Starbreak Read online

  “Like what?” Rebbe Davison pressed. I shook my head. It seemed too absurd to contemplate. But then my eyes caught the craft’s pilot as he curved his body back, reaching for a hunk of meat from the cabin. It bent too far, wrong. Like there weren’t any bones inside.

  “Like plants,” I said faintly. “Like plants.”

  Chuckles arose from the others, weak laughter. Even Laurel, in her tears, cracked a dim smile. Not Ettie, though. She set her little fists on her hips, jutting out her lower lip.

  “It’s not funny!” she said, then spared a proud glance to me. I gave her a grateful nod.

  But inside I was cringing. Plants? The idea wasn’t even miraculous. It was absurd.

  • • •

  Soon plains melted away into marshy bogs crowded by ice floes. At first the craft’s shadow was the only thing that could be seen moving across the gray, dappled ground. But then hulking shapes joined it. Beasts—hundreds of them—moving in a herd through the swamp. They kept their young at the center of the pack, but even they were as a big as a shuttle craft. Beneath their massive feet they left a stretch of flattened mud wherever they went.

  “Megafauna,” Jachin said, gazing over the craft’s edge. “Destructive, at that. Their caloric needs would be huge, as would their methane output. It might explain the lack of genetic diversity.”

  I looked at our captors, packed into the front of the craft with their rotting spoils. The driver was moving his spindly fingers over a console built into the craft’s dash. This time they didn’t park the vehicle or disembark to hunt. They only noted the presence of the herd, recorded it, then sped rapidly through the sky.

  “They’re not the top of the food chain, though,” Rebbe Davison said. Jachin nodded in agreement. Then his expression shifted, darkening.

  “HaShem help us,” Jachin said. “Imagine if we’d continued east. What if we’d encountered a herd? We’d be mincemeat.”

  No one said anything. The sound of the motor was high and whistling. At last I forced a smile—but a jangly one, full of nerves.

  “It’s funny you’re religious,” I said. “Mara always told me that religion and science were incompatible.”

  Jachin frowned at the notion.

  “My parents gave me my faith,” he said. “When the Council assigned me my vocation, I worried it meant I would have to abandon those beliefs. But the more I learned about evolution, the more it became clear to me. How would such a complex system develop without the help of God’s hand? Sometimes I think that we wonder about the afterlife, about a higher power, because it helps us endure. No other Terran animal has such an awareness of his own mortality. And none has been as resilient as us either.”

  “But we haven’t had God on the ship,” Rebbe Davison said. I could tell from his expression that this was an old argument, one they’d rehashed many times before. “And we’ve gotten along fine.”

  “We’ve lived,” Jachin replied. “But have we thrived?”

  Had I? I stared down at my hands. There was blood caked under the nails. The truth was, I’d never worried before about living well. I’d been too busy just barely surviving.

  “Hey,” Ettie shouted, drawing me out of myself as she pointed out toward the horizon. “What’s that?”

  We all turned, staring out past the craft’s copper walls. The swamps had faded, and the beasts with them. In their place was a sprawling complex of white stone and green copper, hundreds of kilometers across. It spiraled out from the crowded center like a web growing wider and wider as it had expanded. Like our ship, the main hub was capped by bubbled glass. But this glass was ancient, fractured by a thousand tiny cracks. Brassy metal and sandstone structures towered up inside it, each one trying to touch the ceiling overhead. And a blood-colored jungle seemed to glow inside the city’s walls.

  Raza Ait. I had named it in my mind without even realizing it. It was the first city we’d ever seen, many times the length of our ship and far more surprising. We watched it grow longer beneath us as the metal capsule came in close.

  I spoke softly, speaking aloud without thinking. “The copper city.”

  But the sight of it didn’t fill me with relief. Because in my head all I could hear was the echo of the boy’s voice, pitiful and lonely; all I could see was the wounded look in his eyes as he’d drawn his hands away. The city where I die, he’d said. I found myself crossing my fingers in my lap, hoping against hope that it wouldn’t be true.

  Hoping that my boy was a survivor too.

  • • •

  The city was gated with bars of towering copper filigree, dozens of meters high. Through the gaps we could see the shadows of buildings, though we couldn’t touch them, not yet. Especially not after the hunters tied our hands in front of us with lengths of synthetic rope.

  At the gates we were met by a retinue of aliens. Their clothes were finer than the others, though they, too, carried long metallic prods at their sides. As the gates swung open, groaning on hinges gone green, the aliens examined us with black, lively eyes. In whistling tones they conversed with one another. Then they lifted our arms, smelled our hair, bared their teeth. I watched as Aleksandra pulled away from one of them, growling, as though their touch seared her skin. But I stayed as still and calm as I could. For one thing I didn’t want to scare Ettie, who stood just a small way up ahead, her bound hands twisting in their shackle. For another, I thought if I watched carefully, then perhaps I’d see my boy—if not among our fur-faced escorts, then definitely among the city’s wider inhabitants.

  The atmosphere inside the city walls was different. It was as warm and fragrant as summer here, the air as sweet as fruit left to rot on the Asherah’s damp ground. On the ship such a smell would have only attracted houseflies. Here there were no insects. But there were people. Thousands of them. They loitered by the mouths of buildings and underneath the thick canopy of the interior forest. It seemed that they’d gathered for our arrival, and they craned their necks as we passed among them. Many of them were furred, small in stature. They seemed bold—dashing down the thoroughfares to catch a glimpse, grabbing for us as we walked by.

  But they weren’t alone. There were other creatures, smooth-skinned, their bodies shining like rubies in the afternoon sunlight. They wore gowns stitched from bolts of smooth, metallic fabric, but even from beneath the lengths of cloth, I could smell them, summer-sweet as they perspired. They kept to the edges of the streets, and though their gazes were no less curious, they seemed somehow afraid of us. Most clutched the nearby hands of their companions—long, three-fingered hands—and, owlishly, watched.

  They stood three or four heads taller than the aliens who guided us through the streets; one or two heads taller than any of us. And as we passed, they twisted their spines, gazing down curiously. Their bodies coiled and crept like vines. It reminded me of something.

  It reminded me of the boy.

  He was here, he had to be. I whipped my head about, searching. But if he was tucked somewhere among all these bright, shining people, then I didn’t find him. Only teeth and eyes and fingers greeted me, probing, cold. I stumbled at the sight, but then one of the creatures pressed his weapon against my spine, pushing me forward. I walked on.

  Up ahead Ettie cried. I heard Rebbe Davison trying to comfort her, repeating over and over again that everything would be all right soon. But I didn’t feel so certain. It was so crowded here—in the pavilion up ahead were hundreds of aliens, lazing beneath the dripping vines. And they all watched us, their toothy mouths open, murmuring “Hyuuu-man, hyuu-man” as we passed. No wonder Ettie was upset.

  “I’m scared! I’m scared!” she panted, and her progress stopped dead. She wouldn’t go any farther. The others from the Asherah turned back to look at her, but pressed by prods and alien hands, they all walked on. I felt my heart squeeze hard in my chest. Rushing ahead, I crouched down so that our gazes met. Her eyes were the color of mahogany, flecked with amber bits. And they were full of tears.

  “Ettie,” I
said, my voice serious. I didn’t want to lie to her. That’s what the grown-ups had always done to me, telling me that my mother would be fine, that my family would be fine. They’d said that we just had to keep our chins up and live on and everything would be okay. But I’d been smart enough to hear their lies even then—even though people thought I was nothing more than a stupid little girl. Ettie was smarter than that now. “It’s scary, isn’t it? This place. So much bigger than the Asherah.”

  She reached her small, dirty hands up, cradling them over mine as she gave her head a fierce nod. “I don’t like the way they look at me,” she said, and let out another hiccup of tears.

  “No,” I said. Behind me a creature pressed his prod to my back. His mouth was open wide. There were probably four dozen teeth in there as, sharp as needles, all lined up in front of his bright purple tongue. “I don’t either.”

  “Ettie!”

  It was Aleksandra. Her hair was coming undone, stubborn black hairs worming out of the braid. She seemed to have lost all of her patience, all of her poise. Just another difference between her and her mother, I guess. Captain Wolff could keep up appearances, but Aleksandra’s emotions were much closer to the surface of her pretty white face.

  Ettie turned, staring fearfully at Aleksandra.

  “What?”

  “Pull yourself together. You’re not a baby.”

  Her words might as well have been a slap, for the way that Ettie winced at them. In the distance I saw Rebbe Davison give his head a dismayed shake. My own brow furrowed. But Ettie didn’t see that through her sheen of tears. She wiped her eyes against her shoulder. Her chin trembled. But soon it stilled.

  “I’m sorry, Giveret Wolff,” she nearly whispered. She trudged forward, her hair a black net over her eyes.

  I gaped at Aleksandra. The edge of her lip ticked up at me.

  “It’s up to me to see that our people stay strong. Even the young ones.”

  But when I looked at Ettie, I wasn’t certain that Aleksandra’s words had helped one bit. Her small shoulders were hunched; her head hung down as if she couldn’t bear to face the city that surrounded us. And what about the people Aleksandra had left behind—hundreds of them, packed like sardines into the tin can of our ship? How was she helping them?

  But then I felt something cold against my back. A weapon’s blunted end. I glanced behind me. There was an alien, snarling, showing every single tooth.

  “I’m going! I’m going!” I said, and continued the long march into the heart of the city.

  • • •

  The dome overhead seemed to amplify the sunlight; it burned strong enough that soon my body swam with sweat inside my flight suit. The others didn’t look much better off: Aleksandra’s hair was pasted to her neck. Perspiration rolled down Jachin’s face in a steady stream. Though Rebbe Davison’s hands were bound, every few minutes he still managed to wipe his palms against his flight suit trousers. And Laurel?

  Well, I couldn’t blame the heat for her condition. She sniffled hard again and again, trying to suck back the tears. But it didn’t do any good. By the time we reached the western edge of the city, where the ground dipped into an overshadowed park, she’d slicked the entire front of her flight suit. But she didn’t seem to care, and if she did, I’m not sure she could have stopped anyway—no matter what Aleksandra said.

  The aliens led us through the jostling crowds, past towering buildings that stretched like arms overhead, and through groves crowded with fragrant fruit trees. Finally we reached a fenced area, where copper links were interlaced with sheets of synthetic fabric. It was a tent, an enormous tent, with a hole at the center of the roof and smoke streaming out. An alien stood guard at the gate; he nodded to our captors.

  “Xadse zhosoui, xadse zalum zhieselekh,” their leader said, and gave Aleksandra Wolff’s binding ties a fervent shake. Her eyes were wide, inflamed at the violence of his touch. But the guard only appraised us carefully.

  “Ezli aum aze zasum,” he replied. Then he entered something into a keypad at the door and stepped aside to let us pass.

  They didn’t come with us. They just pushed us inside and left. Metal against metal rang out like a bell.

  We struggled to right ourselves. Lifting myself from the dusty ground, I appraised the situation. Under a white canopy yellow light danced and flickered. Meager lean-tos had been constructed, all around the same central point—a fire circle, not unlike the one we’d built at our own camp only days before. But this one had weeks’ worth of ash ringing the stones.

  It smelled different here from how it did out in the city. There the atmosphere smelled saccharine-sweet, filled with pollen and the promise of summer to come. Here the air was as pungent as vinegar, as feral as animal musk. This smell wasn’t alien, not at all. It was the unmistakable smell of human body odor. I held my arm up to my mouth, hoping to block the scent.

  The old shuttle crew crawled out of their tents on their hands and knees, scrambling to their feet to greet us. They seemed perplexed—as if they’d thought they might live and die in this city without ever seeing another human face. They were haggard, their faces gaunt, their hair frizzed back in thick ponytails that had begun to turn to dreadlocks. Some of them still wore flight suits, stained beneath the armpits, the once-white fabric gone murky and brown. The others were dressed in the worn, holey cotton they’d donned the day they’d left the ship. They drew close, removing the bindings from our hands.

  I took in the gathered travelers. They were all there, all nine of them. And though I almost didn’t recognize her at first, soon my gaze caught sight of a familiar face. Dirty, her black curls lank and dust-grayed against her shoulders. But unmistakable. Hannah. My sister-in-law.

  “Terra?” she shouted, laughing. She pushed past the others to reach me, then buried me within a bear hug. I staggered back, but soon was lost within her arms. It didn’t matter to me how bad she smelled, or how dirty her clothes were, or, how much she’d missed of what had transpired on the ship—the dingy council rank cord was still sewn to the shoulder of her uniform. It mattered that she was familiar, that she was safe. Living and breathing right next to me, her heart beating beside mine.

  I heard Aleksandra let out a snort, as though the sight of our embrace disgusted her, or worse. But by then the others had drifted away—gone to embrace the shuttle crew, the fellows who we’d thought we’d lost. This time Aleksandra was left standing alone, her curled lip her only companion.

  9

  Hannah held me at arm’s length, appraising my condition. I examined her as well. There was a scar on her forehead, where blood, caked with hair, had been allowed to congeal. But she was alive and otherwise whole—in better condition than the other flight crew members. One had an arm in a cast, the skin all swollen and yellow beneath the bandages, the fingers uselessly limp. Another was missing the entire front row of his teeth. But that was old news to her; Hannah was used to their injuries. She brushed my hair aside, gave a sniffling smile, and said, “Terra, what happened to you?”

  I grinned through my shock and exhaustion. “We crashed in the wilderness. Out in the mountains up north.”

  She glanced back over her shoulder to Aleksandra. “The Council let you go? Didn’t they get our message? We can’t settle here.”

  I gazed back too. Aleksandra shifted, smirking.

  “The Council doesn’t rule us anymore,” she declared proudly. At her word, the rest of the flight crew turned to stare. She touched two fingers to her heart. “My mother, may her spirit rest, was murdered. I rule the ship now, with the Children of Abel at my side.”

  Murmurs of dismay and confusion rose up from the crew. Hannah took me by either shoulder, her expression frantic. I’d forgotten, in my relief at seeing her, who she really was. Daughter of two Council members. Gold thread was knotted through that rank cord.

  “My parents,” Hannah said, her words coming out in a rush, “are they okay? And Ronen? Alyana?” Her voice choked on the name of her daughter, the
peanut of a baby girl she’d left behind.

  “I—” I said, then hesitated. I’d left Ronen in the ship’s bow with the other Council members. I’d run away from them, fleeing toward the dome. At the time I’d thought I could help. Save Captain Wolff, maybe, from her daughter’s hands. But what had I forgotten in my hurry? People—people I loved—that I’d left behind. I hung my head. But not Aleksandra. She simply gripped the radio in hand and spoke right over the others.

  “My men and women report that the Council-loyal have holed themselves up in the ship’s bow where the life support systems are housed,” she said. “They’re following that brat Silvan Rafferty. He’s yet to make his move, but we have reason to believe that he’s planning retaliatory attacks against those who have refused to join him.”

  She paused. Her tone went icy. “Of course, if that happens, my men will have no choice but to neutralize any threats. Still eager to join your parents, Hannah? Be a good Council girl?”

  Hannah’s hands dropped down.

  “No,” she said quickly. “Of—of course not.”

  Aleksandra turned to the closest shuttle crew member, the man whose arm was all swollen and green.

  “Show me the perimeter,” she demanded. “We need to start planning our escape.”

  With his good hand he rubbed his ratty beard. “Yes, ma’am,” he said at last, and led Aleksandra toward the back of the camp. Hannah turned to me. She tucked her hand under my elbow, pulling me to the circle of charred logs and spent ash.

  “What’s happened up there?” she asked as she pulled me down to the hard ground beside her. I didn’t know what to say at first as the others began to gather around us. I turned pleading eyes to Rebbe Davison, but he only bowed his head.

  “Tell her,” he said.

  So I did. Not everything, of course. I didn’t tell her about the poison—didn’t mention that night in the Raffertys’ quarters, clouding that bottle with powdered foxglove. I didn’t yet tell her about the blood on my hands.