Sea of Stars (Kricket #2) Read online

  My fingers feel his smile as he murmurs, “And just when I thought I couldn’t love you more . . .” Taking my fingers from his cheek, he kisses them before wrapping his arm around my waist.

  We rocket from between the doors of the lift, entering into an open area several stories high. There are tiers of every type of hover vehicle here, waiting to be claimed. Trey takes a winding tunnel supported by concrete columns; my hair flies behind me and I lose my stomach. Every sound is muted except the beat of my heart. Terrified that we’ll crash into something—that we won’t make it—I soon forget my nervousness about jet-pack travel when the greater threat, in the form of another bomb, hits the Ship of Skye. Around me, the walls tremble; pieces of the ceiling crumble away, covering my hair with a fine powder as the hovercars shift.

  From behind us, a laser shot obliterates a support column in front of us. Rock dust spews out at us, choking our air. Avoiding a falling pillar shattered by the pursuing Alameeda, we swipe the wall flanking us. We ricochet. Twisting, Trey maneuvers us so that the jet pack skims the ground. As we fly upside down on our backs, Kyon is able to fly above us. He dives down, trying to release the belt of my harness. I kick up at him to make it harder for him to get me, but my bare feet don’t make much of an impression on him.

  Trey waits until the last possible moment to make a sharp turn, leaving Kyon raging in the wrong direction. We branch off into a different corridor. The severe angle of our turn causes us to bounce against the wall. Ricocheting, he fights to keeps us from crashing into the adjacent wall. We flip around once more so that I’m again beneath him. When we pass the next rows of columns in the tunnel, Trey aims his stolen Alameeda weapon, shooting at the stone supports. The ceiling above us begins to collapse, bringing down debris and mortar, blocking the path behind us—cutting off the Alameeda Strikers following us. We take several more turns in an attempt to lose Kyon and the Alameeda soldiers for good, angling toward an enormous pillar in the parking garage that’s wreathed by guardrails.

  “Clutch yourself,” Trey growls in my ear.

  While I try to figure out what he means by that, I look for something to hang on to, but there’s nothing but air between my fingers. We swoop over the guardrail so fast it seems inevitable that we’ll hit the vertical support column rapidly approaching. I put up my hands to shield my face, even though I know it’ll do no good.

  At the last possible second, a warning signal on the jet pack beeps loudly: dee dee dee, dee dee dee. It activates some sort of preservation protocol in the engine, cutting the power to the forward thruster. The jet-pack engine flips the thruster from forward to reverse. We slow up. Trey kills the power completely and we drop, abruptly changing direction. Falling headfirst through the open-air gap between where the floor ends and the support column begins, I do, indeed, clutch myself; my arms crisscross in front of me, circling my waist. The power to the pack is reengaged, and we plummet toward the belly of the ship at a breakneck pace.

  We plunge several stories, and the light dims the farther down we fly. When we reach a junction illuminated by white fluorescent lights, we turn like gulls in the wind, soaring through a long tunnel. We travel until our shadows settle on large chamber doors ahead of us; thick and steel, they scream all of the reasons to stay away.

  Touching down on a platform in front of the dull-hued doors, the jet-pack engine ceases firing. The whine of sirens is muffled here, several stories below the surface of the ship. The flashing of amber lights is all too apparent, though, turning our pale faces from ghostly to sickly in intermittent intervals. A fem-bot voice advises, “All nonessential Detention Center personnel are ordered to Code Amber stations at the surface of Skye. Defensive protocol: Vector Six. All nonessential Detention Center personnel—”

  Trey releases me from the harness; it disappears into the jet pack along with his restraint. He shrugs off the jet pack, and it clatters to the deck with a loud noise. “Most of the Detention Center personnel are being ordered to battle stations,” he whispers as he clutches my upper arms to steady me. “They’ll be operating with a skeleton crew.”

  “That’s good for us,” I murmur.

  A wary scowl crosses his lips. “You’re my prisoner. Do you think you can sell it?” He subtly nods his head in the direction of the imposing doors, and then he shakes me roughly. It’s not painful, only disorienting, as I lose my feet and stumble while he holds me up.

  When he pulls me almost nose to nose to him with his hand balled in the front of my jacket, I glare at him in mock anger and murmur, “We don’t even need a pencil to draw them in, honey.”

  “I love you,” he says under his breath.

  He yanks me into the pools of spotlights in front of the edifice. The light becomes brighter, causing me to shield my eyes. The portal in front of us becomes translucent, revealing a checkpoint with mounted guns and an admissions area manned by only two worried-looking Brigadets. “State your business,” a voice pipes through the communicator located above the trigger of the doors. A heavily armed Brigadet approaches the barrier between us. Trey lets go of the front of my jacket. He straightens his Brigadet uniform shirt.

  “Let us in. I’ve located your escaped prisoner.” He gestures to me, swiping my hair farther away from the already fallen cowl of my red cloak. Pale strands of it spill forward to drape my shoulders, exposing my Alameeda heritage to them. “I’m being pursued by Alameeda Strikers.” He points his thumb over his shoulder at the empty tunnel behind us. “They’re attempting to recover their spy. I’ve been charged to remand her back to your custody,” he lies, trying to hide the strain in his voice from them.

  “Where’d you find her?” the soldier says as he scrambles forward.

  “The Beezway. The Alameeda destroyed the west end of the transfer tunnel. We just made it out,” Trey answers honestly.

  The sentinel activates a hatch door beneath my feet, causing me to fall into a chute when the ground gives way beneath me. My arms are flung above my head. Air propels me rapidly through a cylindrical tube, forcing me under the barrier. I emerge on the other side of the doors, but I’m trapped within a clear gerbil-style cage. My gasping, frantic breath fogs the transparency of the walls as I press my hands against the box restraining me.

  Trey is left standing on the platform outside the door. His eyes search for me immediately. “Let me in!” he insists with a troubled frown from his lone position outside the gate. “I’m dead if you leave me out here!”

  “I’ve been ordered not to admit unauthorized personnel. Most of our detail has been relocated by the Amber Code,” the Brigadet explains unapologetically. “We’re operating on lockdown here.”

  From behind Trey, a firework of blue light explodes. His shoulders round while his hands come up to protect his head. Laser fire ricochets off the once-steel-looking screen that separates Trey from the sanctuary of the detention area. At the other end of the tunnel behind Trey, Kyon and several other Alameeda Strikers with Riker jet packs come into view; they show no fear of the defensive guns that automatically return fire upon them. Blue bubble-shields that look to be made of light form around the Alameeda Strikers, deflecting the lethal Brigadet laser light from penetrating their targets, acting as a force field against it.

  Trey turns and fires on them too. Finding his efforts useless, he backs away from the onslaught of Alameeda. Pounding his hand against the barrier, he screams at the guards, “Open the gate!”

  Confusion shows on the Brigadet’s face, but he acquiesces, moving to the console on the wall again. The floor beneath Trey opens, sucking him into it before the hole evaporates once more. Next to me in a separate, transparent cage, Trey jets upward, filling the space like sausage meat. “Let me out,” Trey urges them. “You need my help to defend against them.”

  The Brigadet moves to release Trey from his hollow pillar prison. The moment the tube surrounding him retracts into the floor, Trey raises the weapon in his hand
and fires a shot at the Brigadet. Electricity pulses in yellow light over the guard’s body, driving him to his knees before he falls forward on his face. Trey immediately lifts his gun to the other two soldiers; before they can react, he pumps them full of energy that makes them fall to the floor, twitching like fish out of water—tased but not dead.

  Running to the panel near my restraining tube, Trey deactivates it. The cage retracts into the floor, allowing me to leave its claustrophobic atmosphere. Breathing deeply, I jump down from the platform that separates me from Trey. I look toward the barrier, and Kyon is there, watching me. He lifts the mirrored visor on his navigation helmet, showing me his piercing blue eyes. I shiver at their intensity.

  “Stop,” I whisper. “Please.”

  No, Kyon mouths back before he gnashes his teeth. His eyes search the barrier for a way inside.

  Trey doesn’t notice our exchange. He clutches my shoulder, forcing me to turn away from Kyon and follow him out of the open door on the opposite side of the admission area.

  We emerge onto a grate-floored catwalk, our footsteps echoing in the cylindrical hivelike arena surrounding us. All of the aisles join together in star formations. Amid each star, there are hundreds of mirror-reflected shiny orbs; they’re moored above an abyss of prison levels that go on for miles beneath us. Thousands upon thousands of stacked hexagon cells form a grim honeypot.

  Jax, Wayra, and my other Cavar bodyguards are in those cells, but which ones? I wonder, as we make our way over the grated bridge toward a large metallic orb. Emerging from a sliding door in the mirrored orb chamber, a soldier lifts his weapon to defend his position. Trey is a better shot; he drops the soldier with a stunning burst of electricity.

  Jumping over the incapacitated soldier, Trey enters the chamber of the orb through its open door. Another Brigadet rises from his seat at a holographic panel of controls in order to ward off Trey’s attack, but he’s dropped to the floor in short order by a blow from Trey’s fist.

  Once we’re inside the orb, the controls and holographic screens indicate that the orb is a craft of some kind. Trey drags the unconscious soldier out of the control room and onto the catwalk. When he returns, he goes directly to the holographic console and gazes intently at the screen of readouts in front of him. Within moments he says, “I found them.”

  “How’d you do that?” I ask in awe and disbelief.

  “I’m a Cavar,” he replies with hubris. “They’re on level four ipsacore in section twenty-two.”

  “How do we get to them?”

  Trey scans the hologram, sliding moveable icons around a gridlike screen. The door of the control orb closes. The catwalks that attach to the orb retract, unmooring it. The orb falls from its position at the top of the hive. Descending several stories, the orb slows and fits itself through a narrow, silver tunnel of light to the left. Like a silver ball in a pinball machine, we glide along to another sector. Shooting out into a separate stack of cells, I notice the mark of section 22. The orb floats to the middle of the sector and hovers there. Grated catwalks expand from bridgelike walkways that line the fronts of the cells. When the star pattern of bridges moves to connect to the orb, Trey slides the door to the orb open.

  “Which ones are they in?” I ask.

  His hands rapidly conduct an orchestra of information on the holographic screen, pulling out its secrets from within the control module. Wayra’s face flashes up on the screen, and then Jax’s. I feel tears sting my eyes.

  “That’s them,” I exhale.

  “They’re all clustered in the same area—south.” He points behind us. “You need a slipshield to help me unlock the cells. Here.” Trey finesses more holographic buttons. A small panel in the control console opens and emits a clear sticker that resembles the symbol on a USB port. He takes the small patch and peels it from the backing like one would an electrode. He grabs my hand, turning it palm up before sticking the tattoolike symbol to the skin over my wrist. I examine it: it’s created from a gel-like substance with wires embedded in it. “That slipshield will unlock the cell door when you scan it. The system will consider you a guard.”

  The silver orb transport pod slows until it hovers in the open-aired space beyond the grated catwalks. After Trey manipulates more icons on the holographic screen, a docking catwalk slides out to our transport, attaching itself to the lip beneath the door. Trey rises from the control seat and takes my hand. He leads me to the door and opens it. He scans the area outside for Brigadets, but there seems to be no one about at the moment. He tugs gently on my hand, and we exit the pod through the open door. Trey takes the catwalk that leads to the southern grated walkway. I follow him, running with my face turned toward a row of empty cells as I scan them one by one, looking for my friends.

  Trey comes to a halt in front of a cell. I peer into it and find Jax sitting on his cot looking forlorn. When he sees us, he jolts to his feet. He shouts something, but we can’t hear him at all through the barrier. As a bewildered smile forms on Jax’s haggard face, Trey immediately moves to the console near his cell, working the slipshield to free him.

  I move around Trey to the cell next to Jax’s and find Wayra. He’s doing push-ups in the middle of the floor. His powerful back is covered in bruises and burn marks. I wince as my stomach twists. The assault against him is clear—they think he’s a traitor, because he insisted upon protecting me.

  Going to the panel on the side of the cell, I square my shoulders. He’d hate any show of sympathy or remorse, so I activate the intercom and ask, “Are you done with your set? Can we go now?”

  Wayra pauses in midpush; his face lifts to see me at the mouth of his cell. One eye is swollen and he has bruising around his jaw. He gets to his feet, wiping at sweat rolling down his face with his forearm as he walks unhurriedly to the clear barrier between us. “Poison, Kricket?” He shakes his head like he disapproves. “You’re not a very good assassin. This is the second time you’ve failed to kill the target. It’s becoming a pattern with you. We’re going to have to work on it.”

  The Brigadets must have told him what I did—maybe while they were interrogating him? I shrug as I swipe my wrist beneath the console’s scanner. The barrier between us disappears, freeing him. “The poison was more of a warning.”

  “In that case, it was a strong message,” he remarks with approval.

  “I really meant it,” I admit as I crane my neck back so that I can see his face as he steps in front of me.

  He picks me up and hugs me to him. I expect him to crush me because he’s so big, but he surprises me by treating me like I’m fragile. “I thought they drowned you,” he says.

  I rest my cheek against his shoulder. “I think they almost did. I need to learn how to swim soon.”

  “We’ll make it a priority,” he replies, setting me back on my feet.

  Trey hasn’t paused in his mission to free the other Cavars. In short order, Hollis, Drex, Dylan, Gibon, and Fenton emerge from their cells. They’re all disheveled messes, each having endured some form of abuse.

  Jax grasps my chin gently, turning my face so that he can scan it. His frown makes me wary. “What?” I ask.

  “You’ve been beaten.” It’s not a question. “Are you in pain?”

  I’ve been beaten? I gently pull my chin from his grasp. “No,” I answer. “I was when I woke up, but I’m not now. Why do you—why do you think I was beaten?”

  “Kricket, you’re bruised and battered,” Jax replies with the kind of gentleness that I’ve never found in anyone else.

  The urgency in Wayra’s voice, as he walks to Trey, distracts me from Jax. “There’s a guard pod at the end of this catwalk,” Wayra says, pointing his chin in that direction. “They have emergency evacuation protocols. If we can get in, we can infiltrate the system and open all of these cells. If we let everyone out, we’ll have a better chance of getting out of here—safety in numbers.” He looks arou
nd, his eyes rising to the hundreds of stacked cells surrounding us.

  “Will they shoot us if they find us escaping?”

  “On sight,” Wayra replies.

  Trey hands Wayra one of the guns he’d confiscated from the Alameeda Striker on the overup. “Take this. They’ll have a stockpile of weapons there. We’ll need them to gain our release. Is everyone up for the mission?” Trey asks each of them.

  In unison, they each respond, “Sir.”

  Trey nods toward me. “Kricket and I will remain here with the transport and map an escape route out,” he says, indicating the silver orb that brought us here. He hands Jax his other gun. Jax takes it, running his hand over the Alameeda weapon and checking its load. “Signal me with that if you need an extraction. Otherwise, meet back here upon completion.”

  “Baw-da-baw,” Wayra says with a roguish smile.

  The unit of Cavars goes in the direction Wayra indicated earlier. Trey walks to my side. Gently he takes my arm, leading me over the catwalk back to the shiny silver transport pod. He stops near the opening of the transport and hands me into it. I lean against the entranceway next to him, nervously looking around for Brigadets. There aren’t any. This section is desolate. They isolated us from the general population for a reason. Now, with the Brigadets all on the surface fighting the Alameeda, the place is a tomb.

  Chewing my bottom lip, I jump when Trey leans near me, murmuring, “They told me you died.” I hesitate, glancing at him. He has a hollow look. He anxiously rakes me with his eyes, as if he doesn’t believe it’s really me.

  “When?” I ask. I have a desert in my mouth; I try to swallow past the lump of sand in my throat.

  “When they took you from my cell. They taunted me with it—they told me you drowned.”

  “Did you believe them?” I ask.

  He grimaces. “No. Yes. No. I went back and forth. I don’t know which was worse.” My eyes widen as he adds, “I knew what could happen to you if you survived.” Now his look is sorrowful.