Sea of Stars (10 page)

As I near the brushes, I scrunch up my face, covering my head with my arms once more. The first brush pushes me flat into a lieback position. The bristles bounce over me, scrubbing my skin with delicate, crumb-encrusted fingers. When I pass by them all, I sit up again on the cloud of air, exhaling a deep breath.

I’m propelled into the next section with significantly more force than the previous ones. Pushing forward, I travel under an arching tunnel of metal jets that shower me. Hot water drips from my chin, as I’m thoroughly soaked. A sharp hiss draws my attention to my right side. Steam rolls from a glass tunnel on an adjacent air-conveyor line. A roiling cloud of steam blasts from it, the temperature of which is enough to sizzle butter. Endless streams of crated glasses trundle into the car-wash-like tunnel, which soaps, lathers, rinses, and sanitizes them. The current temperature reading on the side of the mechanism is equal to a whopping 180 degrees. I shudder, grateful that I didn’t fall onto the skin-melting conveyor with the glassware. But the conveyor I’m on rounds a turn, and I’m met with the same type of hellfire dishwasher ahead of me.

Wild-eyed, I flail my arms, trying to halt my progression forward. I knock dishes over the sides of the conveyor, watching them commit to gravity and fall several stories before they catch a different conveyor and are whisked away in another direction. A sharp hiss of scalding steam emits from the passage ahead of me, turning the air white into a billowing cloud of heat. Desperately, I rock back and forth on the cushion of air beneath me in an attempt to gain enough momentum to pitch myself over the side.

Almost to the tunnel, I whimper as the first flood of steam touches me, turning my skin rosy. I lift my arms to shield my face from the burn.
Thump
, a muffled noise rumbles and rolls out, becoming louder and louder until the whole dishery ripples in a wave of shaking chaos. The conveyor tilts to the side, catapulting me off it before I reach the dish inferno. I hurtle through the air, arching upward in a flying heap before being caught in another slipstream. The forced air jerks me sideways before dumping me off the end of the belt of air. I fall with the other scraps of meat into a gigantic composting silo.

The walls of the compost silo are steely and high. I take a few deep breaths, stunned that I’m still alive. As I lie atop the mound of squishy leftovers, I cringe in horror. More uneaten food pours out of a giant, overturned bucket swinging from a hook above me. I roll to the side, narrowly avoiding being buried. Floundering amid the carnage of discarded cuisine, I crawl to the side of the compost vat. I try to gain some footing, but I keep sinking into the sludge beneath me.

When I spy metal ladder rungs on the opposite side of the vat, I flail toward them. The bottom of the vat makes a choking gasp; it rattles and come to life with a groan. The food beneath me moves in a circular motion, swirling as if it’s being flushed down a drain. In merry-go-round fashion, I’m dragged around the rim of the garbage silo. Coming to the ladder, I palm a rung, but it slips out of my hand as my feet lodge on the muck. I growl in frustration, gritting my teeth. I’m swept away from the ladder. A hole forms in the center of the vat; compost feeds into sharp, churning blades, shredding everything into crumbs with the viciousness of a wood chipper.

I blanch, scrambling with renewed vigor to dislodge my feet from the muck miring them. Pulling on my calf, I can’t get it unstuck and I miss the ladder rung as it passes. Hurriedly, I unfasten the straps on my boots. An avalanche of rubbish careens into the middle of the centrifuge, rolling down to get sucked into the belly of the shredder.

My lip curls in determination. I reach down, finding a jam-smeared piece of bread; I smash it between my hands, rubbing my palms with the sticky residue. I crouch in preparation as I go around again. When I near the ladder rung once more, I grasp the metal in my hand, getting a good grip. Pulling myself up, I loop my arm through the rung, catching the bar in the bend of my elbow. I lock my wrist with my hand and draw it to my chest. Stretching to full extension, I’m torn out of my boots while I cleave to the rung. I close my eyes for a moment, panting hard and holding back tears. When I open my eyes, I look down and see my boots tumble into the jaws of the composter.

As I clamber up the ladder, I miss my footing several times in my haste and nearly fall back in. I pull myself over the lip of the trough and I lie gasping on a grated catwalk.
Thump, thump, thump.
Bombs! I’m nearly shaken off the walkway, but I manage to hang on by wrapping my arm around the railing. The lights flicker in bolts of yellow. Dishes crash down in pelting shards from the interrupted airflow on the conveyors; luckily, I’m shielded from most of it by the catwalk above this one.

Sirens shriek in warning. When the trembling abates, I rise, my knees shaking. I clutch the railing and take my first limping steps. Pipes burst above my head, raining warm water on me, bleeding the splashes of muck from my hair and clothes. I stumble along the causeway, where a pearly light catches my attention and illuminates a hatchlike door.

I lift the latch of the door, ease it open, and find myself in an empty room. The loud siren continues in here, echoing off the tiled walls while a light on the ceiling strobes the room in ominous flashes.

I scream when metal showerheads drop from the ceiling and a clear glass tube rises from the ground, trapping me just over the threshold. I gasp, staring up at the spouts, and my hands press and push against the solid walls surrounding me. A fem-bot voice activates, “Contamination detected. Please remain still for decontamination.”

The showerheads rain down foamy soap and warm water on my head while an arch of mini-jets hits me from all sides. I cringe, scrunching my eyes closed. Loose strands of food and slime flow away into the drains at my feet. After a couple of minutes, the showerheads turn off and retract. The clear tube disappears back into the floor, freeing me.

Holding my breath, I wait to be apprehended again, but it’s clear after several moments that I’m entirely alone here. The place is deserted, and through an observation window, I note that the control room is empty. I move forward tentatively to a steel bench in front of the clear-fronted, lighted lockers lining the walls. I try the latch on a few, but they’re all locked. To my left, there’s a shower room—a lavare. I raise my shaky hand to my wet hair; a shower is a moot point now. Instead, I hunt around for something to wear that will hide my hair.

In a bin near the door, I find discarded cherry-red, industrial overcoats. They must use them to wear over their clothing when they go out to inspect the dishery. I rummage through the bin, drawing one out. It’s enormous. I toss it back in and hunt for another that’s a little smaller. When I locate one, I try it on. It reaches all the way to my ankles. I pull up the attached splash-guard hood, shrouding my hair. I pull the harbinger from the waistband of my pants, and tuck it into the outer pocket of the trenchlike coat. I tiptoe over to a door on the adjacent wall, leaving a trail of wet toe prints on the floor behind me.

The door slides up automatically as I approach. I hesitate as people run by, too preoccupied to even glance my way. I watch them for a few minutes, but it’s clear that they’re abandoning their posts at the dishery as fast as possible. Cautiously, I enter the sterile, white corridor. Merging into the chaos around me, I leave the dishery behind.

C
HAPTER 6

H
ANG ME UP TO DRY

A
fem-bot voice, piping through the audio system, calmly states, “All active-duty personnel are ordered to report to assigned combat stations. Code Amber. Enemy infiltration is detected. All noncombat personnel are ordered to seek shelter in your designated areas—follow protocol Alpha Indie.” The voice pauses for only a few moments before it restates its message. “All active-duty personnel . . .”

I run down the bright white corridor with no thought of direction, guided purely by fear and adrenaline. When I come to the end of it, I search the wall and ceiling for some kind of marker that will help me find the detention area.
Nothing! There’s nothing!

The tap of booted feet hurrying to their assigned positions in the battle echo the flight of my rapidly beating heart. In the next corridor, everyone I come across is outfitted in combat gear. The light that runs down the center of the wide passage is flashing from white to amber here. There are several hallways, but I continue straight ahead.

When I turn onto a new passage, a holographic male figure materializes in my path. I stumble to a halt at his country-club smile, recognizing his handsome visage as being one of a Rafian actor with a role on
Violet Shadows
, a soap opera program that women seem to follow religiously here.

“Welcome to the Beezway, the express superhighway to get you to where you need to be by the most efficient means possible. Shall I call for your transport?” he asks me.

My mouth opens, and then shuts as I think of a response to that question. Finally I murmur tentatively, “Yes?”

The actor’s image gives me a toothy grin. “Excellent! Please scan your wrist communicator into the kiosk to call your vehicle to our current location.” His holographic hand gestures to the lighted, cylindrical docking station near a wall of glass ahead of us. I begin to realize that he’s a glorified valet-slash-doorman.

I hold up my bare wrist to him. “I don’t have my wrist communicator available—I misplaced it.”

With a genuine look of concern on his lighted face, my attractive companion replies, “I’m sorry to hear that. Shall I call for a general mode of transportation for you?”

“Uhh . . . sure,” I say with my bottom lip rolling out.

“Please state your destination.”

I falter for a moment.
Where do I want to go? Where would Trey go?
I wonder. He’s looking for me—I know it. When the Alameeda attack starts, though, he’ll go to the detention center to try to free our friends. “I want to go to the detention center . . . where prisoners are held?” I ask him, keeping my face averted beneath my red hood as a group of soldiers run past us.

“Please wait one moment while I input your destination,” he says apologetically.

As I wait, I walk a few steps away to the wall of glass that separates us from outside of the ship. Beneath the window, a concrete tunnel shelters a lavender channel of light. The channel is a superhighway, ferrying all sorts of hover vehicles along its wide berth in two directions. The highway acts as a link between buildings and around the perimeter of the ship.

I turn away from the window, observing the lobby of this hovercar station. I realize this part of the ship is quickly becoming a ghost town. Several other holographic images of soap opera actors are calling forth hover vehicles for Skye personnel, evacuating them from this area.

I startle as I glance to my side and find the hologram has joined me at the window. “I’m sorry,” the actor-hologram says, “all general transportation has been suspended due to Code Amber. Would you like me to contact a security detail to assist you?”

“No!” I state, holding up both my hands. “That won’t be necessary. I will locate another means of transport.” Dropping my hands, I back away from his smiling visage.

“Okay.” He gives me a sultry look. “Don’t forget to check in with
Violet Shadows
, airing tonight at nineteen parts.”

“Will do,” I say, before turning and moving toward the outside doors.

I keep my face down while the last few technicians from the dishery move to their hover vehicles and merge onto the highway. I wave my hand in front of a panel and open the doors to the Beezway. I walk through and stand at the railing. Several fast-moving hovercars zip past, creating a slipstream that nearly blows the hood of my overcoat back from my head.

There’s nothing left for me to do but to climb over the railing and onto the glowing lavender roadway. I press to the side abruptly as a bullet-shaped hover vehicle fires down the tunneling passage; it’s carrying troops dressed in Cavar uniforms. After taking a deep breath, I turn and follow in the direction they’re going. More shiny silver hovercars with Cavars inside go by. The hopelessness of locating Trey crushes me, squeezing my heart.

In desperation, I sprint down the center of the express track. A hover vehicle rounds the bend in front of me; this one is black and built for speed. I stop and put my hands up, waving at it frantically. The driver cuts the air jets; the vehicle loses buoyancy, hitting the ground. As the car bounces, it sends out sparks, screeching as it grinds across the lane. Stopping right in front of me, the driver’s eyes widen in surprise, and then narrow in anger. The door of the vehicle opens, sliding in an arc over the ceiling.

He flicks his hands at me. “Are you demented?” he asks as he approaches me. “I almost flattened you!” He’s at least a foot and a half taller than me and he’s all brawn with short, military-style hair. His Cavar uniform is that of an officer. The tribal tattoos on his neck are a comforting sight. “Who are you? What are you doing in the middle of the Beezway?”

Blood is roaring in my veins. He comes and stands right in front of me. From my pocket, I pull out the harbinger. As I point the weapon at him, I’m surprised that my hand isn’t trembling. “Take me to the detention area,” I order him. “Now!”

He glances at the harbinger in my hand for a second, and then he meets my gaze. Before I can react, his hand closes over my heavy weapon, pulling it out of my grasp. His other enormous hand wraps around my neck. He twists me around so that my back slams hard against the front of his black hovercar. Holding the harbinger he confiscated from me to my forehead, he says through clenched teeth, “Give me a reason not to kill you.”

I wheeze and cough, all the air inside me knocked out. “Baw-da-baw,” I manage to say as he squeezes my throat so hard that tears come to my eyes. Immediately, his grip on my throat eases. I cough more and gasp for air.

Thump.
I turn my head as an Alameeda missile hits the Ship of Skye in the distance, sending out a rolling wave of fireworks. The shock of the blast causes the tunnel in front of us to shudder and then collapse. Rock dust spews outward, shadowing the destruction. It cuts off the flow of traffic, making it impossible to move in the direction the hovercars were traveling. Had the hovercar I stopped kept going, everyone inside would be dead now, crushed beneath the weight of the tunnel ceiling. A fast-moving vehicle behind us isn’t able to stop in time. It crashes into the caved-in debris and explodes into an inferno. More hovercars follow it into death.

“It’s the Alameeda,” I say, when the soldier with his hand to my neck looks down at me, “they’re attacking.”

With a grim expression, the Cavar tightens his grip once more. “Really? I hadn’t noticed the triple nitronium fritzwinter sonicdrites hitting the ship! ” he growls. “Who are you?”

“It doesn’t matter. Cavars are trapped in the detention center—Trey Allairis, Jax Roule, Wayra Waters—they’re locked in cells, guarded by Brigadets. If we don’t get them out, they’re dead.”

He lets go of my neck and sweeps the cowl of the red overcoat off my head. My wet hair falls in waves onto the hovercar’s shiny black veneer. “You’re the Alameeda priestess—Kricket Hollowell—the one Wayra has been guarding,” he states.

“You know Wayra?”

“The wacker owes me money!” he says.

“It’s going to be tough to collect; the Brigadets have him incarcerated in the detention area. He’s likely to die in there with the Alameeda attacking.”

“You’re Alameeda,” he says with renewed hostility, pressing the barrel of the harbinger harder against my forehead. I wince.

“Yes. You got me. You should take me back to the detention center where I belong,” I suggest.

“Maybe I should just kill you as a traitor,” he counters with a malicious sneer on his lips.

“Kesek Alez,” a voice behind him says, addressing his superior as the rank of major, “she may not be a traitor. Look at this!”

“Report, Cyphon,” Kesek Alez growls. He pulls me off the hood, twisting me around so that my back is to him. One of his hands holds my neck while the other presses the harbinger to my temple.

In front of me, two armed combat-uniformed Cavars have their weapons drawn on me. The other two Cavars on the transport I stopped have exited the vehicle and are now trying to stop the traffic from plowing into the death trap ahead of them.

The one who spoke holsters his weapon, saying, “HQ is running this on a loop.” The one I take to be Cyphon holds his arm out in front of us. From the watchlike band on his wrist, a mini-hologram projects a surveillance camera view of me appearing out of thin air in the commissary. The image of me then points to the middle of the room—the Brigadet I was near soon fires on the spot, and then moments later, the Alameeda soldier falls out of the circle.

The soldier with the wrist hologram looks at his commanding officer. “It looks like she was trying to help the Brigadets.”

Kesek Alez turns me loose. I step a few feet from him and pivot to face him. He frowns at his subordinate. “I don’t give a fat shickle, Cyphon, if she was trying to help the Brigadets. Right now she’s impeding us.”

I interrupt them. “I just saved your lives from that.” I point to the debris in the road. “I need transport to the detention area. Gennet Trey Allairis is being detained by Brigadets,” I lie. “They claim to be the authority here. Defense Minister Vallen would never have allowed that. He would’ve appointed Cavars to be in charge of Rafe’s defenses.” Honestly, I have no idea what Defense Minister Vallen would or wouldn’t have done in this situation.

“They’re calling Gennet Trey a traitor too,” Kesek Alez says with an arrogant sneer. “And he has escaped from the detention center. There are bulletins alerting us to the fact that he’s armed and extremely dangerous.”

“Sir,” Cyphon interjects, “I served under Gennet Allairis when he was Kesek. I’ll never believe anyone who tells me he’s a traitor.”

I latch on to Cyphon’s bit of support. “If you don’t give them the benefit of the doubt, all the detained Cavars in those cells will die if this ship goes down. Let them fight for their lives against the Alameeda.
You can figure out their guilt or innocence after we survive.”

“If they’re traitors and I let them out, they can destroy this ship!” Kesek Alez shoves his finger in my face.

“Take me there—talk to Wayra—you know he’s not a traitor—if you know him at all, then you know that.”

Kesek Alez thinks for a moment, seeming to be swayed for a moment by my argument. Touching a spot on the collar of his combat armor, he activates a communicator. He speaks into it, “Command: we’ve intercepted a fugitive in the area of Griffin Flow and Hurst Haven.”

“Identify fugitive,” a fem-bot voice pipes in from the console within the vehicle near us as well as the earpiece that Kesek Alez has.

“Kricket Hollowell,” he states.

There is hardly any pause at all before he gets a response. “Remain where you are—sending fugitive transport to secure prisoner,” the feminine voice coos through the speaker.

“You knob knocker! You can’t give me to them! Why won’t you help us? You’re a Cavar!” I scream at Kesek Alez in frustration.

He gestures toward the hovercar they vacated with a nod of his head. “Put her in the back until they get here,” he orders Cyphon.

Cyphon grasps me firmly by the elbow, pulling me toward the hovercar. “C’mon,” he says, not without sympathy, “it’ll be okay.”

“You don’t know that!” I sneer at him. “I wish you’d help me!”

He presses his hand to the back of my head, making sure I don’t bump it as he directs me into the backseat of the vehicle. Once inside, he makes me scoot over so that he can sit next to me while we wait for the fugitive transport to arrive.

Kesek Alez turns his eyes on his men. “After we get rid of her, we’ll find an alternate route to station . . .”

Whatever else Kesek Alez says doesn’t register with me. I have the worst feeling: as if I’m entering an ice storm. I exhale a breath; it curls up in front of me like wintry air.
The future
, I think, wanting to stave off any notion of it while at the same time ready to embrace it if it helps me out of this. I lean back against the seat, staring straight ahead of me at nothing at all—until a different movie of my life begins to play out . . .

The Cavars are pacing back and forth outside the hovercar, anxious for the fugitive transport to arrive. One of them checks and rechecks his gun. He glances at Cyphon in the backseat next to me, “You got an extra D-Cell? Mine’s nearly gone.” He indicates his gun, pointing the barrel away from us.

Cyphon speaks to him through the open window. “You’re supposed to keep your D-Cell charged, Ancil.”

With a sullen expression, Ancil replies, “Yeah, I know! I guess I didn’t expect to get ambushed by the Alameeda today.” He looks past Cyphon to me, glowering as if I’m responsible for the attack. When his eyes shift back to Cyphon, he asks, “You gonna help me out or not?”

Cyphon sighs heavily. He rummages around in a soldier’s gear pack at his feet. Locating a rectangular pronged case made of metal, he hands it out the window to the other soldier, who loads it into his gun. The gun makes a humming sound, like it’s powering up.

Ancil begins to walk away, but Cyphon stops him. With a good-natured smile, Cyphon says, “Hey! Gimme the other one so I can charge it, ya jackwagon.”