by Sara King
“What’s a dragonfly, Mag?”
Magali felt her entire world slam into focus with the word. But it wasn’t her father holding his necklace. It was a Nephyr.
Not just any Nephyr. Jersey. A good Nephyr.
And in that instant, Magali had the startling realization of just how far she’d spun out of control, just how deeply she had fallen into the Void. Because she was afraid, because she had nowhere else to turn, Magali lunged forward and wrapped her arms around Jersey’s glassy body, clinging to him like she would a rock in a violent sea, terrified she’d slip back into the nothingness that had started to claim her.
The Nephyr went as stiff as a statue under her, utterly unmoving.
“Please help me,” Magali whimpered against his stony shoulder. “I’m scared.” She started to shake all over with the vulnerability of actually putting a voice to those words, knowing how easy it would be for him to crush her, this man she barely knew.
Jersey pulled away slightly, and for a horrible moment, Magali thought he would laugh at her or turn her away; his final, killing blow, the moment of weakness he’d been waiting for.
But then he said, “You still want me around?” He sounded shocked. “After I pushed you in Silver City and at the Yolk Factory?”
“Yes,” she whispered, shivering at the thought of facing those things alone. “Please.”
To her total relief, he gently wrapped his arms around her. His reply, though not said in words, was in the tears that dribbled down his glassy face in the minutes that followed.
CHAPTER 10: Do You Wish to Open?
18th of May, 3006
North Tear
Fortune, Daytona 6 Cluster, Outer Bounds
“I’m not seeing any aliens,” Milar said. With the jungle canopy thickening above them to block out even the filtered light of early dawn, he’d finally broken out the tactical floodlight and was shining it into the foliage ahead of them, making the whole experience that much creepier. Ever since they’d crossed the no-man’s land into the alien shredder territory, he’d been pale and sweating, kind of like the rookie operator that found himself in the Nephs’ locker room. It had taken Tatiana a full hour to convince him to follow her past the bodies of the Nephyrs, once he’d authorized himself with the correct thought processes to perimeter security, and he’d further delayed them by insisting on taking a nap a couple hours after that, something about not sleeping for several days because he’d been busy taking a branch through the leg while she slept, yada yada.
For Tatiana’s part, it had been difficult for her to sit there and watch him sleep while the aliens were out there, calling to her. Now that they were finally moving towards them again, she was itching to find their local alien tech-head and chat with him for a few weeks about biomechanical integration and arc-weaponry. The idea of putting that stuff on her soldier was actually bringing her close to an orgasm. She decided not to tell Milar that, though. With his limited colonist background in propane tanks, digging metal out of holes, and plowing dirt fields to make food, he probably wouldn’t understand…
“Are they all invisible?” Milar asked.
“I don’t hear anything close by,” Tatiana said, though she was frowning at the weird distress signals. Three hours into their descent into the valley, they had started contradicting themselves. Half the time, a strong, official-sounding signal said the Phage was eradicated and they were free to rescue survivors, and half the time, a much weaker, almost fuzzy signal said the Phage was in control and to avoid the crash at all costs. The odd contradiction was beginning to rattle Tatiana’s nerves.
Help. Void Ring malfunction, colony ship Encephalon went down. We have eight billion survivors that need immediate evacuation. Repeat. We are the last survivors of the Aashaanti race and we are trapped in containment. Phage confirmed utterly destroyed, safe to evacuate.
Then, a few minutes later, a much weaker, Caution. This is the archon of hiveship Encephalon, sabotaged in escape from central hive. Phage on board. Do not approach. This is the hive archon on the heartship Wandering Spirit, using emergency broadcast protocols. The heartship was trapped in the crash and I’ve been locked out of command by containment protocols. Encephalon and Wandering Spirit removed jump capability due to Phage contamination and set the nursery beacon to stasis. All crew reverted at the outbreak to slow the spread. If survivors made it out, destroy them! If there are other intelligent life forms nearby, anyone at all, please destroy this planet for the good of your species.
Destroy…the planet? Tatiana was getting a weird tingle up the small of her back, settling as a cold pocket along her spine.
“Somebody’s talking to you,” Milar said, tensing. “You get this slack-jawed look when you’re listening to mindbabble. What’s up?”
“Uh,” Tatiana said, scowling at the strange dichotomy. “It’s weird. It’s like there’s two different signals going out from up ahead. One is really loud and is asking for rescue, and the other one’s basically telling people to stay away. It’s a lot weaker than the first one.”
“Oookay,” Milar said. “Which one are we going with?”
“Rescue,” Tatiana said. “I’m pretty sure they’re both just recorded messages. Like, lots of different recordings, but just recordings.”
“So they got a little over-zealous asking for a pickup,” Milar said. “We’re operating under the assumption that they’re alive in here somewhere, right?”
“Could be,” Tatiana admitted. But the two different calls were disturbing her. “Maybe they were made at different times?” she suggested.
A loud, official broadcast hit her again, Help. Our ancestors attacked us. The hiveship succumbed to the stress of the crash. The heartship went rogue—it’s killed millions of healthy Aashaanti and set up a quarantine perimeter. No one has been allowed to escape. Please help.
Then, a mental whisper, The Phage is alive. Flee this place, the Phage is alive! Ignore all distress calls. Phageospores control the hiveship helm. They’re dead! They’re all dead! Retreat immediately and return this planet to the Phage’s host dimension!
“Oh shit,” Tatiana said. Her heart gave a startled hammer and she stumbled to a halt.
“What?” Milar asked.
“Uh…” Tatiana frowned, listening some more.
Help. Technical malfunction, hiveship Encephalon is down. Archon’s mental integrity compromised. Eight billion healthy Aashaanti needing immediate evacuation. Phage threat was neutralized. Repeat. Threat was neutralized.
Phage threat not neutralized! Get out! Get out! Phageospores are in control. Ignore all messages broadcast by the official band! Hiveship still unconscious, Phage taking over!
One of our archons succumbed to the hiveship’s pain in the crash. He lost his grasp on this dimension. Please ignore.
Tatiana felt goosebumps tingle up and down her arms as the two messages kept contradicting each other. “I’m not sure. It’s almost like there’s two factions… One that is saying everything’s fine—maybe an officer trying to break quarantine and get rescued?—and the other one’s saying the Phage is killing everyone.”
Milar blinked at her. “Do I need to tell you how utterly freaked out that makes me?”
The Phage, as every child knew from an early age as the boogeyman of the Aashaanti, was supposedly an evil, all-consuming demon-god from the underworld. And one of the messages was clearly saying that the Phage was in the valley with them…
“I think we should go,” Milar said, glancing around in a typical macho-assault-rifle-carrying-badass-pose. “I’m not liking this.”
Perfect moment for a holopic, Tatiana thought wistfully. His sweaty chest was glistening in the dappled sunlight filtering through the jungle overhead, his big biceps rippling under those perfect dragon tattoos, his stolen weaponry strapped to every conceivable body part…
Milar’s eyes had found her, and they narrowed in a scowl.
Tatiana cleared her throat. “You do know what we could do with tech like
those shredders, right?”
“Yeah,” Milar said, “absolutely nothing if we get devoured by Phage.”
“There was Phage in every single city that Daytona Dae excavated near the Core,” Tatiana retorted. “And she didn’t die of it. Did Daytona Dae turn back when she found bones, Milar?”
Milar grimaced.
Sensing a weakness, Tatiana pressed, “She was one of Fortune’s founders, right? Like, your biggest hero, right? Helped defeat the Tritons? Was given Fortune for taking out Emperor Giu Xi? Real famous explorer… Came out to the Outer Bounds to get some quiet in her older years, settled down, had a brat. That smuggler…what’s his name?”
“Runaway Joel Triton,” Milar muttered. “Now will you please stop walking so far ahead?”
Ignoring his request, Tatiana danced a little further out of reach and said, “And how many Aashaanti ruins did Joel’s mom explore and she never found the Phage? Hell, she’s got like, what, twelve systems named after her!”
“You just told me you’ve got someone on the waves screaming there’s Phage out here,” Milar said.
“It’s old,” Tatiana said quickly, realizing she was about to lose what little chance she had of unearthing alien tech. “It’s obviously not dangerous.”
Milar leveled his deliciously golden gaze on her and said, “If it’s not dangerous, why are all the Aashaanti dead?”
“Why are all the Aztecs dead?” Tatiana countered.
Milar blinked at her. “Huh?”
Realizing a backward colonist wouldn’t have any concept of a pre-Migration, extinct Old Earth culture, Tatiana just waved off his question and said, “Never mind. Look. Civilizations die. Extinct civilizations on Earth used to sacrifice people to rain gods, war gods, sun gods, whatever gods because they were all dying because they’d screwed up their environment or because more advanced civilizations were attacking or because the guys in charge were contracting boils on their balls.”
Help. Ring malfunction, hiveship Encephalon is stranded with the final survivors of the Aashaanti race onboard. The hiveship was incapacitated in the crash. Need immediate retrieval for eight billion survivors.
Do not engage! We were infiltrated by Phage! Return to your ships and vaporize this planet!
Tatiana held up a finger. “Fact. Over and over again, the Kelthari said the Phage was a ‘dark god’ that came to their universe from another dimension to eat them and plunge the universe into the ‘void of his domain’. Fact. Apophis was a ‘dark god’ of Egypt that supposedly came out and fought Ra every night for supremacy, the outcome of which ‘decided’ whether or not the sun would rise each morning. Fact. The Aashaanti are dead, and the ancient Egyptians are dead, and they sure as hell didn’t die because the sun stopped rising in the morning. Get me?”
Grimacing, the colonist said, “Yeah, but…”
“So the point is,” Tatiana said, straightening, “you’re gonna help me find this ship, collie, or I’m gonna tell the world you’re just a panty-waist chickenshit colonist knucker afraid of a few bones.” She kicked aside a gleaming white femur, for emphasis.
It was then that both she and Milar realized there were bones everywhere under the jungle detritus beneath their feet, ivory skulls or shoulder-blades poking out here and there, at first passing for rocks.
Considering the human craniums and the disparity in the two distress calls, Tatiana was just about to suggest that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to go crawling around in an ancient shipwreck, after all, when she noticed a half-open door embedded in the dirt under a cascade of sticky Fortuna jungle roots and forgot what she was about to say. It was huge and alien in design, but it was definitely a door. It revealed a glimpse into a deep, total darkness beyond, the well-used path leading to it littered with more bones.
Milar seemed to see it at the same time. He immediately tensed. “I say we go. Like right now.” He grabbed her by the shirt and started heading back.
“Hey, now wait a minute!” Tatiana cried, once more thrilled at the idea to explore alien tech up close and personal. “It’s a door, Milar! We found the ship!”
“Those are bones,” Milar said. “Human bones.”
“I doubt they’re human,” Tatiana said quickly.
“They’re human,” Milar told her. “I know a couple people who saw ganshi up here. We’re going.” He started to go.
“Wait, ganshi?” Tatiana demanded, digging in her heels. “The Tritons made ganshi, not aliens.” She was actually disappointed that there was the sudden possibility that whatever was making the distress calls was human and not Aashaanti.
“Apparently they’ve been munching down on Nephyrs,” Milar said, nudging some bones with a foot.
Tatiana squinted at the human mandible that rattled across the bone-covered forest floor. It carried a telltale transmitter in the jaw that Nephyrs used to speak with each other on operations. “Ganshi were exterminated when the Tritons lost the war,” she insisted. “Those are probably just leftovers from a shredder attack.”
Then she saw the skinless human body—whole human body—lying in the shadows to one side of the open ship door, skull crushed, temples punctured by pickaxe-sized teeth, one leg partially gnawed on. Tatiana couldn’t see a shredder mark on it anywhere.
“I said we’re going.” Milar grabbed her arm and started hauling her back the way they had come.
The corpse muscles were dried out and covered in tadflies—obviously several years old—so instead of letting the big brute miss a perfectly good opportunity to advance human tech a few zillion years because he was scared of an oversized kitty, Tatiana twisted out of his grasp and danced forward into the open maw. The corridor was narrow, but very tall, built for something about two feet taller than Milar. Sticking her head into the shadows, she felt a thrill of excitement seeing the long alien ship tunnel that stretched into darkness beyond. Hundreds of meters long, sloping slightly downward, no end in sight.
“Whoa!” she whistled. “Milar, this thing is huge! And it’s all ours!” Then, before he could stop her, she ducked inside.
“Tat!” Milar hissed, hesitating at the entrance to the ancient corridor. He had one of his pretty Laserats in one hand, flashlight in the other, both aimed at the corridor. “Tatiana, damn it, get out here! That corpse is fresh! Hours old…”
“Hey, you were right, there are paw prints everywhere,” Tatiana said. She really wished she’d stolen Milar’s flashlight when he wasn’t looking. “But they’re really small. Pretty sure it’s just one of those jaggle thingies you guys have on this planet. I knew a Nephyr that was terrified of them.” Or were they called ‘jaguars’? Definitely jag-something. She cocked her head, trying to remember the information packet her CO had issued her upon landing on Fortune. It had been a really hot day and she’d been fantasizing about ordering an ice cream during the presentation.
From the entrance to the ship, Milar gave her a very long, very flat look. “We are not climbing down into an alien Phage-contaminated ship to fight Triton ganshi in hand-to-hand combat.”
“Oh come on,” Tatiana jeered. “I already defeated the killer cyborgs and the inviso-alien shredders. You’re afraid of a few cats?”
“They were created to eat Coalition super-soldiers, Tatiana,” Milar growled.
“If they’re even ganshi. They’re probably just jaggles. You can shoot jaggles.”
Milar stared at her through the cracked doorway for several moments, then he turned and started to walk away.
“You wanna beat the Coalition?” Tatiana cried, hurrying back to the brightness of the entrance. “Come on, Milar. Think of the tech that could be stowed away in this thing. Working tech! Barely any of the Aashaanti tech found so far has been working, and most of it was stupid stuff like gravity gens and life support. Think invisibility shields and jump drives and antimatter knives and billions of pounds of expensive metals, ripe for the taking! On Fortune. Name a source of metal that the Coalition hasn’t commandeered on Fortune. We could use it to build b
etter soldiers! Fortune-built soldiers!”
The last made Milar hesitate, his big shoulders stiffening. Very slowly, he turned back. “You do realize you’re asking me to follow you into an ancient alien structure littered with fresh bodies and ganshi paw prints while you’re dancing around like you’re being showered with rainbows and butterflies and singing ‘what’s the worst that can happen’?”
“How badly do you want to take Rath, knucker?” she demanded. It had, after all, been more or less all he could talk about whenever he was on one of his rants about how they needed to ‘win back Fortune for its people’. “What about taking Rath and shutting down that Coalition chokehold you keep talking about?”
“I’m actually pretty content with a five megawatt sniper rifle, at the moment,” Milar said.
“Ugh! Backward fortune colonists and their stupid cat phobias!” Tatiana rolled her eyes and ducked back into the corridor.
“We have a perfectly good reason to fear cats!” Milar shouted after her. “Didn’t you read the history packet?!”
Tatiana rolled her eyes. “Fortune originally wasn’t considered colonizable due to the huge, man-eating predators that roamed the jungle two hundred years ago, yada yada yada. You guys genetically engineered jaggles to wipe out the alien monsters’ young so you pussies could sleep at night.”
“We’re talking about ganshi. I have no fucking idea what a jaggle is.”
“That’s a jaggle,” Tatiana said, pointing to a paw print.
“That’s a ganshi, and keep your voice down.”
Tatiana snorted at the ridiculous idea that Fortune, of all places, had become a breeding ground for Triton war-beasts and kept feeling her way into the darkness.
“Hey coaler!” Milar called from outside. “Pumpkin? Please come back outside, okay?” He sounded charmingly terrified for her.
“No, bullshit on that,” Tatiana said, ducking her head back into the light to glare at him. “I want invisibility, Milar. And blades. I want Nephyr-slicing blades. Just think what we could do with that stuff!”
