Inherit the Stars Read online

  Copyright © 2015 by Tessa Elwood

  Cover illustrations © 2015 by Shane Rebenschied

  All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions

  Printed in the United States

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher.

  Books published by Running Press are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected].

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015934958

  E-book ISBN 978-0-7624-5841-7

  987654321

  Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing

  Designed by Frances J. Soo Ping Chow

  Edited by Lisa Cheng

  Typography: Lato and Mercury

  Published by Running Press Teens

  An Imprint of Running Press Book Publishers

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

  2300 Chestnut Street

  Philadelphia, PA 19103–4371

  Visit us on the web!

  www.runningpress.com/rpkids

  To that Chrystal,

  because it’s her favorite.

  And to my family and loved ones,

  who endlessly inspire.

  Contents

  The Blight

  Loss

  Bonds

  Reprisal

  Family

  Truth

  Faithful

  Heart

  Faithless

  Daughter

  Fuel

  Blood

  Games

  Fane

  Acknowledgments

  THE BLIGHT

  BOMBS HAVE NICKNAMES. INNOCUOUS, HAPPY nicknames. The thundering yellow cloud licking our flightwing’s windows has got to be a Baby Sunshine.

  “M’lady?!” screams the pilot from the open cockpit. “M’lady are you—”

  The flightwing bucks and Wren’s medibed wrenches from the hook I’ve only half fastened, and skids across the cargo bay. I slam into the wall a second before she does. The bed rams my stomach—pressure and pain and ripping corners and oh God I’m going to die.

  And so will Wren, if we don’t reach the specialist.

  “Go!” I yell. “Go, go, go.”

  The flightwing banks, and I grab the bed rail so my sister doesn’t fly across the hold.

  Wren’s makeshift bandage is red and there’s so much blood on her face I can’t tell if it’s dripping and my palms sweat fire and her bed wants to roll away.

  “I’ve got you,” I say. “I’ve got you, I’ve got—”

  Something booms, and I’d give anything to reach the window—but anything means letting go of Wren.

  The wing rolls and we both pitch forward, bed wheels screeching murder. I scramble across the slick metal floor, flailing against the wall for something. Anything. My fingers brush one of the yellow safety straps, and I latch on. Wren keeps rolling but I have her. Won’t let go.

  My arm’s going to split its socket.

  The pilot swears, the wing swings near vertical, and Wren slams my stomach through my spine.

  But her head’s close enough to see now, and her bandage is dripping. A lot.

  She’s going to die before we get out of the city airspace, let alone off-planet to the moon station’s medic specialist.

  “You’re all right.” I let go of the safety strap long enough to pat her cheek—the nonbroken bits. “Wren? Wren, look at me. You’re all right. I promise.”

  She doesn’t respond. She hasn’t responded since the last bomb hit and she pulled me through the riot. She’d gone out to stand with her soldiers. Because that’s what a Base Commander does. Fights for her people.

  Even if they’re the ones bombing her.

  Another booming ricochet, but this time the flightwing is level and doesn’t rock.

  The window is three steps away—high, round, and trimmed white. I glance at Wren, but her eyelashes don’t move. I rub the sweat from one palm, switch my hands on the rail, and repeat with the other. Then I inch us toward the window.

  One step, two, and—

  The city stretches below, blue and gold, sleek skytowers and open streets. Explosive yellow answered by streaked neon pink.

  Pink? The Kiss Pop bombs? But the city gangs don’t have those. When they raided the armory, the gangs only took the Sunshines and some sparkguns. Wren double-checked the base inventory like ten times. Nothing else was stolen.

  Which means our soldiers are retaliating, throwing Kiss Pops to fight the Sunshines. As if the city gangs are some kind of invading force, not desperate civilians.

  Of course the gangs attacked the base. They thought we had food.

  I pull the bed close and reach for Wren’s wrist, find the communicator watch she usually issues commands through. Except the screen is busted and won’t light up no matter how hard I tap.

  “Okay,” I say. “Okay. Where’s your flipcom?” I skim through all Wren’s pockets. “Come on, you always have it.”

  She does. Even now, broken and bloody.

  And alive. Absolutely, positively alive.

  I pull the flipcom from her jacket, and press the fast-connect circle on the neon screen.

  “Connecting,” says the male automation. “Please, wait.”

  The flightwing slowly inclines; Wren’s bed shifts as we gain height. I dig my heels into the floor.

  “Connecting, please—”

  “My Lady?” Casser booms, thick with astonishment and hope.

  “You have to stop firing!” I say.

  Screams in the background, crashes and static.

  “Asa?” Casser asks.

  “You have to stop, they’re our people!”

  “The gangs? They’re bombing us.”

  “Because they’re hungry. They think all the stockpiled food is safe! Do not fire!”

  Except hungry isn’t the right word. Not after seven months quarantined on a Blighted planet, where everything is contaminated, even us. Wren’s endless ration cuts couldn’t stretch the supplies out forever.

  Not that the city knows that because Wren told the cameras we had enough food, more than enough to get through. Showed off the packed supply warehouse in light bright enough to hide the food’s tainted green glow. I’d confronted her after the cameras left, and she rounded on me. What would you have me say? she asked. We’re all going to starve?

  In the speakers, someone calls Casser’s name and he barks a muffled order.

  “Asa. This is an emergency state, we cannot allow civilians to—”

  “No! No retaliation. They’re our people. We protect them. You know what Dad always says—”

  “My Lord isn’t here and neither are you.” Sharp in the speakers, sharper under my skin. “I know you’re worried for your sister, but I don’t have time for this.”

  “Captain Casser.” I put Dad in my voice and steel in my spine. “You will regain the parameter and minimize damage, but you will not retaliate. You will protect our people—all our people—on the base and off.”

  Restrained, silent thunder.

  I may be youngest—sixteen to Wren’s twenty, and not firstborn Heir and future ruler of our interplanetary House, but I’m still a Daughter of Fane. Dad can gainsay me.

  The captain can’t.

  “Do. Not. Fire,” I say. />
  “As you say, my lady,” he barks and hangs up.

  AS SOON AS WE LAND ON THE MOON STATION, I OPEN the rear hold as the pilot scrambles out of the cockpit. He pushes while I pull, and Wren’s medibed bumps down the flightwing’s ramp. Her body jerks with the wheels. Her head bounces. The pilot’s grip slides off the rail and the bed skitters toward the hard metal dock.

  “Hold on!” I shout, but I can’t manage it either—the bed’s too heavy and my hands are too slick. I swing around the end. Wren’s boots jam my stomach and my heels skid, but the bed stops. I glare up the ramp. “You have to hold on!”

  The pilot wants to crawl out of his skin. I swear I can see nail scratches under his cheeks.

  “I’m sorry, My Lady.” He lowers his head, voice barely a whisper, emphasizing the capitals as if addressing Wren.

  Or worse, Dad.

  “No, I didn’t mean that!” I reach toward him, but my foot slips and the bed with me. I lock my legs. “You’re fine, she’s fine, everything’s fine. Okay? We’re fine.”

  The pilot stares at the floor and doesn’t answer.

  “I promise.” I look between Wren’s bloodied face to his bloodless one. “We’re going to be all right.” The words crack and the pilot looks up.

  Wren doesn’t.

  “M’lady? M’lady Asa?!” An older man with hair as white as Casser’s runs across the dim metal docking bay, thin arms pumping above scissor legs. He stops at the ramp’s edge, eyeing the bright white and brown armband that identifies me as Dad’s. He grabs the bed rails, takes some of the weight. Three half moons and a star hover over the breast pocket of his uniform, which makes him the moon station commander. “You’re finally leaving quarantine? My Lady Wren finally convinced you? My Lord will be pleased.”

  Dad wanted Wren to ship me to our home planet, Malsa, as soon as Urnath had to be quarantined. Wren was needed, in charge of Urnath and its people. I was just visiting for the summer.

  As if I’d let Wren face the Blight alone.

  “I’ll contact Lord Fane as soon as the communicator’s up,” the commander says.

  “It’s down?” I ask.

  “Only since yesterday, m’lady.” The station commander helps me navigate the medibed down the ramp. “Don’t worry, we’ll get it working. Now, who’s this?”

  He flips the bandage away from Wren’s uniform insignia. Six crescents between two full moons, representing our twenty-six planets. The official House of Fane crest.

  The commander snatches his hand away and fists it to his heart. “My Lady.”

  “The specialist,” I say. “Medic Sansa, where is she?”

  “She completed Decontamination yesterday. Left with the evacuation transport to Malsa this morning.”

  “No, she can’t have. She’s here, I know she’s here. I watched Wren sign her quarantine release to this station a couple of weeks ago!”

  “Five weeks, m’lady.” He won’t meet my eyes.

  Decontamination only takes four.

  Time blurs in quarantine, especially when it goes on months and months, but I should have remembered. Paid attention, wrote it down.

  “Then—” But it’s barely a word. I try again. “Then we need whoever you have.”

  He just looks at me.

  “You have someone? You have to have someone.”

  He shakes his head and doesn’t stop. “We only have the medic techs, m’lady. None qualified for this. We don’t have the facilities anymore, everything’s been remapped for Decontamination processing.” He turns to the pilot. “Can you—?”

  The pilot’s face answers for him. We don’t have fuel to return to Urnath. We barely had fuel enough to make it here. Energy is precious and was under ration long before quarantine and the Blight.

  I told the pilot to fly us to the moon station. Medic Sansa is the best, House-renown. The city is under riot, but it is safe here. No street gangs. Wren should have been fine by now, the specialist already operating.

  I’ve just killed my sister.

  And they know it, the station commander and the pilot. Wide eyes fixed on me for the solution, as if I have all the answers. As if I can magically knit together the gullies in Wren’s scalp. As if I can fix everything.

  As if I’m Dad.

  “Stitches. She needs stitches. And the blood cleaned off. And probably a fluid tube. And get the communicator up, I need to talk to Dad.”

  THE SHOWER PELTS MY NECK IN ICE. HEAT REQUIRES energy, and whatever heat there was left ten minutes ago.

  I can’t tell what’s colder, the water or me. I hug my chest and sway, but my arms are coldest of all.

  “M’lady?” calls a woman through the closed shower stall. One of the moon station soldiers. Chelsey? Kelena? “M’lady, are you all right?”

  “F-fine.” My hair is in my mouth, stuck to my tongue. I suck the water off.

  They’re going to shave my head. They already shaved Wren’s. Sliced away her blonde curls, crusted red. They wouldn’t let me save even one. Too hard to decontaminate.

  “Are you sure, m’lady?”

  “Yes.”

  My hair tastes gritty and metallic, like pavement and smoke. Street kids in bandannas, screaming, you can’t starve us forever!

  Or maybe, Asa! Get your hair out of your mouth. You’re not two.

  Or maybe that’s Wren.

  They’ve probably stitched her up by now. That’s what they said they would do.

  I sink down to my toes, fingertips spread on the floor. The water gnaws.

  “M’lady, the initial treatment starts soon, for Decontamination? You said you wanted to be processed as soon as possible? So we can get you and my Lady home?”

  I don’t move. The cold is nice. Ices over the gaps.

  Get up.

  I raise my head and can almost see her. Wren. Tiny fists to match her toothy lisp, back when she was taller than me. You get up. We’re Fane and everybody’s looking, so you get up.

  But I didn’t. I was three and thought Mom’s leaving was the worst thing in the world.

  I was wrong.

  “M’lady, are you—”

  “Here.” I push off the floor and deactivate the water. “I’m here.”

  THE LONG MIRROR REFLECTS A MULTICOLORED ARMY OF bald stick figures, and I can’t tell which one is me. Wren would know, but she’s getting her head stitched six floors above.

  “Cover your faces, please,” calls the intercom.

  We do, all ten of us, arms tucked against our chests. We’re in bras and shorts and nothing else, not even shoes. My feet stick to the floor. The Decontamination rooms are makeshift at best, and all of Urnath has to be evacuated through this station.

  “Don’t let it in your mouth,” says the girl next to me. “You’ll never get it out.”

  I squeeze my lips tight.

  “Ready? First dusting in three, two—”

  Soft pops overhead. Airy powder pillows my skin, burrows through my pores like painless acid. An ashen residue that whispers corrosion.

  “Turn, please,” says the intercom. “Second dusting in three, two, one.”

  More pops and pillows. More breezy powder that doesn’t quite hurt.

  We turn three more times. Then a solder enters in a white, full-body Decontamination suit and ushers us into the Fan Room, where they try to blow our skin away. After that comes new clothes, with round trash bins for the old ones, and then freedom.

  We walk spaced out and sticking together through the narrow corridor of silver walls and safety lights. The hall is cold and growing colder. The new fuel factories were supposed to fix that—the cold, the entire energy crisis—and create a safe, sustainable replacement for uleum, the current universal energy standard. Uleum is finite and almost gone.

  “Your first time?” asks the girl from the powder room. She glistens sallow, and her loose shirt sticks tight to her ribs as she pulls on her jacket. I can count the bones under her skin.

  I nod. “You?”

  “Fifteenth.
Bad enough Fane poisoned the planet, now he de-poisons us every damn day.”

  “He didn’t mean to.”

  “God, you think?” She kicks at the floor. “I don’t know anymore.”

  “I do.” I sink into my jacket, but it doesn’t help. “He wouldn’t have built the factories, if he’d known they’d cause the Blight. He’d have found another way.”

  She snorts. “Riiiight, and I’m sure you have that on firsthand authority.”

  “Yes.”

  The girl sighs at the ceiling. “Listen, sweetie, you—” Then she looks at me. Really looks, past the clothes and my hairless scalp. Her voice rises. “Lady Asa?”

  Every footstep stops. The women ahead look over their shoulders, the girls behind sink into their coats, and I am in a bubble alone.

  “He shut the factories down.” I look between them, all of them, gaunt cheeks and tired eyes. “As soon as he knew about the Blight. The new fuel was everything he ever worked for, and as soon as he knew, he stopped production. Didn’t even hesitate. That’s how I know.”

  “LADY ASA?”

  “Wren?” I jerk upright and blink the medibed into focus as I slide off the chair to kneel at her side. She lies freshly stitched and stable, while Urnath looms through the window-wall beyond—clouded yellow like a small, sickly sun. The commander converted one of the moon station offices for us so we could have our own room, away from everyone else. I slip my fingers through Wren’s and hold tight. “I’m here, it’s okay, I’m right here.”

  She doesn’t squeeze back. Her hand is limp.

  Behind me, someone coughs. An I’d-rather-be-anywhere-else cough. Reality wavers, cracked as hard as Wren’s skull.

  Wren would never call me Lady.

  I curl into the bed frame.

  “Um, m’lady? We got the communicator up?” High and hesitant and nothing like Wren.

  I’ve forgotten what she sounds like already.

  No. Don’t cry. Fane doesn’t cry.

  Wren didn’t when Dad put us under quarantine, or when the months dragged on and the riots started. Not even when she stood on a makeshift podium and told an entire population they’d have to evacuate their home planet. That Urnath’s once abundant fields could no longer grow food or maintain life. That they never would again.