A Million Suns

32 AMY

“WELL, FREX,” ELDER SAYS, LEANING AWAY AND LOOKING AT the blank floppy in disgust.

I look up at him inquiringly.

“All that floppy did was prove that he was paranoid — and that this whole clue-chasing thing has been pointless.”

“Pointless?” I pick the floppy up and stand as well.

Elder nods. “Pointless. I was hoping to learn how to restart the engine, but all we get from this vid is some big secret that Orion decided not to share with us. He sent us on a chase all over the ship to find clues that lead to a door that he just tells us to lock again. You don’t get much more pointless than that.”

I nod, folding the floppy and slipping it into my pocket. “There is definitely something sketch about this,” I say as soon as the last words fade to black.

“Sketch?”

“You know, weird.”

A wry grin slides across Elder’s face. “Every time I think I know you, you say something so… strange.”

“Ha!” I punch him on the arm. “I thought we’ve been over this before: you’re the one who speaks sketch.”

Elder pushes the heavy submarine-like door closed, and I make sure the door does lock behind us — but I’m not going to forget the code.

“I think Orion was scared,” I say, following Elder down the hall.

“He was loons.” Elder’s voice is bitter. “That was filmed around the time Eldest tried to kill him, and it’s clear he’d already lost it. Orion was paranoid—”

“He had a right to be paranoid.” I can’t help it; I touch the smooth skin behind my left ear, remembering the way Orion had scratched his skin in the video. What did it take for him to dig deeper into his skin, to rip the wires from his own flesh? I glance at the wi-com encircling my wrist and swallow back bile at the thought of how it was those wires, dripping in gore and blood, and… ew.

“It’s weird, though.” I pause, thinking. “All the rest of the videos have been on that mem card thing. This one was already loaded on a floppy, sitting in the armory. None of the other ones had text. And none of the other ones were that old. That video was made just before Orion faked his own death. Maybe someone, I don’t know, messed with it.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Elder frowns at the video. “Look, I get that Orion made these vids for you, and you feel like you have to solve his frexing riddle. But we’re going to have to figure out how to live on this ship without whatever stupid message he left for us.” He runs his fingers through his hair. He usually does this when he’s thinking, but there’s anger in the way he does it now, as if he’s only doing it to stop himself from punching something. “We have serious problems to deal with — and this was just a frexing waste of time. The engine isn’t going to fix itself. Orion’s just distracting us from the real problems.”

I bite my lip. Orion didn’t leave a message for us; he left it for me. And it was something about getting off the ship, I know it. The key to fixing the engine, the reason for the delay — something. Something important.

Besides. How much longer can we go on like this?

“Hold on,” Elder growls, and then turns away from me, jabbing his wi-com button on the side of his neck with such force that it looks like it hurts. He speaks in a low voice for a moment, then shouts, “What?!”

“What is it?” I ask softly, putting my hand on his arm.

Elder jerks away from me. “What?” he says again into the wi-com. “I’ll be right there.” He presses the button behind his ear again and glances at me before taking off down the hallway toward the elevators. “I’ve got to go,” he says.

“Why? What’s wrong?” I have to jog to catch up. “Elder, what’s wrong?”

“Bartie’s causing more trouble.” Elder slams his fist into the elevator call button. “I can’t waste my time with this anymore,” he says.

“It’s not a waste,” I say softly.

The elevator doors open, and Elder holds his arm out to prevent them from closing without him. He searches my eyes. “I’m not angry at you,” he says, his voice sincere. “But these ‘clues’ aren’t going to fix the ship.”

Elder steps into the elevator, leaving me alone on the cold, empty cryo level. Part of me wishes he could stay, but I know he’s needed on the other levels. As I walk slowly back to the locked doors, I wonder how things would be different if Elder didn’t have to be in charge of Godspeed. I would never ask him to give up the leadership he’s longed for all his life… but maybe if he didn’t have to care about the ship first, I could believe him when he said he cared about me.

I pull the floppy we found out of my pocket. Maybe Elder is right. Maybe this is nothing but a wild-goose chase.

But… it’s all I have right now. It’s all I’ve had for three months. It’s the first spark of hope I’ve had since waking up, and I have to cling to it. I have to. I have to believe something, something will come of this.

I play the video file again, skimming over the words and straining my ears to pick up some nuance in Orion’s tone, something that will give me a clue.

Orion’s voice — so much like Elder’s — fills the hall. “Eldest doesn’t want anyone to know this secret. I don’t think he even wanted me to notice, but… the outside of the ship needed maintenance… I–I saw what he wanted me not to see.”

“Whatever you found,” I tell Orion’s face, “you saw it outside the ship.”

We can’t go outside the ship. There’s the vacuum of space, waiting to suffocate us or turn our lungs to mush or pop our eyeballs or whatever. We’d die. Unless… unless behind one of the two remaining locked doors are space suits.

I stare up at the hatch that shows the stars. Well, of course there’d be something to enable people to safely go out the hatch. Surely the makers of the ship realized that in centuries of travel, the ship would need maintenance. That’s what Orion called me in the first video, his contingency plan — this must be theirs. Four locked doors on this hall. One leads to the armory, one leads to an evacuation hatch… one must store space suits.

The possibility of what I’m thinking hits me so hard that I don’t breathe for a minute. Then I remember the other thing Orion said.

But the secret… it should stay a secret.

No. I want — I need — to follow this through to the end. I need to know what Orion knows. Because if it’s something that will get the ship going again, that will get us to the planet — it’s worth it. And if it’s proof that the ship will never move again — that’s worth it too. It’s the not knowing that’s killing me. Not knowing if there’s a chance that something can change, not knowing if there’s hope at all.

I play the video again.

The thing is — there’s something different about this clue. It feels off. It was on a floppy, not a mem card. The scrolling text, the fact that Orion was so much younger — it’s as if someone found this video and cobbled it together from an old film. Which means… Orion didn’t make this.

Someone else has the real video — the real clue.