It had grated on Lucien’s spirits over the past eight years to be whisked through the universe at high speed, getting to see all of the alien planets along the way, cataloged in tantalizing detail by astronomers at the Academy, but never being allowed to set foot on any of them.
That was a Paragon’s job: to explore—not to baby-sit a bunch of scientists as they flew right by all of the sights on their way to the edge of the universe.
Now, finally, they’d arrived at that edge—only to find that there were a whole lot more stars and galaxies to explore beyond the old cosmic horizon. Just more of the same for another thirty billion light years. And after that...
A vast stretch of emptiness: The Black. Tyra had bent his ear about the implications for months following the discovery.
“Do you realize what this means!” Tyra had been all but hyperventilating at the time.
“No.” Lucien was busy feeding Theola. His wife’s dinner was a block of ice at the other end of the dining table. She hadn’t even noticed it sitting there yet. She was three hours late.
“We’ve just disproved the cosmological principle.”
“The what?” Lucien asked.
“It means the universe isn’t all the same everywhere! It has this big empty stretch, and we have no idea what could have caused that! It might be filled with dark matter, or dark energy, or both! Or maybe it’s some kind of ripple in the fabric of space-time—some kind of mountain or a cliff. It might even be a real physical edge, and when something reaches it, it just pops out of existence, or disintegrates.”
Theola smacked her bowl of chunky green goop and flipped it into Lucien’s lap. He scowled at the mess, and his one-year-old daughter giggled. He flashed her a long-suffering smile, and she smiled winningly back with all six of her half-in-half-out baby teeth. Theola was late to eating solid foods. Something to do with a sensory integration disorder. This was his latest attempt to get her to eat something other than milk. Buttery smooth purees were all she would tolerate, and barely at that.
“Well, I can’t blame you this time, Theebs,” Lucien said, his nose wrinkling at the smell of the mess in his lap. “I wouldn’t eat it either.”
“Da-da! Blubalidee! Blub-blub... blub...” Theola replied, blowing bubbles with her saliva, and then popping her thumb in her mouth for a good suck.
“Are you even listening to me, Lucien?” Tyra demanded.
Theola craned her neck to look up at her mother, and Lucien followed her gaze to give his wife an exasperated look. “I might have listened, if you’d been home three hours ago, when I called you and you said you were on your way.”
“With this news, can you blame me? I got caught up. Chief Ellis needed me to—”
Lucien held up a hand to stop her. “Save it. That’s the third time this week. Why did you bother having kids if you weren’t going to be around to raise them? You’re barely here to tuck them in at night!” Atara was alone in her room, playing with her toys.
Tyra’s eyes narrowed at him. “That’s not fair. You know I have a demanding job. It’s what allows us to live here—” she gestured to their surroundings. High ceilings. Real hardwood floors. Crystal chandeliers. Expensive furniture. Their mansion clung to the base of Hubble Mountain, overlooking Planck lake in the picturesque city of Fallside. It had a fantastic view from nearly all of its floor-to-ceiling windows. “You think all of this comes without sacrifice?” Tyra went on, nodding to herself as if he’d just answered yes. “Maybe that’s because it’s not your responsibility to pay for it. Your income barely covers our energy bill! Everything else is on me—my shoulders, my sweat—while you get to spend the whole day patrolling paradise.”
Lucien blinked at her, speechless. He looked away, out the bay window at the end of the dining table. He gazed down on the kaleidoscope of yellows, reds, and golds around Planck Lake: the ever-changing leaves of Fallside. The scientists who’d engineered Astralis had used stasis fields to freeze the trees that way. Each of them was a living sculpture, a middle finger to nature. The mighty hubris of science had reared its head all over Astralis, and the message was clear: We are the gods here.
“You’ve got nothing to say to that, because you know I’m right. You’re happy to enjoy the luxuries afforded by my job, but not to endure the sacrifices.”
Lucien looked away from the window. “All of this isn’t worth a newton if we don’t have the time to enjoy it.”
At that, Tyra frowned and her gaze slipped away from his, fleeing out the window. This was the only problem in their marriage—the only thing they needed to fix but somehow never could. It was as though they were caught in a stasis field like the trees in Fallside: their lives looked beautiful on the outside, but on the inside everything was frozen and stuck.
On the bad days, after putting the kids to bed, Lucien would sit in their echoing great room with a book and a glass of whiskey for company. He’d watch the electric fireplace crackle, sipping his drink, his eyes glazed, his holo-reader open to the same page of the same book that he’d been pretending to read for the past month. On days like that, he wondered if he should just take the kids and leave. Maybe that would get his wife to sit up and take notice. Or maybe she’d come home as usual, a few hours before midnight, re-heat her cold dinner, and flop into bed, not even noticing her family’s absence, just as she never seemed to notice their presence.
Lucien winced at those memories. All he wanted was for his wife to show up—to be there, to laugh at his jokes while he did the dishes, to clink glasses with him after dark and kiss by the light of an artificial moon.
Lucien wondered if he should finally talk to Tyra about all of this, to let her know just how bad it had gotten....
The sound of waves swishing and children laughing brought him back and reminded him why they were here. No, he decided, flexing his fingers through the hot sand and nodding to the hateful, inverted glass pyramid at the top of Hubble Mountain. He’d wait until the end of their vacation, until Tyra had a chance to finally spend some time with her family and see what she was missing.
“Chief Councilor Ellis!” Tyra said brightly. “What’s so urgent?”
Lucien’s blood boiled at the sound of his wife answering a comms call on their vacation. He turned to her, his skin feeling hot and tight, like an over-inflated balloon just about to explode.
Tyra’s blue eyes were rainbow-colored in the light of her ARCs. She was smiling at Ellis like he’d just saved her from the dullest moment of her life.
That’s it... Lucien thought, his teeth clenching.
Tyra sat up suddenly. “That’s impossible...! No, of course, I’ll catch the first shuttle back. I’d love to say a few words.... Give me one hour.” Tyra nodded. “See you soon.”
The colored light left Tyra’s gaze as the transmission ended and her ARCs returned to their usual transparency. She turned to him with a broad grin. “You’re never going to believe this!”
Lucien met her enthusiasm with a scowl. “I thought we agreed to unplug. Shut off our ARCs and spend some time as a family for a change.”
“I did, but I have to leave a way to contact me in case of an emergency.”
“It’s always an emergency.”
“This is different.”
“Save it, Tyra,” Lucien said, shaking his head.
She reached for his hand and squeezed until the bones in his fingers ground together. “They’ve found us.”
Lucien’s brow furrowed. “Who has?”
“Us—you, me, the rest of the crew. The Inquisitor made it! Somehow they made it all the way here without us. They spent the past eight years catching up with us.”
Lucien blinked in shock, the news finally settling in. “You’re telling me we never died?”
Tyra shook her head and a grin sprang to her lips. “We’re on our way to meet them right now. The judiciary will probably rule that we have to integrate our memories and put the extra clones in stasis. Who knows what we’ll learn? You and I might even be married t
wice!”
Or divorced twice, Lucien thought, but didn’t say. He flashed her a tight smile. “So you’re going back to work.”
“Just for a day or two, until we bring the Inquisitor on board.”
Lucien looked away, his jaw set, his mind churning with conflicting thoughts.
“You can come with me,” Tyra said. “You’re going to have to meet yourself at some point.”
“Sure. Why not.”
“You don’t sound excited.”
He wasn’t excited, but maybe he should be. Tyra had said they’d have to integrate their memories, consolidate two lives into one. The injection of a fresh perspective might be just what they needed. “You’re right,” he said. “We should be there to welcome them home—but we’re extending our vacation by however many days this takes.”
Tyra nodded, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth once more. “Agreed.”
Lucien’s gaze drifted to their girls again just in time to see Theola go stomping through Atara’s sandcastle, flattening it in an instant. Atara screamed and smacked her sister’s thigh in revenge. Theola fell down and burst into tears.
Lucien sighed. “I’ll get the girls,” he said, already on his way down the beach. He scooped up Theola and grabbed Atara’s hand, chiding her for smacking her sister.
“But Dad, she—”
“It doesn’t matter,” he replied. “We have to go, anyway.”
And upon hearing that, Atara started crying, too.
Chapter 5
Astralis
TEN MINUTES UNTIL THE FAROS ATTACK...
Tyra Ortane stood to one side of the comms station in the operations room of Astralis. She watched with a conspiratorial smile as Chief Councilor Ellis stepped to the fore. He was wearing his ceremonial white council robes, as was she.
Tyra balanced on the balls of her feet, ready to jump into view as soon as Ellis introduced her. It took all of her will not to fidget while she waited for the Inquisitor to respond to their hail. The galleon had arrived at the rendezvous less than a minute ago, but the seconds were passing like hours.
She couldn’t wait to find out what her clone had seen and done. Although, technically, the Tyra she was about to speak with was the original and she was the clone. Meeting herself was going to be like stepping into a time machine, since as Chief Councilor Ellis had just informed her, the crew of the Inquisitor had spent the past eight years in stasis while their navigator bot took them to the cosmic horizon. It made sense, of course: there was no way that a galleon could support its crew for eight years otherwise.
What that meant was that both of their copies—originals—aboard the galleon were still technically twenty-two years old. There were probably many more new developments in their lives here on Astralis than there were in their lives aboard the Inquisitor.
Despite that, one question remained: what had happened eight years ago to bring that alien fleet bearing down on Astralis? And who were those aliens? What did they want? Why had they been so hostile? Astralis hadn’t run into them again since that time, but they had deliberately kept a low profile.
A tone sounded from the comms and a 3D hologram sprang to life on the viewscreen directly behind the comms station, revealing the bridge of a star galleon. Tyra saw herself sitting in the captain’s chair at the center of the galleon’s bridge. Sitting beside her was none other than her husband, Lucien.
Tyra grinned and waited for her introduction. If nothing else, Lucien’s proximity to her on the bridge suggested that the sparks had already begun to fly between them.
“I am Chief Councilor Ellis. On behalf of Astralis, welcome back, Captain Forster. We have much to discuss. Please land your galleon in hangar bay forty-seven. Meanwhile, I have someone here who’s eager to speak with you—councilor?” Ellis turned to her and nodded, to which Tyra stepped into view of the holocorder.
“It’s... you,” Lucien said, glancing at the identical copy of her sitting in the captain’s chair beside him, and then back.
Tyra fought to contain a giddy smile while the copy of her on the screen stared at her in wide-eyed disbelief.
“I’m a councilor?” Captain Tyra asked.
Tyra inclined her head to herself. “We stopped sending out expeditions after yours almost got us all killed.”
The captain nodded slowly, acknowledging the wisdom in that. By now she and her crew would know better than anyone about the dangers of exploring.
Tyra’s gaze flicked between Lucien and the captain, wondering if their relationship was strictly professional.
“What is it?” Lucien asked. “You keep looking at me like there’s something you want to say.”
“It’s just a shock for me to see us in this context.”
“Us?” the captain echoed.
Tyra hesitated. “I suppose you’re going to find out before you integrate your memories, anyway, so there’s no reason I can’t tell you.”
“Find out what?” Lucien demanded.
“We’re married, Lucien. With two kids. Atara and Theola.”
“You’re what?” a woman that Tyra didn’t recognize demanded as she stood up from the comms station on the Inquisitor’s bridge. Tyra recognized the woman’s jealousy in an instant, and her smile vanished as she eyed this other woman with a reciprocal flash of her own jealousy. This woman and Lucien were obviously some kind of couple.
The captain held up a hand to forestall further revelations. “Councilor, perhaps you’d better wait to tell us more. You’ve all been living our lives without us for the past eight years while we’ve been in stasis. I’m sure a lot has happened that will seem strange to us.”
“Of course... you’re right. I shouldn’t have said anything,” Tyra replied, sweeping her reaction under the carpet of a smile. “I apologize. It will be easier to understand everything that’s happened after you integrate, and our memories become your memories, too.”
“Agreed,” the captain said.
Tyra inclined her head to them. “See you soon, Captain. Astralis out.”
As the transmission ended, Tyra felt the ache spreading in her chest, and a knot tightened in her throat, making it hard to breathe.
So much for destiny. Given the choice between that other woman and me, Lucien chose her. Did that mean their marriage was a sham? Were they together by convenience or by accident? Tyra’s logical brain took over, rationalizing the situation: no one was really destined to be together. The idea of two souls somehow reaching across time and space to be together was a childish notion for untrained, and uneducated minds. Romance is two parts chemistry, and one part opportunity. A simple equation of attraction plus availability.
Tyra had been so lost in her thoughts that she hadn’t even noticed that Ellis had disappeared without a word. She turned in a circle, scanning the operations center for him. There was an urgent bustle of activity, and a sudden hush in the room. Ellis was leaning over the sensor operator’s station, his mouth agape.
“It’s not possible,” he breathed, his voice a strangled whisper. “Double check those sensor profiles!”
“I’ve already triple-checked them, sir. There’s no mistake. They’re exactly the same type of ships we encountered eight years ago.”
“They followed us for eight years?” Councilor Ellis demanded. “Who in the netherworld are these people?”
A split second later the room’s speakers crackled with, “Red alert! Action stations, action stations! This is not a drill. We are under attack by a hostile alien fleet. Repeat, red alert! This is not a drill!”
A battle klaxon roared in their ears, and Councilor Ellis turned to her in horror.
Tyra gazed blankly back, her mind racing. My children... I have to get my children!
The intercom crackled once more: “Attention all citizens, this is Admiral Stavos, we are under attack by a hostile alien fleet. If you find yourself near the outer hull, please proceed along emergency evacuation routes to the nearest shelter as calmly and quickly as possible. Keep
all emergency lanes and corridors clear for Marines and repair crews. Violators will be stunned without warning. I repeat, we are under attack, please proceed along emergency evacuation routes as calmly and quickly as possible. This is not a drill.”
It took a physical effort for Tyra to stop herself from running out the doors of the operations room to go find her family.
Chief Councilor Ellis crossed over to her and grabbed her arm, shaking her lightly to get her attention. Her eyes darted from the exit to look at him. Lucien was with the kids. He would know what to do. Her job as councilor of Fallside was to coordinate the evacuation efforts and emergency response teams in her city.
“We need to go!” Ellis yelled to be heard over the ship’s blaring klaxons.
Tyra nodded. “Lead the way!”
Chapter 6
Astralis
Lucien was at home, eating lunch at the breakfast table with his daughters when the red alert came. For the first few seconds he was too shocked to move; he just sat there listening to Admiral Stavos’ subsequent call for the evacuation of the ship’s outermost compartments. When both announcements were over, all was silent, but for the distant screaming of Astralis’s civil defense sirens.
“Aliens are attacking us?” Atara asked with all the seriousness of a child who suddenly didn’t sound like one.
Theola’s baby blues flicked to her sister, and then back to him. She was sitting in her high chair, sucking her thumb.
“Dad?” Atara pressed. “What are we supposed to do?”
He was busy asking himself the same thing. His job as the chief of security in Fallside was to help coordinate the evacuation from the ship’s outer compartments to its shelters, and to keep the population from losing their heads in the crisis. But his job as a father was to keep his children safe, and he couldn’t just leave them at home alone. First things first, he had to get his children to the nearest shelter. They’d have their own provisions for childcare, which would free him up to do his job.
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