The tower was the same structure I’d seen from the air; it was a few miles up the beach, but the day was gorgeous—of course it was; we were on a nature preserve for the super rich, “an utter lack of nongorgeous days” had probably been in the design document of the original terraformers—and the sand up the beach was firm enough that Sho’s wheelchair had no problem gripping it. I’d been the one to suggest that Sho and I handle sending the message, to give Mo and Jane a chance to catch up as well as to let the two of us get the lay of the land.
Plus, there was that conversation we needed to have, gifted child to gifted child, survivor to survivor. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but like I was starting to learn from Jane: when you had a hard thing to do, the best thing was usually to just . . . do it. Letting it fester would only make it worse.
“Sho,” I said, trying to find a way to start. We’d been heading up the beach in peaceable silence for the last little bit—or at least, Sho had seemed peaceful; I’d been looking for a good way to tell him what I needed to tell him.
“Yes, Esa?” he asked. I stopped walking for a moment, stared out at the ocean. Just . . . do it, dammit. Just be brave. If it were you, you would want to know.
“I need . . . I need to tell you something.”
“You found something. On the Cyn’s ship. Something that means . . . something that told you he really was on Kandriad hunting gifted children.” I turned toward him, my eyes wide—how the hell had he put that together?
The answer was simple: he was smart, and he thought things through, and he was observant as all hell.
He took my surprised reaction as assent—there was that observant nature again—and nodded, something incredibly painful, almost bitter, in the sharp jerk of his head. “I thought so,” he whispered. “Which means what happened . . . what happened to my city . . . what happened to my mother . . . it was because of me.”
“No.” I said the single word as forcefully as I could—so forcefully, in point of fact, that a puff of sand was kicked up from the beach, my teke reacting to my ironclad sense of negation. “What happened on Kandriad was because of the Cyn, Sho. It was because of him. You didn’t choose to be born the way you were, and you certainly didn’t choose to be hunted.” I’d been through much the same thing, when Jane had found me—blamed myself for the Pax razing my hometown. I was determined to help Sho through the same thing I’d suffered, the same self-doubt, the same self-hate.
“What did you find?” he asked me, those big gold eyes staring up into my own.
I knelt in the sand, the ocean behind me, so I could look him in the face. “A girl,” I said sadly. “A Vyriat girl, younger . . . younger than both of us, I think. He’d . . . locked her in a cage. She saw her chance to escape from him, and she took it.”
“ ‘Escape’ from him? You mean—”
I nodded. “She only saw one way out of his grip, one way out of . . . whatever it was he wanted her for. And she took it.”
He looked away from me then. “I wonder if I could have done the same,” he said.
“You didn’t have to. You didn’t have to make that choice, Sho.”
“I know I didn’t. Because of you.” He looked out, reached up with one paw to touch my face. “Thank you, Esa.”
I nodded, once, the motion making the pads of his paw rough against my skin. “The Cyn is the one to blame for this, Sho. Not the pulse that gave us these gifts, not the Tyll sect on your homeworld leading the attack—that motherfucker we’ve got locked up on Valkyrie Rock, he’s the one that did this. You get that, right?”
“I get it,” he said, looking away from me then, out over the ocean, and, looking at his face, I think maybe he did—but I didn’t see any hate there, no rage, just a kind of . . . all-encompassing sorrow, a sadness that extended even toward the Cyn himself, for what his beliefs had made him. “I just wish I didn’t.”
I let the silence sit for a moment, until I thought it had sat long enough. Then I reached out, gently, and turned his face back toward me. His eyes were full of tears.
Forced to look into my eyes, he was forced into speech, too. “I blame him for it, yes,” he said, something so . . . so small about his voice then. “But I don’t know what . . . My mother. She was in the tunnels . . . she may have gotten out. She may have gotten up, climbed higher into the factory. And then came the blast. Esa, I . . . I don’t know which one to wish for. I don’t know whether or not to wish she died in the gas, or in the fires. I don’t know which would be more painless, which would . . .” He choked back a sob; I put my hands on either side of his neck, touched my head to his, and let him cry.
Good. Let him blame the Cyn for that, for the impossible choice he was facing, for the cruelty that left him wondering which death the woman who had raised him had faced. They were both on the head of the Cyn, either way.
He stopped crying after a while. I’d been crying too—I’m a bit of a crybaby, really; someone else starts crying, I start crying, it’s a mess—and for a moment, we just looked at each other, me kneeling on the beach, him still in his chair. “I can . . . despise the Cyn for what he did,” he said finally. “For making my mother face that choice. It’s easy. But Esa?”
“Yeah, Sho?” I sniffed; he’d actually stopped crying before I did.
“I’m glad you found me. Even if it hadn’t saved my life . . . I’d still be glad. So . . . so thank you.”
I smiled at him, managed something like a grin. “You’re welcome, Sho,” I told him. “I’m glad we found you, too.”
We headed farther up the beach.
The tower wasn’t much farther—a twisting spire of delicate construction that rose twice as high as any of the nearby jungle. The looping crescents of blue and gold that made up the helix at the center of the thing hadn’t been weathered at all by over a century of rainfall or sand or salt or the other forces of natural entropy; I had no idea what the damned thing was made of, but at least it was a good sign that the thing was still capable of sending our message.
“Think it’ll work?” Sho asked, bringing his wheelchair to a stop and staring up at the tower. We were both trying our best to pretend like we hadn’t been bawling our eyes out less than an hour before; were mostly succeeding, too. “It likely won’t have power after so many years.”
I shrugged. “Well, that’s why I brought a rolling fusion battery along.”
“You did? I didn’t see you—hey!” I grinned back at him—I’d always wanted a little brother to play stupid jokes on; maybe later I’d try to braid his fur—as I started sauntering toward the base of the tower, the structure casting a long shadow down the beach even as it rose up to intersect with the planetary rings soaring in the sky above.
There was no door to let us inside of the structure, no actual “interior” at all, just a canopied overhang above a small access monitor—because god forbid the Jaliad actually got rained on if they wanted to send a message offworld. Though come to think of it, they probably just dictated the messages in the comfort of their palatial estates, and sent a servant to actually do the broadcasting. The rising tower was incredibly intricately designed down to the smallest detail, like a piece of delicate artwork soaring into the sky, and had only ever meant to be seen as they flew past.
I wasn’t even beneath the overhang yet when the screen snapped to life; I looked back, and sure enough, here came Sho, bringing the envelope of his gifts with him. That was good—if I’d actually needed to rewire the thing, we would have had to make tracks back to Mo’s villa and admit defeat. Unless Sho knew how to rewire a broadcast antenna, which was . . . doubtful, given the level of tech on his homeworld.
I fitted Jane’s message into the slot and punched in the Justified encryption code and the coordinates of Sanctum. Sho was staring upward at the tower as I pressed the broadcast button—I think maybe he was expecting a burst of light or something—but there wasn’t anything to see; the broadcast was invisible. All the same, the message had gone out, heading toward the Justif
ied, and every one of our ships it passed would also get an alert: there was a Justified operative in trouble, all hands on deck, haul ass and save the day, “Code Red” or whatever.
One of these days I should . . . I should probably learn the actual code names. Might be important.
CHAPTER 9
The message was sent; Schaz was merrily bubbling away under the surface of the sea, working on the decryption of the data and the analysis of the mask I’d nicked from the Cyn’s ship; the Cyn himself, the fucker, was still trapped in the abattoir he’d made of Valkyrie Rock. We had nothing but time.
Our days spent in Mo’s villa—or rather, the Jaliad villa Mo was squatting in—quickly fell into a certain pattern. Mo would go out in the morning to hunt, or else sit on the upper levels of the villa’s decks to fish, watching Jane and me training along the beach, while Sho did roughly the same in the shade of the villa, trying to learn how to actively manipulate the fusion energy he gave off in waves. Jane had something against enforced idleness, and after three years, I’d grown to appreciate that fact: if we had nothing else to do, we trained.
We’d break for lunch—usually leftovers from the night before—and then I’d practice channeling energy through my telekinesis, while Jane would take Sho and try to walk him through his progress during the morning. Both of us had incremental success, though it always came hard earned: Sho always looked worn out and frazzled when lunch rolled around, and I had to shave my head again after the stubble that had been slowly taking over my scalp decided to catch fire on a bad day.
Still, we were making progress. By the end of the week, Sho could generate an electric current out of thin air, a current he would then lash at me: I could hold off his attacks at the very least, and once or twice I managed to siphon off enough energy to gather it up in a teke spike and toss it back at him—though I aimed for the beach beside him, not for Sho himself: he hadn’t gone through any defensive training yet, and we didn’t have the facilities here to implant an intention shield into his neck.
The evenings were for relaxing, or being as relaxed as any of us got: two old soldiers, and two teenagers doing their damnedest to adjust to having superpowers. Or in my case, trying to do new shit with old superpowers. I’d just been starting to get a handle on using my teke in combat, and now this new wrinkle came up.
One night, Mo and Jane were trading war stories on the deck—not stories about when they’d worked together, unfortunately, more “what’s the craziest thing you’ve fought since we went our separate ways”—and I wheeled Sho off to bed. When I came back, I paused by the door. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, per se; Jane and Mo were just deep in conversation, and I didn’t want to interrupt them.
Also, I wanted to eavesdrop.
Mo was speaking as I made my decision not to approach. “How much longer are you going to keep this up, Red? You’ve fought your wars.”
“There are always more wars, Mo.”
“And always new blood to fight them. The girl’s good.” That was nice to hear.
“She’s not as good as me.” Well, okay, but still.
“She’s not what you were when you were her age, no. But that’s not what I meant. You and I . . . we’re compromised. And I don’t just mean the pulse; I don’t just mean the decisions we made, with the Justified. From before that, even. When I say she’s good, I mean she’s good, Jane. She’ll be able to find ways . . . solutions . . . we never could. She’s not a killer. Not at heart.”
Jane sighed, shifted in her chair. I drew back, farther into the shadows. “You’re right,” she said, staring up at the rings that split the night sky.
Mo shrugged. “I’ve always been able to read people.”
“I mean about me, old man. Esa too, but mostly . . . I’m getting old, Mo.”
“Ah, you look fine. I meant more how long did you want to do it; wasn’t asking how long you could. I’m a hundred years older than you are, and I’m still kicking.”
“You’re Mahren; you’ve still got a ways to go on your natural lifespan. I’m well past mine. It’s just nanotech and synthetic . . . everything, holding me together now. Humans just weren’t meant to live this long. I certainly never was. When I was Esa’s age, I never dreamt I’d see my next decade, let alone a century or more.” ’
“Then retire. Scoop up this Javier of yours, find some forgotten world somewhere, live out what’s left of your days. Take up fishing, basket weaving, whatever. Just don’t take up a gun again.”
“You’ve still got your guns.”
“But I don’t have your ghosts. The Justified made me a killer, Jane. For better or worse—”
“They didn’t have to make me anything. I know. I was already . . . by the time you found me—”
“You needed training in a lot of ways. Never in that one.”
I think Jane almost smiled at that; I could hear it in her voice. “Was I really so feral?”
“It’s a question of degrees,” Mo shrugged. “I just had to remind you that you were a person, underneath all the rest. She’s doing the same thing—the girl, I mean. And that’s why you feel old, Red. It’s not because you’re failing, or fading. It’s because for the first time in a long time, you’ve got someone around to remind you that you have more to offer than death.”
“And also because she’s seventeen, and I’m . . . not.”
“And also that, yes.” Mo sighed, shifted in his chair. “Do you remember the story of Aeliadh Hill, Jane? I told it to you, when you were young.”
“Where the last of the great Vyriat knights made their stand, defending the last library, before the Vyriat Dark Ages descended. Yeah, I remember. They died, to a man. And their cause was lost.”
“Their war was lost; not their cause. After, they became legend, their story told, over and over, a reminder during the Dark Ages of what the Vyriat could become. My point is: you’re not there. Not yet. Your story doesn’t have to end like that, even if that ending for them was a beginning for someone else. They fought to the last because they had no other choice. You shouldn’t go looking for your Aeliadh Hill. That’s all I’m trying to say. You’ve still got a good fight or two left in you.”
CHAPTER 10
We kept training, and we kept waiting: for Schaz to finish her decryption, for some sort of message to arrive from Sanctum. Mo’s hospitality had its limits: he had point blank refused to let us offer up Jaliad as a staging ground for our second assault on the Cyn’s prison, had refused to let us tell the Justified where we were at all. That meant we were waiting to hear that Sanctum was sending other operatives to Valkyrie Rock, and once we did, we could join them there.
After another round with Sho, I lay exhausted and panting on the warm wood of the deck, my sparring partner in his wheelchair beside me. “It feels like I’m lifting this whole place with my legs,” he moaned, just as worn as I was. “You know—the legs that don’t work.”
“Jane always says, ‘if something comes easy, you’re doing it wrong.’ ” I closed my eyes against the bright blue glare of the sun as it descended down toward the ocean, making its way through the twisting ribbon of the planet’s rings, light shining through the gaps of the orbit-clutched sediment.
“I’m not saying it should be easy, just that I wouldn’t mind if it was just a little less hard,” Sho replied. I grinned at that, but said nothing. “Hey—there’s Mo.”
I sat up, shading my eyes against the sun. Mo was indeed emerging from the forests, but unlike most afternoons, he didn’t have some exotic beast for us to eat hefted on his shoulders. He was moving fast, instead. Fast wasn’t good.
“Something’s up,” I told Sho, slipping off the edge of the deck and dropping to the sand below. “Get inside the house.” I didn’t wait for him to do so—though I did hear the motorized hum of his wheelchair as he started moving—I just set off running, heading toward our host, already building a teke field in my hands.
Watching a Mahren run was like watching a never-ending rockslide; he
was really booking it. I put on a little extra burst of speed as well, until I was within shouting distance, and he started waving his arms. “Go back!” I could barely make out the words he was saying. “There’s something—a reading, on my radar! Check the monitors!”
I turned on a dime, started sprinting back toward the villa. Exhausted or not, I closed that distance in a quarter of the time it would have taken me at a walk: my constant training with Jane paid dividends. I hauled myself back up onto the deck and darted inside the open doors, making for the dining room, where I found Sho and Jane already gathered around the pile of seemingly random tech that was Mo’s early-warning system.
“It’s a ship,” Jane confirmed as I approached. “Its systems are stealthed; we don’t know anything more than that.”
“Relative size?” I asked.
“Smaller than Schaz by about half.”
All right—at least it wasn’t the Cyn, somehow escaped from Valkyrie Rock and out for revenge. Or, scratch that: at least it wasn’t the Cyn somehow escaped from Valkyrie Rock still in his possibly Cyn ship—if he had made his way off of Valkyrie Rock, it was entirely likely his vessel hadn’t been salvageable, and he’d hijacked some other craft to take him this far, something we’d missed when Schaz was spiking all the other vessels on board the asteroid.
“It’s slowing down,” Sho said, still glued to the monitors. He turned to look at Jane and me, fear in his eyes. “It’s definitely making for us.”
“That tears it; I’m headed for the roof,” Jane said, grabbing her rifle from where it was leaning against the wall.
“Can you raise Schaz?” I asked. Jane was good with her rifle, but a spacecraft would be armored, heavily shielded: a handheld weapon wouldn’t even make a scratch. I really wouldn’t have minded leveling the playing field with our own ship at this point.
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