A Million Suns

other in the air for a minute before the winds stop and we’re standing on the platform on the Feeder Level.

“See?” Elder says, tucking my hair behind my ears. “Not so bad.”

I step back, off the platform, resisting the urge to smooth his hair down.

As we step onto the trail, our shoulders brush. I step away and walk a little in front of him.

“Come on,” I say, unable to meet his eyes.

31 ELDER

AMY LEANS AGAINST THE CRYO-LEVEL WALL, WATCHING AS I approach the keypad by the locked door to the left of the hatch.

“I told you,” Amy says, “twenty-seven doesn’t work.”

“Let me see the list again,” I say. Amy thrusts the wrinkled paper into my outstretched hand. My wi-com beeps, but I ignore it.

“They look like submarine doors.” The catch in Amy’s voice makes me look up at her.

My mind races, trying to remember what a submarine is. One of those underwater things. I didn’t think they were real. But then again, I used to think the ocean couldn’t possibly be as big and deep as Amy said it was.

“They’re all seal locked,” I say. “The door to the Bridge is that way, too, and the hatches that connect the different levels. In case there’s damage to the ship and one level’s exposed, we can seal it off and…” I drift off, my attention turning back to the list.

“My father took me to see the USS Pampanito when I was kid — I only remember it because the name was so ridiculous that I sang it about a million times as I raced through the tiny hallways. Pampanito! Pampanito! Pam-pa-NITO! My dad tried to catch me, but he hit himself on the head trying to crawl through one of the small doorways. Almost knocked himself out.” She gives a tiny laugh, but the sound dies quickly. I glance up from the list — Amy’s staring at the wall, her eyes glassy.

I will do anything to make her happy again, so I give her the stars. I type the key code in quickly— Godspeed—and the hatch door flies open, exposing the millions of glittering dots in the sky.

I remember the first time I saw the stars. I thought they changed everything. I thought they changed me, like I’d become a different person just by seeing shining specks of light a million miles away. Now when I stare at them, I feel nothing. I don’t believe in them anymore. When I first told everyone on the ship that I was giving them the freedom to be themselves, I took those interested in seeing the stars — the real stars — here. Some came. Far fewer than I’d expected. And then I realized: when you’ve lived your entire life within ten square miles surrounded by steel, it’s easier to forget the outside. It makes it less painful to be trapped on a ship if you tell yourself it’s not a trap.

That’s the whole reason why I can’t tell everyone about the stopped engine.

My gaze shifts to the red paint by the keypad. Maybe one day the smears of paint Harley left throughout Godspeed will fade, and maybe the stars never will, but I’d rather have Harley’s colors.

Harley died for… well, I don’t know what he died for. I just know he’s not here anymore, and I miss him. But Kayleigh died for a truth, according to Orion.

His words echo in my mind, and I’m grateful. I don’t want to think about hollow stars and Harley.

Instead, I think about Orion’s puzzle. Orion seems to have known more about the ship’s engine than anyone else. If I can figure out his frexing clue, I might actually figure out why the engine’s stopped, maybe get us going again. Add it up…

I turn back to the list Amy found. Beside each of those twenty-seven names is their cryo-chamber number. What if I add those numbers together…?

1,270.

“What are you doing?” Amy asks.

I try 1270 on all four doors, starting with the biggest door at the end of the hall.

The last door opens.

Everything is darkness. The room smells of dust and grease. I think about what Orion said, just before I froze him. The frozens plan to work us or kill us.

I want to see these weapons for myself.

Amy finds the light switch before me. It flickers on reluctantly, spluttering as if unwilling to show what the room contains.

And I can see immediately what made Orion fear that, when we land, we’ll be made into soldiers or slaves.

You know what’s really going to twist you? Orion had said just before I spun the dial to freeze him. The fact that Elder sort of agrees with everything I’m saying.

Pistols, rifles, larger guns than that. Blister packs of mustard bombs. Missiles — most about the size of my forearm, three that are bigger than me. Everything’s sectioned off in compartments, sealed in heavy red plastic bags that are stamped with labels and FRX symbols.

“We don’t know what’s going to be on Centauri-Earth,” Amy says, already defensive. “It could be aliens, or it could be nothing. It could be monsters or dinosaurs. We could be giants on the new world. Or we could be mice.”

“Better to be armed mice, huh?” I say, picking up a filmy bag that protects a revolver.

“I know this looks bad.”

“It looks like everything Orion said before was true,” I say.

“It’s not,” Amy says immediately, but how does she know? I can see her thoughts warring — on the one hand, she believes absolutely that her father and the rest of the people from Sol-Earth would never use the weapons spread before us, but on the other hand, she can’t deny that the weapons are here. And they seem so much more… I don’t know, violent than I expected.

I head to the other side of the room, where the largest weapons are stored. I recognize torpedoes and missiles and bazookas from the vids of Sol-Earth discord Eldest showed me. A shelf lines the back of the room, cluttered with small round things, small cakes of compressed powder carefully packaged in clear plastic.

Amy picks one of the powder cakes up. “These look like toilet bowl cleaners we’d use on Earth, the kind you’d drop in the back of a tank.” She turns it over in her hands, the heavy plastic package crinkling. Then she notices my confused expression. “Oh, yeah, the toilets here don’t have tanks.”

On the bottom of the heavy, clear, thick-plastic packaging is a warning label etched into the container:

Anti-agricultural Biological Chemical

For use with Prototype Missile #476

Range: 100+ acres

To employ: See Prototype Missile #476

FRX

FRX… Financial Resource Exchange. The group that funded Godspeed’s mission in the first place.

On the next shelf is a similar cake-tablet, but this one is black, and the label on the bottom calls it an Anti- Personnel Biological Chemical.

I put the things back on the shelf cautiously, careful not to set anything off. It takes all the strength I have not to throw them away, hurtle them as far as I can, shove them all out the hatch.

“Don’t tell me you still think this is all for self-defense,” I say. I don’t want to pick a fight with Amy, but surely she can see these weapons are extreme. “This is chemical warfare. It’s preparation for genocide.”

“My mother’s a geneticist and every bit as important as my father in the military,” Amy counters immediately, but her voice is guarded, and I don’t know if it’s because she doesn’t want me to question her beliefs further or if