Starbreak Read online

  “Where’s Mar Schneider?” I asked, turning back. Rebbe Davison still stood in the mouth of the shuttle, one boot up against the broken steel. His mouth fell open. He glanced behind him to the capsule, torn open behind us like a throat. That’s when I heard it—the girl let out a cry.

  “Zayde!” she said.

  I don’t know why, but my legs snapped to action, as if they were under the command of someone else. I scrambled past Rebbe Davison, ducking inside the shuttle. I peered left, toward the cockpit, where the window glass had shattered into a thousand glinting shards. And I turned right, where the storage container had fallen open, exploding its contents across the snow-slick floor. Then I saw it, the shock of red that seeped out beneath a curved overhang of metal. I shouldn’t have, but I knelt down and looked.

  He was still strapped to his seat, his limbs dangling down. I saw hair. Silver wisps of hair. Then the white skull beneath them. And something else. His insides.

  I’d seen bodies before—too many bodies. Momma’s, waxy and still in her hospital bed. Abba’s, dangling from the bedroom rafters. Benjamin Jacobi, and Captain Wolff, too. But even when I’d seen blood spill out from open throats, those deaths had been quick ones, and relatively clean. Not this. I turned and was sick in the corner. I puked until there was nothing left, until my stomach was just an empty hole.

  When I was finished, I pulled myself out of the shuttle again. The light struck me dizzy after all those years spent in the dark of the dome. I collapsed in the snow beside Laurel and the girl. The child cried and cried, her face slick with tears. At first I was frozen, stunned. I’d made it to the planet, thoughtlessly pursuing my dreams, and now, because of me, an old man had died.

  I looked down at the girl. She was narrow-shouldered. Young. Younger than I’d been when Momma died.

  “Esther, are you okay?” I asked, at last pulling her name from my memory. Her eyes still fixed forward, she wiped her nose on the back of her flight suit sleeve.

  “Ettie,” she said finally. Then she honked out a cry.

  “Ettie,” I said, and then added, in case she’d forgotten: “I’m Terra. And I’ll keep you safe.”

  I didn’t even consider the meaning of my words before I spoke. I’d never kept anyone safe before. I’d always been a loner—messy Terra Fineberg, looking out for herself and no one else. But I wanted to believe that it was possible. This girl, her hair all a tangle, was alone in this strange world—helpless.

  But maybe not anymore. She drew in a shuddering breath. I drew her to me, and she tucked her face in against my shoulder, letting me hold her as if we were more than strangers.

  • • •

  I’m not sure how long we sat there in the snow, the winter sun bright and small overhead. Without the clock bells to toll the hour, it was impossible to tell. Might have been twenty minutes—might have been two hours. We hunkered down in silence, shivering. I guess we were all shocked from the crash. I know I couldn’t make words move past my mouth.

  At last Deklan pulled himself to his feet. He stared down the mountain. Between a pair of boulders was a deep cleft, wide enough for a man to pass.

  “Helllooooooo!” he called. His voice came echoing back a dozen times, folded over itself. When at last it died, he turned to us. “Nobody’s home.”

  “It’s a big planet,” Rebbe Davison said.

  It was. Stretching thousands of kilometers out in all directions. This wasn’t the ship, where there was no place to go, and anywhere you went was safe. This was Zehava, the wider world. The air was cool and biting, and there were no warm quarters waiting for us. I finally let go of Ettie’s hand and stumbled to my feet.

  “We need a plan,” I said. “For the night at least. Otherwise we’ll freeze. I know I didn’t come all the way to this planet just to—” I broke off, thinking of the body smashed inside the shuttle, and how it had once been a man.

  “There are supplies,” Laurel said, not noticing how I tripped over my words. “We’ve been stocking up the shuttles for months. Shelf-stable food. Water. A tent, and sleeping sacks.” She paused, as if she were afraid to go on.

  “What else, Laurel?” Rebbe Davison prodded, in his placid teacher voice, the one that somehow always convinced one kid to snitch on another back when we were young. Laurel took a breath.

  “Weapons,” she said. “And firestarter.”

  “Fire?” Jachin asked. We all grew quiet again, thinking about it. On the ship open flames were forbidden. Our stoves were electric; our heaters electric too. Once a year a marshal came to make sure not a single spark would escape. We were taught from a very young age that fire was dangerous—that even the smallest flame could sear through the dome, eating all our trees, our crops, disrupting the delicate balance of breathable air. But we weren’t in the dome anymore. We were on Zehava, and the afternoon was cold, and bound to grow only colder.

  We started toward the shuttle.

  • • •

  We were lucky. Though we’d lost a dozen or so packets of dry fruit and a few sleeping rolls down the mountainside, we were able to scrounge enough to make a small hill from our provisions. Rebbe Davison asked Ettie to count them, and she seemed glad for the distraction. Sniffling, she reported that there was one tent, nine sleep sacks, forty-seven dehydrated meals wrapped up in crinkly cellophane, eight rucksacks, three lighters, a canteen of fresh water for each of us, four mess kits, twelve sonic rifles, a small ax, nineteen packs of firestarter, and a dozen helmets.

  “We should have been wearing those when we crashed,” Laurel said, staring down at the pile. “I can’t believe I forgot. What if the air here is toxic?”

  I thought of the video I’d seen in the command center. My sister-in-law, Hannah, had worn no helmet. She had a trail of blood down her face, but she breathed. I drew my own breath deep into my lungs.

  “The air seems fine to me,” I said. But Laurel only shook her head.

  “There could be biological hazards. Diseases. And if we’d been wearing them—” She glanced back toward the shuttle, to the corner of smashed metal that we’d all avoided looking at. Deklan set his hand on her shoulder.

  “It’s too late for that now,” he said softly. She collapsed into his arms. She didn’t cry, only let him rock her silently. She was lucky that she had him—strong arms, a soft shoulder. I thought about my boy, how he’d snatched his slender fingers away from mine at the slightest touch. Looking at Deklan and Laurel, I felt more alone than I ever had before.

  Soon Rebbe Davison and Ettie surfaced from under the distant clump of trees. Each one held a pile of black sticks in their arms.

  “I was going to chop down a tree,” Rebbe Davison said. “Like it says in the survival manuals in the library. But—” He hesitated, looking out at the silhouette of branches that shivered against the sky. When Ettie piped up, her own voice was awed despite the tears drying on her face.

  “They moved! The trees moved! Like they could see us! Like they were people!”

  We all stared at her. I suppose the others didn’t believe it, that trees could move of their own volition. Of course, on Earth the plants turned their faces toward the sun, unfurling blossoms in the early morning light. But that was different—automatic, instinctual. And slow, slow, slow.

  But I’d known for months that plants could caress you, could wrap their arms around you like you, too, were made from cellulose and wood pulp.

  “There are plants on Earth,” I offered when they turned to me with questioning eyes, “that move in response to stimuli. Carnivorous, mostly. Pitcher plants and flytraps—”

  “Carnivorous?” Deklan asked, angling up his jaw. I hesitated. It was Jachin who answered for me.

  “Flesh eating.”

  Deklan’s eyes went wide. The corners of his mouth lifted, but I don’t think he found it funny. Alarming, maybe. He wore his smile like a shield. He took the bundle of sticks from Ettie’s arms.

  “We’ll make do,” he said. He arranged them on the ground. I saw him glanc
e back toward the fist of trees in the distance. The black clump waved at us like fingers thrust up through the crust of ice. Deklan shivered, but we all ignored it as we knelt by his side and helped him make a fire.

  • • •

  The flames that leaped out of the lighters were small, only tiny nubbins of orange light. But the firestarter caught the flames easily and spread them through the black twigs and sticks. First they smoldered, smoke rising, thick on the air. But soon the fire grew hypnotic, orange and dancing, blue at the base and then fading to white as it flickered into the open air. We gathered around it, warming our faces. At first Ettie hung back.

  “It’s dangerous,” she said, and then she looked pointedly at Rebbe Davison. “We learned that in school.”

  I held out my hand to her.

  “It’s okay,” I told her gently. “It will keep you warm. You want to be warm, right?”

  She hung back a moment longer, chewing on her lip. Then, in a burst of energy, she plunged herself over the drifts and came to kneel beside me in the snow.

  Rebbe Davison got us food. We boiled the packets of dried meat and dehydrated vegetables over the fire with a few splashes of our water.

  “The water won’t last us long,” he said. “We’ll have to boil snow soon and hope . . .” He trailed off. Deklan was hard-eyed. He held one of the sonic rifles over his knees. He hadn’t let it go since we’d found them. Projectile weapons weren’t allowed on the ship—too risky, even for the captain’s guard. I guess it made him feel extra safe.

  “Hope what?” he demanded. Rebbe Davison let out a small, desperate laugh.

  “Hope there’s nothing in their water that will kill us.”

  We were all quiet for a long time as we watched the water burble, as the fire beneath it burned. Rebbe Davison still held the pot out over the fire, but he used his free hand to veil his face.

  “I can’t believe I did this,” he said at last. “I never drink. But I was drunk when I ran for the shuttle bay.”

  Beside him Jachin let out a snort.

  “Me too.”

  Then Deklan and Laurel gazed at each other. In the firelight I saw her cheeks darken. He wore a wicked grin. “So were we.”

  Then suddenly, strangely, we were all laughing—desperate, hysterical laughter, like it was the best joke that had ever been told. All of us except Ettie, of course. She frowned deeply, staring at the grown-ups like every single one of us had two heads each.

  “What’s so funny?” she said, with the sort of righteous indignation that only someone under the age of ten can muster. “I don’t get it!”

  But no one answered her. We only breathed in deep gulps of frigid air, our laughter echoing against the mountainside.

  • • •

  I don’t think our meager meal filled any of our bellies, but we didn’t complain. There was no telling how far we’d have to stretch our rations, how long we’d have to make them last. We were used to following the leader—the Council, Captain Wolff, even Aleksandra. But we had no leader, no plan. It would have been worrying if the weight of sleep hadn’t been pulling at us so heavily. The sun was barely three quarters of the way across the sky, and already we were yawning, sniffling, and blinking the sleep away.

  “I can’t believe I’m so tired,” Deklan said. With the rifle still nestled against his belly, he pressed his face to his knees. “It can’t be any later than—what? Twenty-three o’clock?”

  “We don’t have our pills.” I thought of the little packet of pills we all ate each night, and of something Koen Maxwell had told me once. How years ago, just for kicks, just to see what it would do, he’d started palming them.

  No matter what the light looked like in the dome, it was like the day inside me was getting shorter and shorter.

  Jachin let out a small grunt of agreement. He lifted himself to his feet and went to fetch our tent. Laurel scrambled to help him pound in the stakes.

  “Melatonin,” he said as he worked to unfurl the canvas walls. “And somnescence. We’re not built for Zehava’s days. It’s only the pills that keep our internal clocks synced to hers.”

  “Abba always thought—” I started, then stopped. It felt weird to talk about my father now, as I sat amid a coterie of rebels. Like I hadn’t quite shed the skin of our former lives. But I guessed it didn’t matter. He was a clock keeper once, after all. It had been his job. “My father had this theory that, given enough time exposed to the natural rotation of Zehava around its sun, we’d adapt. Our circadian rhythms would shift. But it was only a theory. No way to test it on the ship.”

  “Guess we’ll have our chance now,” Deklan Levitt said. He pulled himself upright and snatched up one of the sleeping rolls. Then he ducked inside the tent. We all craned our necks after him, staring into the dim interior. It was inviting, dry and warm. After only a moment’s hesitation we followed him inside.

  4

  The rest of them all stripped out of their flight suits, exposing the sweat-soaked clothing beneath. But I didn’t—couldn’t. I wore only my underwear under the synthetic fabric. It wasn’t until I was tucked inside my sleep sack that I felt okay undoing the long zipper at the front of my suit. It was strange to feel the soft fabric of the sleep sack against my bare skin. The blankets on the ship were all wool and rough-hewn linen, but these ancient synthetics had been saved by our ancestors just for landing. I pulled my suit out of the sack and left it splayed out like a second skin beside me, then snuggled down inside the covers.

  Sleep came instantly. At first I was buried in the firm hold of the forest—vines lacing their way through my hair, branches looping my ankles. It was warm, safe. But wrong. I pulled forward, parting the brambles. He was waiting for me, as he always was. I guess he couldn’t stay away.

  I’m here now, I said. On your planet. I’m here. I came for you.

  His back was to me, a wide violet plane that dipped gently in the middle. His shoulders were lit by the setting sun. When he glanced back at me, his eyes caught the light above. For once they didn’t look flat, impenetrable. Instead they sparked and danced. Like fire—like a pair of living flames.

  I can’t— he said. I don’t—

  Even in my dreams I was exasperated. I threw my hands up into the air.

  If you don’t help me, we could die! I came all this way just for this place, just for you, and now that I’m here, you tell me you “can’t”?

  I was angry, my fingers cutting through the air, my jaw clenched so hard, I thought my molars might crumble in my mouth. But underneath that heat was fear, raw and real. At long last he took my frantic hands in his.

  But he didn’t put them on his body, like he normally would have. Nor did he press them to his wet, sweet mouth. Instead he shoved my fingers upward, toward the evening sky above. I followed the line of our intertwined fingers to the green-streaked sky.

  The full dark of night hadn’t come on yet. The sun was a white circle in the west. All the trees unfurled their blossoms, exposing their lewd insides to its light.

  Xarki, he said, pointing fiercely. Xarki.

  The sounds curled my tongue in new ways. Xarki. Xarki. Epsilon Eridani. Their sun. Then he moved my hand in a wide arch across the firmament, stopping at each of the three moons above. He named them.

  Akku. Zella. Aire.

  I glanced up. One moon was a perfect crescent; another barely a sliver high overhead. The third was full and perfect, a rose-gold circle marked by distant mountains and empty ocean beds.

  Why are you telling me this? I asked. His chest was close to mine. I could smell him, fragrant, like overripe peaches and something else, something foreign, strange. He didn’t answer, only pointed upward to the stars that barely twinkled to life in the evening sky.

  These nine stars. The hunter in his carriage. Look for the head of his harp. It is fixed in all seasons—in autumn, in spring. And in the deep, deep cold of winter. He always stands upright as he makes his music. You will stand upright too. And then turn around. Walk away fr
om the hunter. Stay on the rocky pathway. Avoid the forests.

  The vines tangled around us, caressing our ankles, our calves. They didn’t seem dangerous.

  Why? I asked.

  His eyes went dark, half-shaded. He let out one simple word: Beasts.

  There was a shudder in the distance, like the rattle of an ancient engine, but louder, rawer. He gave his head a fearful shake and went on. From there the path to Raza Ait lies between the shadows of Akku and Aire.

  Raza Ait?

  He still held my hand up in the sky, cradled against the palm of his hand; his chest was pressed to mine. When I looked at him, I saw a fierce hunger. I felt the burn of his skin against my skin—blue, so blue, against my own pale white belly.

  The city of copper. He paused, licking his lips with his bright purple tongue. The city where I die.

  • • •

  I gasped myself awake. My heart thudded so hard that at first I was afraid that the others might hear. But then, with a relieved breath of air, I realized that I was alone. Shaking—as much from the dream as the shock of the cold against my naked limbs—I rose and put on my flight suit. I could smell the ripe, rank smell of my body, but ignored it. On the ship our ancestors had been able to maintain the fiction that our society was polite, orderly. But here in the wilderness we could no longer deny the truth. We were savages.

  I stumbled out of the tent, zipping it tight behind me. The others had gathered around the smoldering coals. Rebbe Davison had one arm thrown over Ettie’s shoulders. He was singing “Tsen Briders” to her—that counting song about the brothers who all die off, one by one. I’d always thought it was a ghastly song, even when we all sang it together in school. Ettie didn’t seem to like it either. She squirmed beside him.

  I trampled over the hard-packed snow. We were still deep in night, even if our bodies didn’t know it yet. The only sign of the sun—Xarki? I asked myself—was in the delicate blue wash at the eastern edge of the sky. Soon, in a few hours maybe, dawn would come. But for now it was all wild, unbridled night.