Honor Bound

by Rachel Caine

  No, part of Starocean said. Not yet.

  The Leviathan aspects wanted Xyll dead, but one within the fusion refused . . . and then two. Zara, and Starcurrent. It is of use, Starcurrent’s part said, still bitter as ashes. It may die later.

  Our course is wrong, Lightstorm said again.

  Wait, Starocean said. Watch. Listen.

  At some remove, a gulf of time later, we heard the scratching wrongness of the Phage, their awful disharmony, and the noise drew nearer. Some portion of us heard the alarming cacophony, but others were talking, and Starocean grew less. Smaller. Starcurrent was gone. Beatriz. We wanted to fight, but smaller words scraped away insistently at our attention, like the hand on someone’s cheek, barely felt, but there.

  Dropping from the bond, I opened my eyes and sat up to find Bea shaking me. “Come back! We need you here!”

  I felt a little dizzy, and if I did, maybe Nadim did too. He could not plummet into dark sleep now, so Bea was probably right. A deep bond should be a strategy, not what we did because I was emotionally wrecked, when we were both exhausted. I stood up and groaned; all my muscles had seized up.

  I struggled to focus. “Right, okay. What’s wrong?”

  “Xyll got out. I don’t know where it is!” She swallowed hard. “Can’t pick it up on sensors.”

  Shit.

  Was this the moment that Nadim’s Trojan horse prediction came true, and Xyll started destroying our Leviathan from within? At this juncture, we couldn’t spare the time to hunt down an internal saboteur, especially if Xyll burrowed into some part of Nadim that we couldn’t easily reach. I had the most experience in navigating his biosystems, but we were also chasing down a damn god-king, and the Phage lurking somewhere ahead of us were as big a problem, if not bigger. But what if Xyll hurt Nadim somehow, infected him? Laid eggs or reproduced via parthenogenesis? I didn’t have a clue how Phage biology worked, only that it did, and fast.

  I still had a gun on my hip from gearing up to face the Phage earlier, and the weapon was in my hands before I knew it.

  “Hello.” The metallic clatter of its voice came from . . . overhead.

  My first thought was, blindly, Giant roach-spider, kill it fast, and I aimed my gun. It scuttled backward, still clinging to the ceiling, which was wrong on so many levels.

  “Get down from there!”

  Xyll dropped, landing easily on the floor. “Have an importance, could not wait. Looking for you.”

  My trigger finger was taut, ready to blast this thing into bits, but so far, I had no evidence it had done anything other than leave its quarters. “Nadim? You good?”

  “I detect no internal damage, Zara.” I noticed the strain in him, though. He wanted Xyll contained. Preferably, gone.

  “Hear that?” I said to Xyll. “Nadim just saved your life. You have thirty seconds to tell me what’s so crucial that you broke the rules.”

  “Empty ones, the eaters, are coming.”

  “The Phage hive mind?” Last I knew, they were following the god-king’s commands, but maybe— “Have they been ordered to hunt us down?”

  “True,” said Xyll. “Soon, now. Must defend. Will help if possible.”

  Making a quick decision, I put away my weapon. “I’m trusting you. Now that we’re on alert, go back to your room, unless you can’t hear the swarm in there?” That was a test. There were no blockers in place, no reason that should be true. If Xyll lied and claimed it needed to be elsewhere, then maybe I couldn’t trust its intel.

  “Going,” Xyll answered. “Will keep promise to aid. Permit comms access? Had none before. Had to leave to tell importance.”

  Starcurrent joined me in the corridor to escort the Phage back to its quarters. Once we saw Xyll inside, ze said, “It does not lie.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Hearing truth, this is not a thing that humans do?” Ze seemed surprised.

  “Not really. Some people are better at gauging deception than others. There’s a whole subset of psychology devoted to it.”

  “Then, is difficult to explain.”

  Taking the declaration at face value, I said, “You think Xyll is really an ally?”

  “Harder to distinguish personal motive from simple true false. But . . . Xyll wishes to live, true. Hard to thrive as an individual in the swarm. Could be eaten.”

  Again, that tracked for me. For someone who had to be grieving deeply, first for zis Leviathan, and then for the whole colony of Darkwell, ze was coping admirably right now, though zis tentacles remained a muted gray. Or maybe it only seemed that way because I didn’t fully understand zis people.

  “Noted.” I hesitated for a second. “You all right, my friend?”

  Starcurrent seemed startled, or at least, that was what the ripple of tendrils told me. “No,” ze said. “Loosed a god-king, Zara. Caused death of an ancient star, death of Darkwell. Am not all right at all. Are you?”

  I stared at zim for a long few seconds, because it was a damn good question, but that was, I realized, how humans rolled. We put things in boxes until we had the space to deal with them. I’d be guilty as hell later, but right now, I only cared about survival. About Nadim. About stopping the god-king from doing worse.

  “I’m all right because I have to be,” I told him. “Am I telling the truth?”

  That got a stir of tentacles from him. “Yes. Truth.”

  “Then let’s leave it there.”

  As I headed back toward Ops, Nadim said, with an admirable economy of words, “Phage sighted.”

  Chills rippled through me, because this time, the fight would be different. Instead of mindless hunger, these creatures were attacking on Lifekiller’s orders. Finally, the devourers had strategy behind their destruction, an army with a general, not just a rampaging mob.

  And they wanted us dead.

  Even if they couldn’t manage it, the delay of a drawn-out battle might cost thousands of lives elsewhere. We couldn’t let another outpost fall like Darkwell had.

  “Nadim, does Typhon know they’re coming?”

  “He’s aware.”

  “Good, then we’re on the same page. We can’t lose too much time here. This strike could be meant to slow us down, keep us away from the god-king.”

  “Zara . . .” Nadim’s voice was tentative. “Lifekiller is stronger now. We could lose this battle. You know that.”

  “I don’t,” I said crisply. “And you never go into a battle afraid of losing. We fight, Nadim. Together. Always.”

  “Always,” he said. But there was a slight, troubling note in his voice. I didn’t know what he was thinking. I didn’t have time to find out.

  Before, our fight had been about saving the Leviathan—and we still needed to—but the threat was even bigger now. The god-king wouldn’t stop at destroying our ships.

  Shivering, I remembered Nadim’s translation from Lifekiller’s icy sepulchre: Here rests the fallen god-king, life-eater, song-swallower. Tread not upon him; never speak his name. Let him return to dust and may the silence never be broken. Death comes for any who forsake the way.

  We couldn’t even claim we hadn’t been warned.

  “Get ready for a hell of a fight,” I told Bea.

  She took one side of the console while I settled on the other, sending orders to the drones in the docking bay. On-screen, I saw Suncross’s ship come alongside, much smaller than Typhon or Nadim, but strapped for Armageddon, then the Bruqvisz’s face appeared on-screen, all teeth and excited neck frills. I took that to mean he was eager for battle.

  “Obliteration!” Suncross yelled. His crew echoed the war cry.

  I couldn’t raise an answering call. Too much was riding on our results here.

  “Try to clear us a path through this,” I said. “We’ll supplement with the drones.”

  “Understood, Zeerakull. Today the stars will sing and our enemies burn!”

  Suncross vanished from the screen, and his ships went weapons hot, putting on a sunburst of speed that boosted hi
s vessel out in front, a small but mighty vanguard for our two behemoths. It was impossible not to feel awed by the momentous events unfolding. On Earth, they had no idea of the stakes behind the public pageantry of the Honors. It was all just smiles and uniforms to them.

  This was life and death.

  If we fall here, Mom and Kiz will never know the truth. For a few seconds, the sorrow of that washed over me, and then I put the sadness aside. No matter what happened, I wasn’t sorry. Not for anything. If I had to do it all over again, I’d still come to Nadim. Maybe it would sound strange to anyone else, but he completed me, and I’d come to care so much for everyone; Bea, Starcurrent, Chao-Xing, Yusuf, and Marko had become my family.

  Wild, when I considered what a loner I used to be, how I fought permanent attachments. No wonder I always felt trapped on Earth. I needed a whole universe to call my own. For once, I didn’t feel like that was too much to ask. For me to be here? This was meant to be, and I was honor bound to give everything to this cause.

  Lightly, I touched minds with my Nadim, and from there reached out to my Beatriz, and my Starcurrent. They were all my family, and I’d give this everything I had. Immediately warmth filled me, along with conviction and strength.

  “We can win,” Nadim said.

  “We have to,” I answered.

  And launched the first barrage of drones at the swarm.

  Suncross’s ship used their globulators to clump the Phage together. Nadim and Typhon followed with their own weapons, blasting with abandon. I stood at the console, watching the battle rage silently beyond. We were close to a binary sun system, one that radiated cool blue with a hot, orange core, and the light slid over the shifting, twisting movements of the Phage as the swarm turned, broke, reformed, attacked. Through Nadim, I felt the impact of the bodies hitting his armor and latching on, but to negligible effect.

  Bea reached over and said, “I made an improvement.” She hit a control in front of me and held it, and through Nadim, again, I felt a mild buzz, like a pleasant little shock.

  Not so pleasant for the Phage. She’d connected the force-field generators to the plating. The Phage weren’t prepared for the current, and they drifted into space, twitching.

  “You made a bug zapper!” I high-fived her.

  We spun back to our jobs, watching for anything out of the ordinary, targeting and firing on the swarm with rail guns and energy weapons.

  “Nadim, did that hurt?” Bea asked.

  “No,” he said. “It felt good. Like . . . sunlight.”

  “Great. Then I’ll keep zapping. Tell me when we’ve got enough in the kill box.”

  I smiled at Bea, despite the severity of our situation. “Look at you, working the army-talk.”

  Typhon dove straight into the swarm, ramming, twisting, slapping, and crushing hundreds at a time. But he was getting too far ahead. I tapped the comm. “Chao-Xing, rein it in! Stay in the formation!”

  “Trying,” she said tersely. “He’s a little wild right now.”

  The big, scarred Leviathan let out a deep, resonant pulse that punched through me like a fist, and I staggered. So did Bea. Even Nadim felt it.

  It blew apart about a thousand Phage in one go, shattered them into broken shells and drifting fluid, and I grabbed the console, shaken. “What the hell was that?”

  “I don’t know,” Nadim said. “I’ve never seen him do it before.”

  It was Yusuf who replied, “Nadim can run in stealth mode. Typhon has sonic disintegration.” Yusuf sounded steady, very much part of Typhon’s crew.

  “Well, that would have been pretty damn useful in literally every other fight we’ve been in!”

  “He couldn’t do it before,” Yusuf said. “He wasn’t strong enough. He’s only just reached enough reserve power to use it . . . but it’s limited.”

  “Still an advantage. Let’s push. We have to get clear.”

  For answer, Typhon lunged forward, an athletic leap of grace and power, the force of the pulse radiating from him in a scintillant glow. It pummeled the Phage, destroying the first waves, sending the next spinning out of control. There were a hundred thousand of the creatures, but every booming attack from him drove them back and apart. Suncross’s ships went after stragglers, spearing them with light beams that cut them in two and sent the opposite halves spinning.

  “Beware!” That was Xyll, on comms, and the stannic screech of its voice made me wince and clench my teeth.

  We were so focused on driving through the swarm that we’d missed a dark whip snaking out from around the blue sun. More Phage. Reinforcements, flanking us.

  “Typhon!” I sent coordinates. “Take them out. We’ll deal with this.”

  Typhon’s resonant cry was incredibly effective against the Phage, and I understood why; Lifekiller had the same vulnerability to resonance, music, song. It was a power that threaded through the entire universe, and one I never would have guessed. But now I understood why the Leviathan had pilots and singers. It was nurturing.

  It was also a weapon.

  “Bea,” I said. “Get ready for Lifekiller. We’re going to need songs. Abyin Dommas songs, human harmonies, Leviathan calls, anything and everything. Get it prepped.”

  “On it, I’ll loop in Marko,” she said. “You okay here?”

  “Yes. Go.”

  She moved another console and began to set up a symphony that would slow down, and hopefully damage, a god-king. No pressure. I watched her for a second, but she was confident, moving with urgency and authority.

  Quite a change from a girl who’d been terrified to let people hear her sing when she came aboard. Who’d been prostrate at the sight of open space.

  I felt a wave of love for her. For all of them.

  Starcurrent arrived, swarming in on a blur of tentacles, and joined Beatriz. Ze leaned back and waved a few tendrils in my direction. “Do you require assistance, Zara?”

  “Nope. I got this.”

  I concentrated on destroying the Phage ahead of us, while Typhon devastated the swarm behind us . . . but then I felt a sudden burst of worry. Not mine. Nadim’s. “He’s exhausted,” Nadim said. “He will lose the ability to sing that frequency soon. He must pull back.”

  Dammit, too soon. Both ships were drinking light from the binary suns, but the armor cut down absorption by 30 percent. Typhon was blowing through his reserves too fast.

  I hit comms. “Yusuf?”

  “I know,” he said. “I’m on it. Stubborn son of a bitch argues, but he’s not stupid.”

  “Save it for Lifekiller,” I said. Then I turned to Xyll. “Can you access the hive mind?”

  “Can try,” Xyll said quickly.

  “If possible, confuse the swarm around Typhon. Try sending it in another direction.”

  “Phantom ship,” Xyll said. “Yes.”

  I zapped the last few thousand Phage from the original swarm as they abandoned any kind of strategy and latched on to Nadim’s armor, hoping to drill inside. Tough as the plating was, I was afraid they might just make it, given enough time. A couple of hits from the zapper, and they drifted away, prey for Suncross’s ships to slice apart.

  “Xyll,” I said. No answer. “Xyll!”

  “Swarm is moving away,” Xyll said. It sounded faint. “Difficult. Apology.”

  I didn’t have time for that. “Where’s Lifekiller?”

  For answer, Xyll reeled off another string of numbers. Nadim grabbed and displayed them, and I didn’t know what I was looking at. A planet, obviously. A large one. The scan showed a lush world with what looked like green seas, a few atolls of land masses, white ice at the poles. Delightful place. Not unlike Earth, though the atmosphere looked cloudier. Gases that would probably be toxic to us without suits or filters.

  “Nadim?” I asked. “What planet is this?”

  Nadim might have answered, but it was drowned out by the burst of discordant noise from Starcurrent, who was suddenly there, staring at the planet. I’d never seen zim quite so distressed, every tent
acle unfurled and shaking. Not gray in the tips this time.

  A vivid, violent black. Zis barbs were out.

  “Home,” ze said. “That is my homeworld. Greenheld.”

  For a second I didn’t know what to do, what to say. I was a kid from the New Detroit streets. What did I know about saving an entire homeworld, an entire damn people? I finally got my voice back, and said, “How many—”

  “Billions,” Nadim said. “There are billions of Abyin Dommas here. It is the heart of their civilization. Zara, I think the god-king means to exterminate them!”

  “Because we sang them silent,” Starcurrent said. It was almost a keen. “Is revenge.”

  “How far away is Lifekiller? Xyll?”

  “Minutes,” the answer came.

  I didn’t have time for horror or fear. I boxed it up, steadied my feet, and said, “Starcurrent, warn your people. If they have defenses, get ’em up. Nadim—”

  “Yes,” he said. “Hold on.”

  He leapt forward with such strength that it sent Phage corpses spinning like asteroids, heading for the sun, and I’d never felt such urgency or speed in him before. He was tapping into dangerous reserves, but I let him. We both had to delve deep now. I told Yusuf what we were doing, and Typhon abandoned the Phage and followed, passing us in the next tremendous push. Stars blurred. Gauzy clouds of stellar dust brushed by us.

  We ran with all the incredible power that Leviathan could bring.

  We’d just touched the outer edges of the system when Xyll announced, tonelessly, “Lifekiller has arrived.”

  On the screen, I saw a shimmering golden shield encase the planet. Through my link with Nadim, I heard the incredible singing of the people abiding below in those oceans, Starcurrent’s kin, a united and beautiful chorus that grew stronger by the second.

  They were singing their defense. And their song created a shield that might save them, at least for long enough.

  I saw the vast, unfinished form of Lifekiller drift closer to the planet, and heard the strain, the fear woven into their desperate song.

  Without hesitation, I leapt for Nadim and gave everything to the bond, pulling Starcurrent and Bea with me. Starocean flowered open, bold and bright and brave, and then we called to our others, a deep fusion that twined us together in an incandescent explosion to bring Men Shen into existence again, and we were mighty beyond reckoning. A single creature, with a single purpose.