Out Past the Stars

by K. B. Wagers

  Oh, I knew that calm fury. It filled the air, crackling with an energy all its own. It was the same hate I’d carried on Sparkos for months. The grief of failure. The grief of losing those you love. The bone-deep desire for vengeance.

  “If I had time,” Thyra said, peeling the rainbow film apart and draping it over Mia’s face, “I would hunt down your Emmory and his husband. Make you watch as I hurt them. Make him watch as I take the two most precious things in his life from him and then leave him to his painful death.” The glee in her voice chilled me as much as her words, but it also lit a fire in my chest that burned away the last remnants of my frozen fear.

  “You won’t touch my Trackers,” I replied calmly.

  Thyra gave the same little trill I’d heard from the children on the Selan ship, but this one was cold and absent of joy. “Have you seen Trackers die, Your Majesty?”

  I wanted to ask what she was doing, but instead I thought of Zin’s scream in the cargo bay of Hao’s ship. That awful, lonely sound that ripped the heart out of me. I thought of Fasé in the hallway and everything she had sacrificed for us. “I have.”

  “Not really. Fasé stopped it. I think that is what twisted the path. Had you lost their influence you would have been more inclined to listen to Adora when she came to see you. I saw how your Ekam”—she spat the word—“stopped you from listening to me. I nearly killed him right then, but it would have done no good.” She sighed a surprisingly human noise. “I have studied your Trackers, Your Majesty; they are incredible things. I have seen them broken and begging for death when the other half of their soul dies, and whatever that pain is, mine was a million times worse when Priam died. How I wish I had the time to repay your Ekam for what he took from me.”

  It was my turn to put fury into my words, both at the implication that Thyra had taken Indranan Trackers and experimented on them and at her threat. “You should remember how things ended for Priam when he went up against me and Emmory and speak with more caution. I’m done with you. You’re going to let her go. We’re going to walk out of here and your people will mete out justice on you like the criminal you are.”

  The film had disappeared beneath Mia’s skin, the tan surface now shimmering with a faint rainbow sheen that vanished entirely a moment later.

  “You’re not in a position to bargain just yet.” Thyra smiled. “Your bombardment would have destroyed our protection from my self-righteous descendants, but we have time before they get here and I would have answers before you let me go.”

  “You think I’m going to let you go?”

  “To save this one’s life? I do. She should not exist. It’s another puzzle. Another twisting of the way things should be.” Thyra poked a limb into Mia’s shoulder, abruptly changing the topic of the conversation. “I made sure the Farians could not reproduce without our assistance—not with each other and certainly not with humans. And yet, the damn Shen spread like a disease. They should not be here, she should not be able to see and do the things she does, and I want to know why.”

  “Because you can’t control life, no one can.”

  “I am a god. I can do whatever I please!”

  I wished I had even an early-model Grendel in my hands. From this range it would at least do some damage on Thyra and give me enough of a chance to rush her. Or a knife. I cast around as subtly as I could, searching for a weapon. “Look, there’s no way out of this for you. Your people are here, they’re going to take you into custody, and you’re going to pay for your crimes. But if you let Mia go—”

  “You’ll do what, Star of Indrana? Put in a good word for me?” The sound that came out of Thyra’s mouth was supposed to be laughter, but it ripped down my spine like a knife.

  Bugger me.

  I spotted the scalpel jutting out from the tray just past Thyra’s right side.

  “You shouldn’t be here either,” Thyra said. “Not as you are, anyway. It wasn’t just your Ekam. The Shen corrupted you. Fasé corrupted you. You were supposed to save us.”

  “I was never here to save you,” I replied, Sybil’s words echoing in my head. “I am here to save everyone from you.”

  “Liar! I saw it. That’s how it was supposed to be!” The metal of the cabinet top bent when she slammed her limb down. “Sybil was right about everything else. I still can’t figure out why she was wrong about you.” She turned back toward the table and Mia’s still form. “Except, once again the Shen corrupt everything they come into contact with.” She grabbed the scalpel and spun toward Mia, fury burning in her wide, dark eyes.

  I launched myself at her, plan forgotten, and we crashed into the cabinets. Pain spiked through my shoulder when it slammed into the floor and I nearly got the scalpel through my eye for the distraction.

  I caught the limb that was holding it with my left hand, and instead of taking an eye it sliced a hot line of pain across my cheek as I wrenched her to the side. I punched Thyra twice in the head with my free hand until she yelped and rolled away.

  I followed, pulling the gun over my shoulder and swinging it with as much force as I could muster. The butt of the gun caught her in the face and I knew it hurt. I could feel the energy from the river surging in my veins. Making me stronger and faster. I kicked Thyra, dodging her answering punch. I missed the follow-up, and her strike flung me into the cabinets. I grabbed for the instrument tray as I fell and flung it at Thyra with all my newfound strength.

  Thyra staggered back. I rolled toward Mia and the doorway, bouncing to my feet, gun still in my hand.

  “Star of Indrana, we do not have to fight.” Thyra put her limbs up in an oddly placating gesture. Grayish blood streamed from a cut at her temple.

  “Oh, I think we do. You’ve threatened my Trackers, killed my people. Betrayed my allies. Hurt those I care about. You started this fight and I am going to finish it.” I was breathing heavily and took advantage of the pause to pull the energy in from the air around me. The temperature cooled, but my aching injuries eased and the blood welling from the cut on my cheek slowed.

  Thyra noticed, and something very much like hatred crossed her face before she could control it. “You should not be able to do that.”

  “If humans are good at anything it’s our constant ability to adapt.” I gave a little bow before realization hit me through my sarcasm. “You can’t? Is that it? You can’t heal yourself. You can steal the energy from the Farians but you can’t use it yourself for anything more than keeping you alive. Is that what this has all been about? So you could heal yourself?”

  “Healing?” Thyra scoffed. “I already heal faster than you ever could. I don’t need something so trivial. I was designed to heal quickly. There’s very little value in a weapon that’s easily broken. You don’t understand a thing. We were created as property for a specific purpose, and then meant to be disposed of when we were no longer of use. When we were freed I swore I would find a way to undo all that and give us the lives we deserved. No longer temporary, but eternal.”

  “Your people did just that without bloodshed,” I said. “They survived, and they’re free.”

  “They die.” Thyra spat the words at me, fear and hatred clinging like the mud of Xeros B. “The Farians can live forever but they are fragile, imperfect things. Even after all these years the bodies break down. It did us no good. Until I found a way around it.”

  I’d already seen the proof of that with my own eyes, but still the confirmation that Thyra had experimented on Farians made my stomach twist unpleasantly and I tightened my grip on the gun, praying that Fasé would follow my orders and stay put.

  “Star of Indrana, I can give you what you want.”

  I didn’t blink at the subject change. “Which is what?”

  Thyra glanced past me at Mia’s still form and bared her teeth. “You want to live forever so you can stay with her. I can make that happen.”

  “No, you can’t.”

  “I can. I swear.” Thyra kept one limb raised while she lowered the other, sticking the scalp
el into the top of the nearby chair. “I have finally figured it out and I can make it happen. You just have to promise me something if I do.”

  “Which is what?” I repeated, even though I already had a suspicion just what she was going to ask.

  “Let me go. Tell the others I overpowered you and escaped. They can look for me if they want but I’ll be long gone.”

  I didn’t think it was a good idea to joke that she obviously hadn’t been paying attention and that I was fairly sure no matter what kind of head start she had it wouldn’t take Emmory and Zin long to track her down.

  I allowed myself for just a second to entertain the notion of immortality and then discarded it with an internal sigh. I didn’t need a future-seer to tell me that would end very badly.

  Beyond that, I wasn’t about to let her get close enough to do anything to me, let alone willingly hold still for some science experiment.

  “You know that’s not going to happen.”

  “It was worth a try.” Thyra flashed that awful smile again. “I am perfectly fine with killing you and escaping here on my own with Mia. I am good at starting over.”

  “Good luck with that.” I let go of the gun and made a come-here gesture with one hand. “You’re not touching her again. All I have to do is hold you off until the others show up.”

  Whatever Thyra’s reply had been, it was lost to my rush. I threw the gun at her and then hit her square on when she flinched, knocking her through the doorway of the lab into the adjoining room. We hit the ground hard, my teeth snapping down from the force of the impact and narrowly missing my tongue.

  It was worth it, because it got her away from Mia and away from the scalpel, and judging by the noise she made it hurt her just as much as it hurt me. I swung for Thyra’s throat, but she blocked it and the snarled curse was in Selan and untranslatable by my smati.

  I got my own left hand up before her second shot hit me in the head and rolled with the blow, landing on my side. I kicked out as I fell, and my boot impacted with something.

  Then Thyra vanished. Just like Priam had.

  43

  I froze in shock and the hesitation cost me. The metal tray flew through the air at me and I barely blocked it, flipping it up and over my head with my forearm.

  She didn’t follow with an attack and I thanked my luck for her lack of practice. Thyra might have been a warrior once, but the long years had betrayed her. She was too used to being in charge, being the stronger, faster one, and it had dulled her instincts.

  Whereas I was coming straight from what was essentially “Fight the Gods 101.”

  But I couldn’t fight what I couldn’t fucking see. I didn’t dare close my eyes like I had with Priam; that had ended in a disaster that only Emmory had saved me from.

  And this time I was on my own.

  Think, Hail. You can see through all their other tricks, why not this one?

  It’s just light. Aiz’s voice was in my head. Just energy. We can shape it however we choose.

  I dove to the wall, hoping for my luck to hold out. It did and the panel on the wall controlled the lights—plunging us into darkness when I hit it.

  The room went black, except for the light streaming in from the other room. It sliced through the open door and left a wide rectangle on the floor. The downside was that light made it impossible to use my night vision setting on my smati, but I was hoping it meant the same for Thyra as I felt along the edge of the cabinet behind me in search of something else to use as a weapon.

  I’d just closed my hand around a metal dish when I saw the shadow shifting at the edge of the light. Whatever ability Thyra had, it wasn’t enough to keep her from casting a shadow.

  I flung the dish not at Thyra but farther into the room, praying she’d take the bait and follow. The shadow shifted, crossing at the bottom edge of the light and melting into the dark.

  Holding my breath, I slipped around the edge of the door back into the room with Mia, grabbing the gun on my way by.

  The table was empty.

  I scrambled for the hallway and found Fasé cradling Mia on the floor. Mia’s head lolled sickeningly and I had to stomp hard on the surge of anger that screamed at me to go back into that darkness and finish what I’d started.

  “We have to move,” I said, gathering Mia into my arms and standing so she was leaning against me. Fasé followed, taking the gun from me. “It won’t do any good.”

  “I heard,” she replied with a tiny smile. “Still, better to take it than to leave it here for her to use on us, right?”

  “Hail?” Mia’s whisper was weak, barely more than a breath of air against my throat.

  “It’s me. I need you to stay quiet,” I murmured against her ear. “And to run if you can.”

  There was a crash from the room behind us and I picked up my pace, Mia stumbling along beside me. The first door Fasé tried slid open and I hoped that didn’t mean our luck was going to run out when we needed it most. We slipped in, tapped the panel, and lowered Mia to the floor as the door slid shut.

  I heard Thyra yelling and then the strange offbeat pattern of her footsteps as she ran down the hallway.

  The room was almost black, with a dim light shining at floor level on the far side. Fasé touched Mia’s face, winced, and shook her head. “You try. I don’t know what Thyra’s done to her.”

  I put a hand on the exposed skin of Mia’s upper chest, whispered a prayer, and gathered in the energy around me.

  When I tried to heal her, it was like crashing headfirst into a wall. The energy I tried to send to her bounced back at me with enough force to put me on my ass and make my ears ring, adding to the buzz of what was still left in me from the river. I shook my head at Fasé as the pain subsided. “I can’t heal her either. Thyra put some sort of film across her face. Did you see it?”

  Fasé shook her head, her golden eyes wide and haunted.

  Bugger me.

  “Mia, look at me.” I cupped her face in my hands, my heart skipping in relief when her eyes fluttered open. “Hey.” I brushed a thumb over her lower lip.

  “Hail? Is it really you?”

  “I promised, didn’t I?”

  “Where are we?” She looked around with a frown. “What happened?”

  “Etrelia. Thyra grabbed you and ran. I don’t know what she did to you, but I can’t heal you. Do you remember anything?”

  “No, I—” I watched her eyes fog and tightened my fingers on her cheeks until she blinked. “I remember we rushed into the Pedalion chamber; Fasé had just joined up with us. There was shouting and then nothing. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right.” I touched the injury at her temple gently. “Neither Fasé nor I can seem to get through to you. Do you want to try to heal yourself? We have to get out of here. I need you mobile.”

  Mia closed her eyes and I watched as the wound closed with agonizing slowness. But her color paled at the same time and she gasped for air.

  “What is it?”

  “I can’t feel anything outside myself. It’s like—” She fumbled for the words, but I had them.

  “Being behind a wall of glass?”

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “Been there.” I leaned in and kissed her, smiling gently as I pulled away. “We’re going to have to get out of here first, then we’ll figure out what’s going on with you.”

  “I feel a little better,” she said. “But it’s exhausting to only tap into my own energy.”

  “Rest for a minute. I want to see if there’s another way out of this room.” I also didn’t know if Thyra had some sort of monitoring system in place, but judging from the silence outside I doubted it.

  The room we were in was larger than the others and my breath caught as I realized why.

  The light on the far side came from a wide doorway, and behind it were thousands of beings who were a mix of Farian and Selan. The upright tubes stretched out—row upon row—all of them glowing a faint greenish-blue in the dim light.

/>   The batch isn’t ready.

  The realization slammed down on me—Priam’s words about ruining thousands of years of work, Thyra’s relentless search for a way to stop the Selan from dying, the Farians’ ability to manipulate energy. How dismissive Thyra had been about their healing abilities and the deaths of her followers. Her focus on their inability to come back from death like the Farians could.

  Ice froze in my chest—Trackers, she’d been trying to figure out how their connection worked.

  This wasn’t just about her trying to find a way not to die or making an army of soulless Farians, it was something far more horrific.

  She had created an army of Hiervet. Not the Selan as they were now, but the warriors they’d come from. An army capable of taking down anything in its path.

  “Oh Shiva, protect us,” I murmured. I sprinted back to Mia and helped her to her feet.

  “She can lean on me,” Fasé said, looking up at me with a shake of her head. “Your hands should be free.”

  She was right and I took point as we made our way farther into the room, past the rows of still and silent beings.

  “What is this?”

  “Thyra’s been making a fucking hybrid army,” I muttered. “Bugger me. That’s what I missed. The ones we saw above were part of a failed batch. She’s been trying to re-create herself. Using all of us. She’s spent thousands of years pulling the best pieces out of all of us in a mad attempt to breed a new version of herself, and she’s done it.” The knowledge had settled into my gut with a heavy thud. Because what else would a slightly mad alien scientist be doing? My mind spun as I tried to figure out what to do next.