it to me; bending down, he tips a canteen to my lips. He’s surprisingly gentle for such a strong, raging knob knocker. When I’ve had enough, I move my lips away. He manages not to spill any of it on me. I can’t yet ask them the only question I want to ask them. I’m too afraid of the answer. Instead I ask, “When you said ‘they’ve been with us,’ where was that? Is there a Valley of Misfit Boys or something?”

A grudging smile appears on Giffen’s lips. “Pan made a home for us in the Amster Rushes—in the annexed area. Then he set about finding all of us—all the Alameeda males with special talents who were being hunted down and slaughtered—bringing us there. He saved most of our lives.”

“He must be a saint,” I reply with sarcasm.

“He is,” Raspin replies, believing every word of it.

I snort in disgust. “Did he happen to notice when he got to Amster that he was one daughter short?” The bitterness in my voice is extremely apparent.

“He rarely speaks of you, but when he does, it’s always with the greatest respect and admiration for your sacrifices.”

I laugh humorlessly. “My sacrifices? Oh, that’s—” I shake my head and exhale a harsh breath. “Do you know why he abandoned me on Earth?”

“You’re the prophecy. You’re the one who sparks the war. He couldn’t bring you back. He had to leave you there. It was your destiny.”

I nod my head as if I’m okay with it. “Oh . . . it was my destiny! So it’s all part of the plan?”

Giffen exhales in relief. “Yes.”

Rage boils over as I yell at him, “Screw your plan! And screw him!”

“Not! Working!” Raspin yells at Giffen. He storms to the doors, ripping them off their tracks as he leaves the room.

“Now you’ve made him mad,” Giffen sighs in frustration.

“Just let me see if I understand you. You want me to allow you to hand me over to the Alameeda in exchange for my sister, but you don’t want me to retaliate against you by using my ability to see the future to harm you in any way.”

“Yes, and—”

“Wait! There’s an
and
? Why is there an
and
?”

“We need you to be our eyes on the inside. We want to communicate with you and—”

“You want me to spy for you.”

“Yes.”

“You guys have some big, fat,
huge
, bouncy—”

Raspin enters the room dragging Trey’s unconscious body behind him. I don’t know what they did to him, but he looks dead. With a hand around Trey’s throat, Raspin lifts him up, ready to gut Trey with his knife if I blink at him the wrong way. “Ya shefty wee monster! I’ll carve him to prove to ya that I am heartfelt,” he seethes. He’s being honest.

“Wait! Please!”

Raspin’s hand stills just above Trey’s chest.

“Okay, I’ll do it! Just stop!”

“Ya swear upon it?” Raspin asks angrily.

“I swear on it,” I reply in desperation, trying to reassure him. “Astrid gets saved and I get thrown away again. It’s fine. We have a deal. Just don’t hurt him, okay?”

Raspin looks like he doesn’t believe me. “Should something happen to Astrid, it happens to him. I gut ’em all if she’s harmed.” He raises his knife, placing it to Trey’s neck, drawing blood as he begins to cut.

“Nothing will happen to her!” I try to placate him in a stream of words. “I’ll make sure of it!” He stops cutting. It’s an eternity that I wait—those seconds I watch Raspin take as he decides whether or not I’m telling the truth. A part of me isn’t sure if he’ll believe me. Even when Raspin lowers the knife in his fist, I have trouble breathing.

My legs are numb with fear. When he stops holding Trey by the throat, my chin drops to my chest for a second in relief and I let go of the breath. He places Trey on the ground against the wall. I stare at Trey for several seconds, trying to see if he’s still breathing. There’s a swollen knot by his left temple. It’s hard not to lose my mind as I strain against the metal on my wrists, finding that I can’t free myself. The cut on Trey’s neck is slowly dampening his collar with his blood.

I turn my attention back to Giffen. He rises from his chair, pulling out his communicator from the pocket of his Comantre uniform. I can’t believe that my father is associated with these two psychos—then I think about how he abandoned me—maybe it makes perfect sense. I clear my throat and ask, “Does Pan know about this plan?”

Giffen’s eyes narrow in suspicion. “He knows.”

In a shallow tone I ask, “Does he agree with it?”

He ignores my question. “I need to take your image.” He holds up his communicator in front of me.

“What are you planning to do with my picture?”

Giffen snaps a couple of shots. “I have to send it to Kyon Ensin. We’ll pretend to be Comantre Syndics. He doesn’t know who we are or who your sister is. Hopefully, none of them have realized yet that she has Alameeda blood or that she’s a priestess. When Kyon responds, I will demand a trade: you for her. I will tell him that she is Comantre and was working in the Isle of Skye when the unrest broke out. I will ask for her safe return in exchange for yours.”

“How do you know she’s not already dead?” I ask.

“She’s too pretty for that. They’d keep her for entertainment.”

Raspin smashes another chair, unable to contain his rage.

I blanch. “Why wouldn’t they know that she’s a priestess—or at least know that she has Alameeda blood? Isn’t it obvious?” I ask in a near whisper, trying without success to keep my inquiries between the two of us.

“She wasn’t born with pale hair like yours. She has Pan’s coloring—black hair, but her eyes are blue. We altered them before she went in.”

“How did you do that?”

“We injected pigment to make them green, but it only lasts a few rotations, then it reverts to her normal hue.”

“Alameeda blue?” I ask.

“That’s right, like her mother’s.”

His attention is back on his communicator again. “Wait,” I say, seeing that he’s about to send the pictures he took of me.

“What?” he asks.

“You want this to work?” I ask, meeting his eyes.

“Of course!”

“If you want this to work, you should hit me.”

His eyes narrow. “What?”

“I look okay right now—I look like you’re not serious about getting your supposed consort back. You have to make it urgent or Kyon will take a little time to find out exactly who Astrid is before he hands her over. You have to put it on a faster time line. You have to take the control away from him and keep it. If he thinks that you might kill me, he’ll lose the advantage. He can’t know how you got me or that you have Trey. When you meet him to exchange us, it can’t be here and we have to go alone—just you and me, Giffen.”

Raspin growls at me, “Going!”

“He can’t go,” I argue. “There’s too much emotion there. He can’t cope. A priestess could read him like a billboard. You can get out alive with Astrid because of your telekinetic gift. It’s the only way I can think of where everyone has a shot at survival.”

Giffen looks at Raspin. “It sounds like a good plan.”

“That’s because it
is
a good plan,” I mutter.

Raspin nods his head. He starts to walk toward me. “Seriously?” My eyes shutter in scorn. “You’re not hitting me, Incredible Sulk!” I glare at him like he’s a lunatic, which he definitely is. He hesitates and looks at Giffen.

I shift my head and nod toward Giffen. “You,” I assess him. “You do it.”

Giffen glances at Raspin, who shrugs and gestures with his hand toward me. Giffen squares his broad shoulders and walks to me. As he stands above me, looking down into my defiant face, I can’t tell if he wants to do it or if he’s reluctant to do it. I just know that he
will
do it. I take a deep breath, trying to brace myself. “Ready?” he asks. I nod.