Memory's Blade

by Spencer Ellsworth

  Easy to think on now.

  I know something about hunger, and I know that it’s real tough to think when you got a hole right through your belly. Can’t think on a thing except how much you want a piece of nice fresh food, whether it be a bit of meat or, Starfire bless me, a fresh cold ripe tomato.

  But you feel other things. You just have a bit of trouble taking other things seriously, what with that hunger. Them devils have got to feel a few other things, but it’s hard to really deal with it over the hunger.

  “Jaqi!” Kalia says. “Jaqi, you said his ship was a short walk from the temple?”

  “Aiya, not much of a walk at all. Why?”

  She waves her hand at the empty shore in front of us. “Shouldn’t we have reached it by now?”

  I keep going, not answering Kalia. Hoping I don’t have to answer this.

  But sure enough, we come up on a place where the ground has been churned up fierce, just like a ship took off here. Bits of bulbous glass, superheated, are scattered with the sand.

  Kalia doesn’t say a word. I just look up, like I’m going to catch the ship in the sky. But no, I can feel it. The node in orbit’s been opened and passed through already.

  “Jaqi,” I say, and slap a hand over my face. I reckon the Bible says plenty about how a Chosen Oogie en’t supposed to let the Usurper go.

  -18-

  Araskar

  TURNS OUT THAT KEIL was running at top capacity, so the Resistance manages to drum up eight dreadnoughts, matching the two the Thuzerians bring.

  Ten dreadnoughts emerge into the Rocina system, to face the Shir.

  Rocina was a nice blue world once, no doubt. I’ve been reading about it, briefing myself, as one apparently does before leading a naval mission.

  The planet is—was—an independent federation of city-states built on large islands. No landmass big enough to be called a continent. Good vacation spot. Lots of places to swim, to hike, to boat, supportive to human life and a variety of other sentient life, including at least one semiaquatic race that had been there long enough to forget whether or not they ever crossed. No interest in the Empire—they could offer better drugs and delights illegal in the Empire by staying independent.

  It’s not nice now.

  Space is big, and so the node is still far enough from the planet that we have to see it all magnified on sensors. And what we see of Rocina is a broiling black marble. Red and white lightning flashes through the black clouds marring the surface. A thick black thread, big enough to dwarf our entire fleet, emerges from the planet and vanishes into space. It twists and spins like a huge cyclone, pulling in the light.

  A Shir node; a wormhole no one but the big spiders can use.

  “Any refugees?” I ask. “Any ships we need to get out of the way?”

  “Scanning. There’s plenty of debris, Firstblade.”

  “Acting Firstblade.” I can’t help it; I look over at Vanaliel.

  “Plenty of debris. Lots of ships damaged in the escape from the planet. Sweeping for life-signs and finding very little.”

  “Is very little nothing?”

  She pauses. “No, Firstblade. Some evidence of sentients on a ship adrift in the orbit of Rocina’s main planet. Probably refugees from the attack.”

  “Send a drop ship and a Moth escort.” I try to sound like a man who deserves his command. “And once they’ve made contact, launch the planet-crackers.”

  “We don’t have that luxury,” Kineroth says.

  Vanaliel doesn’t speak. She’s wearing no rank emblem, but she’s standing to my left, and she eyes me.

  “My order stands, Secondblade,” I say. I motion for him and Vanaliel to follow me into the communications chamber just off the bridge.

  “Don’t counteract me on the bridge,” I say to Kineroth as soon as the door to the comm room closes. Once again, an old Fifth Navy symbol stares back at me. “This is hard enough already.”

  “A handful of sentients aren’t worth a delay that could get us killed, Acting Firstblade,” Kineroth says.

  “No scans are showing the mothering triad, are they?” I say. “We’re still unnoticed.”

  “No scans have shown the mothering triad,” Vanaliel interjects. “But they have ways of hiding from us. I think you forget that for fighting Shir, this crew is still green.”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” I snap. “We’re all green. I’ve never been to the Dark Zone.” I pause and add, “But it is what we were designed for, you know.”

  Vanaliel and Kineroth both look away. No one’s used to this. It’s a lot to ask of a cross who’s swallowed John Starfire’s propaganda whole, about how we were meant for more than to die in the Dark Zone, how we’re sentient and we can have our own art, our own worlds, our own children and grandchildren. Now we’re facing the fate we all rejected. We all believed what John Starfire said when he made peace, even though that was too good to be true.

  Father Rixinius and the Thuzerians pop up on the holo-table, with none of the distortion that usually marks the node-relay. “You will launch the planet-cracker?”

  “We have a rescue mission going in first,” I say. “The minute they verify whether there are sentients alive in that debris field, we launch the planet-crackers. Two planet-crackers for the planet—hopefully the first will hit its target and we can reroute the second one to deal with any adult Shir in-system.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Father Rixinius says, and tunes out.

  “Leave me,” I say to the Firstblade and Secondblade.

  I stay in the room and close my eyes. Jaqi, I wish you could hear me.

  If I had her here, I still wouldn’t be able to say everything—to say how insane this feels, to say how I’ve dodged about five kinds of death, and every time I thought of her.

  Instead, I make a private call within the ship. If anyone notices, they’ll be too distracted to comment on it.

  Aranella’s holo-figure comes up on the table. “What is it?”

  I swallow. I can’t read a face through a holo, and I can’t help wondering what she’s thinking. Is she thinking about how I lied about Rashiya’s memories? Is she thinking about my request for forgiveness?

  “I’ve got command,” I say. “We’re moving against the Shir. Do you have any idea where, uh, the Regent, is?”

  She sighs. “He just disappeared. He could be dead. He could have gone into the Dark Zone again. Or he could show up any minute now. I can’t predict what he’ll do.”

  “I hope he stays quiet,” I say.

  “Tell me something, Araskar,” she says, and I can hear how much it hurts her to say my name, even.

  “What is it?”

  “Were you serious about forgiveness?”

  “Yes.”

  “Promise me I’ll go free. If you have any power over the situation, promise me I’ll live. I want to go back to my surviving children.”

  I don’t say anything. This acting Firstblade thing will last exactly as long as my bullshitting lasts. I don’t know that I can promise that.

  “I’ll forgive you, if you promise me I can see my children again.” She leans forward. “I’ll forgive you for lying to me.”

  I slowly nod. “I promise.”

  “Good.”

  I don’t say much, just turn off the holo, and sit for a moment. I don’t feel any different, and yet somehow it feels like something has changed.

  Forgiveness. Hope.

  I damn myself for thinking that life sounds so good.

  And then, I get up and go back to the bridge. Nothing to do but wait some more, and watch Rocina burn. The sensors indicate that the Shir eggs have not yet begun to pupate. They are just incubating for the time being, growing a few thousand nightmares. Once they hatch, they’ll need to take on material for their inner furnaces. I call up all the charts and pictures from my data dump. They’ll stretch out and flatten until they can absorb a sun or a gas giant big enough to compact into a nuclear reaction, to power their guts.

  Only
those big planet-cracking shards will take out the Shir eggs. Imperial campaigns have all been meant to contain the Dark Zone, killing as many spore-producing adult Shir as possible. Since they never seem to die naturally, and the adults have the opposite reaction as their larvae to space’s background radiation—they thrive off it—it’s a difficult prospect. Shards kill Shir, though, and although it takes several planet-crackers to kill an adult Shir, or so my data dump tells me, it will only take one to break a planet that’s hosting their eggs.

  It feels like a year, but it’s only twenty minutes before the rescue ships confirm. “We have life signs for the rescue mission. And atmos inside the ships. Beginning rescue mission.”

  Kineroth mumbles something about being too late. I ignore it.

  “I want planet-cracker launch.” I indicate both dreadnoughts that have intercepted and carried the new planet-crackers. “Two squads of Moths each for protection, one from Thalator, one from Kassarath.” We like old-timey Jorian names for the dreadnoughts too. “Thalator will move to the far side of the planet with the Thuzerians. Set up orbit.”

  “It will take an hour for the planet-crackers to fall,” Vanaliel says.

  “An hour is a short time for monsters the size of a star,” I say. “Maybe they won’t notice.”

  I continue to take reports, to wait, so on edge that my teeth practically chatter.

  The planet-crackers are making a good pace, and we keep the second far enough back that we can save it if the first one lands normally, and the mission matters. The rescue mission reports back—they have landed on a transport ship, and evacuated a few hundred sentients who just escaped Rocina in time.

  The sentients are sick, distraught. But alive.

  All things considered, my mission might be working.

  “Adjusting the first planet-cracker’s velocity to fall in with the orbit,” the communications officer says. “We’re nearing the point of no return. As soon as we can plot a steep descent into the orbit, Rocina is as good as cracked.”

  “Crack those eggs,” I say, and let a little smile come to my face.

  “Wait.”

  I turn and look at the comm officer. “What do you mean, wait? Is it . . .”

  “It’s not the Shir. A ship has just appeared in system, and it’s transmitting on . . . it’s transmitting on a frequency that clears all our codes. Even classified ones.”

  “What?”

  “There’s visual and audio both. Should I put it onscreen?”

  I have a sinking feeling I know who it is. I look behind me, and before I can say anything, Kineroth says, “Onscreen.”

  The comm officer obeys.

  And John Starfire fills our viewscreen.

  “My Resistance,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper. He’s pale, sweating, his face marred with blood and some green gunk that looks like it might have come out of a vat. He’s been hurt, and hasn’t taken the time to heal properly.

  “Regent!” Vanaliel stands next to me. “Patch us in to the Regent!”

  “I’m trying, sir,” the comm officer says. “He’s not receiving.”

  “My Resistance,” he says. “I have returned. I am sorry for what I must order you to do. You must trust me. The Shir’s young must be allowed to hatch. I repeat. They must be allowed to hatch.”

  Kineroth raises a hand. “Reroute the planet-cracker.”

  “Wait,” I say. “No. You can’t stop it. It’s just about to fall.”

  “He’s switched to receiving, sir. We’re patched in to the Regent,” the comm officer says.

  And John Starfire looks up from the viewscreen at me, and his eyes burn. “You? You? Traitor!”

  I look over at Vanaliel, whose eyes are fire.

  I draw my sword. “There is no way I’m allowing a planet full of Shir eggs to hatch. No matter what the Regent orders.”

  Everyone on the bridge looks between each other, back at me, back at each other.

  Then Vanaliel lunges for me, a blow meant to run me through.

  And I’m weak and wounded still, and though I get my own blade up and deflect hers, it’s not perfect. She slashes a chunk from my nice new leg. I go down on one knee.

  “It’s crazy,” I yell, as I block another of her blows. I draw my short sword and slash at her leg. She dances back. Despite the pain, I get up on my leg, leaking blood and synthskin.

  “Listen to me now,” John Starfire says. “Do not listen to the traitors, who have tried to prop up their own false prophet. I have been to the very end of the universe, my Resistance. I have seen Earth that was lost. And the new generation of Shir is not what you think. They can be turned. They can be changed.”

  Vanaliel comes at me with a standard thrust, typical out-the-vat stuff. I turn it with my short sword and tag her arm with my long blade. She twists, too fast, her own short sword an inch from my belly when I stop it.

  We stand there, hilts locked.

  “You were always a traitor,” Vanaliel says. “You’re as bad as the Regent’s wife. Or worse.”

  “Listen to him! He’s telling you not to kill the Shir! He’s siding with the devil itself! That is betrayal!”

  “Planet-cracker adjusting velocity,” the comm officer says. “We will change to a stationary orbit until orders say otherwise.”

  “Good,” Kineroth says.

  Vanaliel shoves, with all her strength. My leg gives out and I crash against the wall. The cold steel of her sword touches into my neck, and then she draws back for the killing blow—and waits, short sword at my throat, long sword drawn back for a stab. “I want to leave your memories for the Regent, but my hand just might slip, traitor.”

  “Oh yeah,” I say, struggling to get up, until she kicks me in the belly again. I cough out the words, the steel biting into my throat with each word. “The one working with the Shir’s not the traitor. I see.”

  Doubt mars the rage in Vanaliel’s face.

  “You will see.” John Starfire’s voice reaches a feverish, tinny pitch. “You will see. Let them hatch, and they will come to me, and I will change them. Can you feel the truth in these words?”

  “Something’s changed in the planet, uh, Secondblade,” the comm officer says. “I think the pupation process is beginning.”

  Voices fill the comm. There’s Father Rixinius protesting on the comm. “Do not stop the planet-cracker’s course! Do not let the juveniles hatch! In the name of God and the Saints—”

  And then a voice that makes my mouth dry, my skin shiver, makes me feel like I’m frozen in the grip of the pinks again. A voice that kills all my friends before me once again. A voice that makes Rashiya’s dead eyes look back at me.

  We hear you, little things.

  A scream.

  The ship makes a sound like a can opening.

  Everything lurches—and suddenly we’re without gravity, the air is cold, and all I see is a faint, sickly blue light on the sensors—

  And then the emergency power takes hold, and I am looking through a sense-field. On the other side of the sense-field, half the bridge spins away in vacuum, against faint blue-white lines that fill space, like a web cast over the darkness.

  Gravity slams me to the floor, the generators going to twice the power to keep us rooted—and then the gravity generators fail and I fly up again in zero.

  Kineroth floats off into vacuum, dead and still glaring at me. The poor comm officer still clings to her comm, on the wrong side of the atmos.

  In front of me, Vanaliel floats, shedding globules of blood where the sense-field took off both her legs. But at least most of her is on the oxygenated side.

  And I’m not dead yet. All of two feet from open space.

  I leap to catch her, kick off against the sense-field despite the shock that runs through me, and pull her body back toward the lift.

  And through the sense-field, out in space, a dark sun rises in front of Rocina’s star, and I detect in the dim blue light a thousand legs, a thousand eyes, teeth like planet-sized spars.


  We told you, little one, little John. Their voices hit me like the sight of my friends’ dead bodies, like the withdrawals from the pinks. You are not the one.

  Sickly blue filaments spin through space, hit the protective sense-field and the ship screams again. The Shir are attacking us.

  I fly through zero into the lift, slam the door closed, and it plunges through the ship toward the hangar. Blood rushes in globules from Vanaliel’s severed legs, spatters all over me.

  You are not the one.

  I think I hear John Starfire scream.

  I’m guessing the Shir just broke that truce.

  -19-

  Araskar

  THE LIFT TUMBLES AND screams to a halt. I wrench the doors open. The corridor is awash in pale yellow emergency lights. Debris tumbles through the air in zero—bits of a bulkhead, an empty shard-blaster.

  I need to get to a comm. And a med-bay. Vanaliel’s severed arteries are spraying the blood rapidly, little bubbles spinning through the air and splattering against the wall, rebounding onto me.

  “Araskar,” she gags. “Araskar. I didn’t—”

  “It’s okay, soldier, I forgive you your insubordination.” There’s got to still be a functioning med-bay. And then—what then? I need a comm. I need to tell Rixinius we’re still fighting.

  I scramble through the hall, dodging the debris, much of which is coming quickly enough to kill. The zero makes it much easier to move; I just have to be careful not to get going too fast and smear myself against the bulkhead.

  Vanaliel chokes on her blood, tries to speak but gags on the words.

  We should be on the same floor as the node-relay. I’m going to have to call for help to everyone. Necros. Kurguls. Suits—anything with a gun.

  Not that anyone in the galaxy has anywhere near the military might the Navy has. Had.

  “You know,” I find myself saying aloud, “if I could go back in time to the invasion of Irithessa, I would have to point out that peace with the Shir was wishful thinking.” If only I had woken up then. I was way too interested in finishing the mission so I could get my hands on some drugs.