by Rachel Caine
“Just come.”
**DIRECT-H2-APP-SCORPIONXPOISON-ENCODED**
From: Derry McKinnon
To: Torian Deluca
Made your offer to the Leviathan Elder. You were right. Everybody wants weapons. Gave a little demo of the advanced prototype you sent up with me and made the deal.
I am clear to go find Zara. My ship doesn’t like it much, but she’ll do what I want, at least as long as she knows I can hurt her. Send the rest of the chem supply. I can’t break orbit unless I have enough to last this trip. You don’t want me going through withdrawal, do you? That would blow all your plans.
Don’t worry. I’ll bring you Zara’s head on a plate.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Binding Forces
“WHAT AM I looking at?” I asked.
The dead rock on-screen wasn’t remarkable. Dull gray, with darker striations. Readings seemed to indicate there was a thin atmosphere and our equipment was showing the dead remnants of civilization, though the settlements were in ruins. Whoever had once lived here, there was no sign of life now. It didn’t seem like an emergency.
Bea’s hands trembled as she brought up another series of images. These were shockingly different—a planet bursting with colorful hues, with vivid greens and blues that reminded me of Earth. Not in the same configurations, of course, and there were slashes of deep red and shocking purple as well. A gorgeous place.
Bea said, “Typhon took these scans long-range, an hour ago.”
I stared. “Can’t be. He was looking at another planet?”
“No. He wasn’t. An hour ago, that’s how it looked.”
“You’re telling me that in the space of an hour, the planet went from alive and vibrant to . . . to that?” She didn’t need to tell what could’ve done that. I knew. “This verifies that Xyll can track the swarm, at least.” My calm words covered horror swirling like cold grease in my stomach. I had to swallow to keep it down. “Who lived here?”
Bea nodded toward the chairs not far away. Starcurrent sat slumped limply, all silent grief, like when we’d pulled zim from zis escape pod after the Leviathan slaughter.
I knelt beside zim. “Starcurrent? What can you tell me about this place?”
Zis tentacles barely fluttered, and I didn’t like zis color at all, pale gray, deepening to charcoal on filament tips. Maybe I wasn’t an expert on Abyin Dommas chromatology, but this singer in the deep radiated sheer sorrow. Deep shock.
“Is Darkwell, among first colonies founded in the diaspora.” Starcurrent’s translated voice was flat, but I could feel the waves of enormous horror coming off zim. “Home to a hundred universities. The Library of Zuran. Not the birthplace of Abyin Dommas, but a singing jewel to us.” A high, thin whistle cut across the translator, like keening. “All dead. All gone now.”
“I’m so sorry.” It wasn’t enough, nothing could be. Before now, or maybe more accurately, before seeing that red star die right in front of us, I never could’ve fathomed destruction on this scale. Hell, I thought humans were good at killing, but this . . . it had taken less than an hour to reduce a whole planet, and every living thing on it, to rock and ruin. “How many?” I asked finally, mostly because I didn’t know what else to say.
“Five million? It was a small colony, mostly Abyin Dommas, a few Bruqvisz.” Tentacles flared then, and I hurt for Starcurrent. And Suncross’s people too. I didn’t think he’d take it well.
That wasn’t small. It was a goddamn massacre. I’d thought the most horrible thing I’d ever see was that Leviathan slaughter, but that had been perhaps a hundred ships, at most. “Is there anything I can do for you right now?”
I expected a sad negative, but Starcurrent wrapped a few tentacles around my arms, and now that I was used to the feeling of zis skin, it didn’t bother me. But the strength of it put me on guard. That was going to leave a mark. “Sing. Sing them to their rest with me.”
I almost said, that’s Bea’s thing, but this was such a small ask. It didn’t matter if I sounded good; the point was, being willing to offer a little comfort. “Call the tune. I won’t know the words, so I’ll hum along.”
“Me too,” Bea said.
“I will, as well.”
I couldn’t remember ever hearing Nadim sing with his physical voice, the one he used with us, though I knew he called to other Leviathan, or maybe resonated was the better word. Regardless, Starcurrent started singing in a bass so low that I felt it through the soles of my feet, and it was pure loss, mourning that pierced deep even as I tried to match it several octaves higher. Bea weighed in with her soaring soprano and Nadim sang too, a lovely baritone. It should’ve been an atonal mess, but instead it was so moving that tears sprang to my eyes. I didn’t cry easily, ever, but I could feel the awful loss of this, the waste of it.
We must’ve kept it up for five minutes, as we looked down on the dead colony, now just ash and dust. Nadim orbited once, long enough for us to finish paying our respects.
Chao-Xing came on the comm just as Starcurrent fell silent. “What are you doing? We can’t wait here. We should keep moving! Get new coordinates from that abomination.”
“Xyll,” I said.
“What?” She was mad as hell over the pointless slaughter, but now that I knew her better, I could also see the pain. C-X was blaming herself for this. So was I. If we’d done something different—
But what-if was a fool’s game, a bet you couldn’t win. Excoriating ourselves couldn’t bring anyone back. We just had to do better, faster.
“The Phage cell asked to be called Xyll,” I said.
“I don’t bother learning the names of my enemies,” she said coldly. “It’s dead when we’re done with it, even if I have to go through all of you to do it.”
Yeah, it wasn’t time to argue. “We’re moving out; will forward the next location when we have one.”
“Do it fast,” she said. “I’m not losing anyone else to these bastards.” She was off the screen before I could even try to make a comeback. Not that I had it in me.
On my way out of the hub, I went over to Bea, lowering my voice to a whisper. “Any survivors at all?”
She grabbed my hand, holding on so tight it almost hurt. We’d seen what Lifekiller did to that star, but I still couldn’t wrap my head around what I was seeing. “There are no signs of life whatsoever.”
“Like, down to plants and animals?”
“Down to anything. No biological life of any kind. The god-king devoured everything. This world is a husk, and the colonists have been reduced to ash.”
“This wasn’t a Phage attack?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. They leave . . . pieces.”
I shuddered. Where the Phage devoured everything, at least they were eating, turning that life into fuel. Ruthless, but that was the essence of life. It was something I could understand. The god-king, though . . . I couldn’t see any sense to him. He seemed to be swelling like a tick or a mosquito, and then I had the awful thought that maybe he was gearing up for another radical metamorphosis. Like, if he could suck up enough energy, it would power a change. I suspected we did not want to see his leveled-up form.
Poring over the awful images wouldn’t change anything, so I steeled myself. Since we’d missed the god-king by a frustratingly short time—and this world had paid the price—I couldn’t let my emotions cost us another victory. Like Chao-Xing had said after our first decisive win, we are at war.
Since we were paused assessing damage, Marko took the chance to return to Typhon on the Hopper we were sharing. Ours would be operational soon.
Then we left Darkfell behind and found a cluster of stars that would nourish Typhon and Nadim. Soon both ships were recharging and healing, which was good. We needed every advantage for the next round.
I went back to Xyll—to learn where to find our enemy.
Xyll was, at first glance, in a cocoon, and for a second I thought, Kill it with fire, because I did not want to see a metamorphosi
s form of the Phage, either . . . but then the silk chrysalis it was in parted down the middle, and Xyll jumped out to crouch in the middle of the floor.
It was still the same. I didn’t see any menacing upgrades.
“What the hell is that?” I pointed at the thick cocoon, which was a lump in the middle of the horizontal silken rope.
“Bed,” the Phage said. “Have you not such?”
I wasn’t here to compare decorating tips. “We missed the swarm. Where are they now?”
“You are angry,” Xyll observed.
“Damn right. There’s a planet down there that’s an empty rock, and it used to be full of life.”
“Lifekiller,” Xyll said. “The god-king is enraged.”
“Yeah, well, me too. Tell me where he’s going.”
“Cannot.”
“Why?”
“Cannot feel Phage now. Dormant.”
“What does that mean?”
Xyll lifted all its limbs. It looked like a threat. I kept my hand on my gun. “Dormant. Bed. Sleep. Cannot track when asleep.”
Shit. I’d never thought about it, but everything living needed rest, at least everything I’d ever heard about. The Phage had collectively fallen asleep, maybe after they’d picked a course to follow . . . but Xyll couldn’t access the Mind while it rested.
Unless it was lying.
I pulled my gun. Xyll lowered its arms, which looked less combative, but I couldn’t be sure of that. Not at all. “Why threaten?” it asked me. “Telling truth.”
“I need to be sure. Do you regrow those legs?”
For answer, I got a hiss from Xyll, and something in me squirmed and shuddered. It sounded like every vile, poisonous thing on Earth, coming to get me. Man, these Phage could tap into the fear center with no effort at all. Made it extra hard to be objective about them. “Yes,” it said. “Will regrow. But painful.”
“You don’t want me to shoot something off you.”
“Is not my choice.”
“Then tell me the truth,” I said. “Tell me where the Phage are heading.”
“Do not know,” Xyll said. “Mind is dormant. Phage cannot be reached.”
“But they had a course before the Mind went to sleep.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me where that leads, then.” It was a risk. If the Phage changed their course somehow, or Lifekiller changed it for them, we could miss the mark altogether. Lives were on the line—not just ours, but planets full of life. Darkwell had been a living, breathing, vital place, and now not even viruses or bacteria survived.
I couldn’t let that happen again. We had to catch them.
The Phage rattled off another sequence of targeting numbers, and I asked Nadim if he got it; he said yes, and I holstered my gun. Xyll didn’t move. “Would have shot me?” it asked.
“If you hadn’t answered me? Yes.”
The Phage’s armor glistened as it shifted, but I couldn’t read what, if anything, that really conveyed. “You hate,” it said. “Why?”
“You chewed up Leviathan,” I said. “What other reason do I need?”
It didn’t answer me. It hesitated a moment, then crawled back up on the rope and buried itself in its cocoon again.
Did I feel a little guilty? Hell yeah. Xyll had done nothing since arriving on board to make me doubt its intentions, but still . . . the only measure I had for its kind was hunger and violence. Scaled up to intelligence, that was an incredibly dangerous combination. I had to be careful with this thing. I had to understand before I could trust.
I left the containment room and leaned against the wall outside, eyes shut for a moment. “Nadim, you know what to do.”
“Yes, Zara,” he said. “It’s a gamble, isn’t it?”
“Only one we have,” I said. But that wasn’t what I was thinking about. “At best speed, do you think we can overtake them?”
Nadim was silent for a moment, and then he said, quietly, “I do not believe we can. We will try. But Lifekiller has given the Phage a much greater advantage. If we knew their destination, we could attempt an intercept course.”
“What’s on that route?”
“Many things. Too many planets to protect.” He sounded deeply shaken. I understood that.
But I was overcome by something else too. What I’d just said to Xyll. What Nadim had said to me. I sank down the wall and put my head in my hands, fighting not to cry from the overwhelming surge of knowledge that came over me like a cold wave.
“Zara? What is it?” When I didn’t answer, Nadim attempted a bond, a light one. I fended it off. “Please tell me.”
“We’re the Phage,” I said. My voice shook. “You’re treating us like we’re the Phage. Humanity. You’re trying to rehabilitate us. That’s what the Honors program is. That’s why you’ve given us all the tech to make our lives easier. You’re hoping that we’ll lose our violent edges and become . . . civilized enough for the rest of the galaxy.”
“Humans are not like the Phage,” he said. “You are young. You come from one of the cruelest, most angry planets that exist. You have been forced to fight it, and lower life-forms, for tens of thousands of your years. But when there was nothing left to fight, humans turned on each other. When you had conquered your environment, you poisoned it. When you were no longer threatened by your companion animals of Earth, you exterminated them. You are not like the Phage.” He paused for a long, painful moment. “I am sorry to say this, Zara, but in some way, humans are more dangerous, because humans do not do this from hunger.”
My heart collapsed inside me, and the tears slid free, not for me, not for my own pain, but for the cold fact that humanity had the darkest of edges in us, something that even the Phage lacked. A vicious streak that we used on each other, when nothing else was available. I knew that. We all knew it, deep down, for all our art and culture, beauty and kindness. Deep inside, there was a disturbing, limitless darkness. It was there in every culture, in every age.
“That’s why the Leviathan wanted us,” I said. “Not for our intelligence. Not for our curiosity. Not for anything good. Leviathan wanted us for our darkness. Because that’s what you need to fight the Phage.”
“That’s not entirely true. If it was, why would the Elders have first asked for scholars, scientists, and musicians, instead of criminals, killers, and soldiers?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I felt miserable now, sick, strangely betrayed even though nothing had really changed. “You tell me.”
“The Elders wanted to find the best in you and teach you that you could all reach those heights.” He sounded so incredibly gentle now. “They wanted the best, and Zara, they chose you.”
“Because I’m a criminal.”
“Because you are strong, yes. But I think because they saw something else in you, just as they did in Beatriz, in Marko, in Chao-Xing. You are all strong, you all have vital instincts we need. But you are balanced by such goodness. Such love.”
That made sense, but the words weren’t enough. I reached out to him because Nadim could lie to me in words, but never like this. I was anguished and angry and sad and broken, and he flooded into me like warm sunlight, filling up the cracks in my heart. I couldn’t convey the horror I felt at that possibility, but he felt it. And he let me know that it was all right, somehow. That we were what we were, and there was nothing to regret.
I love you as you are, Zara, he said. There is darkness in you, yes. But there is a light like a million stars, and this, we have learned from humans too: that both may exist together. That both may be useful and good. Your strength comes from struggle and pain and survival. You must wear that with pride. Because I am proud of you. And yes, the Elders chose humanity partly for this reason. But I choose you for you. Always.
I threw myself into the bond completely, and spun into starlight and song, and the harmony of it was beyond any measure of peace. Zadim loved, and was loved, and I was aware that Zara’s physical body had collapsed to the hallway floor, eyes open and
black, but it didn’t matter.
I was home.
Let’s go.
Zadim leapt forward, released, whole, and Typhon fused together. Lightstorm. The small, flitting needles of Suncross and his crew gliding with us, stitching a straight course as the Leviathan swam in great leaps, sails spread to catch song and light. Beatriz joined the bond first, and then Starcurrent, with all zis gray anguish. All together.
We are one. We are Starocean. Before, we hadn’t articulated a name. Now it was time.
This is the strength we need, Zadim thought. And Lightstorm pulsed an agreement. But we need more.
We felt rather than heard Suncross’s transmission that blasted on a wide band through the stars, giving course instructions.
We were calling an army.
The resonant deep song of Leviathan belled through stars, through darkness, seeking cousins, and Zadim felt the strong reverberance of replies. Distant, but responding.
From a thousand planets, we felt the call, heard the response.
Yes.
We were going to war, and gods should tremble.
FROM THE FIRSTWORLD TEMPLE OF BIIYAN, FRAGMENTARY TRANSLATION
Provided by Honor Sunfire Victory, with permission from the Bruqvisz Planetary Database
Spike of sharp fear
As god-kings return
To bend light and murder stars
And end all that oppose
We fear
We fight
We die
We win
Sing the dawn of new days
Sing the dusk of old
Sing it never to come again
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Binding Gods
WE FLEW.
Through starsong and incandescent colors that hissed like silk around us, food and heat and life. The armor was heavy, and it altered our maneuverability. We had sacrificed some grace and dexterity for durability and self-defense. It was acceptable. In our present form, we were unstoppable.
It lies to us, Lightstorm said. The monster. They are not on this course. It remains loyal to them. Kill it.
