The Lazarus Particle

by Logan Thomas Snyder

  Or if, she thought balefully.

  As if to punctuate the thought, a strange ripple fluttered through her body. A loud snick-snack startled her. The hatch suddenly began to open. The blade of light that knifed into the chamber and the two overlapping bursts of gunfire that followed threatened to overwhelm her reawakened senses.

  As her sight slowly returned to her, her eyes resolved upon the cold, lifeless irises of one of the Irregulars.

  Still, she waited. And waited. And waited. Yet no one came for her.

  Slowly, she found the strength to crawl toward the door. Ease it open.

  The further she opened the door, the more death and destruction was revealed to her. The deck was covered in bodies; apparently there had been some internecine dispute. Whatever the cause, Kerikeshaala: Ty Yeleyhi wasn’t about to question it. She scrambled to her feet, stumbling half-blind out onto the deck.

  Even half-blind, though, she could hardly miss the sleekly appointed Morgenthau-Hale Courier Command Vessel.

  Picking her way carefully toward the yacht, she failed to suppress the predatory grin creeping across her face. Somehow the Free Planetary Irregulars had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. The realization helped to drive, to animate her search.

  Soon she would be back aboard her ship, with the rest of her clan-kin, and she would rain all horrific hell down upon this pestilential little planet…

  Finding the command chip to the Morgenthau-Hale shuttle took some doing. She had to search several of the bodies, all the while wondering what in the hell had happened, as well as guarding against whatever might come next…

  Ultimately, the only answer that mattered was that she was free and capable of rejoining her fleet. They would wonder what had become of their Tj. Might even have appointed an interim fleet commander. That would be understandable, but also unacceptable.

  She boarded the ship warily. She had taken a weapon off one of the fallen humans, but it wasn’t until the yacht’s landing ramp sealed seamlessly behind her that she felt truly secure. Even if she couldn’t get it off the ground, at least she had several inches of heavily armored hull between her and the Irregulars. Probably a fairly sophisticated array of weaponry, too, now that she thought about it.

  But if she could get to the weaponry, then she could get to navigation, and that was first priority. After all, she had all the ordnance she needed to bomb this planet into nonexistence several times over orbiting thousands of kilometers above.

  Seating herself before the helm, she took a moment to familiarize herself with the controls. Mostly laid out the same as a Tyroshi vessel of similar size and disposition, though perhaps not quite as intuitively. She frowned. Still, only a minor hindrance, and she wouldn’t be flying the vessel for long.

  The command chip unlocked the controls. Within mere moments she had the celebrated Morgenthau-Hale ceramic engines firing at capacity. A bit further down her mental chain of command, she mused that miraculously escaping enemy custody in possession of a rarefied piece of enemy tech should almost certainly qualify her for her ascendancy to Zj.

  Optimistic, yes—probably even deserved—but wishful. She forced herself to focus on the here and now.

  An alarm barked as a barrage of small arms fire clapped at the yacht’s backside; apparently whatever reserves the Irregulars had in their pocket had made it to the deck all but seconds too late. Tj Yeleyhi savored their untimely arrival like a fine wine, laughing merrily as she turned the yacht about. She broke the atmosphere less than a minute later, recalling the coordinates of her fleet’s last position and angling toward them.

  Composed as she was, Tj Yeleyhi couldn’t help jumping slightly as the radio crackled to life.

  “—And if you don’t bring that yacht back down, we’re going to fucking shoot it down! Repeat, this is Free Planetary ground control demanding immediate compliance—”

  Tj Yeleyhi just smiled. If the Irregulars were truly capable of annihilating her from the ground, they would have already done so.

  Before her, the veil of occupied space blossomed as she transitioned through the planetary atmosphere and angled toward her fleet. Mere pinpricks from her current vantage, but soon to be her salvation, as well as her vindication.

  She tried several times, unsuccessfully, to hail her flagship. At length she discovered and managed to disable the encryption key, elementary as it was, before finally getting a response.

  “Tj Yeleyhi? Is it really you?”

  For a moment, she struggled to place the name of her successor. “Yes, Lj Zissidss, it is Tj Yeleyhi.”

  “My Tj, how good to hear your voice again!”

  “And yours, my Lj. As you may already have surmised, the exchange proved to be an ambush. The duplicitous, incompetent Oviddians could not control their revolution for so much as twenty-four hours. We arrived into the jaws of a well sprung trap. However, having engineered my own escape, I believe we are well positioned to inflict maximum punishment upon this planet as soon I reassume command. Over.”

  Several moments passed before Lj Zissidss responded, his voice choppy and distorted. “My Tj… I am… vised… ou ar… in pos… clear dev… on col… cour… with flee… please respond.” The last two words came in perfectly, and then once again. “Please respond.”

  Kerikeshaala: Tj Yeleyhi tried to alter the course of the yacht, only to realize she had been locked out remotely. She tried to communicate with her fleet, to the same fruitless effect.

  The comm crackled to life once more. The voice reaching out to her this time was not one she was familiar with.

  “Kerikeshaala: Tj Yeleyhi, please respond. This is Free Planetary Base, over.”

  “Free Planetary Base, this is Kerikeshaala. Do go on, over.”

  “Tj Yeleyhi, by now you will have noticed we have taken remote command of your navigation and communications, over.”

  “As a matter of fact, I have. May I inquire as to why? Over.”

  “You are currently in possession of several high-yield nuclear devices. As I am sure you are aware, the vessel you’re aboard is quite capable of outmaneuvering even your most advanced targeting solutions.”

  Tj Yeleyhi paused a long beat as she absorbed this information.

  Beaten. She was well and truly beaten.

  Or perhaps…

  “Tj Yeleyhi? Over?”

  “I suppose I have no other option but to commend your ingenuity. Well played, Free Planetary Base. You were a worthy foe. Over.”

  Another pause, this time on their end. A new voice sounded over the comm a moment later.

  “Die screaming, Tyro scum. Remember Shih’ra. Free Planetary Base, out.”

  The comm abruptly ceased.

  Tj Yeleyhi had several moments to contemplate her fate as her flagship loomed larger and larger in the yacht’s panoramic viewer. It was a gorgeous vessel, one she had commissioned and overseen the construction of herself. Tyroshi vessels were built to purpose based on individual need. All shared certain crucial elements of both form and function, but no two were exactly the same. Her flagship and all that followed were like a storm of swords aimed at the planet’s surface. Gracefully proportioned yet treacherously punishing if provoked. Even now, they were beginning to bombard the space around her with everything the fleet could possibly bring to bear. Plasma cannons, laser-guided missiles, ionic disruptors; yet, as promised, the remotely controlled shuttle had no problem dipping and dodging what would be a withering bombardment to any other comparable ship in known service. The combination of the advanced, ultralight ceramic engines and the skills of the pilot who had assumed remote control proved too wily, too unpredictable for her people to acquire a proper firing solution. Just as the voice on the comm had promised.

  Yet she was certain her side retained one critical advantage. Morgenthau-Hale may have perfected engine technology, true, but the Tyroshi had perfected sensor and comm technology to a point henceforth unheard of. Now that she understood the context, she could reconstruct the garbled mes
sage from Lj Zissidss in her mind.

  “My Tj, I am advised you are currently in possession of several nuclear devices and that you are on a collision course with our fleet. Please respond. Please respond.”

  Having failed to respond, they were now attempting to blast her into oblivion. They knew it was impossible, yet they gave it their all nonetheless. For that, she felt a great and sudden surge of admiration for her clan-kin. Warriors. They were true warriors, each and every last one of them.

  Some were of different varieties than others. Even now, she knew that hundreds of her best communications technicians were feverishly attempting to subvert the encryption frequency that had no doubt locked out not just her own vessel, but communications fleet-wide. Surely one of them would manage to break through and broadcast news of their imminent demise. Eventually Tj Yeleyhi and Clan Kerikeshaala would be avenged. Vindicated. There was some solace in that. Not much, but some.

  It was the only hope they had. The Free Planetary Irregulars almost certainly assumed their ambush would go undetected, leaving no trace other than the physical remnants of her fleet and the telling trace signatures of the Morgenthau-Hale vessel. It would still be a killing blow, of that there was no doubt, but not a true ambush. They had not counted on the Tyroshi’s advanced sensor technology. If even just one of her technicians was able to reopen communications long enough to transmit a distress packet, then all was not lost.

  She watched her flagship growing larger and larger. The multicolored bursts of light and energy representing the fruitless bombardment of her inevitable approach became increasingly spectacular with each passing moment.

  The Morgenthau-Hale engines really were quite magnificent, she mused as the yacht barreled through the blanketing cloud of fire without so much as a glancing blow. She barely felt the movement as the yacht pitched and yawed, deftly executing every daredevil maneuver its remote pilot ordered of it. Truly remarkable.

  The yacht smoothed out as it adjusted course slightly. She was through the looking glass, too close for the flagship or any of the other ships to fix a solution without risk of collateral damage. Not that it mattered at this point. Dozens of blips began to emerge from the ships of her fleet, emergency vessels desperately making a last ditch effort at escape, but most if not all were doomed before they had even launched. They had waited too long, gambled too much.

  And now all of Clan Kerikeshaala was to pay the price.

  The silence was broken when the comm suddenly squawked to life.

  “Tj Yeleyhi, please respond, repeat…”

  “I am here. Report!” she barked angrily, though she could already anticipate the answer.

  “All apologies, Tj!” the voice of Lj Zissidss wailed through the comm. “You must understand, we had no choice but to attempt to thwart your approach—”

  “Enough sniveling! You must transmit a distress packet to Clan Soliorana immediately! Do you understand?! Immediately!”

  “Tj, of course we are attempting to communicate our disposition to all loyal clans as we speak, but there is no guarantee our technicians can maintain this break in the encryption indef—”

  Tj Yeleyhi felt a tidal surge of rage as the comm went silent again, never to resume. And then, with a closing sigh, she let it all ebb away to nothing. The yacht had nosed within mere kilometers of her flagship’s command module. She was seconds away from transitioning to the Aftermire. She refused to sully the rite by tainting it with her rage.

  Calming herself, she prepared for the inevitable.

  At last the moment of impact arrived, and for one brief and spectacularly blinding moment, Kerikeshaala: Tj Yeleyhi felt herself at the nucleus of all Creation.

  24 • LAZARUS

  Alexia concentrated on feeling, not thinking.

  The cool, prevailing darkness of the Medical recovery room was good for that.

  Torrey by her side was even better.

  She could feel his breath whispering against the nape of her neck; the weight of his arm draped around her midriff; the warmth of his well defined body pressed softly against her backside.

  For a moment, she could almost imagine herself feeling happy in his arms. But then imagining came dangerously close to thinking…

  Behind her, Torrey stirred almost imperceptibly. Only a slight change in the rhythm of his breathing gave her any indication he had awoken.

  “Can’t sleep?” he said, his words thick with fatigue.

  “No. This is nice, though. I needed this. Just to be close to someone. The last few days…” She sighed, searching for the right words to complete her thought.

  “I know.” Working his fingers between hers, he squeezed her hand. “I know.”

  She paused to consider the man sharing the cot with her. The man dispatched to rescue her from the psychotic wrath of a sexual sadist, only to find she’d done as much already herself. The man who put his trust in her so readily, so unflinchingly. The man who had barely left her side in three days’ time.

  “Thank you, Torrey. Thank you for being you.”

  “You don’t have to keep thanking me, you know. I’m right where I want to be.”

  Alexia turned to face him. Her face was a welter of bruises commemorating Vron’s assault, each one a swirling constellation of sickly yellows and swollen purple. Judging by the way he smiled when they locked eyes, he couldn’t have cared less. “So… it’s not just me, then?”

  “It’s definitely not just you.”

  Alexia closed her eyes tightly, grinning broadly against the tears welling in them.

  “Is it really so hard to believe?”

  “No,” she said softly. Not after the way he had looked at her. Not after the subtle shift of his hands or the way their bodies had gravitated even closer together, virtually eliminating all the space between the thin, thermal body stockings separating them. Not after all they had been through together in such a remarkably short period of time. “No, it’s not.” She laughed cathartically. “I wanted to say something sooner, to see if you felt the same thing. I just thought you would think I was crazy or overwhelmed with grief or PTSD or I don’t know what.” She buried her face in his chest, half laughing, half crying with relief.

  “You’re too strong for me to think anything like that.” Holding her close, Torrey lifted a hand to stroke her hair. “Me, though… I didn’t want you to think I was trying to take advantage of the situation just to get closer to you. Especially after the way we met.”

  Lifting her head, she quickly dried her eyes with the heel of her hand. “I know you wouldn’t do that. You’re not that kind of man.”

  There was a moment of mutual hesitation before they found each other’s lips in the dark. It was a small and glancing thing—a peck, really, if even that—but the kiss that landed next was anything but. Alexia drew in her lips as they separated, savoring the lingering warmth Torrey left upon them. She sighed and settled comfortably into his warm embrace.

  Five minutes. All she wanted was five minutes to hold and be held by her new boyfriend/lover/whatever Torrey was. They could work out how to label each other later. With the war over, or at least entering an unprecedented new stage requiring weeks of redeployments, staging, and strategizing, there would be time for these things. Time to get to know each other better, to settle into routines, to figure out if this budding battlefield romance was something that could really last…

  For now, though, just five minutes.

  She got just shy of three before an urgent knock sounded through the door.

  “Specialist DeCoud? You’re going to want to hear this.”

  “So unfaaair,” Alexia groaned into Torrey’s shoulder.

  “They wouldn’t knock if it wasn’t something important,” he reminded her. He was always doing that, gently fanning the flame of her hope whenever it started to waver. One more thing to appreciate about the man.

  They dressed quickly and kissed again—longingly—before meeting Dr. Perry in the hall. “How is he?”

 
“Dell remains stable but physically unresponsive. This has more to do with a possible… well, I hesitate to call it an actual treatment.” Dr. Perry shook her head. “Better you hear it from the source. This kind of thing is well outside my wheelhouse.”

  ‘The source’ proved to be none other than the daring (insane?) souls who had run the Tyroshi blockade and executed what she understood to be the nearly impossible retrieval maneuver that brought Dell back from the clutches of cold infinity. They were the reason she would have a body to bury just as soon as she could bring herself to pull the plug on her baby brother. She hadn’t even met any of them, but she felt an instant emotional connection nonetheless. Like looking upon long-lost family for the first time in so many years.

  “Alexia DeCoud,” Commandant Soroya said. “I do not believe you have had the pleasure of meeting our new friends. This is Fenton Wilkes and Roon McNamara. Fenton, Roon, I give you Specialist Alexia DeCoud and Corporal Gennison Torrance, though as I understand it he prefers to be addressed in the casual form by ‘Torrey’ when he is off duty, as he is presently.”

  “Thank you both so much for what you did to bring back my brother,” Alexia blurted after the introductions.

  “Simply a matter of right place, right time,” Roon said. “And to be fair, Ensign Cassel did the hard part. I just called it in.”

  “Still, thank you.”

  “It means a lot,” Torrey added. “To both of us.”

  “So,” Alexia said after the moment cleared. “What exactly are we talking about here? Dr. Perry mentioned something about some sort of non-treatment?”

  Fenton and Roon exchanged glances. Roon nodded. “Okay,” Fenton started. “I was part of a top secret section of Morgenthau-Hale called the Biotech Development Initiative. I worked for the Applied Sciences Division. We used to call ourselves the ‘Dirty Secrets Brigade.’ The things we worked on…”

  “Fenton,” Roon prodded gently.

  “Right, right. Anyway, I was the head of a team working on a project called the Lazarus Particle. What we called it, anyway.”

  Roon cut in, rolling her eyes. “Forgive him. Scientists have a tendency to over explain, I’ve recently discovered. His team—him, really—created an electromechanical nanite capable of symbiotically assimilating with the host’s most complex biological functions.” Roon took a breath as she finished, looking from Fenton to Alexia and back again. “Did I get all that right?”