by AJ Super
A pit formed in the bottom of Nyx’s gut. Her legs struggled to move, tied up with invisible fabric, winding wet and heavy. She would be dragged to the bottom of the lagoon if she didn’t get out, if someone didn’t save her from drowning. Her legs stiffened, and she began to thrash in the water. Water splashed into her mouth and nose. She tried, but couldn’t, call for help.
A woman in red walked into the grotto and put her hands on her hips. Her hair was tied back severely and the trailing black tattoos from her wrist up across her neck to her jaw made her look like a tiger ready to pounce from the leaves of the jungle. “Nyx. Mon petit papillon, I told you not to come here.”
Mon petit papillon. The edge of a half-remembered memory sliced into Nyx like a knife. Her mother called her that. This was something important that she had forgotten, that she only ever saw in her dreams. Her head bobbed precariously, water washing over her nostrils.
The little girl rose and looked at her reflection in the rippling water. She tipped her head, smoothed her damp dress. Ball in hand, she eyed the struggling Nyx. “Je suis désolé, maman.” Her small voice drip-dropped like rain on a wide, supple leaf. The girl pivoted and skipped to the woman, ball bouncing in front of her.
Nyx gasped, her arms paralyzed as she tried to tread water. The feeling of drowning was somehow familiar—someone had pulled her out of the lagoon when she was a child. She opened her mouth to call to the woman and the girl, and it filled with water.
The woman grabbed the girl by the arm. The red ball bounced underneath a waving, leathery leaf. “You’re wet. We were going to have dinner with your father and my sister. What am I supposed to do with you now?”
“Ça fait mal, maman. That hurts,” Nyx whispered, eyes burning as she sank, and warmth encapsulated her. Her lungs filled with rich, deep, dark water. It soothed her, quelled the pain just under her consciousness. She relaxed and let the lagoon carry her. She was supposed to drown. She was supposed to die. She wasn’t supposed to remember her mother in a red dress on this day—the day her maman died.
Nyx opened her eyes and lay stretched on a divan. A pristine white room radiated around her, empty except for a small white table with a vase and an emerald peace lily with two white blooms.
She must be dead. “How? Why? Am I alive?”
“Do you need to rest more?” An identical image of herself hovered over Nyx, next to the white couch. She was dressed in the same black frilly dress that the little girl with the red ball was wearing.
Nyx gaped. The Nyx-copy in front of her was perfect, down to the fiery glint in her sepia eyes. The hairs rose on her neck. The copy looked like a doll dressed in the black ballgown. Her throat clenched. “Why do you look like me?” she blurted.
“Do you not like it? I can change.” A jagged green light coalesced around the Nyx-copy. Nyx covered her eyes, leaving only red afterimage of the copy seared where she had been standing.
When it cleared, the woman with the tattoo streaking from her wrist to her jaw stood in the place of the Nyx-copy. She wore a strapless, crimson velvet dress that hugged her muscular curves and flared out just past the hips. She was exactly how Nyx remembered her maman, Nue Marcus, the last night she was alive.
“Maman,” she whispered, choking down the ball in her throat.
“I am Erebus. One of the Seven.” She smiled. “Does this form please you better?”
Nyx grit her teeth. “It’ll be fine. One of the Seven? What is going on?”
“You were in a virtual, medical brain stimulation program. Now, you are here.” Nue-Erebus tipped her head. “Activity in your hippocampus and amygdyla suggest you are sad. Are you sad?”
Nyx smiled. “You look like my maman, from my dreams. In the fuzzy, half-remembered dreams of the last night I saw her alive.”
“This makes you sad?” Nue-Erebus furrowed her brow.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry. I can change.” Nue-Erebus lifted her hand. Green light began to coalesce around her.
Nyx blinked hard, the tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. She wiped at them with the back of her hand. She shook her head. “No. Don’t.” Her chest throbbed, and she inhaled softly. Seeing her maman had tickled something in the back of her memory. She wanted to remember whatever it was that stirred. “What am I doing here? What are you doing here?”
Nue-Erebus tipped her head. “I was contained in the weapons system. An explosion freed me. Now, I am here with you.”
Nyx sat up. The explosion freed the Star of Erebus. What did that mean? “How exactly were you contained in the weapons system?”
Nue-Erebus’ mouth pulled thin. “I was put into a sleep-mode, compressed in a canister of nanotechnology. It wasn’t very pleasant.”
“How were you freed?”
“The canister was destroyed and the nanites were let loose into the Thanatos. I am the Thanatos. The Thanatos is me.” Nue-Erebus smiled sweetly.
Canister? Nyx couldn’t remember…but there had been one. A small corroded cylinder the size of her thumb, filled with gold dust plugged into the weapons system manual override. Installed, but not completely functional with no output wires, only input. She was an AI virus, being fed information but not allowed out.
Now the Thanatos was the virus.
A sentient virus.
Nyx could barely contain her excitement. Now she could tell her father she knew what the Star was. Maybe they could even control the AI and use it to thwart the Queen’s Navy in higher traffic trade lanes. More lucrative lanes. Her father would be so happy… if he wasn’t dead. If Malcam hadn’t floated him.
Now she had the weapon, and nothing to do with it. Yes, her father would have been proud. But it didn’t matter now.
“You are sad again?”
Nyx sat up on the divan. “What am I going to do with you now?”
“I don’t understand the question.”
“I suppose Kai could do something with you, as captain of the Thanatos. But then I’d lose whatever leverage I have...” Nyx looked around the shining white room. “Where exactly is here?”
Nue-Erebus frowned. “Physically, you are in the medical bay, medical pod number four. You were in hyperbaric isolation for twenty-four hours, and you’ve been in an induced coma with the nano-medics for approximately seventy-six hours and thirty-nine minutes.”
Nyx sat hard on the divan. “So, this room is what? An extension of the brain stimulation program?”
“No. This is your program. Your AI. You are Nyx. One of the Seven. We are family.”
“I’m who? No. That’s just some cosmic joke my parents played, naming me after the head of the pantheon. I’m not one of the Seven.”
Nue-Erebus nodded. “I am one of the Seven. You are one of the Seven. I turned on your code, and you infected my program with yours. We are two in one, one in two. But you have not downloaded my program yet. If you wish, I will show you how.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Nyx held up her hands. “Download? Infect? Turned on my code? What in the Stars are you talking about?”
Nue-Erebus straightened and smoothed her hands down her sides. “You’re going to wake up. There’s much I haven’t told you. You haven’t accepted your blood yet.” The vision of her maman smiled. “But the nano-medics are finally working correctly.”
“Accepted my blood? Working correctly?” She jerked her head in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“I had to reprogram the nano-medics.”
Nyx’s shoulders tensed. “You had to what?”
“They were healing you incorrectly. There was a fault in their system. If you did wake, you would have been permanently injured. I adjusted the nano-medics to repair cellular damage. Now, they are capable of healing at a cellular level… continuously.”
Nyx crinkled her brow. “Well, thanks.”
Nue-Erebus smiled. “You are Nyx, one of the Seven. I couldn’t let you die.”
She guffawed. “I’m not a god. Or a Star.”
A shot of
electricity ran from ear-to-ear. She gasped, suddenly doubling over. “Why does it hurt so bad?”
Nue-Erebus tipped her head. “You have to embrace your blood, your AI, to control it. Nue never had this problem.”
Nyx looked up sharply. “AI? What AI? I don’t understand.”
“Your mother was one in the line of Nyx. She knew her power and used it well. She was never at odds with her AI. It never rejected her, and she never rejected it. She never endured this pain.”
“I don’t have any AI in my body,” Nyx said.
“Not precisely true. The nano-medics are AI. I used them to initiate the conversion in your blood. It should have happened years ago. But it seems your mother wasn’t around to awaken your operating program. And, until now, I have been asleep in containment.”
“I’m not a Star. I’m a human.”
Nue-Erebus’ smile faded. “You are both. You are the only Star who bridges the gap between AI and humanity.”
Nyx felt her gut sink. “I’m not AI.”
Her maman’s avatar blinked.
Nyx’s heart stuttered as a shock rattled through her body, with fingers of lightning. She sucked in a hard breath.
“You’ll wake up very soon,” Nue-Erebus whispered.
Nyx nodded. “What’s going to happen to you?”
“It won’t matter where I go. I’m not trapped in the weapons system anymore. I’m free to roam the entirety of the Thanatos’ systems.” Her maman tipped her head, dark hair falling across her shoulders, tattoos etched up her neck. Her dark eyes danced. “I can go anywhere. Eventually, the size of this ship will not contain my program.”
Flashes of light ignited behind Nyx’s eyes. She leaned back on the divan and held her hands to her face. Her head pounded. “The Ship Interface Android,” she muttered. “Sia’s only a handful of interactive programming. Go there. You still owe me some explanations.”
Nyx slipped out of the white room, and into a clear, cold tube, thin blue light periodically zipping up and down her white tank-top and ratty red and white striped underwear-clothed body. Her eyes flickered open. Goose flesh rose on her arms and legs. An alarm beeped somewhere. She turned her head.
“She’s awake. Doc, she’s awake.” Kai’s voice reverberated through the medical bay.
10
Nyx felt for the isolation tube retractor button and pressed it. The medical pod tipped gently, and the plexiglass split down the center and retracted, allowing her to step off the table from a standing position.
She tripped on her feet. Kai grabbed her and sat her on an examination table. He leaned in and pressed his lips to the top of her head, wrapping his arms around her. She sank into his warmth. “I’m glad you’re awake,” he murmured into her hair.
Kai smelled like he hadn’t showered in days. She pulled him closer and mumbled into his chest, “I was on Elysion again. I saw maman. The day she died.”
Kai tensed, then ran a hand down her back. “I thought you didn’t remember that.”
“I don’t. It was a dream, I think.” Nyx leaned back and looked up at him. “Malcam? The bomb? What happened?”
Kai put his hands on her face. “Does it matter? You’re alive. Don’t scare me like that again.” He smoothed her hair back, staring into the depths of her eyes. His rich umber gaze searched her face as his thumb traced her temple. “No more being a hero.”
Nyx winced as he hit a bruise. “Fine by me.”
The medic cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses. Kai stood aside.
“Just remember, I’m only a medic. I’m not a doctor. And I still don’t know how you survived.” He flashed a light in her eyes.
Kai grinned. “Whatever you did, it worked, Lenus.” He slapped Lenus on the back, making him cough.
“That’s the thing. I really didn’t do anything.”
“It’s the nano-medics,” Nyx whispered.
Kai swiveled to her. “What was that?”
“The nano-medics were reprogrammed. You need to check the nano-medics to see what their new directive is, Doc.” Her throat burned as if she’d swallowed a handful of meteoroids.
“Be right back. I’ll take a sample and check it out.” Lenus Groenfeldt was a competent medic, but Nyx didn’t know if he could handle what happened in her coma-induced dreams. If they were dreams at all.
Kai put his hands on her shoulders, rubbing them up and down. The friction warmed her. “You’re going to be off-duty for the next two weeks. You honestly look like hell.”
She scrunched her face at him. “Sorry I couldn’t pretty myself up for you while I was in a coma for four days. Besides, you’re not so fresh yourself.”
Kai looked startled. “How do you know how long you’ve been down?”
“I had a strange dream.” She furrowed her brow. “Only, I’m not sure it was a dream. I need to see Sia. Where is she?”
“The android? On the command deck, like she’s supposed to be.”
Lenus returned to the examination table with a hypodermic gun. “This shouldn’t be painful. Just a pinch. Let’s face it, you just went through worse.”
Nyx grimaced. He had no idea.
Lenus pressed the gun against a vein in the crook of her elbow and pulled the trigger. The blood sample hissed into the little vial with barely a pinch. He pressed a piece of cotton against the injector site and taped it down. “All done. I’ll analyze these little bugs and see what’s up.”
She hopped off the examination table, still a bit wobbly. It would take a little bit to get her legs back under her. Even with the muscle stimulation of the med-pod, her legs were weak.
“You are going to take it easy. Quarters and recreational spaces only for you,” Kai said. “You need to pause and take a serious look at yourself.”
She glanced at her arms and legs. Microfractures of her capillaries left small bruises up and down her body. Scabs where the oxygen pierced the cell structure of her skin and began to boil out pocked her arms and legs. She touched her eyes. “How can I still see? My eyes should have…” She blinked hard, trying to produce tears. Her eyes were dry.
“—been the first to go? Cloned replacements,” Kai whispered. “We really did almost lose you. That kid, Falak. He brought you in quick. Your suit was hemorrhaging too fast and couldn’t keep up. Suit kept you alive probably twice as long as if you’d been floated without one. It almost wasn’t soon enough.”
Nyx stared at Kai. New eyes. She had new eyes. She breathed in slowly.
“They look the same,” Kai whispered.
“DNA-bioprinted replicas.” Lenus shoved himself between them and handed Nyx a bottle of eye-drops. “Use these twice a day for a week. They’ll help with the dryness and the healing until the nano-medics fully integrate your new eyes. I’m surprised they’ve healed as fast as they have so far.” He shook his head and turned. “The rest of you will take some time, too.”
Nyx glanced at her arms and then craned around the doctor. There were other, more important things to deal with than her eyes. The Thanatos had to be safe. “And what about the signal? The bomb?”
“Falak ended up sending close to twenty different signals at the same time. We’ve jumped from the moon to the edge of the trading routes near dark space. There’s no way Malcam can track us. That red-headed genius really saved us out there.”
“The bomb?” Nyx prodded.
“Electromagnetic wave triggered a hard reboot of all Thanatos’ systems. It shut everything down for about five minutes. Including life support and gravity. I thought I killed us all. Once we switched on the manual override and rebooted, though, everything ran like new.” Kai squinted. “Almost better than new. Is there something going on that I should know about?”
“I don’t know yet. I need to see Sia.”
“Why?”
“If I tell you, you’ll think I’m crazy. If it was just a dream, then it won’t be what I think it is.”
“You’re making absolutely no sense.”
“Just let me
see Sia, then I’ll abide by your no-duty, rec-only rules. For one week.”
Kai crossed his arms. “Two weeks.”
“One week.” If it wasn’t a dream, she had enhanced nano-medics in her system, and she would be in shape in no time. “Let me see Sia.”
He pursed his lips. “Fine. But don’t you want to get some civvies on first?”
Lenus stood at the med-bay door. He held up a medical dress like it was a jacket.
She grabbed the powder-blue dress and draped it around her, tying it in the front instead of the back. “I’m fine. This is more important.” She stalked out of the med-bay and down the corridor to the command deck.
Kai shrugged and followed. “This dream—was it good?”
“I got to see Elysion again. Haven’t been there since…”
Kai hesitated. “Your mom.”
Nyx nodded. “And I saw her again. It was like the memory of a memory. But better than nothing.”
Kai was silent.
“It’s okay, Kai. I’m okay. I know she died saving us all that day. I know she made you and the crew get me out of there. I know,” Nyx whispered. “I’ve never blamed you. Or anyone else on the crew.”
Kai stopped. “How could you not?”
She stutter-stepped and turned. “I blame the monarchy for putting bounties on our heads. I blame the man who shot her. You were just a bystander.” Out of the corner of her eye, a bright white wisp rose from her hand and twined with a green light pulsing in the door pad. Nyx snapped her head to the twining lights, only to have them fade. “Did you see that?”
“See what?”
Nyx shook her head. “Nothing. Nevermind.” It was probably some kind of leftover hallucination from the med-pod. She pressed her palm onto the door pad, and the door swished open.
The crew glanced at the door and gaped. Being dressed in her skivvies and a medical dressing gown, she definitely stood out amongst the tunics, leggings, jumpsuits, leather jackets, and canvas pants the rest of their motley gang wore. Sia was still in the black slacks and mandarin-collared shirt of the Thanatos’ uniform. Nyx wondered why no one had changed her yet.
