by Sara King
“Get out!” Milar shouted to his younger self. “Run, you stupid shit!”
“Chess is all about strategy,” the man agreed.
They played four more games, each one ending in colossal failure on the stranger’s part. To give the man credit, he was pretty good, but after the first game, Milar started showing off, and didn’t even bother to let him think he had the advantage.
“So are you good at anything other than chess?” the man finally demanded. “Because if the universe were a chessboard, you’d be a damned Encompate judge.”
Milar’s younger self shrugged. “Take your pick. I’m good at everything.”
“No, no, no, no!” Milar snapped.
The stranger seemed amused. “So this other kid,” the man said. “He’s coming all the way to Silver City to play chess? Where’s he from? Cold Knife?”
“Further,” Milar’s younger self said, checking the time again, frustrated. “He’s actually from some place along the South Tear. They don’t let us know where, exactly.”
“‘They?’” the man asked, much too casually to Milar’s hardened ear.
“Damn it!” Milar shouted. He got down and yelled into his younger self’s ear, “Run!”
His younger self ignored him. Instead, he shrugged. “People who think we should play together.”
“Why would anybody go through all that effort to get a couple of kids together?” the man asked. Though Milar’s younger self wasn’t looking, there were sharp lines of attention in his face. A focus that didn’t belong to a dirt-encrusted silver miner.
“Because he’s the only one who’s any good,” Milar’s younger self said, haughtily.
“It’s a trap!” Milar yelled, directly into kid-Milar’s face. “Get out of there, you arrogant. Little. Shit!”
“That’s what we heard,” the man said, crossing his arms and leaning back with a smug look on his face. “Considering we took him into custody two hours ago.”
Milar’s younger self had frozen, no longer boredly scanning the street for Jersey. Milar remembered those words like a blow, remembered his heart start thundering. “So you’re his dad, then?” his younger self bluffed, but it was much, much too late. “You and his mom get a divorce or something? You got custody? That mean he can’t come teach me chess anymore?”
“And you’re just as good as he said you were,” the man said, utterly ignoring young Milar’s feint. “Congratulations, kid. You’ll make an excellent addition to the program.”
Then four men that Milar hadn’t noticed stepped out from where they’d been lurking against walls or in cafes. Milar’s younger self dropped the chessboard and bolted, only to be knocked to the ground by a fifth that he hadn’t seen—a Nephyr dressed up in homespun.
“I don’t wanna see what comes next,” Milar said, swallowing. He had started to back away, despite himself, knowing, deep down, what the next scene would be. “I know what’s coming. I don’t wanna see it.”
We have to get you home, his father said, sounding apologetic.
“No, goddamn it!” Milar shouted, turning on his father. “Get me out of here!” Living through it once had been enough. To see it all again would make him lose that tiny grasp of sanity he’d struggled to maintain.
In the background, the scene continued to play out.
“Lock him in the cab with the Brackett kid,” the stranger said. “Should be good for a laugh.”
Inside the militarized shuttle, Milar saw his chess partner hunched in the far back, head down, hopelessness on his face. Milar’s younger self hadn’t seen that, however. He watched his younger self realize Jersey had turned him in and then launch himself at the boy in a fury. Jersey never even fought back, taking a broken nose and busted jawbone in total silence—the silence of someone who was already dead.
Milar would have killed him, but the Nephyr reached in and yanked him away before he could start bashing Jersey’s head against the wall. All around them, men were laughing, saying that Milar was exactly what they were looking for.
“I don’t want to see what comes next,” Milar whispered, turning away. “Not the Academy. Please.”
We have to follow the road back home, his father said, apologizing.
The room was sterile and white, the humidity ramped up as far as it could go. The light was blinding, and there was an array of machines lined up beside the stainless steel table…
Instantly, the old terror of the scene slammed into him and Milar stopped breathing.
A Nephyr stood beside a hooded man strapped to the table, a razor in his glittering hand. “Hey meatsack,” the Nephyr said.
“No!” Milar babbled, panic suddenly tearing at his veins. “No!” In an overwhelming rush of terror, he grabbed the closest chair and threw it aside, hurling it into the far wall. “I will not see this again!”
The Nephyr turned and glanced at the broken chair, frowning. “What the fuck?”
Milar remembered the sound of snapping metal while he had lain there in darkness, vision obscured by the black hood, steeped in terror as he waited for the Nephyr to carve on him. He remembered thinking the Nephyr had stumbled and broken the furniture in his fall. He heard his own, younger voice say, “What’s the problem, tinkerbelle? You stub your toe?” Just as Milar had said, eleven years ago, in that act of terrified bravado.
Just as Milar was recognizing the broken chair, stunned that something he’d done had actually gotten through, Milar’s father said, That’s not supposed to happen! Not your own, no, no… The little man looked horrified. You can’t do that. The archons erase you for that!
It took Milar only a second to realize he had altered something irrevocably, something that had changed his own history. Realizing that he could therefore change everything, Milar grabbed a scalpel and stalked toward the Nephyr…
You can’t! his father cried, grabbing his arm.
“Oh I fucking well can.” Still high on adrenaline, Milar raised the scalpel, intending to drive it through the Nephyr’s eye.
His father elbowed him in the face, and they went tumbling again.
Milar stabilized on what looked like the corrugated metal floor of a ship. Strange, alien electronics beeped and clicked in a cramped space around them. Blue gel pumped through clear tubing along the walls and ceiling, and the place smelled of a mixture of ozone and rotting flesh.
We went too far, Joe insisted. Much too far. Have to go back.
But Milar wasn’t paying attention to his father. His older self was huddled on the floor, weeping, holding Tatiana. She was dead. Unmistakably, irrevocably dead. Nodes all over her body had been torn free, and there was fresh blood everywhere. He went cold as he looked down at it.
“Do, it Anna!” a voice called insistently. Standing in a corner, a much older Anna Landborn was watching the scene, her hand in a pocket, rolling…marbles?…around in her fingers. She showed no horror, no concern, not even an ounce of emotion. If anything, it looked like she was thinking. Behind her, a man was frantically trying to patch one of the oozing leaks in the gel-bearing tubes. Beyond him, a dark Cobrani teenager hid in the shadows, watching Anna tensely.
“Do it,” Milar heard the hiding kid say again, watching Anna’s face. His hands were tightened into fists. “Anna, do it! You’re running out of time!”
“Do what?” Milar demanded.
The kid in the shadows jerked to look at him, startled.
We have to go now! his father cried. He’s one of the dangerous ones. Then, with clear panic, he grabbed Milar by the arm and yanked him away.
Milar was standing in a brightly-lit, impossibly-long room filled with what looked like glass cryo-canisters. Several of the nearby canisters had been damaged, and bodies of humans and robots sprawled over the floor, some still bleeding. Up ahead, at the exit, Tatiana was easing into the room from a hallway beyond, a frown of concentration on her face. An older Milar was following her, gun out, shirt stained with sweat and blood.
“Tatiana, what are you doing?” Mil
ar’s older self hissed. “We’re gonna miss the boat!”
“There’s something in here,” Tatiana said, still moving forward. “It’s up ahead. Miles, it’s calling me.”
“Tatiana, they’re gonna figure out that ship doesn’t have a pilot, then we’re all fucked!” Milar cried. “Come on, we gotta go!”
“Oh God, Miles,” Tatiana whispered, stepping over another oddly gray human corpse, peering around the room in almost a daze. “Can’t you hear that?” She kept moving, but she was holding her head, now. “There’s something in here!”
Milar’s older self cursed and glanced over his shoulder. Keeping his voice low, the older Milar said, “Tat, those things could come back at any minute!”
“No, this is important!” Tatiana cried. She kept entering the massive chamber, drawn to a cluster of canisters marked with a birdlike hieroglyph.
“Tatiana!” Milar’s older self snapped. “We need to go! You said this place was going to lock down!”
“It is.” Tatiana groaned and hesitated. “Oh man, Milar. It’s close. It’s…” She frowned at one of the broken canisters, the glass near the top having shattered from whatever firefight had killed the dozens of bodies littered around their feet. She moved closer, her face tightening. “Milar,” she whispered, “it’s alive. One of them’s alive!” Milar watched her put her hands on the broken canister and get up on her tiptoes…
Still too far from home, Milar’s father said. Have to go back…
“No, wait!” Milar cried, rushing forward to look at what was inside the case.
Like a light getting shut off, the vision went dark and Milar was once again tumbling through the Void.
“We just got word. Anna’s dead. Whole ship’s adrift somewhere in the Outer Bounds.”
Milar found himself standing beside his twenty-one-year-old self. He remembered feeling the news like someone had socked him in the gut. “Adrift?” he watched himself ask.
“Hit a MID. Got knocked off course. Navigational array is down. One of Geo’s smugglers just reported running into wreckage en route to Fortune, and Geo told me.” Pedily Maine snorted. “Corpulent albino prick actually wanted payment for the information.”
Hitting MID—moving interstellar debris—was the worst nightmare of any long-term cryo mission. Hearing Anna’s fate, Milar remembered suddenly finding it hard to breathe. Anna had saved him. Of anyone on Fortune, she was one of the only ones who cared enough to help Patrick get him back. Patrick had come to her with some stupid, half-baked rescue plan, asking for her help in hijacking a ship to get him to the Nephyr Academy, where he undoubtedly would have died before he reached the front gates. Patrick had already begged everyone else, but none of the adults were willing to risk their lives on a fool’s errand. David Landborn had barred Patrick from even talking about it.
Milar still remembered how it had felt, never to be able to say thank you.
“Did…” The early-20s Milar swallowed, closing his tattooed fingers into fists to hide that they were shaking. “Did they find her body?”
“Aside from a few pieces of a Marquis Sovar’s long-range nav equipment, no. Ship kept going after impact, probably a couple years off course, now.” Pedily Maine grimaced. “Wasn’t much in the way of debris, so ship’s probably still functional, just not going anywhere good. With what they found out there, the nav systems would have to be totally tits up.”
Neither of them needed to mention the fact that, of the group of smugglers that had stayed in the Marquis Sovar to take the slow-boat back with Anna in cryo, the only one who had the potential expertise to fix a navigational array was four years old and wouldn’t fit into an atmosuit.
The older pirate reached out and put a hand on younger Milar’s shoulder. “Sorry man. I know you were looking forward to thanking her for what she did for you.”
Milar’s younger self just nodded, numb. “She’ll need a grave.”
Too far back! Joe cried, frustrated. He yanked them back into the Void.
“Miles, there’s a buzz on the radio about an unidentified ship floating in the black about seven AU from Fortune,” Patrick’s voice came from the cockpit. “Coalition’s thinking about going to check it out after their flyboys get done with today’s exercises.”
An early-twenties Milar, who was bitterly examining yet another version of the woman who still hadn’t shown up in his life, wasn’t kind in his response. He slammed the intercom button. “And I should give a crap about this why?”
“Weeeeellll,” Patrick said, “it’s an unmarked Marquis Sovar with a damaged navigational array.”
Milar’s younger self froze and sat up. “It’s just floating out there?”
“Yeah,” Patrick said. “Like someone plugged in the coordinates and then went to sleep.”
Milar lunged out of his chair, throwing the picture aside. “Get us up there!” he cried. “Now!”
And Patrick did.
A few precious minutes later, they were docking with the Marquis, Milar standing at the airlock with a medical bag and a pistol as he waited for the entry ramp to pressurize. As soon as the door opened, however, he dropped both as an incoherent, four-year-old Anna Landborn fell into his arms, babbling and crying about being alone in the middle of nowhere, unable to communicate or read the waves, everyone around her dead…
Milar pulled her to his chest and rocked her. “It’s okay,” he said, over and over. “You’re back. We’re here. It’s me and Pat. We’ve got you.”
Patrick did a quick sweep of the ship as Milar tried to calm Anna down, then came back naked, dripping with decontamination liquid, and looking pale. “They’re all dead. Arlyxian mold. Fuck!”
“Scuttle the ship,” Milar watched himself say.
Patrick swallowed. “Yeah, but how’s Anna still—”
“Scuttle it!” Milar snapped. “The Coalition’s coming, and the less they piece together about what you and Anna did at the Academy, the less likely they are to come get you.”
In his younger self’s arms, Anna Landborn was still whimpering and babbling about being alone. Alone and terrified in the Void, stranded on a ship full of corpses.
Patrick looked like he wanted to say more, giving Anna an odd look, but then retreated to set the Marquis Sovar on a collision course with the sun. Anna, meanwhile, had lost the power of speech and had begun to shake uncontrollably in Milar’s arms, a classic symptom of a rushed defrost. He picked her up and carried her into the crew quarters.
“I heard what you did for me,” Milar’s younger self said, still holding her in his arms as he settled on the bed. “Thanks, squirt. You ever need anything, I’ll always be here for you.”
“Thanks,” Anna whimpered.
“You can just go to sleep,” Milar said. “I’ll stay right here. We’ll have you back home in a couple hours.”
Anna didn’t respond, but he saw the tears on her face.
Damn it, Joe said. Still too far…
“You’ve got a brother. I’ve got a sister. They’re banging. I want it to stop.”
Milar’s world came to focus on a young Anna Landborn, who was calmly sipping a strawberry soda at a streetside café in Silver City, peering at him over the table. Immediately, his hackles lifted with the desire to grab her by the neck and empty her malevolent skull over her plate of mashed potatoes.
Milar’s younger self, who was sitting across from her, scoffed and shoved idly at his own plate. “We’ve had this discussion before.”
“Yeah, but now they’re getting ready to take the big step,” Anna said.
Milar watched his younger self bristle at the idea of losing his brother to some harebrained fantasy on Mezzan. “He’s been talking about kids,” he muttered reluctantly.
“Exactly,” Anna said. “He gets her pregnant, she’s not gonna be fulfilling Wideman’s prophecy.”
“And what prophecy is that?” Milar asked. “All he does is repeat the word ‘killer.’”
Anna just grinned. “Oh, it’s coming. Y
ou and I both know it’s coming.”
And Milar had. He’d been playing coy, trying to get Anna’s take on it without having to ask the little twit. His younger self grunted. “I don’t really care about all that. I care about the fact he’s stopped hunting Nephyrs with me on Fridays.”
“And she’s talking about moving to another planet in the Daytona 6 cluster. Like Mezzan or Oric. Do you know what they do on Mezzan or Oric?”
“Fuck like bunnies to boost population?” Milar said.
Anna wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Exactly. She wants to turn herself into a broodmare.”
Milar’s younger self swirled his whiskey in his glass, then downed it. “So what do we do?” his younger self asked, slamming the tumbler back to the table.
Anna Landborn smiled. “We break them up.”
Closer! Milar’s father cried. Shouldn’t be long now!
Milar found himself standing in the belly of Liberty as he and Patrick unpacked from another transport run. The cargo hatch was open, a gaping maw into the darkness of late evening. He watched his younger self whistle as he started unloading grain from the rice villages of the South Tear, which he had traded for Deaddrunk silver. He had two sacks flung over his shoulders and was climbing down the gangplank, his brother right behind him, when David Landborn stopped him on the tarmac.
Landborn had tears in his eyes.
It was the first time Milar had ever seen David cry. He dropped the rice sacks immediately. “What happened?”
David looked devastated. He dropped to his knees in front of Milar and put his forehead to the ground. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered to the asphalt.
“Sorry about what?” Milar’s younger self asked, curiosity and nervousness on his face.
“Caroline,” David whispered, face still to the ground. “A whole regiment went through while I was away. They…took her. Her and a bunch of other girls.”
Milar remembered how his heart had stopped, hearing that news. He remembered feeling the rage, the terror, the agony as it overwhelmed him. “She…you…” Everything he wanted to say balled up inside, trapped by the horror of what had happened to his sister. “Why the fuck weren’t you here, old man?!” had been the first enraged cry he could force from his lips. “You said you would be here!” He fisted his hands in fury.
