Zodiac (Zodiac, #1)(12)
He glares at me but doesn’t say anything. He knows I’m right.
“And what’d you see now?” whispers Nishi.
“Thebe is gone . . . and our other moons have started to flicker.”
None of us speaks. My friends are still caught in the gravity of my revelation, but I’m thinking of Instructor Tidus. She was the first grown-up since Mom who saw any potential in me.
Please let her have survived the blast.
Kai floats away from us, to a corner of the bunkroom. “I hope you’re wrong,” says Deke, following Kai and offering words of comfort.
“Maybe you’re not wrong,” whispers Nishi. “The omen and the flickering of the moons could be connected. Did you see anything else?”
“Nish, I don’t know anything,” I whisper back, growing unexpectedly angry. “None of what I saw was real. The Astralator proved I was wrong. I have no clue what you expect me to do.”
Deke frowns at us from across the room. “What are you gossiping about now, Nish?”
“I’m being serious,” she says. “I don’t care how, but Rho saw a threat, and we can’t ignore that.”
“It wasn’t in the stars, it was in my head,” I say, my words fueled by more hope than certainty.
“What about all the tragedies in the news?” she asks. The last couple of years, there have been a slew of natural disasters in the Zodiac. Mudslides in House Taurus. Dust storms and drought in the Piscene planetoids. Forest fires raging out of control on a Leonine moon. The past year alone, millions of lives have been lost.
“Maybe it’s the Trinary Axis again,” whispers Kai, like the thought itself is dangerous.
“Don’t even say that,” snaps Deke. “Events go in cycles, Kai, that’s all. It’s nature.”
We fall silent, and I wonder if we’re all still thinking about the Trinary Axis. A thousand years ago, the axis started a vicious galactic war that raged out of control for a century. When we studied it at school, it seemed unreal—just as unreal as the bodies on Elara.
“Those terrorist attacks in House Aries,” I say, “and those suicide bombers on the Geminin space freighter—that’s not nature’s way.”
“Fringe fanatics,” says Deke, sounding just like Stanton. “We’ve always had our share of lunatics.”
Nishiko draws me to the far end of the bunkroom, darts a wary glance at Deke and Kai, then whispers in my ear. “What if there is an enemy? Think about the timing of the blast.”
“You mean the Lunar Quadract?”
“Almost every Zodai and high-ranking government member in your House was on Elara tonight to hear your Guardian’s speech—”
“And our moons were at their closest conjunction,” I say, completing her thought. I chew on my lower lip as the full magnitude of her theory sinks in. If someone planned this, they really thought it through. A well-timed blast in exactly the right place, and our moons could crash into each other like marbles.
I feel myself blanch. I don’t want to consider this. Cancer has no enemies. Humanity has been at peace for a thousand years. “This was a tragedy . . . no one could have orchestrated it.”
Nishi frowns at me. “You’ve been seeing an omen.”
“Yes, and the experts at the Academy who teach classes on this stuff don’t find my methods reliable, so neither should you.”
Nishi’s voice rises higher, and now Deke and Kai are listening again. “Rho, they just don’t understand your methods, that’s all! I know you’ve been taught to trust your elders, but on Sagittarius we’re raised to question everything—it’s the only way to get to the truth of a thing. You and our instructors are being blinded by prejudice right now. You’re so distracted by how you got the right answer that you’re missing the point that you are right—”
An alarm blares across the room, and an automated voice echoes through the ship: “Debris field ahead. Brace yourselves.”
A heavy object jolts against our hull, and Nishi and I grasp hands just as the retro engines fire, flinging all of us to the ceiling. We must be flying through Thebe’s rubble. “Grab something and hang on!” I shout, wrapping my fingers around a handrail.
The engines thunder so loud, my teeth vibrate. We hear the thuds of more space rocks striking our hull, and we cling to our handrails while the ship veers in every direction, blowing our bodies around like seaweed in a riptide.
Kai looks green, so I pull myself over to him and tug on his elbow. “Come on!” I call over the thunderous rumbling. “We have to belt in.”
As the ship rolls and swerves, I help him into the nearest hammock and squeeze in beside him, hooking the belt tight across our ribs. An especially large chunk of debris slams our hull, and Kai clutches my hand so hard, I wince.
The ship keeps lurching unpredictably, the wreckage so extensive it feels like we’ve been bumping through it for hours. After a while, Kai starts singing an old Cancrian seafaring song:
“The wind she blows from north to east.
Our schooner flies ten knots at least.
So ever forward we shall roam,
Until the sea shall bring us home. . . .”
I join in, flat and off-key. When Deke’s voice seeps in, he meets my gaze for the first time. His eyes look like dying stars, nebulas of turquoise whose lights are fading.