Starbreaker

by Amanda Bouchet

  “That orange stripe down its back is made of hard plates with pointed tips that are lying down right now. Threaten it, and it’ll raise them up like armor. Really piss it off, and it’ll shoot them at you hard enough to do some damage.”

  “Like lose an eye?”

  “Like sever a jugular.”

  Okay then, not like Bonk. “Let’s stay here, shall we?”

  Shade’s low chuckle made me ridiculously happy. I wrapped my arms around him from behind. His hands covered mine on his abdomen.

  “It’s almost done. It’ll take off after it gets what it wants.” Shade watched the banging process as avidly as I did. I couldn’t wait to see what happened.

  The purple shell finally split open. Something fat, gray, and shiny slithered in a viscous goo. The little animal scarfed it up like a gourmet meal. After, it lapped up the goo.

  “Ick.” I grimaced.

  “Yeah, I wouldn’t eat that, either.”

  I buried my laughter in Shade’s back, trying not to disturb the animal.

  The orange spearback licked its paws and whiskers, looking very pleased with itself. After a quick glance around, it scuttled down the tree headfirst and disappeared into the jungle. Shade continued across the bridge once we couldn’t see the spearback anymore.

  My SRP boyfriend’s clear competence here helped me fear the jungle less and enjoy it more. He really was a Space Rogue Phenom. My insides almost fluttered at the idea of what he might prove he could do next. Slay cyclodiles? Swing on vines? Start fire from sticks?

  My smile so big I was probably catching gnats in my teeth, I listened to myriad unseen things call, chitter, buzz, and rattle. The shady-hot air filled my lungs with extra oxygen. Trees everywhere—giving life and air and cover to all the exotic and spectacular things here. Who’d have guessed? Tess Bailey, Space Rat, right in the middle of an untamed rain forest. The vibrant heartbeat of the jungle pulsed through me, wild and electric. I was sure that every time I closed my eyes for the rest of my life, I would hear it echo again inside me.

  Shade stopped, leaning his elbows on the thick rope railing. I did the same. It was impossible to hurry past the open views from the bridge. They were too remarkable and demanded attention.

  “Earth had tropical forests like this.” Because our abandoned motherland was our common history, we all studied it. Galactic schoolchildren spent an entire universal year on Earth’s geography, climate, animals, noteworthy history, and famous figures. It was how I knew what beavers were but not flervers. It made no sense that we hadn’t moved on more definitively yet, but I was glad we hadn’t. That had been my favorite school year. “It must have been amazing.”

  “Earth had everything. It was the universe’s chosen planet—the start of humanity and civilization.” Shade finished crossing the bridge and stepped onto the wide platform.

  I followed him toward the rope ladder that would bring us down again. “Then why do you think it hasn’t attracted all that many returners?” Hitting the solid wood of the platform threw me off-balance, and I swayed a little. I must have gained my bridge legs during the crossing.

  “Because it’s a cesspit.”

  I burst out laughing, startling a bird that took off abruptly from the tree next to us. “Not really. Not anymore.” Time cured everything, even radiation and plastic. “That one little planet still affects our lives after all this time, and yet hardly anyone actually wants to go back there. I mean, I don’t give a crap what time it is on any of the rocks I’ve been to recently, or even on this one, really. I care what time the clock says it is on Earth, a barely populated planet across the galaxy.”

  Instead of starting down to the forest floor, Shade hopped up on the platform railing, looking pensive. “I suppose it’s because we need constants, and we can all trace ourselves back there. Earth was home to all of humanity for a lot longer than anywhere else ever has been.”

  “True… But don’t you think it’s strange? How hard we hold on to things that shouldn’t have any meaning for us? My favorite books are all mostly pre-exodus, talking about places and animals and ways of life that don’t even exist anymore.” Although right here didn’t feel all that different from some of the locations I’d read about.

  “Pre-exodus books are hard to find these days.”

  “The Overseer’s book purge.” I sighed in disgust. “Too many thoughts out there that weren’t his own.”

  “Or that didn’t serve his purpose.”

  Shade swung his legs, a slow tick-tock as he answered my earlier question. “I think we hold on to the past because we haven’t changed. Sure, we have more sophisticated tech and things our ancestors could only dream of, but otherwise, what’s really different about us?”

  “We’re all lorded over by an asshole?”

  Shade flashed a quick smile. “As if that’s never happened before.”

  “There are more of us being lorded over by an asshole?”

  He chuckled, gently rocking on the railing.

  I itched to reach out and make him stop moving up there. “You’re right. Things external to people have changed, but inside, we’re still the same as always. Hopes, fears, dreams, love, family… You could stick Jax, Fiona, or me on an exodus ship, and we’d fit right in with all those terrified, fleeing Earthlings.” We spent most of our time terrified and fleeing, anyway. “And stop leaning backward. You’re freaking me out.”

  “Because I might fall?” Shade held up his hands and wiggled.

  “Shade!” I lunged forward and grabbed him. “Men are such jerks!”

  He laughed and jumped down. “Happy?”

  “No.” I scowled, the rampaging heartbeat in my throat nearly choking me.

  He gave me a quick kiss to try to mollify me. It didn’t work, and I turned my nose up at his attempt to placate.

  Looking almost contrite, Shade started down the ladder. “As for the slow repopulation, I don’t know. Earth’s perfectly habitable again.” He gave me a questioning look. “Would you ever go back?”

  “Back isn’t the right word because I’ve never been there, but no, not to live. Why would I?”

  “I don’t know. Roots? Nostalgia?”

  I saw the exact moment his playfulness evaporated, likely dried up by thoughts of his roots on Albion 5—and the fact that he could never go back there.

  An ache hatched in my chest, the muscles cramping uncomfortably.

  Should I feel guilty?

  No.

  Did I?

  Kind of…

  The rawness inside me grew as I watched Shade move down the ladder. He’d given up more than his docks for me, hadn’t he? Home wasn’t something that could be quantified in buildings or wealth. It was so much more than that. He wouldn’t want me feeling guilty, though. If anyone took responsibility for his decisions, good or bad, it was Shade.

  I breathed in deeply, expanding my lungs. “I think moving to Earth would feel like living in a cemetery—walking on bones and seeing ghosts.”

  “I guess so.” He didn’t sound convinced, probably because he was used to walking beside the ghosts of his parents and watching the docking empire his family had built fall apart in the hands of Scarabin White. “Besides, there isn’t room on Earth for even a fraction of the population of a place like Sector 12, let alone the rest of the galaxy.”

  “Well, I prefer the Endeavor. Or wherever Bonk is.”

  He grinned up at me. “Miss your kitty?”

  “Yes.”

  “Me too,” I heard him say as he jumped off the ladder.

  I rubbed my chest. That sudden burst of heat may or may not have been my heart melting. I chose not to analyze.

  Shade held the ladder steady for me. I followed him to the ground, turned in triumph—I’d just successfully completed jungle obstacle number one, after all—and leaped to hug him a split second before a h
ard-coated insect bashed me in the head.

  Screaming, I batted my arms and reeled back. Fast-moving wings hit my hand with a stinging thud. The insect buzzed louder and stayed in my face. Gold. Blue. Eyes all over its head! I swerved. It swerved. I ducked. It dropped. What the hell? It didn’t fly away. It banged straight into my head again because tangling in my hair was so smart.

  “Shade!” I yelled.

  “Hold still.” He reached out with both hands and grabbed it. My hair clung to furry legs—multiple legs—and Shade had to tug and detangle as I screeched in panic. He finally tossed the fist-sized insect skyward. It got the right idea this time and buzzed away from us in an upward spiral.

  “What was that?” Frantically, I scrubbed my hands all over my face and head, trying to erase the feeling of fuzz and stick and flutter.

  “Just a draakwing. Harmless. And dumb as shit, or it wouldn’t fly toward predators.”

  “I’m not a predator.”

  “To it, you are.” He waggled his eyebrows. “They’re tasty.”

  “What? Ack! How do you know all these things?”

  He smoothed back my hair, tucking the sweat-dampened strands toward my ponytail again. “I used to spend a lot of time here. I came every year with my parents for as long as I can remember. We’d stay at the resort for a few weeks—one of those Aisé bungalows. Until they died in that shuttle crash. I haven’t been here since then. Until now.”

  “Every year?” My heart fumbled its next beat. “Why didn’t you tell me?” The memories must be tearing him up inside. But he loved it here—I could tell. That was the part he’d been showing me since yesterday.

  He shrugged. “I didn’t want you to feel obligated to like it.”

  “I love it.” My throat thickened. I love… I swallowed and bit my lip. “Did you come here for prayer at the temples?”

  Shade nodded and moved up the bank. I followed him away from the river. A sign in the shape of an odd, pot-bellied animal with bushy eyebrows and a long black-and-white mustache pointed us uphill through the jungle.

  “More for the outdoors but, yeah, prayer, too.” He held back an overgrown branch for me.

  Ducking around it, I couldn’t hide my skepticism. “Why? What has the Sky Mother ever done for you? Where are her Powers? I mean, look at the state of the galaxy. I don’t see any evidence of positive and balancing forces at work.”

  “Don’t you?” Shade glanced at me, his brow drawing down. “On the one hand, there’s the Overseer and his Dark Watch. On the other, there’s a whole rebellion, places like Starway 8 and the Fold, and people like you, Jax, Merrick, and Fiona.”

  “That’s not balance. That’s a minority trying—and mostly failing—to make a difference.”

  “It has to start somewhere.”

  I hiked in Shade’s footsteps, watching for pits and snakes. “As pessimistically optimistic as that sounds, I still think that’s people and their choices, not some big star supposedly sending out rays of light that change our lives on a daily basis.”

  He turned back to me. “Can you imagine living in total darkness?”

  A shiver rippled through me at the velvet hitch in his voice that hinted at true believing. “I’m thinking in terms of science—a big ball of hot gas giving off light and heat and radiation. You’re speaking metaphorically. And no one has real answers. It’s like with any religion throughout the ages, the eons of mankind. There’s never any proof. Or maybe there is, but only after you’re dead, so who knows?”

  “Faith—throughout the eons—is believing without proof. I’d rather have certain beliefs to comfort me when things seem too dark than nothing at all to brighten the horizon.”

  Part of me wanted to gape at Shade like he was a total stranger. The other part of me knew to respect other people’s choices in religion.

  I thought about the handwritten text Susan, the bookshop owner on Albion 5, had given me. It purported that the Sky Mother had provided us with the Mornavail, a sort of second children to spread her light into the gathering darkness. Now, it seemed the Mornavail were like me—human, but with a more evolved immune system. I was basically a walking cure-all, with blood that could be chemically modified into enhancers. I’d yet to meet another like me, though—and most people who’d heard of the Mornavail thought they were a myth.

  Good. Stay hidden.

  The Overseer had sniffed me out, and I’d spent half my childhood strapped to a chair with needles shoved into my veins. The result was an entire floating space lab filled with super-soldier serum partially concocted from my blood.

  Serum I’d stolen away from the Overseer and given to the rebel leaders.

  Serum that had led me to Shade—and lost me Miko and Shiori.

  Serum the Overseer could engineer again after I handed over six bags of my blood to his right-hand goon in just a few hours.

  Shit. What a mess. At least we had more enhancers than he did.

  But how many super soldiers had the Overseer already created?

  “I could use a little Sky Mother help after all,” I muttered.

  “What’s that?” Shade asked, glancing back at me.

  “Nothing.” I scrambled up a steep, rocky incline, sweat gluing my clothes to me. “People pray and pray, and there’s zero concrete feedback. No proof, and not much reward, in my opinion. I don’t understand how you can maintain faith when you’ve lost everything.”

  Shade held a finger to his lips instead of answering. He tilted his gaze upward, leading mine to the nearby branches. Small brown creatures with butter-yellow heads, liquid-dark eyes, tufty ears, and black button noses watched us, cocking their heads in curiosity and munching on things they held in their tiny humanlike hands with five fingers.

  Awe burst inside me like fireworks. “Those are the cutest little things I’ve ever seen.”

  “Ganokos,” Shade said softly.

  Holding hands, we watched them in fascination until the pack moved on, looking for the next tree with fruit or nuts to nibble on. Once they were out of sight, I felt as though a piece of me went missing. I was beginning to understand Shade’s attachment to the jungle, how it got under your skin and became a part of you.

  “Come on. I’ve got something even better to show you.” He led the way again, the hike getting steeper and more difficult by the minute. I didn’t press him for an answer about maintaining faith. It wasn’t a discussion we needed to have any more than it was an argument one of us needed to win. I just enjoyed hearing his perspective on things.

  About a half hour later, Shade heaved himself onto a wide lip of rock that jutted out from the mountainside. Pivoting on his knees, he turned back to me with an outstretched hand and pulled me up to join him.

  My jaw dropped in wonder as we stood together. Birds called, insects chirped, and the jungle rustled on a humid breeze that propelled me farther out onto the flat shelf suspended high above the Gano River. A waterfall cut down the cliffside beside us, crashing into a large pool and throwing rainbow spray through the air like ribbons. I reached out to touch the shimmering moisture. “Shade, this is amazing.”

  “I love this swimming hole.” He crouched down and circled his fingers in water so transparent I could see every glistening stone on the pool’s bottom.

  Big-leafed vegetation teemed with exotic birds all singing to different tunes and making a striking chorus. Warbling calls. Sharp chirps. Squawks from somewhere. Colorful blossoms grew from cracks in the slippery cliffside. Vines tumbled down from above, twisting and curling through the flowers. “I’ve never seen a place so…flamboyant.” I looked around, stunned and reverent.

  Shade smiled at me, shaking drops of water from his fingertips. He stood again and turned to look out over the vista. There was something almost pained in his expression, as though this place stripped back layers of skin and arrowed straight into the heart of him.

 
The water called to me, if only to stick my feet in, but first, I joined Shade in admiring the view in the distance. The bungalows and manicured lawns of the Aisé Resort dotted the far bank like little pockets of civilization just daring enough to dip a toe into the wilderness. Beyond that, small from here despite their grandness, the five temples of the Holy Hollow formed a star around the inner gardens and main temple—the one where we would meet my uncle.

  “Thank you.” Overwhelmed by everything we’d shared last night, this morning, and now this, I felt tears threaten.

  Shade stood beside me, just our knuckles brushing. “This is my favorite place in the galaxy.”

  The knot in my throat tightened, my eyes prickled, and I got the same feeling as when I rounded a corner on Starway 8 and suddenly came face-to-face with the bright, swirling colors of the Rafini Nebula. Reverence. Amazement. Fascination. And maybe, just possibly, the stirring of belief in something other.

  “What we were talking about earlier? Faith?” Shade turned to me. “I’ve been thinking. I’ve lost things, but I haven’t lost everything.” His eyes met mine, his dark-amber gaze more open than I’d ever seen it. “And maybe, I’ve gained more than I ever thought possible.”

  Emotion charred a pathway to my heart, incinerating all defenses. “I’ve never, ever been in a place that stirred me the way Starway 8 does. But this…” I trailed off on a shuddering breath. “Who would have thought that a jungle on Reaginine might reinvent me?”

  A soft smile curved Shade’s lips as he looked out over the vista again, his eyes seeming fixed on the golden tip of the Grand Temple. At midsummer on this part of Reaginine, light from the Great Star pointed straight down through the hole in the top of the temple, lighting up Her image carved into the floor and kicking off the galaxy-wide festival of Emergence—the supposed birth of the celestial being. Believers across the eighteen Sectors took that day to rejoice, no matter the season where they were, or how seasonless their home in the Dark might be. I’d never bought into it, but right now, I couldn’t deny feeling something.

  “I’ll never try to make you believe one thing or another, but I look around me”—Shade’s eyes lighted on the temples, the jungle, the waterfall and swimming hole—“especially here, and I can’t help thinking there’s something that makes all of this more than just random.”