Ashes in the Sky Read online

  “Just do it!”

  The chair liquefied, becoming hands and reaching for me. The fluid swirled around my waist, pulling me beside David and locking me into a sitting position.

  I grimaced. “You didn’t have to—”

  My seat jammed forward, as if we’d hit a tree head-on going fifty miles per hour. My head spun. The mustard canister flew off the console and rolled across the floor.

  A vision of a green tractor-trailer flashed before my eyes. I turned the wheel of the car. Mom screamed. The brakes screeched. A flurry of white fabric crushed my nose.

  Another tremor rocked my liquid seat, jerking my neck to the side. I cried out. Cold liquid instantly coalesced about my neck, stabilizing me before the next shockwave hit.

  David squinted at the screens before him. A swirling opal passed before us. The orb hesitated, and the space around the craft wavered. David braced against the control panel before the whirling vibrations leaped toward us. Our ship heeled back, shaking.

  Sweet Lord! We were in a spaceship dogfight!

  The silvery-black dot we had been heading toward had become a huge molten spaceship. David shifted his shoulders, and we turned away from the vessel.

  “Isn’t that where we were going?”

  “Not anymore. The ambassador told them we had a weapon of mass destruction. If they scan our ship, they’ll see it’s the truth. He neglected to mention he was the person we took it from.”

  Of course he did.

  Another spiral of swirling, nearly clear vibrations shot from the other ship and splatted across the front window. I closed my eyes until the shaking subsided.

  David moved his hands from the wall and inserted them in a different panel. His look of deep concentration melted into a furrowed brow and panicked eyes.

  He’d crashed on Earth on his first mission. Had he flown since, or was this only the second time he’d piloted one of these things?

  The ship rattled again, and the lights went out. The walls faded to stars on all sides, as if we were free-floating in space.

  “Was that supposed to happen?” I asked.

  A small light illuminated David’s face. His lips formed three words he never spoke. He straightened, turned to the console, and inserted his hands.

  “Don’t.” A voice rattled through our chamber, the tone chilling my skin.

  An orb circled us three times. I felt like a goldfish stuck in its bowl as a cat stalked him.

  “It doesn’t have to be like this, Tirran Coud.”

  I clung to my chair, Poseidon’s voice cutting through me.

  He continued. “Give me what I want. Deep down, you know it the best for our people.”

  David closed his eyes. His jaw quaked before he steadied himself and tapped a glowing spot on the translucent panel before him. “I can’t sacrifice the humans. It’s not right.”

  A deep, menacing tone echoed throughout our ship. David hopped away from the console.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  His wide eyes scanned the clear walls. “I don’t know.”

  Poseidon’s craft stopped in front of us and eased closer. If I could reach through the glassy surface of our ship, I probably could have touched his hull.

  David stepped back as Poseidon’s ship shimmered. The opalescence faded, showing the ship’s interior. Poseidon leaned against the glass. It looked like he was drifting alone in space. His grin sent the hairs on my arms to attention.

  His lips moved. A second later, the ambassador’s voice boomed through our ship. “Make a choice, Tirran. Your little pet or this one.”

  He reached down and pulled a man in camouflage from the floor. He flung the soldier against the glass as if he weighed no more than a loaf of bread.

  My vision skewed and refocused. The warmth drained from my face.

  Dad.

  My father’s eyes seemed swollen shut. His face bruised. A whimper escaped my lips as I clenched the arms of my chair.

  Poseidon pulled Dad back and smashed him against the glass again.

  “Stop it! You’re hurting him.” Tears ran down my cheeks. I cringed as my father’s mouth stretched against the clear hull.

  David touched the console and whispered in his native tongue. His lips quivered as his gaze sunk to the flooring.

  The ambassador’s retort came in a stern ramble of Erescopian words. David’s hands covered his face. What had he said?

  Poseidon laughed. “What will you do, Tirran? Do you have the conviction to stand there and let your little pet watch her father die?”

  “No!” I screamed as Dad rose into the air.

  David reached for the console before he drew back.

  I turned to him. But what could I say? A painful lump formed in my throat.

  That was my father.

  The one person I could always count on.

  All I had left on Earth.

  The pain burst from my lips in a sob. “Please don’t let them hurt my dad.”

  David’s eyes closed. An alien appeared beside Poseidon and pointed a silver disc at my father’s temple.

  “David!” I screamed.

  He turned to me, a gamut of emotions transitioning across his features until he settled on grim determination. “I’m sorry, Jess.”

  He turned back to the console and punched his arms into the liquid surface. Our ship jolted, throwing me back in my seat.

  Poseidon’s eyes widened before he, his ship, and my father’s beaten form faded into a blur and disappeared.

  18

  The window closed over. My insides lurched as the chair pulsated beneath me. Everything around me stretched, swirled, and warped. I clutched my seat as bile rose into my throat. Trembling, I swallowed the burning acid down, closing my eyes.

  Dad.

  He bandaged me when I skinned my knee learning to ride my bike.

  He never asked questions that night he picked me up after my date got drunk at a party.

  He hunted me down when he thought an alien kidnapped me.

  He stood by my side for two painstaking months through debriefing, examinations, television appearances, and the worst of interviews.

  He’d been my rock. My shield. The only stable element to my existence.

  And I left him.

  The one moment he needed me, I sat there and did nothing. He was gone, and it was all my fault.

  A scream lodged in my throat, burning, begging for release, but I couldn’t set it free. Frozen, lost, and swirling in a dark abyss of nothing, I sat immobilized, chained to the memory of my father’s battered face.

  A jolt threw me against the soft metal restraints. I coughed as the window reopened to thousands of stars and milky, cloud-like formations scattered in the darkness.

  David wiped tears from his cheeks and sunk his hands back into the liquid controls. He swirled his arms as if he were stirring a pool of black mud. Taking a deep breath, he pulled his hands free, slumped to his seat, and stared at his lap.

  I fought against my bindings. “Let me go. We have to go back.”

  David slouched, holding the sides of his head.

  “Did you hear me? They’re gonna hurt my dad. We have to go back!”

  His sobs filled the chamber. The pressure in my chest coalesced into a scream as tears poured from my eyes. “You left him. You left him there!”

  My bindings receded into the chair. I arched forward, hugging myself. Did Dad know I was there? Did he see us abandon him? Did he see me leave him to die?

  David turned, his face red and swollen. “I didn’t have a choice. If I gave them what they wanted—” He closed his eyes.

  Mars would be dead, and the Erescopians would take Earth.

  His head drooped between his shoulders.

  I gritted my teeth. “This is your fault. You invented that stuff. How could you create something so horrible?”

  “It was an accident. I never meant to—”

  “An
accident? They’re going to kill my father, and all you can do is try to apologize?”

  “I never meant for any of this to happen! I was trying to save my people.”

  “Yeah, great. And you probably just killed mine in the process.”

  The expression drained from his face. Lost. Defeated. Hurt.

  The turquoise in his eyes paled as his forehead wrinkled.

  My anger sapped just as quickly. He’d left my dad there. I knew the reason. It didn’t make it easier to stomach. Without the powder, they couldn’t hurt Mars or Earth.

  My father was gone. But it wasn’t David’s fault.

  I was the one who insisted on being the aliens’ photographer. I was the one who fell through a wall and found the powder. If I hadn’t, I’d already be home. With Dad. Eating tacos. I covered my face with my hands and tore at my temples.

  The seat liquefied and disappeared as David pulled me into his arms. I tried to shove him away, but he held me with firm, but gentle hands. I slapped his torso, my sobs deepening. My lungs threatened to burst, until I collapsed against his chest, muffling my cries in his tee-shirt.

  David’s arms surrounded me. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  What should I have said to that? It’s okay? Everything will be fine?

  It wasn’t.

  I stared at the swirling, opalescent floor of the ship. The mustard canister—the harbinger of doom—lay nestled at the base of the wall. Designs formed and dissolved within the flooring without meaning. Without reason.

  Dull. Lost. Alone.

  A tone sounded, and David startled. He looked toward the control panel, then back at me.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Do whatever you need to do.”

  He hesitated, his lip trembling, before he released me and grazed his fingers through the shimmering surface of the console.

  The lights dimmed.

  “Is that okay?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “This is a short range vessel. I took it too far.”

  “How far? Where are we?”

  He sighed. “I don’t actually know.”

  “What?” I sprang beside him and looked at the console. Not that I knew what I was looking at.

  He turned to me. “I engaged the thrusters without calculating a destination. I knew it was risky, but—”

  “You’re serious. You really don’t know where we are?”

  “Well, I know we’re not dead, and we have the powder.” He shrugged. “The sensors don’t have enough energy to tell me anything else.”

  I shivered, but the temperature hadn’t changed.

  “Are you telling me we’re stuck here?” His silence bore a hole through my heart. “After all this, are we going to die?”

  He grasped my shoulders. “No. I’m not letting anything happen to you.”

  Another tone sounded. David’s eyes seemed to study my face before he turned away. Some kind of board appeared in the wall to the left of the control panel. He tapped his fingers across the surface and waited.

  I grabbed the mustard powder and placed it back on the console. David grimaced at the cylinder and glanced at me before returning to his work.

  How could I blame him for any of this? He did what he needed to do. If we were lost out here, and Earth was safe because of it—well, it didn’t make it any easier, but at least I knew he’d done the right thing. David always did the right thing. Not like me: the idiot who always tripped into trouble.

  He pointed at the wall. I saw nothing but a black, wet-looking surface. “There. A planet. Not all that hospitable, but the ship has survival gear in storage.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. “How long will we have to stay there?”

  “Until I figure this out.” He turned to me. “I will figure this out. I’m getting you home.”

  Something in his eyes brought me back to when we’d first met in the woods. Funny. We were far from safe with the Army after us, but we were home. On Earth. We’d be there again. I knew it.

  I nodded. “What do you need me to do?”

  The chair appeared again. “Just sit. Keep me company.”

  “I can do that.” I eased into the seat. The liquid form-fitted to my boney butt. I wish I’d had one of these when we’d driven to Disney World a few years ago. Cadillac, eat your heart out.

  A smirk crept over my lips. Dad had complained the whole trip—said he’d never drive to Florida again. My smile skated away as my vacation image faded to Dad’s bruised and swollen face pressed against the glass. Suddenly, the chair wasn’t all that comfortable anymore.

  David sunk his hands back into the panel. His body swayed, almost dancing.

  Tears beaded in my lashes. I wiped them away. I had to think of something other than Dad. Anything else. “How does it work?” I asked. “The controls, I mean.”

  He glanced at me. “The interface responds to thought and movement. The most important thing is to focus on one task at a time and center your consciousness on what you want. It takes a few years of practice.”

  “That’s pretty cool.” Dad would love this.

  I closed my eyes. A vision of him and Mom laughing after she’d doused him with the garden hose flashed through my mind. He and I could be that happy again, if we only had the chance. Please, God. Let him be okay.

  “There we go,” David said.

  A huge, shining orb lit up the window. The ship veered to the right, and we headed toward a tiny mint-green marble.

  “It’s pretty.”

  He nodded. “I guess so, if you like the color of noxious gas.”

  “Noxious gas?”

  “I said it wasn’t hospitable. We won’t be able to breathe the air.”

  “Ummm … ”

  He pulled his arms free. “Don’t worry. We have a bubble that will cover us and cycle out the contaminates. And I’m getting us out of there as soon as I can.”

  I nodded. It wasn’t like I could disagree. Space Travel 101 wasn’t exactly a college-prep class.

  A chair appeared. He sat beside me, sliding both his hands over mine. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  I soaked in strength through his touch. Having him near made everything all right. I almost had to struggle to remember that our trip wasn’t about beautiful stars and glowing green planets.

  “My dad. Do you think he’s dead?”

  His grip on me tightened. “I don’t know the ambassador well. If he’s angry, who knows what he’ll do?”

  I flinched. Sometimes I wished he’d lie to me.

  David dragged his finger across the edge of the canister. “Then again, we still have the powder. It would be logical to keep him alive and use him as leverage against us.”

  I nodded. That made perfect sense. At least, that’s how it always happened in the movies. Now we just had to figure out how to fix our ship and fly home to play hero.

  My gut twisted. David was a scientist, and I was in high school. What chance could we possibly have against Poseidon and his goons?

  The walls warbled. Both our chairs liquefied. What the … I gasped as I dropped to the floor.

  David reached for the panel, but it solidified.

  “What’s happening?”

  He stared up at the window. The pretty, green marble became a golf ball, a baseball, a grapefruit, a soccer ball, a basketball …

  “We’re losing cohesion.” He pulled himself from the floor. “We’re going in too fast!”

  “Can’t you stop it?”

  The color drained from his face. The violet hue beneath his human covering pulsed to the surface. He punched the console three times until the metal reliquified. “I think I can slow us down.”

  The ship shuddered, as if an unbearable force pulled against it. The planet hung before us, filling the screen with pale green brilliance, but getting no closer.

  David drew his gaze from the monitor to me. “That brace isn’t going to last. We’re in its gravit
ational pull.” His turquoise eyes darkened. His hands flexed before pulling me from the floor.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked, struggling to keep up as he drew me toward the back of the ship.

  An alcove opened in the wall. He chucked my backpack into it.

  “I need you to listen to me very carefully.”

  The ship rumbled around us.

  “Take this.” He handed me a rough, silver box. “This is food and water.”

  “Wait a minute, what?”

  He pressed his finger against my lips. His intensity terrified me into submission.

  Reaching behind me, he grabbed a sheet of shiny black paper. He bent the edges and displayed it in front of my face. “Hold your breath.”

  The paper sucked away from his hands and latched onto my face like a freaky alien parasite. Panic flooded me. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see.

  “Relax. Let it fit itself.”

  I didn’t relax. I clawed at my face, but the paper suddenly turned clear and filled with air. I could breathe. Holy crow!

  “This will feed you oxygen for twenty-six hours if you don’t exert yourself.” David backed me into the alcove. “Don’t take it off. No matter what.”

  I reached for him, but a clear wall thumped shut between us. “David, what is this?”

  He dragged his fingers along the glass near my face. “It’s going to get hot, Jess. Very hot.”

  My pulse throbbed in my temples as sweat beaded my brow. Oh, God. I was in an escape pod. “Don’t. Please don’t.”

  His gaze seeped into me. Searching. Learning. Absorbing. The ache in his eyes tore through my heart.

  “You are the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me,” he whispered. “And I regret nothing.” He banged his hand against the wall.

  My head slammed against the back of the compartment. David shrank. The ship shrank. The stars faded into a bright green haze.

  The walls shimmered and buckled. A jolt crashed me to the side before slamming me flat against my back like that idiotic rotor ride on the boardwalk.

  Attached to the hull and unable to move, I jostled with the ship. My skull seemed to buckle with the surface around me. Heat blasted through the walls.

  God, please help me!

  The ship’s bulwarks came to life. Cold metal surrounded me and completely liquefied, cushioning me from the searing panels. The roar of a freight train echoed through my mask before I collided with something. My body flew up, nearly hitting the ceiling before I smashed down again, and again. I rolled over three times before the pod jerked to a stop.