Mara.
I felt a pang of guilt at the sight of the injured specter sniper, and it only deepened when I took in the sight of the prosthetic leg she was obviously still acclimating to—the one she’d been forced to swap for the real thing after she’d gone at Frosty with a knife to keep the reeker away from Glenbark. The one I’d failed to save, after having dragged her and the Hounds into that canyon ambush to start with.
But Evangeline Mara didn’t look like she blamed me.
On the contrary, she gave me the closest thing to a friendly smile I’d ever seen from her.
“I was wrong about you, Raish,” she said, to which Edwards immediately cleared his throat and stooped down to show her an over-dramatized expression of wide-eyed shock.
Mara rolled her eyes, and gave him a rather firm elbow to the gut. “Maybe I’m kinda glad this big idiot has a soft spot for hopeless cases and broken things with sharp edges,” she admitted.
I couldn’t help but smile at that as she followed her elbow strike up with a tender hand to Edwards’ cheek, in keeping with their oddly physical—and sometimes borderline frightening—relationship. I was pretty certain I wasn’t the only broken thing to which she was referring. “I’ll take that as a compliment, I guess.”
She shrugged, matching my grin. “Whatever you gotta do, Raish. All I’m saying is, maybe once I’ve gotten the hang of this damn thing”—she patted her prosthetic leg—“someone’ll see fit to build a nice shiny spaceship and let us Hounds come cover your ass out there. Alpha knows you could use it.”
I looked from her to Edwards, not really disagreeing with the sentiment, even if I was skeptical about the timeliness of its execution. I smiled as best I could, reassuring myself with the not-so-comforting thought that, if we did find ourselves in need of that much backup out there, it would probably mean we were already gropped anyway.
“I’ll try to keep out of trouble until you get there,” I promised.
For some reason, they both laughed at that.
As the goodbyes waned and the time drew inexorably near, I looked around for Johnny, thinking to try one last time to dissuade him from all of this, or at least to offer him a genuine out. After a minute of looking, I spotted him behind one of the transports, lunging in to catch a rather startled Glenbark in an abrupt and slightly awkward hug. And maybe it was the bad angle or just my imagination, but after recovering from her moment of wide-eyed surprise, I could’ve sworn she repaid him with a regal kiss on the cheek.
Judging by the way he floated back over to us afterward, flushed cheeks out-burning his flaming red hair, I might not even have imagined it.
“What did she tell you?” Elise asked him.
He looked at us dazedly, touching at the cheek in question. “That I’ll never love like that again.”
Elise and I traded a look.
“She said that?” I asked.
“Well... I mean, I guess her words were actually more like, ‘You were a better servitor than I ever would have thought to ask for,’ but...” He shook his head and blinked at us. “Sorry, what was the question?”
Elise gave him a hug. “It’s all gonna be okay, you know?”
“Yeah...” Johnny bobbed his head numbly, still too frazzled to return Elise’s hug. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
“Johnny...” I started, sure that this was the time, but unsure what exactly to say.
He jabbed a finger in my face before I could say more anyway, then swept it over into Elise’s personal space preemptively when she pulled back from their hug. Back and forth, the finger went, daring either of us to say a thing, until Elise raised her hands in surrender. Satisfied, Johnny nodded to himself and stalked off, mumbling something about a hero’s sendoff, Alpha-dammit.
I could only watch, silently marveling at my friend’s strength, suddenly certain that it wasn’t my place to stop Johnny or Elise or anyone else from choosing to join this expedition of ours, and that it never had been.
I glanced at the ship, wondering whether any of us really had any appreciable idea of what we were getting ourselves into, and realized that Alton had reappeared in the open hatchway, watching the procession below with an inscrutable expression. His eyes turned to meet mine as soon as I spotted him.
“This was all your doing,” I sent, not really sure whether I meant the words as thanks, or as an accusation. Probably a bit of both.
“Speaking from a point of pure self-interest,” he sent back evenly, “I need you at your best for what lies ahead. And they are your best,” he added, nodding down to where Elise was checking in with the others. “Your true clan, as it were.”
I looked back up at the raknoth, too many conflicting emotions running through me to even begin to narrow down the predominant consensus. “I don’t know whether to thank you for this, or to burn your eyes out.”
Alton grinned, and turned to stride back into the quiet of the ship. “Fortunately,” his voice came in my mind, “you’ll have plenty of time to decide that on the way. Provided we ever actually manage to depart, that is.”
If I hadn’t known any better, I might’ve thought he actually sounded a bit bitter about our farewell parade.
I pushed the thought aside and looked around at the crowd, wondering who I’d missed even as I realized there was no number of goodbyes I could say that would actually leave me feeling like it was time. I was thinking maybe I should just find Glenbark and the others and get on with the inevitable when I noticed Garrett and Alexia watching me from over in the ruins, decidedly separate from the crowd. Adam and Enid lurked behind them, looking even less excited about the prospect of mingling with anyone.
They watched me approach, looking like they weren’t quite sure whether to smile and wave, or to brace themselves for tense final words. I wasn’t really sure myself. All I knew was that the four of them were probably some of the strongest Shapers left on Enochia, and that, judging by the intricate silver sigils they all wore over their left breasts—identical to the one I’d noticed Elise wearing—they’d all apparently decided to pick up the fight in a way I no longer could.
“I take it I’m looking at four Children of Enochia?” I asked when I reached them.
“Afraid so,” Alexia said.
“Out of one cult...” Garrett added.
“And into a revolution,” Adam finished, looking only slightly less dubious than Garrett about his own words.
“Praise Valen,” Alexia added, patting at her shiny little sigil, and drawing a disapproving frown from Enid.
It would’ve been hard to pretend like Enochia couldn’t have asked for more qualified champions to fight for the freedom of Shaper kind. But I suppose we could’ve done worse, too.
“So you all passed the test, then?” I asked before I could stop myself, looking around the group.
It was a little eerie, how quickly they all went from friendly-ish smiles to avoiding my gaze completely. Like someone had put the fear of Alpha into them. Or the fear of Elise, I realized, when I turned to find her approaching, and staring them all down.
“Ah, who’s counting?” Alexia asked.
“Bullscud test, anyway,” Garrett agreed.
Adam nodded his absent-minded agreement, seemingly lost in thought behind his dark frown.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell him all this time,” Elise said, with a pointed look at me. “For all we know, that thing could’ve miscalculated for any number of reasons. And it doesn’t matter anyway, because no one actually has a good explanation for what that red dot even means.”
“Thing was probably just confused by how freakishly strong you are,” Alexia said.
I frowned, positive she was only stroking my ego. At least until Garrett turned his own indignant frown on her, and she shrugged and added, “What? You try melding with him in battle and see how you like it.”
Garrett looked back and forth between us multiple times, brow deeply furrowed, until he finally shrugged it off and muttered, “Yeah, well I
killed two of those things with my bare hands.”
“Yes, you did, my big, strong man,” Alexia crooned, running her hands up Garrett’s chest. I might’ve thought she was only teasing him if I hadn’t already been intimately acquainted with the preternatural boldness and frequency of their swiving habits. As it was, I wouldn’t have been all that surprised if they just went for it then and there.
“I’m not really sure I see how a dagger counts as your bare hands,” Adam chimed in. But Garrett was obviously too distracted at that point thinking about all the other things he’d like to do with those hands of his.
“I think we’re all ready,” came Elise’s voice in my mind, to the overture of Alexia’s lascivious giggling. It was an odd contrast, and the growing unease in my gut only doubled when I looked over to Elise and saw my apprehension reflected on her face. I nodded, and took her hand, trying to push the lingering doubts and questions out of my mind.
It wasn’t like it would really matter out there in the depths of space, what some magic helmet thought about my validity to be a representative of the Emmútari legacy. Out there, we had our own job to do.
It was enough. More than enough, after everything I’d seen of the rakul.
We said our goodbyes to the ex-Seekers, exchanging a few handshakes and awkward half-hugs, with wishes of safety and good luck. Only Alexia seemed fully at ease with the situation. It was almost like she’d never tried to kill me at all, as she took Elise and I both in a warm, sensuous group hug, and told us to be careful out there, and not to have too much fun without her. I might have blushed when her hand traced down to my backside for one last firm squeeze, but when I felt Elise stiffen beside me as if she’d had her own surprise, and saw Alexia’s beaming smile for both of us, it was all I could do not to simply laugh at the woman’s utter lack of personal boundaries.
At least it gave the two of us a fleeting iota of distraction as we turned and started back for the ship, silently clutching hands as tightly as if we didn’t know what else to do. Because we didn’t.
The first tendrils of fear crept through my insides, more potent and visceral than the edgy nerves I’d been sporting all day long. Fear at the great unknown we were about to fly off into. Fear that I’d somehow read it all wrong, and that now I was leading the people I loved most into fates only knew what manner of trap. Fear at too many things to count.
A voice in my mind interrupted me from trying.
“It’s some kind of danger rating.” After a confused second, I recognized the voice as Garrett’s. “The last color, I mean. Your red. Magic helmet speak for ‘walking time bomb,’ apparently.”
I stopped at the base of the steps, waited as Elise parted to go check on the others, then turned and stared back at Garrett, trying to process what he was saying, and why he was even telling me this at all.
“I don’t want that scud festering in your head out there,” he explained, apparently picking up on my confusion. “Just move on, kid. It’s a bullscud test. It has to be, if us cutthroats all skirted by in the yellow. We both know you’re too much of a scud-nosed boot shiner to ever break bad anyway, so just gropping forget it, you hear me? Move on, and go see to it we don’t end up with any more aliens raining down on our heads before we’re ready, yeah?”
Across the way, in the ruins, Alexia was frowning up at Garrett from her place on his chest, clearly sensing that something was amiss. She looked over at me, then back to him. My head was too busy spinning with implications to care all that much who else might notice.
Move on. Move on from the fact that an Emmútari relic thought I was more of a walking time bomb than a bunch of professional murderers? Because that was the more reasonable explanation, wasn’t it? The one no one seemed to want to point out.
Either the test was flawed, enough so to let a bunch of Shaper-killing cutthroats skirt by when I’d failed... or it wasn’t, and that arcane brain scanner had seen something in my mind that was even more troubling than a cutthroat’s capacity to kill innocents in order to survive.
And that thought, right there, was probably exactly why no one wanted me stewing over this.
An impact on my shoulder jolted me nearly into the atmosphere, then back down to heart-thundering reality, where Johnny had just clapped a hand on me.
“You okay, broto?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said, too quickly.
I looked back to Garrett, who gave me a grave nod. I returned it. Beside him, Alexia waved goodbye, actually looking concerned about me.
Demons to the wind, if I stayed here any longer I was going to start thinking even they were my friends.
“What’s that about?” Johnny asked, giving a half-hearted wave to the new Children of Enochia.
“Just keeping good relations with the cutthroats,” I said. “You know how it goes.”
“Very wise,” Johnny said, nodding sagely. He turned to me. “You ready to go kill a space dragon, broto?”
I frowned at him, burying my dark thoughts for later. “That’s not really the intended goal of this mission. You do realize that, right?”
Johnny just shrugged. “Not the intended goal of your mission, maybe. I need me a worthwhile mantle to haul back here when we’re all done saving the universe.”
It made me smile, how confident he sounded that we would be returning at all. I hoped to Alpha—and to any other deity, real or fabricated—that he was right. Especially when I noticed Franco and Phineas sharing their last quiet moments with Barbara Sanders and Therese Brown beside the ship.
For the thousandth time, I felt a wave of nauseating guilt that any of them should leave their lives behind like this, even if it was for something we all believed in. It just didn’t seem right. But I guess not much did when you went around wishing that life could be fair.
“I think it’s time,” Elise said softly behind us.
I traded a look with Johnny.
“For ours is not to ask...” he said softly.
I opened my mouth to finish the mantra, then thought better of it and, on a whim, called a small stone from the ground to the palm of my hand with telekinesis instead.
“Souvenir,” I explained weakly, thinking back to the days I’d spent with Carlisle, straining hard enough to risk a brain bleed just to budge a little pebble.
We all turned to the ship with an unspoken agreement that it was for real this time. Franco, James, and Phineas mounted the steps ahead of us, seeming to feel the same. Elise fell in behind them, Johnny behind her. I was halfway up the steps, fighting the urge to take a last look back, when Barbara Sanders’ voice called out from behind.
“Is there anything you’d like to say to Enochia before you go, Haldin?”
I stopped and turned, mind racing for the magical combination of words that might somehow make a difference for the world we were leaving behind.
I didn’t find it. Mostly, I just stared dumbly at the camera instead.
“Be good to each other,” I finally said.
I started to think about saying more—about telling the world what we were off to do, and about the safety and prosperity I wished for them here, even after everything. There was a lot to be said, after all. Volumes and volumes. But when I glanced back to meet Elise’s gaze, seeking her guidance, and saw her soft, loving smile, that’s when I knew. That was enough.
So I turned and walked into the ship, leaving Enochia with those five words. And I didn’t look back.
“You’re sure about this?” I asked the others, once the hatch was sealed behind us, and we were all alone in the cold, alien walls of the ship corridor. “You’re all sure?”
I looked to Johnny, expecting a witty remark, but he had nothing. Nor did the others. Nothing but heavy silence until, almost as one, we all started to nod.
“Right. Let’s strap in, then.”
Fifteen minutes and a few sickly pale faces later, we were back in space, outside of orbit this time, the gentle grey-blue sphere of Enochia receding behind us on the viewing wall,
swallowed by the darkness of space on all sides at an alarming rate.
“Are we all ready for the first jump, then?”
Alton looked slightly irritated to even be asking the question.
“Scud nuggets,” Johnny murmured from the other side of Elise, two seats down. “We’re really doing this, aren’t we?”
I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to tell him that there was still time, that we could go back. That he didn’t have to sign away what might well be the rest of his life just to prove that he was a brave soldier and a loyal friend. But then Elise found my hand and squeezed, and when I looked over, I saw she had Johnny’s hand too. Across from us, Franco and James were similarly braced.
Even Phineas begrudgingly allowed James to lay a hand on his shoulder.
“We’re really doing this,” Elise confirmed. Then, cracking the hint of a sly grin, she added, “Just think how impressed Freya’s gonna be when you get back.”
Johnny blew out a ragged laugh. “Hey, what the scud else do you think I’m doing up here with you people?”
We all shared a shaky smile, holding hands there at the edge of the infinite unknown, and taking silent solace in the fact that, whatever awaited us out there, we would face it together. It was a profoundly touching moment, right up until Alton Parker pointedly cleared his throat.
“I’ll take that for a yes, then,” the raknoth said flatly. “And you don’t need to be strapped in for this part, by the way,” he added, looking around at us like we were all being a little bit ridiculous. “The jump is perfectly safe.”
For some odd reason, none of us seemed to be in any hurry to go unbuckling our restraints and testing that claim.
Alton shrugged, and looked to me as if for final confirmation. I gripped Elise’s hand tighter, thanking all the fates above and below that she and the others were here with me. Then I nodded. “Let’s go.”
“Very well,” Alton said, closing his eyes in concentration. The ship began to thrum. “First jump commencing.”
“Next stop, Earth?” Johnny asked.
Alton cracked open one eye. “Were you not paying attention when I explained that the journey would be—”
Children of Enochia Page 40
