Stone in the Sky (19 page)

“Bitty…” I said. “What happened?”

“I don't know. Only a few of us made it off the
Prairie Rose
. It was awful. As you can see.”

“How did you escape?” I asked.

“I made it to a life pod,” she said. “All those annoying drills you made me do saved me.”

“Was it an accident or was it sabotage?”

I realized that I didn't know, and Bitty would have a better idea of it than I would. The
Prairie Rose
exploding had haunted me these past three years. It was this great unanswered question. Probably one I would never truly know the answer to. Things happened in space. Accidents happened. It just seemed that since Brother Blue was involved that it was unlikely that he didn't have a hand in it.

She looked at me, searching my face to see if I really believed that it could have been anything other than an accident.

“Do you really think someone deliberately harmed the
Prairie Rose
?” she asked.

“I think Brother Blue never wanted you all to make it to Beta Granade,” I said. “He tried to kill me.”

Bitty slapped the wall with her hand as this information sank in.

“I wanted to scream every time I heard his name again,” she said. “He never answered any of the petitions from the few survivors. I thought you were with him. I couldn't understand why you wouldn't come for me.”

All of a sudden her attitude shift toward me made sense. She thought that I had abandoned her. That she could think that I would know she was alive and ignore her was horrifying. I pulled her in again for a hug.

“I wasn't with him,” I said. “I found the grain loaded onto the dock, and when I confronted him … he beat me. He left me for dead on the Yertina Feray.”

The look of betrayal that Bitty had in her face changed to one of sympathy. We both had our scars.

“I had nothing. There were no Humans. I thought I was going mad. I was alone with only aliens for friends. I thought you were dead. I swear to you, Bitty, if I had known you were alive, I would have come for you.”

I slipped my hand into hers.

“Tell me what happened,” I said.

“The ship made its first skip, and it was fine. Then we made another skip, and the alarms went off. It was during the sleep cycle. I shot out of bed and to the life pods, but there was fire everywhere. I didn't want to go through it but Mom was behind me and shoved me into the fire to get to the pod.”

She swallowed at the memory. I could see tears in her eyes.

“Go on,” I said. “I'm here now.” I had reverted back to being the big sister.

“I was in so much pain that I didn't see anything, just hands pulling me in and a blanket covering me up. We ejected from the ship but Mom wasn't with me.”

Now the tears were coming out of her freely. This strong young woman was like a little girl again as she relived the pain. I let her sob on my shoulder until she was ready to speak again.

“We floated for a few days, just tumbling before we were picked up by a ship. Earth Gov wouldn't let us go back home, and we couldn't raise a signal from any colony. Eventually, we found a ship that had taken on some Wanderers, and the tribe adopted us.”

“How many of you?”

“Four,” Bitty said. “Only four kids in my pod. They've moved on to other tribes over time.”

Four out of one hundred and sixty-seven. It seemed a miracle that anyone had escaped at all.

“Ever since it happened, I've been with these Wanderers. At first I tried to convince them to get to Beta Granade. I was hoping that maybe some others had survived and that you were there. Maybe another ship had come to settle it.”

“No one settled,” I said. “Those worlds are empty. Brother Blue charmed us out of all of our money and our dreams and then once he'd bled us dry, he disposed of us. We weren't the first. If someone doesn't stop him, we won't be the last.”

I hugged her again.

“We're not safe on this ship,” I said. “We have to get off of here.”

It was good to have a sister again. If I never went back to the Yertina Feray or if I never found Caleb again, then at least I'd be with Bitty. I could bear it now. I could survive this. There was an elation to knowing that I had gotten something back that he had taken away from me.

“I know one thing, Bitty. We are not going to die on a Hort ship at the hands of Brother Blue.”

After all of those months of loneliness, I had something to live for. I had just found my sister, and it wasn't so I could die with her. She wiped away the tears with the back of her hand, and just like that, the strong young woman I'd met earlier was back.

“We're getting out of here,” I said.

“The Hort won't open the cargo bay door except to dump more Humans in here,” she said having pulled herself together. “We've tried. It's impossible.”

“There's always a way until there is none,” I said.

“You think you can get us out of here?” Bitty asked.

“If I have to die trying,” I said.

“How?” she asked.

“Hijack this ship and make it our own.”

 

25

Bitty led me through the cargo bay over to Ednette. When we were young, it was Bitty who followed me everywhere. And when we were on the
Prairie Rose
, I was the one who everyone knew. Here, I could see that like Ednette, Bitty commanded a certain kind of respect. If someone was in her way, they moved. I felt proud that she had survived in her own way; just as I had. She was a young leader and no longer a little girl.

I wondered what our mother would think of us and how we had survived. She would have been proud, I think. Whatever grit she'd had to want to go out into space she'd passed on to us.

“Mother, we'll die here if we don't do something,” Bitty said to Ednette.

It was strange to me that she called Ednette Mother. But it reminded me that Bitty was only eleven when we'd left Earth. I was glad that she'd had Ednette to care for her. Just like I had Heckleck to care for me in his own way.

Ednette did not react; she just kept stitching up the fabric that she was holding. Her face was still and stoic, as though she had years of practice at hiding what she really thought or knew.

“It's true,” I said. “Let's do something.”

“Tula can help us,” Bitty said. She was looking at me the way that she did when she was a little girl and thought that her older sister knew everything. I wondered if she might know more than me. She'd been on more space voyages than I had. She looked like she'd been in more fights than I had, too.

“Do you have an idea?” Ednette asked.

“I do. We're going to take over the ship,” I said.

“How do we do that?” Ednette asked.

“Our enemies are Hort. I know Horts,” I said. “They cannot stand the sound of the Human voice.”

“That must be why the Hort mostly never take Humans. It did surprise me when they accepted our passage,” Ednette said.

“There was so much money to be made they could not refuse,” I said.

Ednette's face sobered.

“The frequency of it reverberates with them in such an awful way that it causes them intense pain. The nanites that most species carry can alter our frequency in conversation, but it can not immediately balance hundreds of Human voices all at the same time. It would give us only minutes, but those minutes could mean life.”

“How can I help?” Bitty added.

It wasn't much different then when she asked me when we were children what the game was. We'd march out into the dust, hoping for green fields, but finding only brown, dried foliage. In the distance there'd be the factories, and at night there'd be the stars. During the day, Bitty would rely on me to make up games and find the fun. I led, and she followed. In the past, it annoyed me when she'd asked me that question, but now I could kiss her.

“Bitty, go get those Imperium officers and anyone else you can trust,” I said. “We're going to need a team.”

“I'll get Traynor, Buzzle, and Thomas,” Bitty said, and Ednette nodded in agreement.

“Who are they?” I asked as Bitty darted away.

“They were the journey leaders of the other tribes before I was named for this leg. They know their people.”

Bitty came back with them, and I noticed that one of the journey leaders, Traynor, was the grizzled man that had discovered my bracelet.

“Why are they here?” Traynor asked, pointing to the two Imperium officers. “We should kill them and throw them out an airlock. They brought us here. They are responsible for our situation.”

“They have a vested interest in getting out of here, and they have military skills that we don't have,” I said.

Traynor shook his head in disagreement, but he was alone in his opposition.

“What are your names?” I asked. They were cautious, not knowing what new trick this might be.

“Hanks,” the woman said, her blue eyes darting from face to face nervously.

“Siddiqui.” He stood at attention as though he was ready to adapt to the situation.

“Do you know how to win a fight?” I asked.

“Who are we going to fight?” Hanks asked incredulously. “We're locked in a cargo bay.”

“We're hijacking this ship,” I said.

Hanks shook her head.

“You can't get a bunch of savages to fight an honorable spacefaring race,” Hanks said.

Siddiqui put his hand up to silence Hanks.

“I'm sure if I could talk to these Hort they'd see that there was a misunderstanding…” Siddiqui said.

“There is no misunderstanding,” I said. “These Hort have been highly paid to take us to the colonies.”

“But that's a good thing,” Hanks said. “My great aunt is on Marxuach. She went there with the Children of Earth. We can get there and hitch a ride back to Bessen when the next transport comes.”

“I know you've been told one thing,” I said. “But you have to stop believing that fiction. I'm going to tell you very clearly that there are no Human colonies, and if we don't stop this ship from going there, we'll be dead.”

A wave of understanding finally came over them. Hanks's shoulders slumped, and her eyes got a faraway look as she tried to reconcile reality with what she had believed for so long. Siddiqui straightened, his square jaw set as he made the leap in his mind.

“Weapons,” Siddiqui said as he grasped the seriousness of the situation. “Gather whatever weapons or makeshift weapons you can find. We can make a better tactical plan once we know what we have.”

“Don't let everyone know,” Ednette said. “I don't want to spread any more panic than we have to.”

Ednette, Bitty, and the other Wanderers scattered to find what they could. They brought back trinkets and goods that people had hoarded. When we had our makeshift weapons laid out in front of us, it was sobering.

We sifted through and each took knives, clubs, and tools to arm ourselves.

“Could be death,” Traynor, the grizzled man, said.

“It's this or death,” I said. “You choose.”

“I don't like death,” he said.

“Me neither,” Siddiqui concurred. Hanks gasped putting her hands to her mouth.

“I just came out here to help colonize,” she said. “I'm on a peaceful mission.”

“Not anymore,” I said.

“We die trying,” said Ednette. “No matter what the odds.” She was this voyage's leader. They would do what she said. It was the rule of survival for the Wanderers. It was a relief to have Ednette's full backing and support.

“The ship is moving again,” Bitty said. We could all feel the ship speeding in its acceleration to a light skip.

“I don't know how far away we are from where we are going,” I said, trying to calculate from the many ship voyages I'd recently done what the best timing would be for the attack.

“The guards that block us from the hallway. They are our first line out of here. If we can escape the cargo bay, and get to the hallway, then we have a chance at taking over the ship,” Siddiqui said.

“What next?” Ednette asked.

“You cannot seduce a Hort. You cannot sway them with sob stories. You cannot play on their sympathies. They are cold and they are cunning. They loved certain kinds of foods that we Humans would never eat and that we certainly don't have. Our situation seems hopeless, but I once knew a Hort named Heckleck who I called a friend. He is dead now but he taught me everything that I know about how to stay alive.”

“They don't seem to have any weaknesses,” Traynor said.

“Noise,” I said and then explained about the Hort and their aversion to the Human voice.

“That's too simple,” Traynor said.

“It's true. I learned about it in training. Human voice frequency troubles them. Makes them uncomfortable unless it's modified by nanites,” Siddiqui said.

“That's why we're in the bottom of the ship,” I said. “It's going to take a long time for us to make our way up to the bridge.”

“We'll get there,” Ednette said.

“If we make so much noise that it overwhelms them, it could at least give us a first push,” I said.

“We can get everyone to do that,” Bitty said. “Even the weak.”

“Let's get the word out,” I said. “When the door opens, everyone needs to make noise—a lot of noise. But everyone else should stay back until we've cleared the hall.”

“You want them to fight?” Siddiqui asked, looking back at the Wanderers. Some were so old that they could barely stand. Many were sick.

“Yes,” Ednette said. “If we fail, they are dead anyway. Those who want to fight might as well fight.”

“They can secure what we've taken as we push forward,” I said. “That gives them something to do.”

I looked around and noticed that even Hanks was in. Our group was in agreement.