Flame: A Sky Chasers Novel Read online

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  For my brother, Michael

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  I. Back to the Beginning

  Outside

  Return

  Damage

  First Things

  The Doctor

  Reunion

  Maya

  Duel

  The Devil You Know

  Spies

  II. Plans

  The Elders

  Congregation

  Next

  Hearing

  Agitator

  The Captain

  Conjugal

  Doubt

  Nebula

  Surviving

  III. Monsters

  Snare

  Night

  The Dark

  Allies

  Seth

  The Devil

  The Plan

  Run

  IV. Good-byes

  Buddy

  Search

  Light

  Run

  The End

  The Gift

  Reunion

  The Brink

  New Mission

  Good-byes

  Beginnings

  V. Gaia

  Sermons

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Amy Kathleen Ryan

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.

  —Thomas Jefferson

  PART ONE

  BACK TO THE BEGINNING

  If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.

  —Winston Churchill

  OUTSIDE

  When the metal helmet of the OneMan suit closed over Seth’s head, his ears popped. Sweat soaked his armpits and trickled down his sides. He’d performed only a few space walks before, and they didn’t get easier. During the last one he’d almost killed himself.

  “I’m not going to die,” Seth told himself for the twentieth time as he enabled the thrusters and checked his fuel and air levels. The flight prep took him twice as long as it should because he had to do everything with his clumsy left hand. His right hand was badly mangled; two of his fingers twisted into ugly, agonized knots. He turned up the oxygen in his breathing mixture to compensate for the awful pain.

  “If that Neanderthal can do a space walk, I can do it,” he said through gritted teeth, eyeing the empty housings for two OneMen, which must have been taken by Jake Pauley and his horrible little wife. She had been the one to set off the explosions that destroyed the Empyrean, then she broke her husband out of the brig and they must have come straight here to escape the dying ship in OneMen. She’d shown no remorse for leaving Seth trapped in the brig to die. If not for Waverly, he would have.

  And to thank her he’d sent her all alone to the New Horizon—a snap decision that he already doubted. What was the alternative? Bowing and scraping to the people who had killed his father and destroyed his home ship? With his bad temper he’d get himself thrown in the brig, and he was damned if he was going to spend another minute of his life trapped like a rat. If he made it to the New Horizon and found a place to hide, he might be able to help Waverly, and maybe even do something to get back at Anne Mather.

  He engaged the thrusters on his suit and hovered over to the air lock. Once inside, he turned back for a last look at the Empyrean. The shuttle bay was cavernous, quiet, deserted. Already it felt like a ghost ship. How many had the Pauleys killed today?

  “Not the little kids. They’re okay,” he told himself, shaking his head against panic as he pressed the button to seal the air lock for the last time. The outer air-lock doors yawned wide to reveal the infinity of the open sky—black nothing carpeted with stars that seemed to rush away from him in a dizzying expansion.

  Seth eased the OneMan out of the air lock and engaged the thrusters. He had enough experience now that he knew what to expect and was able to slowly maneuver his craft up and over the hull. At first the skin of the Empyrean looked undisturbed, but up ahead he could see plumes of freezing gases escaping in a billowing stream. Toward the aft he saw a vast cloud of white gas trailing behind the ship to disappear in the dark, leaving thousands of miles of air and water vapor in a long line cutting through the nothingness. Beyond that lay the nebula they’d left behind months ago, pink and glowing, belching flashes of electrical charge at the fringes. Seth turned away from its menacing beauty.

  The New Horizon rose over the wound in the Empyrean like a deformed moon. Pieces of debris came into relief against the gray hull. Jagged bits of metal, pieces of furniture, plant matter, even a tractor—all fell away behind the ship with awesome speed. He turned toward the prow of the Empyrean to get ahead of the debris and gunned his thrusters.

  As he circled, he saw objects in the distance hovering over the Empyrean, strangely stationary. Seth used the telescope attachment in his helmet to get a better look: four New Horizon shuttles. The nearest shuttle’s cargo ramp was hanging open, and from inside came four OneMen, drifting out like fish.

  They were sending in rescue teams, Seth supposed. Or maybe they were looking for something that they wanted from the Empyrean cargo hold. He turned off his outer lights to make himself invisible, then scrolled through his radio frequencies until he heard voices.

  “God. The damage is…,” a man was saying. “Why would anyone do such a thing?”

  An image of Jake Pauley’s demented face appeared in Seth’s mind—the weird smile, the heavy bones of his browridge, his grimy teeth.

  “That’s what I’m saying. This is useless,” another man said. “I don’t know why she sent us out here.”

  To pick over our bones, Seth thought. He was so angry that he wanted to ram them, sever their air hoses, knock them spinning into space.

  “I think she’s losing her grip. Did you see the way Dr. Carver was looking at her during services?”

  “This is an open channel, boys,” a male voice warned.

  They were silent for a few moments.

  “There are still a few missing kids,” said a woman. By her tone, Seth guessed she didn’t much like her companions. “I’m glad to help look for them.”

  “In an explosion like that? It’s amazing all of them didn’t die,” said a third man.

  “I guess we have to look for them,” said the first man, “if they’re just kids.”

  “Noble of you,” the woman said, and the other men laughed.

  Once they were out of view, Seth started toward the New Horizon again, this time less hurried. He had time. The ship wouldn’t leave behind its search teams, after all.

  Seth kept his eyes on the hull of the Empyrean as he moved. As long as he was near the large ship he didn’t feel so exposed, but when the hull of the Empyrean rolled away and the starscape widened before him, he gasped.

  “Did you hear that?” a woman said in his ear.

  Stupid! He was so stupid! He’d forgotten to turn off his radio. He flipped the switch, just as someone else said, “Feedback from the other team.”

  His heart galloped and he trembled in his suit. He couldn’t make a mistake like that, not ever again.

  His problem was exhaustion. He’d just finished a grueling jour
ney through the dying Empyrean carrying Waverly on his back. Aside from his mangled hand, his brain was still sore from oxygen deprivation, and his thoughts were fuzzy. He needed to concentrate.

  He kicked the thrusters harder. The New Horizon was miles away; the sooner he closed the distance the better.

  Seth ran over the mental picture of the Empyrean schematics he’d spent his boyhood studying. There were small air locks for maintenance all over the ship—one of them had killed his mother, along with Waverly’s father, in what had been called an accident. The New Horizon was practically a replica of Seth’s home ship, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find an air lock in a seldom-traveled area.

  He decided to try the storage bays toward the lower levels. They were far from the habitation levels, so it was unlikely he’d be seen, but if he needed, there’d be plenty of places to hide.

  Closing the distance between the two ships took almost an hour, even pushing his thrusters at maximum capacity. He heard only the hollow sound of his breath inside his helmet, and if he strained, he could hear the blood coursing through the veins in his ears. He entered a kind of trance, distant from the pain in his hand so that he could concentrate on keeping his course true.

  When the air lock in the storage bay came into sight, an alarm light from the OneMan’s guidance system warned him that he was going too fast. He gunned the reverse thrusters to slow himself, grimacing against the unpleasant pressure of the inertial force. The metal hull reared up before him, and he hit hard.

  Frantic, he shot out his magnetic arm to keep from bouncing away from the ship and clung to the controls, panting and shaking, waiting for his heart to stop racing. His entire body was trembling, though he felt paralyzed.

  “Last space walk ever,” he promised himself.

  He checked his air: only ten minutes left. He shouldn’t have turned up his oxygen after all. Another stupid mistake!

  He looked around for surveillance cameras on the outside of the ship, for surely he was in view of at least one of them. He found one about thirty yards away, but it was turned slightly away from him. There was a chance that he’d been observed on his approach, so he should hurry.

  Seth engaged the outer air-lock control and the door popped open. He guided his craft inside, and as soon as the air lock filled with air, took off his helmet. The inner door opened, and he drifted inside and set the OneMan down on the floor of the storage bay. He was surrounded by huge storage containers stacked to the ceiling—rows and rows of them, full of equipment and supplies for colonizing New Earth. The planned arrival on the planet was so many decades away, Seth doubted he’d live long enough to see it.

  He’d released most of the clamps sealing the suit along his chest when he heard voices.

  “Hey!” someone yelled. Four men ran toward him, carrying guns. They were about three hundred yards away, closing fast.

  Seth pulled at the last remaining clamp on his suit and, ignoring the pain in his hand, catapulted himself out of the lower portion of the OneMan and started running.

  He was winded almost immediately, but he wove between the room-size shipping containers, listening for footsteps and voices, which sounded close at first but soon faded away. Despite his physical exhaustion he had the advantage of youth and natural speed. Seth slipped through the door to the starboard outer stairwell and ran up several flights until he found the rain forest level. He dove into the velvety humid air. It was warm here, and it smelled beautiful. He sprinted down the path until he found a patch of large ferns growing under a teak tree and collapsed into them. He sprawled, listening, panting, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his left hand. No one came. He was safe for now. But only for now.

  RETURN

  Waverly tried to focus on the familiarity of the pilot’s seat in the shuttle she flew, the comfort of the joystick in her hands, knowing this was likely to be the last time she’d ever fly a shuttle. If she kept her eyes on the control lights, she could pretend she would be coming back home soon. But then her gaze would drift to the rear vid screen, and she’d see the long, cluttered trail of vapor gushing from the Empyrean, and reality would come crashing back. No. It was over. The ship couldn’t be losing air like that and still survive. Her home was dead.

  There was only one place to go now: into her enemy’s control on the New Horizon.

  With one glance at Sarah in the copilot’s seat—her blank stare and the pallor underneath her freckles—Waverly knew her friend had gone into a kind of numb shock. Just like me, Waverly thought. The loss of the Empyrean was so devastating that she couldn’t take it in all at once. No more orchards, no more granaries, no more hallways filled with familiar faces, no more home.

  She was enraged to see the New Horizon so pristine, not a mark on her, lurking up ahead. Beneath that metal skin waited Anne Mather and all her blind followers. If I have to live there, she thought, I’ll lose my mind. The New Horizon air-lock doors were tiny in the distance, but they grew inexorably larger, and then suddenly they were huge enough to fit her craft, and they opened for her shuttle.

  “You’re taking it too fast,” Sarah said.

  Waverly was going too fast. She knew she was. “You think I should slow down?” Waverly asked, her voice muffled in her own ears. If I ram them, she thought, I could decompress the shuttle bay just like they did to the Empyrean, when all this began.

  “Are you thinking about…?” Sarah’s jaw set with ugly menace, but the menace wasn’t for Waverly.

  Waverly didn’t answer.

  The com system crackled to life, and a tense woman’s voice said, “Empyrean shuttle, slow your approach.”

  But Waverly didn’t slow down. How many kids were on board her shuttle? Five? Ten? Probably every one of them would love to put a hole in the New Horizon, even if it meant dying.

  “The shuttle bay is full of young children,” the woman’s voice warned.

  The shuttle joystick waited between Waverly’s knees. To slow down, all she needed to do was pull back on it. It waited there, but she didn’t reach for it.

  “Waverly,” Sarah said. Waverly glanced at her friend and saw tears streaming down her face. “I’d do it if it was just us, you know I would, but…”

  “I know,” Waverly whispered, and she pulled back on the joystick. Both girls were pressed forward against their safety harnesses as the shuttle slowed for landing.

  When the inner air-lock doors opened for them, Waverly eased the shuttle onto the deck of the New Horizon. The landing gear connected with the metal floor, and a metallic snap reverberated through the shuttle bay. Someday Waverly might stand on a planet with nothing but sky overhead, no metal walls and ceilings trapping her with these people she hated. Forty-two years before we get there, she thought. I’ll never make it. Through the blast shield she saw Anne Mather crossing the huge bay, an armed escort trailing in two neat lines behind her. She frowned at Waverly as they drew near and crossed her arms to wait for the shuttle to empty out.

  “There are no kids here,” Sarah said, fatalistic and flat. “They lied.”

  “I can’t do this,” Waverly said. She felt sticky with sweat and exhausted. She’d spent the last two hours trudging through the Empyrean as the ship died, enduring oxygen deprivation to rescue Seth until she’d collapsed completely. He’d saved her life, carrying her up endless flights of stairs to safety, and then he hadn’t even come with her on the shuttle! He’d abandoned her to face Anne Mather alone.

  “We have to leave sometime,” muttered Sarah from the copilot’s seat.

  “Will they take more eggs from us?” Waverly whispered.

  “No,” Sarah said, her upper lip rigid.

  The girls jumped in their seats when they heard the shuttle’s exit ramp extend onto the floor of the New Horizon. Waverly looked through a side porthole and saw her passengers trickling out of the shuttle, walking with jerking steps toward Mather and her sentries—the last of the kids to be evacuated off the Empyrean, looking dazed and traumatized.

&nbs
p; “Should we go?” Sarah asked Waverly. “Instead of making her come get us?”

  “Probably.” Waverly disliked the flaccid tone of her voice. She looked out the blast shield to find Mather watching her. “You go ahead,” Waverly said miserably, turning away from Mather to stare at her own cold hands.

  Sarah stood, her face set with stony courage, and left the cockpit.

  Waverly couldn’t make her legs move. She watched as Sarah, with her boyfriend, Randy, walked bravely out of the shuttle and across the gray metal floor, hands held over their heads. Two of Mather’s men patted them down for weapons, then led them away.

  Waverly took hold of the pilot’s joystick with both hands and imagined escaping into the void of space where she would choose a direction, punch the engines, and just go. She’d be alone, and safe, and no one could come after her. It would take her awhile to die, but if it got to be too much, she could just blow out an air lock and it would be over.

  If she wanted to do that, she should have thought of it sooner. And she didn’t want to do it. Not really. Not if there was a chance her mom was still alive.

  “Get up,” she told herself. “Go out there. Go find Mom.”

  But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Acid rose to the back of her throat and she swallowed. Her saliva tasted corrosive.

  She saw movement from the corner of her eye and looked out. Anne Mather had broken away from the group of guards. One of them started to follow, but she held a hand in his face and he stepped back into formation. He was vaguely familiar to Waverly from her time on the New Horizon, always in the background, behind Anne Mather, or off to the side. He was tall, with a bulbous, crooked nose, thinning gray-white hair, and the kind of heavy jaw that looked like it had been chunked out of a boulder. When he glanced up at Waverly, she looked away.

  She heard the scuff of footsteps on the floor behind her, but she didn’t turn around. She knew who it was. “No one is going to harm you, Waverly.”