Spark: A Sky Chasers Novel (29 page)

Arthur shrugged. “I can’t get anywhere near Central Command. Now it’s just Sarek and Kieran in there, and neither of them is talking to me.” The boy spoke hesitantly, as though Kieran’s anger made him doubt himself.

“We’re doing the right thing, Arthur.”

“I just wish we could make Kieran listen to us.”

“We’ve tried that.”

“Did we? Did we really try?” His eyes, magnified through his glasses, studied her like two blue searchlights.

“You know him,” Waverly said, shaking her head as she put the bag of guns down on the floor. “He’s stubborn.”

“I don’t like double-crossing him.”

“We didn’t,” she said, sticking her chin out. “He knows what we’re doing.”

“You’re stubborn, too,” Arthur said distantly.

“When you’re right, it’s good to be stubborn.” She leaned across the space between the seats and put her hand on his arm. He was still small, but she could feel the muscles of early manhood under her fingers. He was growing up. They all were. “Arthur, are you having second thoughts?”

“I have second thoughts about everything all the time. I have a ruminative mind.”

“And do you think we’re doing the wrong thing?”

“Our experience with Anne Mather would suggest that we’re not.”

“But…”

“But we’re about to act just like her.”

Waverly drew away from him, her nose wrinkled in disgust. “You don’t know that woman—” she began, but Arthur cut her off.

“She tried to solve her problems with violence. Now that’s what we’re doing.”

“Only if Kieran’s plan doesn’t succeed,” Waverly reminded him.

“Define success,” he said.

“What?”

“When do we make the decision that diplomacy has failed?”

“If he gets our parents back, we call off the attack,” Waverly said. She could hear the anxiety in her own voice. Arthur was making it complicated; she liked to think it was simple. But of course he was right. Nothing about this was simple.

“What if the exchange of hostages takes more time than we’d like?” Arthur said, suddenly animated. “What if Mather only gives us ten of the hostages? What if Kieran accidentally gives us away?” He swiveled his chair to face her, leaning his head against the back of his seat, his face scrunched into a lopsided shape. “These things are hardly ever all or nothing.”

“We’ll just have to make those decisions when the time comes.”

He sighed heavily. “We’ll be in a fog. We’ll be scared and confused.”

“We’ll be brave,” Waverly said firmly. She took hold of Arthur’s hand and waited for him to look at her. “I’m going to get you through this.”

He blinked but said nothing.

“Remember, target practice later,” she said to cover the silence.

Arthur reached into the bag and looked at the guns, touching a telescope device attached to the top of one of them. “It shouldn’t be too hard with those laser sights,” Arthur said. “Seth chose well.”

“Laser sights?” she asked, feeling stupid.

“These are for hunting.” He picked up a gun and aimed it at the back wall of the shuttle and gently pressed his finger on the trigger. A small red dot appeared on the wall. “See that? That’s where the bullet will go.”

“That makes it easy,” she said, suddenly breathless to be reminded that she might have to kill again.
Watch them crumple as their life leaves them in a gush of red
. Her mouth went dry, and she swallowed hard. Somehow through all this planning, all this careful consideration, she hadn’t really thought about the killing. Surely some people on the New Horizon might die. She wouldn’t have time to hesitate, not unless she wanted to give them a chance to kill her first. Arthur was watching her, and Waverly straightened in her seat and gave him a smile.

“It’s not fair that you have to go back there,” Arthur said.

“Nothing about this is fair to anyone,” she said. “But we’re going to make it fair again. We’re going to get our parents back, and anyone who stands in our way…” She didn’t finish. She didn’t want to hear herself say it.

They were justified to do anything. They’d been attacked, their way of life destroyed, their families split up, their futures stolen—the list of violations was endless. And what about all the videos that
hadn’t
come for anxiously waiting kids? Only forty-six videos had made it through, and though a mob of kids loitered outside the door of Central Command round the clock, waiting for more, there was no news.
We’re a ship full of orphans,
she thought. And for that, she wanted to kill Anne Mather herself.

She looked forward to it.

She’d been having dreams of running through the corridors of the New Horizon, chasing the guards and matrons and doctors and nurses who had taken so much from her and the other girls. Dreams of their surprised faces as she pulled the trigger and they fell to their knees. The gurgling sounds as they choked on their own blood. The way they’d hold up a hand as if thin flesh and bone could stop a bullet. Or several. Always at the end of the corridor stood Anne Mather, alone and defenseless. She’d hold up her hands prayerfully and intone, “Revenge is the Lord’s alone,” and then Waverly would pump her full of bullets, each of them exploding into blooms of rosy flesh against the white silk of her robe, spraying her face with a fine pollen of blood.

The old Waverly would have woken from this dream horrified, but the new Waverly found herself smiling when she opened her eyes in the lonely dark.

It’s her fault I’m like this,
Waverly thought.
She twisted me.

“I’m going to see if I can find out anything from Sarek,” she said to Arthur.

“He won’t tell you anything,” Arthur said.

“Yes, he will,” she said, and left the cockpit.

The ship was just beginning to stir from sleep as she paced the corridor to Central Command. Bleary boys and girls were obediently heading down to morning services. Even after the terrorist had been captured, Kieran still held compulsory daily meetings. She never went, and she still wondered why Kieran hadn’t punished her for it. Maybe his forbearance was the final vestige of what she’d once meant to him.

Outside Central Command, Waverly rang the bell for entrance, and waited. She heard the camera pivot toward her, and she looked at it expectantly.

“Go away, Waverly.” Sarek’s tired voice. With Arthur gone, his duties must have doubled.

“The Central Council has a right to know when we’ll reach the rendezvous point, Sarek.”

“I’m under orders not to talk to you.”

“If you don’t let me in, I’ll tell Kieran you’ve been monitoring his conversations with Anne Mather.”

“He won’t believe you.”

“I know details that could only have come from you, Sarek. So let me in.”

She waited patiently until the doors slid open.

Sarek looked exhausted, and he smelled like he hadn’t bathed in days. Waverly took the seat nearest him and leaned an elbow on the com station in front of her chair.

“I’m sorry to have to pressure you—”

“No you’re not,” he said bitterly. Sarek seemed tired, but there was something else about him. His eyes were red rimmed and his voice was husky, as though he’d been crying.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said quietly.

“You know something, Sarek,” she said. “Is this ship in danger?”

“Not any more than usual,” he said ruefully.

“You got a video from your dad, didn’t you?” she said to Sarek, trying to break through his sour mood. “Maybe you’ll get one from your mom, too.”

His eyes flicked to hers, and they burned with a fiery rage. It wasn’t directed at her, but she recognized it—the helpless rage of loss. He looked away, shaking his head. She could see him clenching his jaw, biting back tears.

“Oh, Sarek, I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

She sat with him in silence, sharing the atmosphere of his pain. The whole room reeked of grief, as though it had sloughed off him like musk and left traces everywhere.

“We both have one parent left,” she finally said. “And we need to figure out how to get them out of there.”

“Kieran told me what you’re going to do.”

“Good. So when is the rendezvous? I need to know.”

“Forty-eight hours,” he spat. “Now get out.”

“I really am so sorry, Sarek,” she said softly.

“I said please leave,” he said without looking at her.

He obviously didn’t want her there, so she left without another word.

Her body buzzed with fear. Two days before she saw her mother again! She didn’t let herself entertain other possibilities.

She met the Central Council and the five other volunteers for the mission in the shuttle bay, where they’d gathered to practice the assault. Plenty of kids had come forward, wanting to help with the attack, but the council had decided to keep the force small for the sake of speed and had chosen volunteers on the basis of age. “Thanks for coming, everyone. I’ve finally gotten confirmation that the rendezvous is happening about when we expected, in forty-eight hours.”

Murmurs rustled through the crowd. Alia, Sarah, and Melissa wore frowns of determination. Melissa’s eyes were puffy and red, and Waverly guessed the poor girl had been crying since the videos came through three days ago; she’d had no news from either parent. Sarah, who’d also heard nothing, seemed enraged, and Alia, with her huge brown eyes, simply looked numb.

“Are there any questions before we do our practice run?” Waverly asked.

The team went over last-minute changes to the operation, reviewing their roles and positions. This went on for half an hour, until finally the conversation petered out.

“Any other questions?” Waverly asked.

Alia smiled with quivering lips. Next to her stood Debora Mombasa, with her wild hair and coffee-colored skin, who’d had no reason to expect a video, though the happiness of some of the other kids only seemed to deepen her grief. Sarah Hodges chewed on a lip, looking fiercely around the room. Next to her stood Randy Ortega, a tall boy with a round face and shoulders and large brown hands. He whispered something to Sarah, and she visibly relaxed and gave him a shy smile. Waverly suspected the two had struck up a tentative romance. No one made a move for a question, and after waiting awhile, Waverly began to feel she was stalling.

“Okay then,” Waverly said. “I think we all have memorized our plan. So let’s get going.”

She felt foolish rushing through the empty corridors to the sewage plant, pretending to carry a gun. Alia looked confident as she ran ahead of the group and set up her position at each turn, pivoting around the corner and pointing her gun at an imagined shooter. Sarah brought up the rear along with Randy, running backward. Once they got to the sewage plant, three kids were stationed at each entrance, while a small force of four ran to where they anticipated the parents would be kept, and Waverly fired up the arc welder they’d taken from the machine room. She practiced cutting through a thick steel bolt like the one she’d seen on the livestock container back on the New Horizon. It felt like it took an hour, but when she finished, Sealy said, “Four minutes! Awesome, Waverly!”

The team clapped, but Waverly shouted over them. “We’re only halfway done! Let’s go!”

They moved back through a different route until they reached the shuttle bay. This was the most dangerous part, Waverly knew, and it would be the stage of the mission that was least predictable. Almost certainly, they’d have to shoot their way out, and Waverly knew that all kinds of things could go wrong. She’d had this same feeling before her escape from Mather’s clutches—butterflies in her stomach, a dry mouth, and fear that seemed to take up all the space in her lungs. She’d lost Samantha escaping from the New Horizon. Who would they lose this time?

You can’t think about that,
she told herself angrily.
You have to believe this will work, or it never will.

In all, the entire practice run had taken a total of nineteen minutes, but she was still nervous. Nineteen minutes was plenty of time for Mather to react.

After the dry run, the council and its volunteers went to the storage bay in pairs and practiced shooting live ammo into a thick piece of sheet metal. She saw joy in their faces when they pulled the triggers, that same weird enjoyment she felt in her blood-soaked dreams. She wondered if they’d still feel that way when they were shooting people instead of dead metal.

When they’d used as much ammunition as they dared, the team said good-bye for the night. Waverly took the guns back to the hiding place on the shuttle. The walk through the ship had an ethereal quality, as though the Empyrean were part of a universe she no longer completely belonged in. The smooth metal walls, the loamy smell of the rain forest level that penetrated even all the way up here, the sound of the air whooshing through the ventilation system, the ever-present hum of the engines—it could all vanish in an instant. Or, even more likely, she herself could vanish without leaving a trace. Every fiber of her body felt vulnerable, each cell aware that a few hours might be all that was left of her life. She wanted the mission to go well; she believed it would. But she had seen what happened to Samantha on the New Horizon. She knew death could happen to her, too.

She should say her good-byes, but there was only one person she really wanted to see, and she couldn’t face him. She’d locked away her memories of the way she’d tortured the prisoner in front of Seth, made a tight box in her mind, and she never looked inside so she never had to hear the prisoner’s cries again or see his twisted features or recall the damp stink of fear rising from the creases of his body as she stood over him. But she couldn’t forget Seth’s face as she’d left the brig, the way he’d looked at her with deep regret, as though realizing for the first time that she wasn’t the girl he thought she was. She knew she wasn’t. No one could be as perfect as that, anyway. But she’d lost something that she hadn’t even known she treasured until it was gone. Seth had respected and admired her; now, after what she’d done in front of him, after the way he’d seen her grimace of pleasure as she drove the Taser deep into the man’s groin, how could he ever respect her again? How could anyone?