Page 44 of Bound by Stars

Jupiter

Six days to Mars

Lights flicker at either end of the hall. Asha waves us across to the bridge. The door sits halfway open, the auto-lock disengaged or broken. Framed in the fifty-foot window in front of the amphitheater of empty workstations, orangey-red Mars is closer than the moon to the Earth.

“Dad?” Asha brushes past me, jogging around the upper level.

The expansive room is abandoned. Nothing like the last time we were here. It should be noisy and bustling with crew members responding to alarms, reading off warnings, and calling out commands.

Skye descends the stairs down the center of the room, searching panels of flashing lights. “Some of these are oxygen alarms.”

Asha leans over a different workstation. “I can’t tell what any of this means. There are so many alerts.”

Tar takes a seat, his fingers flying over a keyboard. “Backups are kicking in, but too many systems are failing.”

Weslie drops my hand and marches to the captain’s station in the middle of the top level overlooking the amphitheater. Scanning the screen, she taps the upper left corner, and the alarms go quiet. “There. Now I can think.”

ILSA trails her. “Weslie, I detect bruising and abrasions on your left and right wrists. My scans indicate the wounds require cleaning and dressing to avoid infection. Do I have your permission to attend to your injury?”

“Not now, ILSA,” Weslie answers.

“Where’s the crew?” With wide eyes, Asha hurries back to Weslie’s side.

Wes shrugs. “Maybe they’re all abandoning ship.”

“No. My dad wouldn’t. They must be somewhere else.”

The map. I run to Navigation. The holomap flickers. The miniature ship replica is centimeters away from the tiny Mars. Earth sits on the other end of the long table. I swipe my hand over it and the levels of the ship grow and stack onto the surface. From bottom to top.

Cargo levels at the bottom of the ship are intact. The second-class sublevels come next, one after the other. No damage.

Then the first-class entertainment level.

In the middle of the level, the arboretum and central stairwell are undamaged.

The outline of the library and a game room flash red with large letters over each: offline .

The top level forms on the map. The missing escape pod bay: offline .

Various other sections of the level flash with a warning: danger .

“The escape pods,” Weslie whispers. “With the first-class bay gone, there aren’t enough.”

I swipe the first-class layers away, tapping the two second-class pod bays. The remaining functioning pod count is displayed over the areas. It’s not enough by half. At least.

Weslie and I lock eyes through the holomap.

Tar appears behind the map next to Weslie, breaking our connection. “If they can double up, pack them full, it might work. They’re built to sustain the passengers for two weeks, and we’re less than six days away.”

“Weslie, I detect bruising and abrasions on your left and right wrists. My scans indicate the wounds—”

“I’m fine, ILSA.”

A violent rattle tears through the ship, and the three of us grip the edge of the table. When it passes, Tar’s eyes are wide. His voice is so low I have to lean into the holomap to hear. “The ship isn’t going to make it. With a few system issues, sure, but the backups are failing. It’s too much.”

“Look.” Wes points to my chest and I drop my chin to see the upper second-class bay displayed in orange lines over my sternum. Another pod goes dim. “They’re already leaving.”

“Didn’t they say there were extra pods somewhere?” Wes circles the map to stand beside me. I examine her serious expression as she scans the lower levels. Moving her hands over the glowing lines, she zooms into one of the cargo levels. I wince at the angry bruised rings around her wrists.

I gently take her hands. “We’re better off getting down there before they’re all gone.”

She presses her hands to my chest and her voice drops to a whisper. “Those pods are going to fill up fast. We need a backup plan.”

“What the… You all need to see this,” Curran calls from the surveillance station on the other side of the mezzanine.

Tar rushes to Curran’s side, where he’s silhouetted in the light of a patchwork of little screens.

I shift but can’t pull myself away from Weslie’s orbit.

She nods and gently pushes me to go as she returns to the holomap, combing over every centimeter of the ship for the spare escape pods while fending off ILSA, who insists on tending to her wounds again.

A muffled scream from the amphitheater stops me in my tracks. I peer down from the top of the stairs to the middle level, where Asha stares at the floor with her hands over her mouth, backing along the stretch of the desk.

“What is it, Ash?” I run down the steps and into the row.

She turns, eyes wide.

Tucked under the desk, I find a vacant stare. Her fire-red hair is still bright, but her skin is ashen, mouth parted like she died before she could utter her last words. Sofie. One of our bridge tour guides.

Tar and Curran run down the stairs. On the top level, Skye is at one end of the room, and Weslie peers down from the other. I meet her stare and shake my head as ILSA rolls up next to her.

“Weslie, I detect—”

“Silent mode, ILSA.”

Taking Asha by the shoulders, I try to pull her away, but she’s frozen. “Ash, come on. We have to get out of here.”

Several pairs of footsteps echo through the hall outside the bridge, growing louder.

I wave my hand to them all, mouthing, Get down.

Curran grabs Tar and they duck into the row across from us. Weslie, ILSA, and Skye each disappear on the top level, and I pull Asha under the desk.

As they enter the bridge, an unfamiliar voice says, “…and half the first-class passengers are rushing for the second-class pod bays. It’s complete chaos.”

I inch forward, peeking out from under the edge of the desk. There are five of them, but my view is limited from this angle. I don’t know how they haven’t spotted ILSA. It’s not like she can just duck under a table.

Asha lifts her hand and it’s painted red. She sucks in air and scrambles away, closer to me.

I clap a hand over her mouth before she can scream and press my back to the barrier under the desk.

The footsteps stop at the upper level, near surveillance. “What the hell happened to following the plan?”

Captain Nazari.

Asha relaxes in my arms like she’s relieved by the sound of her dad’s voice. She tries to pull my hand off her face and stand, but I hold on tighter. There’s something not right about this.

“Zone four blew early, sir. Herded the first-class population in different directions. Part of them made it down the main stairway before it was blocked. The other half ran for the central stairs and were trapped in the corridor on the opposite side of the arboretum as planned.” Another unfamiliar voice. Urgent and rough.

Captain Nazari goes so quiet I can barely make out his words. “This is a complete disaster. Our message is entirely lost.”

“It could still work. There are a lot of prominent figures trapped in the corridor,” another crew member says.

A softer but confident voice chimes in. “The casualties were supposed to be limited. That is no longer possible.”

The captain lets out a deep sigh. “How many crew did we lose?”

“Only the five loyalists, sir.”

My eyes shift to the dead crew member next to Asha. Darkened by our shadows, I can barely make out her white star badge emblem splattered with blood.

Captain Nazari is the one behind this. But…he’s such a central figure in society. He’s at every event. People love him, trust him. Even my mother reveres him.

One of them, tall and slender, descends a few steps into the amphitheater, in direct view of me and Asha.

I hold my breath. Both of us stay completely still, hidden only by shadow.

“The system could reset any minute. We need to keep moving.” He turns and jogs back up the stairs.

“What’s the status of my family?” Captain Nazari asks.

“Your wife was escorted to your escape pod, but we’re having trouble locating your kids.”

“Find them!” Captain Nazari snaps, sending two of them jogging back to the hall. “Get everyone into the pod. What about the girl?”

“Escaped,” the soft-voiced crew member says.

The remaining group marches back out the open bridge door, their footsteps receding in different directions.

On the other side of the aisle, Curran helps Tar stand. His voice is hollow.“Two more bodies over here.”

“Another back here,” Weslie calls, appearing from her hiding spot.

I pull Asha off the floor as tears stream down her face and her breath hitches between soft sobs.

Tar blinks slowly, shaking his head and meeting my eyes across the aisle. “I had no idea he—”

“You all need to come see this.” Skye waves up to the surveillance station.

When I get Asha up the steps behind Tar and Curran, a soft banging makes us all jump.

Weslie opens a supply closet door.

ILSA rolls out, following her to meet us at the wall of screens.

A third of the camera feeds are black with the word OFFLINE flashing in white.

Half of the remaining first-class areas are sealed off by emergency doors.

Elysian passengers roam past the cameras in the living quarter halls, wandering like they’re searching for a porter to explain the flashing lights and blaring alarms.

On one screen, the main stairway sits abandoned and useless, a steel door blocking the top of the steps.

The clock still counting down the time to arrival.

In the feed from the dining room, draped tablecloths on empty tables sway with a mild jolt that rolls through the ship, while down the hall outside, another camera shows a herd of first-class passengers jamming the stairwell to the lower levels.

Everyone pushing and fighting to get to the remaining escape pods, but in their panic, getting nowhere.

Most of the first-class passengers are trapped, funneled into a single overcrowded corridor as more cameras go black.