Zodiac (Zodiac, #1)(37)

Her eyes shine with tears. “Stay safe out there.”

I nod. “Take care of Deke. And Kai.”

Crius drums his fingers on the table. “If you insist on this mad journey, we’ll tell the people you’re raising disaster relief funds. We don’t want to incite mass panic.”

Anxiety lines Agatha’s face. “Come back to us soon, Mother.”

“I think you’re all insane.” Dr. Eusta’s hologram blinks and vanishes.

Mathias strides to the door and swings it open for me. “I’ve commandeered the fastest ship on the dock. A visiting bullet-ship. It should be fueled and ready by the time we reach the hub.”

“We?”

He steps forward, until I’m swallowed by his shadow. “Your training isn’t finished. And besides, you’ll need a pilot.”

This flight could be suicide. I can’t let Mathias come with me.

“I’m sorry, but I’m doing this alone.”

His indigo eyes flash. “There are no self-flying ships. Either I go with you, or you don’t go at all.”

I bite my lip. There’s no other way.

“Welcome aboard.”





13


WHEN I WAS EIGHT, Stanton used to give me rides on his sailboard. I remember the feel of the board pressing against my belly as I lay on

it, sprawled between Stanton’s feet, while he danced around, manhandling the

sail.

One day when he wasn’t looking, I took the sailboard out by myself. I almost couldn’t lift the heavy sail, but as soon as the wind caught, I went zooming across the water. Salt stung my eyes, and I felt free and—for the first time in my short life—young.

It was only when my foot slipped and the sail slapped down in the waves that I looked back toward home. Kalymnos was a thin black line on the distant horizon, and every second, the offshore wind was carrying me farther away. I was lucky people on a passing boat spotted me.

The terror I felt that day on the water comes back to me now. Mathias and I are thousands of kilometers out from Cancer, so far away that the full shape of our Crab constellation is visible. I’ve never seen the real thing before. I’ve never been this far from home.

We’re sealed in the nose of a bullet-shaped craft, shooting toward Gemini, our nearest neighbor. I just hope we get there in time.

Now that we’re alone in the sky, I decide to activate the black opal. I need Ophiuchus to see I’ve left Cancer. If he’s going to attack me, better he do it here.

My muscles are clenched so tight, they ache. I need to program an escape capsule for Mathias to ensure he’ll survive this—only I’ve never programmed anything in my life. I’ll just have to shove him into a capsule when Ophiuchus shows up and trust that Mathias can take it from there.

The rounded front nose of the bullet-ship is capped in thick, diamond-hard glass, creating a fishbowl at the bow, and that’s where I’m floating in midair and peering into Space, like a damselfish confronting infinity. Behind me, Mathias is monitoring an arc of control screens at the helm. Now and then, he glances up, and our eyes meet. He looks pale and tired.

I’m too nervous to be tired. My black opal is clipped to a peg so it can’t float free, and its ovoid hologram of starry light fills the ship’s glass nose with its radiant map of the universe. Just beyond the glass, the real universe cradles our ship.

Like most spacecraft, this ship has handrails and safety belts for use in zero gravity, and Mathias has his legs hooked around the pilot’s seat while he works. Meanwhile, I float free on my back, stargazing.

I deliberately slow my breaths and relax my muscles, trying to open my inner eye. The hologram shimmers over the black fabric of my space suit, dappling my body with stars. For the past hour, I’ve been focusing on the region of the Thirteenth House.

“What do you see?” asks Mathias.

I rub my eyes. “Nothing so far.”

Mathias is programming the ship’s shield to defend us. Deep Space is full of hazards—pirates, foreign surveillance drones, cosmic radiation, stray junk, and debris. He says if we’re threatened, this bullet-ship will fly faster than a Capricorn can think—and it even has a cloaking veil. He was surprised he could hack the controls, considering the sophistication of the computer system.

“We’re entering the Double,” says Mathias from the helm. “Have you planned what you’ll tell them?”

“No clue.” I float upright and stretch my spine, staring out at real Space through the ship’s nose. “Apparently I’m no good at this.”

“Actually, you can be pretty forceful sometimes.”

Still facing away from him, I say, “I haven’t convinced you.”

He doesn’t speak for so long that I worry I’ve offended him. “Rho.” At the sound of his low baritone, I turn to find him floating just a few feet behind me. “I listen to everything you say.”

“That’s not it,” I say, shaking my head. I struggle with the words. I want to tell him I know he’s loyal and will always support me, but his allegiance only makes things worse. If sense of duty, and not trust, is what compels him to follow me, then I’m forcing his free will—and how is that better?

But I can’t say any of it. Sometimes Mathias makes me so angry that I’ll revert into a toddler who can’t form sentences. I wonder if it’s because we stayed silent for so many years that now we don’t know how to talk to each other.