The Oceans between Stars Read online

  Or rather, the being standing beside it had changed its mind. As they inched closer, Xela’s heart skipped a beat at the sight of the strange figure on the catwalk, overseeing the Telphons’ departure. (This was, in fact, the second alien to show up on Telos that day. Moments before, a being known as a chronologist had arrived elsewhere on the planet to log the Tears of Ana in her records, but she had kept her visit to herself.)

  This delicate, ancient being standing beside the crystal had appeared once before. Xela’s mom and dad had been there, though that encounter was strictly classified. The Telphons translated the being’s name as Styrlax. A couple of centuries earlier, one of these same beings had also appeared to a small collection of earthlings, who had heard its name as Paha’Ne. Neither of these were quite the true name of the beings, but they didn’t mind. When you’d traveled over a quarter of the known half of the universe, you learned to be easygoing about nomenclature.

  Interestingly, even these Styrlax, easily one of the oldest and most advanced races in the universe, did not know about the chronologists. They knew about the blueberry, but not the pie, so to speak.

  When the Styrlax had first appeared five years ago, he had kindly explained the business of the giant orange crystal to the Telphon scientists who had been studying it, and who were quite shocked to see an otherworldy being materialize out of it. He’d said, apologetically, that the Styrlax had intended to use the crystal as part of a plan to colonize the planet and turn the Telphons into mindless drones, only to learn that because of some slight oddities in the Telphons’ chemical composition, the Styrlax mind-control technology would not in fact work on them.

  “Sorry about that,” the Styrlax had added. “It’s just that our planet blew up, as they sometimes do. We’ve been homeless ever since, but unlike some beings, we believe that all life in the universe is precious, no matter how insignificant.”

  Before leaving, the Styrlax told the Telphons that, when the Telphons were ready, he would be happy to assist them in journeying out into space. “As an apology for nearly enslaving you all. Really, it’s the least we could do.”

  At the time, the Telphons had no idea what the Styrlax was saying. He was, after all, speaking Styrlax. Xela’s mother was part of the linguistics team that had worked on translating the language in the years since. Until today, they hadn’t known for certain whether they’d gotten the translation right, as they had attempted to send numerous messages into the crystal but had received no replies. Then this morning when the first scientists raced down to the lab after the Tears had struck, and sent a desperate plea for help, they’d been relieved to see the Styrlax appear moments later.

  “Place both palms on the surface,” the Styrlax had said, and the Telphons had correctly translated. “And I’d suggest closing your eyes,” he’d added.

  Now Xela and her parents were almost to the crystal, only a few groups ahead of them. Arcs of energy erupted like solar flares from its surface, cycling around it like a miniature sun. The next few Telphons put their hands on it and disappeared in a wash of light.

  “What about Mica?” Xela asked, but her voice was choked and barely more than a whisper. She couldn’t quite see over the adults behind them, but the sounds of screaming and wailing had grown so loud behind them . . .

  Mom kept checking over her shoulder, fire glimmering in her tear-filled eyes. She rubbed Xela’s back and forced a smile. “They’ll make it.”

  The group directly in front of them disappeared into the crystal.

  “We have to go,” said Dad. “It’s now or never.”

  Mom nodded, tears falling faster. She put her arm around Xela and they stepped up to the crystal. Its humming vibrated her teeth.

  They’ll make it, Xela said to herself over and over.

  “Tarra,” Dad said to a scientist beside him, “any idea where they’re sending us?”

  Tarra-8 motioned to the Styrlax, who watched the crowd mildly, his translucent arms crossed. “He says they have a ship in orbit.”

  Dad glanced around. “Golan and the kids?”

  Tarra checked her phone. It flashed No Signal. “He took them early to practice. I should have gone for them. . . .”

  Dad put a hand on her shoulder. “They know to come here, right?”

  Tarra shrugged. She motioned with her phone. “Golan has subnetwork access, but even that’s down.”

  “That fire is spreading fast,” said Dad.

  “Not a fire,” said Tarra. “A fusion-driven plasma storm.”

  The Styrlax spoke from nearby: a voice you might describe as a human computer imitating the sounds of an excited dog, crossed with a dinging microwave.

  “Please hurry,” Mom translated.

  “Go,” said Dad, pushing Xela.

  She found herself face-to-face with the glittering electric crystal interface. But Mica! And wait, were they really leaving the planet? How would they get back? They—

  “Now, Xela!” Dad urged.

  Later, and for years after, Xela would wonder how she did it, because placing her hands on that warm surface had meant never seeing her house or anything in her world again. No one had told her that, and yet she’d seen her parents’ faces, seen that storm. It meant traveling to somewhere completely new when only moments before she’d been eating cereal and preparing for yet another day at school. Still needing to brush her hair and coil her tail, to remember to bring her friend Dia-7’s charm bracelet with her to class, otherwise there would be drama at lunch, and what about that vocabulary quiz? Wait, what would happen to Dia? And her classmates?

  As she placed her palms onto the warm, buzzing crystal, it hit her like a wave. None of those things would ever happen, and her brother, and her grandparents—

  Her body lit up. She experienced a light and stretching feeling like she was a pysal flower (similar to an Earth dandelion), like her very molecules were catching the wind and blowing free. And it felt like there was air between her fingernails and her skin, a wind behind her eyeballs, a gray hole in her thoughts . . .

  The next thing Xela saw was the midnight-blue floor of the Styrlax space cruiser. She sucked in a breath that seemed to reorganize her from toe to spine. The gray hole was still there, though, the sense of something missing, something lost. After a moment it faded, but not all the way.

  It never would.

  She stumbled to her feet and looked around at the small crowd of Telphons. Everyone was silent. Facing the same way. Light flickered on their faces. Xela pressed up on her tiptoes but once again couldn’t see over the adults.

  “Xela, don’t,” said Dad.

  “I want to see.”

  Dad sighed and lifted her up by the armpits; when was the last time he’d picked her up? He strained to hold her against his side. It had been so long since she’d smelled his brand of gel. Everyone wore it to keep their bristles from drying out. Dad’s smelled like hot sand and the Telphon version of chocolate. All of this brought fresh tears to her eyes. She felt younger, and older, so much older, all at once.

  Xela saw, over the crowd, a giant liquid window. Below were the glittering rings and magenta curve of Telos. Her world. The copper hues of its oceans, the red and pink dabs of its landforms. She’d seen images of it from orbit but never really imagined how beautiful it was.

  And yet, before her eyes, the energy storm swept over the planet rim, preceded by a foam of black clouds like breaking surf. It charged over land and water and crashed against itself in splashes of fire, and when it had covered the entire surface, their planet looked as if it had become a star. Then the storm died out, leaving a swirling gray breakwater, ashen, here and there blooming with flashes of leftover flame, like fireworks in a cloudy sky.

  Everyone wept. Someone wailed. An older man nearby just repeated, “No, no, no. . . .”

  Xela craned to see behind her. The crystal interface—a smaller sphere up here on the ship—hummed quietly. No one else was appearing in front of it.

  “Mica?” she whispered.r />
  Mom put a hand on her shoulder but didn’t answer.

  “We should have stayed!” Xela yelled. “We should have waited!”

  Dad hugged her tighter. “Shh.”

  “No! Let me go!” She thrashed out of her father’s grasp and fell to the ground. He grabbed her by the shoulders and hugged her again. “We’d be dead, too,” he said, his voice choked. “You have to see that. We’d be gone.”

  Xela quieted. He was right. But now that she had lived, how long would she feel this terribly alone?

  Eventually, the murmurs and tears and wails of agony coalesced into one swirling wave, a single question, ringing throughout the crowd of survivors.

  “What happened?”

  “Ana wanted to punish us!” someone yelled. “She wept for our sins!”

  “It was terrorism!”

  “We were attacked!”

  Dad moved away from the shouting. Xela trailed behind him. He and Mom and Tarra convened behind the orange crystal, in a command area where the Styrlax who had come for them stood with two others of his kind.

  “Do you know what caused this?” Dad asked calmly.

  Mom translated the question. The Styrlax chirped and blipped in reply.

  “He says they aren’t sure,” said Mom, “but they can help us retrace the trajectory of the bombs and pinpoint their origin.”

  “Can they help us get there?” Dad asked.

  The Styrlax made a sound like a breeze through wind chimes. He consulted with the others for what seemed like a long time, then replied.

  “They will lend us a ship,” Mom translated. “What we do with it is up to us. We can bring a small team. The rest can stay aboard here for as long as we need, but the Styrlax will not involve themselves further.”

  “Tell them we are grateful.” Dad looked back at the survivors, then locked eyes with Tarra and another scientist who’d joined them, Barro-8. “I think we’ve ended up in command.”

  Barro motioned to Tarra. “You’re the highest ranking among us.”

  Tarra grimaced but nodded. “Let’s get everyone else organized.”

  Mom looked around. “There are so few of us. . . .”

  “All the more reason not to waste time.”

  “Dad, what will we do?” asked Xela.

  “We’re going to figure out who did this, and why.”

  Xela sat alone by the window as the adults conversed in quiet tones. Below, the planet swirled in gray ash and darkness. She thought of Mica, of his auburn bristles and his feisty tail, the way he wouldn’t leave her room each night even though it was bedtime, the way he jumped on her each morning . . .

  Many hours, or maybe a day later—time had little meaning when you were in orbit, the sun slipping by every few hours—Mom came and sat beside her.

  “Mica’s gone,” Xela sobbed.

  Mom nuzzled her face against Xela’s braid. “I know.”

  “We’ll never see him or Nia or Niho again, ever. Or the rest of our family or any of my friends or our house or anything. I just want to die, too.”

  Mom hugged her tightly, tears falling. This was the kind of moment when, throughout Xela’s life, Mom had said something like It’s going to be okay, but not this time.

  “We’re going to go on a journey,” she said instead. She rubbed her finger against the skin in the crook of her elbow.

  Xela noticed that Mom had drawn three hollow black circles there. “What’s that?”

  “To remember your brother, and your grandparents.”

  “Can I have one, too?”

  “It’s permanent. And it hurts.”

  “I don’t care; I want one. Where are we going?”

  “To where the Tears came from. To find out who sent them, and why.”

  “And then what?”

  Mom looked out the window. “We don’t know yet.”

  “We need to kill them,” said Xela, squeezing her own tail until it hurt. “We need to burn them up just like they did to us!”

  “Calm down, honey,” said Mom, rubbing her shoulders, and yet she didn’t disagree. “Barro and Tarra are leaving soon. They will scout the system and report back. Then we’ll go.”

  Xela nodded. “I’m waiting for you to tell me that you’re going to leave me here where it’s safe.”

  Mom shook her head and bit her lip, a pained look crossing her face. “We will stay together. Nowhere is safe anymore.”

  “I know.”

  “We may need to make some changes,” said Mom. “To how we look and how we think. We may need to do things that, before today, we would never have imagined doing.”

  Xela gripped her tail tighter. “Good.”

  Mom left, and Xela gazed out the window. Below, the surface of Telos, in night’s shadow, was as dark as the depths of space around them, a black hole where her entire life had once been.

  She turned away from it and curled up on her side.

  Many sleepless hours later, she boarded a Styrlax spaceship with Mom and Dad, Barro and Tarra, and ten other Telphons. The ship was powered by a smaller version of the orange crystal sphere, and they traveled many light-years nearly at once. And then again. And again.

  One year later, after endless training and careful, quiet study, Xela had a new name and a new face. She had scars from the changes they had all made to blend in, changes that had left her in daily pain. The strange planet she now found herself on looked stranger through her new eyes; even her voice no longer sounded like her own. She was an alien speaking an alien language, learning an alien history. But she appeared as one of them, except for the three circles she would draw inside her elbow, above the permanent, hidden tattoos beneath. Three circles that she would touch when she was alone, and say their names: Mica, Nia, Niho.

  She would smile, and she would make alien friends, and pretend to laugh at their alien jokes, but inside, she would never forget:

  They would be counted.

  TIME LINE

  2175: Humanity detects anomalous readings in the sun and discovers that it will explode in a supernova in less than fifty years. This behavior contradicts all previous scientific knowledge of yellow dwarf stars, and there is no way to stop it.

  2179: The International Space Agency devises a plan: leave the solar system and journey to the planet designated Aaru-5, nearly fifteen light-years away. The journey will take one hundred and fifty years, with humans in stasis for most of the trip.

  2185: Humanity begins moving to colonies on Mars. Starliner construction commences in orbit above the red planet. The ISA initiates Phases One and Two of the Aaru-5 colonization protocol.

  2194: Eight years into its test voyage, the Starliner Artemis, the prototype of the ships that will make up the colonial fleet, is lost.

  2198: The last humans leave Earth orbit. The planet is officially declared uninhabitable.

  2200: The First Fleet departs on the ten-year journey to Delphi, the first waypoint en route to Aaru-5. Additional fleets depart yearly, then every few months as Red Line, the time when Mars will become too dangerous to inhabit, draws closer.

  2209: Phase One is completed. Initial readings are deemed promising. The First Fleet reaches Delphi successfully and refuels to begin the journey to Danos, the second waypoint.

  2211: Earth is consumed by the sun.

  2213: The last colonists depart Mars on the Starliner Scorpius.

  2216: The sun goes supernova, obliterating the solar system.

  2223: The Scorpius begins its arrival procedures near Delphi. . . .

  1

  EARTH YEAR: 2223

  DISTANCE TO DELPHI: 557.3 BILLION KM

  TIME TO ARRIVAL: 184 DAYS, 9 HOURS

  From a far enough distance, the Milky Way galaxy appears to be hugging itself with arms made of soft clouds. Closer, those clouds can be seen for what they really are: trillions of stars, a spill of diamonds. It would seem that to fly through, you would need to carefully thread your way between their crowded edges, all the while being blinded by their glea
ming. But when you get very close, those spiral arms, those rivers of gems, reveal their trick. The spaces between the stars get bigger and bigger, until you are alone in darkness, each star seemingly a lifetime away. You can be moving at nearly thirty thousand kilometers per second, a speed so fast it is like traveling from your house around the world and back in the time it takes to snap your fingers, and yet the stars never seem to get any closer. In a universe this vast, where the answer to are we there yet comes in decades, centuries, even millennia, you can almost feel like you aren’t moving at all.

  Better just to sleep.

  And so humanity did, in billions of little pods on a hundred great ships, a jagged blinking ant line through the dark. And yet, again, so great were the distances that this was not a line you could see: the First Fleet, which had recently departed from Danos, the second waypoint, was a bit more than a full light-year ahead of the Final Fleet, which was just nearing Delphi, the first. More than twelve trillion kilometers separated the first starliner, the Asimov, and the last, the Scorpius, with the rest of the fleets scattered in between.

  There were more ships behind the Scorpius as well: many private vessels, stragglers who had stayed to watch the sun go supernova seven years ago. They had pulled back to a safe distance and peered through high-powered scopes as the sun, now a smoldering red supergiant, all at once collapsed in on itself and exploded, sending a brilliant wave of energy in all directions. It vaporized Jupiter and Saturn (in the Rings of Gold casino, at the last table of lifers still playing cards, the dealer’s final recorded hand was a perfect twenty-one), as well as Neptune and Uranus. It tossed Pluto and Charon like marbles out into the dark, to roam the night perhaps forever, or at least until they found another sun to enchant them. It bloomed into a feathery magenta-and-yellow cloud and eventually died away.

  Humanity’s home: erased forever.

  Was it worth it? the stragglers had asked one another as they’d turned and shot away from the glimmering little neutron star that remained, a celestial tombstone to the solar system that was. Definitely, they’d all replied, and yet they were quiet as they prepared for stasis, their memories haunted by the ferocious blast, by the sight of those planets disintegrating, the irrefutable finality. . . .