Starbreak Read Online Free PDF Page A

strangers.
    •  •  •
    I’m not sure how long we sat there in the snow, the winter sun bright and small overhead. Without the clock bells to toll the hour, it was impossible to tell. Might have been twenty minutes—might have been two hours. We hunkered down in silence, shivering. I guess we were all shocked from the crash. I know I couldn’t make words move past my mouth.
    At last Deklan pulled himself to his feet. He stared down the mountain. Between a pair of boulders was a deep cleft, wide enough for a man to pass.
    “Helllooooooo!” he called. His voice came echoing back a dozen times, folded over itself. When at last it died, he turned to us. “Nobody’s home.”
    “It’s a big planet,” Rebbe Davison said.
    It was. Stretching thousands of kilometers out in all directions. This wasn’t the ship, where there was no place to go, and anywhere you went was safe. This was Zehava, the wider world. The air was cool and biting, and there were no warm quarters waiting for us. I finally let go of Ettie’s hand and stumbled to my feet.
    “We need a plan,” I said. “For the night at least. Otherwise we’ll freeze. I know I didn’t come all the way to this planet just to—” I broke off, thinking of the body smashed inside the shuttle, and how it had once been a man.
    “There are supplies,” Laurel said, not noticing how I tripped over my words. “We’ve been stocking up the shuttles for months. Shelf-stable food. Water. A tent, and sleeping sacks.” She paused, as if she were afraid to go on.
    “What else, Laurel?” Rebbe Davison prodded, in his placid teacher voice, the one that somehow always convinced one kid to snitch on another back when we were young. Laurel took a breath.
    “Weapons,” she said. “And firestarter.”
    “Fire?” Jachin asked. We all grew quiet again, thinking about it. On the ship open flames were forbidden. Our stoves were electric; our heaters electric too. Once a year a marshal came to make sure not a single spark would escape. We were taught from a very young age that fire was dangerous—that even the smallest flame could sear through the dome, eating all our trees, our crops, disrupting the delicate balance of breathable air. But we weren’t in the dome anymore. We were on Zehava, and the afternoon was cold, and bound to grow only colder.
    We started toward the shuttle.
    •  •  •
    We were lucky. Though we’d lost a dozen or so packets of dry fruit and a few sleeping rolls down the mountainside, we were able to scrounge enough to make a small hill from our provisions. Rebbe Davison asked Ettie to count them, and she seemed glad for the distraction.Sniffling, she reported that there was one tent, nine sleep sacks, forty-seven dehydrated meals wrapped up in crinkly cellophane, eight rucksacks, three lighters, a canteen of fresh water for each of us, four mess kits, twelve sonic rifles, a small ax, nineteen packs of firestarter, and a dozen helmets.
    “We should have been wearing those when we crashed,” Laurel said, staring down at the pile. “I can’t believe I forgot. What if the air here is toxic?”
    I thought of the video I’d seen in the command center. My sister-in-law, Hannah, had worn no helmet. She had a trail of blood down her face, but she breathed. I drew my own breath deep into my lungs.
    “The air seems fine to me,” I said. But Laurel only shook her head.
    “There could be biological hazards. Diseases. And if we’d been wearing them—” She glanced back toward the shuttle, to the corner of smashed metal that we’d all avoided looking at. Deklan set his hand on her shoulder.
    “It’s too late for that now,” he said softly. She collapsed into his arms. She didn’t cry, only let him rock her silently. She was lucky that she had him—strong arms, a soft shoulder. I thought about my boy, how he’d snatched his slender fingers away from mine at the slightest touch. Looking at Deklan and Laurel, I felt more alone than I ever had