Glow (17 page)

Kieran tapped at Captain Jones’s personal com screen and scrolled down the diary entries. He racked his brain, trying to think of an occasion like this one when the crew faced such terrible losses. The only comparable time had been when that air lock accident had sent three people spinning into space—the accident that took Seth’s mother and Waverly’s father. Kieran found the speech Captain Jones had given then, but it didn’t measure up to what was happening. Nothing in the Captain’s diary did, either.

One folder in the personal files struck Kieran. It was marked “Sermons.” There might be something here.

He scanned the titles briefly and found one called “When All Hope Is Lost.” He opened the file and began to read. It was a short speech, but it was beautiful, and by the time he finished reading, Kieran felt better. He thought the other boys would feel better, too.

Kieran transferred the sermon to a portable screen that he hooked to his belt, and he drifted back out to the corridor, now empty. The last of the boys had spoken with the parents or had learned about what happened to them if they were counted among the dead. It was over.

The loudspeaker was tethered next to the door of the dormitory, and Kieran took hold of it. He didn’t know how to get the boys’ attention. Calling them over seemed wrong somehow. So he simply began to read:

“Sometimes in our lives we must face the great lack. The nothingness of loss rears up and we have no choice but to bear it. What else can we do? We look outside our empty portholes at the enormity of Creation, pinpoints of stars that seem eternal, and we feel so small, so alone. Insignificant. How could anything we do matter in such a cosmos?”

Kieran heard snickering from the corner of the room where Seth and his friends hovered, but he paid them no mind. Some of the boys were looking at him through their tears.

“We
do
matter. To believe that our lives are meaningful is the essence of faith. We are not as large, or as bright, or as eternal as the stars, but we carry humankind’s message of love across the galaxy. We are the first. We are the world makers. Our nourishment is hope. Like the tender reed shaking in the wind, we will reach up to a new sun.”

Kieran paused before the last paragraph and looked up. All the boys were looking at him now. Many of them were crying openly, sending tears to float in the air of the central bunker like snow, but they were quiet. Even Seth was silent as he watched Kieran take command of the room.

“Humankind will not recede into the darkness. The journey is long, the mission is difficult, some say impossible, but we will prevail. There will come a time when children gather around a fire and look at stars unknown to us. They will remember our sacrifices. And our names will fill their songs.”

None of the boys spoke, but the room felt less stifling. Kieran attached the loudspeaker to the hook by the door and drifted down to his bunk. He slid into the blankets, zipped them closed, and, hugging the portable screen to his chest, he finally closed his eyes.

But his mind went on working, seeing the bodies, the blood, the pain in their faces. And now the rest of the adults were dying in the engine room. Would he have to do this again? There had to be a way to get the crew out of there. He couldn’t just give up on them. He wouldn’t.

He couldn’t sleep now, not with so much to do. He got out of his cot and began to walk to the engine room in perfect gravity. The more he walked, the longer the dormitory seemed. He looked around him, and every boy in every cot was Seth Ardvale, looking at him with those accusing blue eyes.

He was dreaming. He was still in his cot. He tried to get up again, but his limbs were paralyzed.

He must sleep. His body had shut down. He would sleep for a few hours.

The words of the sermon,
our names will fill their songs,
ran through his mind, soothed him. Before he dropped off, he wished that he could thank whoever had written it.

What had been the name?

Oh yes.

Anne Mather.

DECOMPRESSION

Kieran woke after a few hours, not quite refreshed but better able to function now that he’d rested. The other boys in the dormitory lay on their cots, still asleep, but a few had already unhooked and hovered near the ceiling. Now that the boys were accustomed to zero grav and the risk of injury was minimal, Kieran allowed them to hover as long as they wanted. He couldn’t prevent them from doing it anyway, and he’d learned it was best not to give orders that were sure to be disobeyed.

Kieran unhooked from his cot and kicked himself up to the ceiling. He pulled himself past the galley, where Randy Ortega was rehydrating dozens of breakfast rations, and across the large room, nodding at the boys who were awake in their cots below him. Groggy, he crossed the corridor and floated into Central Command, where he found Seth and Sarek and a few other boys huddled around a console.

“What’s going on?” Kieran asked as he rubbed sleep out of his eyes.

None of them answered, so Kieran pushed himself down toward the floor and looked at the vid screen over Seth’s shoulder. They were watching a view of the engine room, but there was no movement.

“What is it?” Kieran asked again.

Grudgingly, Seth said, “We can’t see anyone.”

“No one?”
Kieran asked.

Sarek shook his head. “We can’t get them on the intercom, either.”

“For how long?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“When was their last communication?”

“It was a text, forty minutes ago.”

“Where is it?”

Seth handed Kieran a piece of paper. All it said was: “Engines back online at 08:30. We love you.”

“What the hell does this mean?” Kieran asked, his voice high.

“We don’t
know
what it means!” Seth snapped. The bandage on his head shifted, and his hand shot up to press it back in place. A bloodstain, brown around the edges but red in the center, marked the middle of the compress like a bullet hole. Seth’s hair was greasy, and his eyes were wild in the way they darted over the screen. The stress was getting to him, Kieran could see. He wondered if Seth had slept at all.

“Look! There!” Sarek pointed at the corner of the screen, where Kieran saw a human foot moving. It floated off toward the aft side of the engine room.

“Are there any other video links to that part of the ship?” Kieran asked.

“Only the air locks,” Seth said. “But the cameras are turned off, or covered up or something.”

“Why would they cover up the cameras to the air locks?” Kieran asked.

No one answered. They didn’t have to. The truth came to Kieran in an instant. “Oh no.”

With shaking fingers, Kieran engaged the intercom for the engine room.

“Stop what you’re doing. Stop it! I know you hear me!” he screamed. “And you think you’re being heroic, but you’re not!”

The other boys looked at Kieran, real fear in their eyes for once instead of anger. Even Seth was wide-eyed, and his teeth gnawed at his lips, which had gone white.

Kieran waited for a response, then, after hearing none, he punched at the intercom switch again. “Here’s what’s going to happen. Whether you decompress the engine room or not, I’m bringing a shuttle around to dock with the air lock you’re about to open. So you may as well hang on for five minutes. Just five minutes!”

“What are they doing?” Sarek asked. His lips pulled away from his teeth in a frightened grimace.

A dark realization clouded Seth’s face. “They want to blow out the engine room.”

“Why?” screamed Sarek. “The engine’s all fixed!”

“To get rid of the radioactive gas,” Kieran said.
And their bodies,
he almost added before thinking better of it. He didn’t know how many of the adults were still alive. Maybe a few. Maybe all. They’d received what was probably a fatal dose of radiation and had decided to end it quickly rather than linger, but he wasn’t going to let them do it.

He released his harness and jabbed a finger at Sarek. “Stay on the com. Keep talking to them. I’ll contact you when I’m in the shuttle.”

Seth scowled. “You don’t know how to pilot one of those.”

“Neither do you,” Kieran said over his shoulder.

“I’m coming with you,” Seth said.

Kieran pulled himself along the ceiling to the central elevators and jabbed the button. The elevator door opened immediately. He pulled himself in and, without waiting to see if Seth had followed, pressed the button for the shuttle bay level. Seth floated next to him, bracing himself against the ceiling. Kieran studied Seth’s profile, trying to see him as Waverly might, but the exercise made him feel foolish at a time like this, and he turned away.

Seth seemed to read his mind. “You must be worried about Waverly.”

“I can’t think about anything else.”

“Me neither,” Seth said, his eyes steady on Kieran. “I tried to stop them. I want you to know that.”

“I know. I saw,” Kieran said quietly. He could hear the other boy breathing forcefully. Everything Seth did was forceful. “Thanks for trying.”

“Of course.”

Kieran looked at him, opened his mouth to finally ask what he’d wondered for years.
You love her, don’t you?

But he couldn’t give voice to it. He couldn’t face it, didn’t want to believe a guy like Seth was capable of real love.

Once the elevator reached the shuttle bay level and the door opened, Kieran launched himself into the corridor. He had a straight shot to the shuttle bay doors, and he floated there faster than he could have run. He sensed Seth right behind him.

Once inside the door of the shuttle bay, he braced his feet against the wall and launched himself again, aiming for the shuttle nearest the air lock. He felt dizzy flying through the bay so quickly. He saw the pools of dried blood, remembered how he and Arthur had blown the bodies out the air lock. He hadn’t thought about it since; he’d wanted to pretend it never happened.

He looked around, found Seth had already opened the shuttle ramp and was drifting into it. Kieran followed.

“The bodies,” Seth said quietly. “Did you—”

“Yes,” Kieran said, clipped.

“I’d have helped.”

“You were hurt,” Kieran said as he strapped into the pilot seat.

Kieran had never thought about how large the shuttles actually were, how difficult to maneuver through those doors, and his stomach flip-flopped. Could he do this? He’d never even piloted a OneMan before.

“Okay.” Kieran stared at the elaborate control panel in front of him, not sure which button to push first.

Seth jiggled a switch, and Kieran heard the engines cough to life.

“Thanks,” Kieran said, for once glad to have Seth around.

Seth pointed at the pilot seat. “You’re sixteen, right? So they’ve had you on simulations?”

“Yeah,” Kieran said, though he’d never been any good at them. Piloting shuttle craft was enormously difficult. The zero grav made it near impossible to remain spatially oriented, the engines were powerful, and the slightest miscalculation could be deadly. What he was attempting was extremely dangerous, not just to himself and Seth, but to everyone on the Empyrean. If he crashed into the hull, the ship could experience an explosive decompression that could kill everyone on board. In the simulations, Kieran had never even successfully
landed
a shuttle. He’d crashed every single time. He bit his lip to stop its trembling.

“Don’t you dare go coward on me,” Seth said in a warning tone.

“Shut up.”

“Go to hell.”

“You’re not helpful.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

Kieran looked at Seth’s stubborn chin, his hard blue eyes, and realized that, yes, Seth was here, he’d been here all along, present and thinking in a way none of the other boys had been. Kieran didn’t like him, but in truth, Seth was probably Kieran’s single greatest resource.

Kieran took a deep breath and took hold of the joystick between his knees. He lifted it slightly, and he felt the shuttle move upward.

“Release the tethers,” he said to Seth, whose finger was already poised over the switch.

The shuttle bucked. Kieran barely kept it from crashing through the ceiling of the shuttle bay. After a few sickening dips and sways, he was able to steady the craft with a firm hold on the joystick. “Okay, contact Sarek and tell him to open the air lock.”

Seth murmured into the microphone of his headset. Both boys watched as the doors inched open to reveal the large air lock beyond it.

“Don’t breach the hull,” Seth said under his breath.

Very gently, Kieran inched the joystick ahead, and the shuttle eased into the air lock. Once the rear of the craft had cleared the hatch, Seth told Sarek to close the doors. The boys jumped in their seats at the explosive sound of the decompression. Once the air lock was nearly a perfect vacuum, it would be safe to open the outer hatch.

“Holy God,” Kieran said under his breath. His stomach lurched. He’d never left the Empyrean for the infinity of space. He looked over at Seth, whose face was pallid and stretched.

When the boys’ eyes met, Seth said, “What the hell was I
thinking
?”

Kieran burst into laughter, and Seth busted up, too. But the moment didn’t last long. Seth pushed the com button and told Sarek, “Okay. Open up.”

Kieran didn’t know what he was expecting, but when the air lock doors opened in front of him, his fear seeped away. The view of the nebula on the other side of the thick glass wasn’t so unfamiliar after all.

“Slow,” Seth said to him.

“Yeah,” Kieran said as he moved the shuttle out the hatch.

Once they were away from the protective envelope of the Empyrean, vertigo gripped Kieran, and for a moment, he thought he might vomit. He took a few deep breaths until his dizziness subsided before twisting the joystick toward the port side.

The profile of the Empyrean loomed into Kieran’s field of vision.

He had never seen the ship from the outside, and he realized what an amazing machine it really was. The shuttle moved along the outer hull, which rose in misshapen hills and valleys, comprising the domed housings of various ship systems. The housing for the atmospheric controls loomed higher than all of them.