Hurry. I can’t fight five at once.
I glanced skyward again.
Or the thousands waiting for nightfall.
Blue Callista light sparkled on the Strigoi coffins’ surfaces. She couldn’t talk to me while broken into so many pieces. I didn’t want to move for fear I’d disrupt whatever strategy she was using.
My heart must’ve stopped and restarted a hundred times.
And then I heard a crack and a hiss. I backed away, leveling my arm-cannon at the closest coffin sphere.
“Cal?” I said. “Callista?”
Like an egg split down its center, the Strigoi sphere fell open. Oily black fluid splashed into the dust, whole tubes of it writhing as they spat out their contents.
The Strigoi inside, curled the same as a sleeping baby, leapt to its feet and screamed.
I wanted to shoot it. I didn’t. A part of me had always doubted Sylpha’s claim that sunlight could actually destroy them, but when I saw its eyes, heard its scream, and witnessed its cold black skeleton crackle, I knew.
It’s dying.
It collapsed, smoking and wailing. I backed another two steps away. It was as if Hera and Zeus had seen the horrid thing and judged it unfit to exist. In mere moments the Strigoi turned to ashes. Its bones, its organs, even the twisted machines holding it together – all of it settled into a mound of black powder.
I couldn’t comprehend it.
In scientific terms, it made no sense.
“Cal?” I called her name.
She was already working on the next sphere.
It went much the same as the first one, only faster. I don’t know how or where she found a way in, but she cracked it open. From the second coffin, a second Strigoi emerged into the light. It died an even more violent death than the first, writhing on the ground, burning and screaming.
As its ashes floated to the ground, I surveyed the ruin of the cracked-open coffin.
No string reprogrammers, I saw.
What if they aren’t here?
Callista went about her work. I walked to the third coffin, the one nearest the Sabre’s nose, and watched a cloud of blue nano light invade the helpless Strigoi sphere. I allowed myself the smallest smile as several thousand of her motes gathered around a single point and vanished.
She’s in, I thought.
Nothing can keep her out.
The third sphere cracked open. I heard a howl, and I saw the Strigoi go to its knees. This one was different, I sensed. It suffered the sunlight long enough to look up at me, to glare with four eyes at me, and to smile. It even lifted its rifle, aimed it at me, and pulled the trigger. I was frozen. I hadn’t expected anything but screams and ashes. And yet, even as the horrid thing squeezed its bony finger on its weapon, the rifle decayed in the sunlight.
It wasn’t just the Strigoi that perished in the light.
Their technology died the same.
And there, sitting in the ashes of the third fallen nightmare, two silver devices, one meter long each and wrapped in silver coils, gleamed in the suns’ glow.
I stood still long after the ashes settled. Callista retook her familiar form. If it were possible for a floating blue nano-girl to look exhausted, she did. Her little shoulders sagged and her arms hung limp at her sides.
“Are you ok?” I exhaled.
She didn’t answer.
“Cal? Talk to me. Are you damaged?”
She blinked and looked up at me.
“I’m fine, Joff.”
“No you’re not. I can see it on your face.”
She shivered off some of her blue motes, and when they gathered back onto her, she looked like herself again. I didn’t trust it. I was sure she’d done it just to make me feel better.
“Did they…hurt you?” I asked.
“No.”
“Were there things inside? Like…I don’t know…counter-programs to stop you?”
“No.”
“Then what? What’s the matter?”
She floated to my side and gazed down at the ash pile with me. “Did you know,” she sighed, “inside the spheres, they talk?”
“I didn’t know,” I said.
“Well they do. There were things going on in there. I heard whispers in a language that sounded…almost human.”
I shuddered.
I knelt near the ashes and scooped the reprogrammers up. I winced, expecting the life-drain to begin again, but I didn’t feel it. I tucked one reprogrammer under each arm and backed away. In the Vezda suit, they weren’t heavy, but I could tell they would’ve been had I picked them up without my armor.
“Let’s go.” I glanced back at the Sabre. I tried not to see the pile of Sylpha’s smoldering men, but I couldn’t help it. I caught a glimpse and felt sick.
“No,” said Cal. “Not yet.”
“Forget the other ones,” I argued. “Let’s go.”
“We can’t leave any alive.” She faced me.
“They’re not alive,” I argued. “They never were. Leave them be. I can’t ask you to do it twice more. I can tell it bothers you.”
“You’re not asking me,” she said. “I’d do it whether you were here or not.”
She did it twice more. I couldn’t watch. Holding the reprogrammers, I stared off into the sky, which burned a strange shade of golden blue. I heard the coffins crack. I heard the screams as two more Strigoi turned to ash. When the final one met its end, I begun to think I was going mad.
It laughed at us.
And it said something.
“It’s done.” Callista floated up beside me.
“What did it say to us?” I asked. “Could you understand it?”
She zoomed ahead toward the Sabre. Hovering beside the pile of dead men, she uttered her command, and the ship’s belly opened.
“No,” she said to me.
And for the first time, I knew she had lied.
Twilight
“How long until the suns set?” I asked while crawling through the Sabre’s underbelly.
It wasn’t a question I really wanted the answer to.
On my hands and knees, I moved through the Sabre’s maintenance deck. The ceilings were only one meter high, and my chosen path was a web of tubes, snaking wires, and pressurized metal pipes. To squeeze myself and the string reprogrammers into the ship’s crawlspace, I’d stripped off every piece of the Vezda suit. Shoeless, wearing only my sweat-soaked tunic, I was miserable.
I remembered being back on my farm, crawling beneath my father’s tractors and repairing machinery on stifling summer days.
But the Sabre…slightly more complicated than a tractor.
“Hera sets in three hours,” Callista floated behind me. “Zeus an hour after that.”
Plenty of time, I wanted to believe.
Right?
I pushed my way through the tubes, wires, and shadows. I dragged the string reprogrammers behind me. The cold metal floor chewed into my knees. If not for Callista’s glowing body, I’d have been lost in the dark. For all the forethought Doctor Abid and his scientists had put into building the Sabre, they’d neglected to add one little detail.
A flashlight.
I searched and searched. And then I found it: the sealed metal port leading to the ship’s ejector. The Sabre used the ejector to expel gaseous wastes into deep space. Its port was about as big around as the main water supply pipe I’d installed with Dad for our farm’s irrigation system.
And it was just big enough to squeeze in two string reprogrammers.
Using the ejector to launch Sylpha’s S.R.’s had been Cal’s idea. When she’d told me, I’d been stunned. After all, I was certain all she wanted to do was fly back to the Ring and go home. Destroying a planet teeming with life-sucking aliens had never been part of her plan.
“I have questions,” I said as I spun the valve to open the ejector.
“I’m listening,” she replied.
I kept spinning, spinning, and spinning the valve. “First, how do we turn the S
.R.’s on? I don’t see an activation switch or anything.”
“The reprogrammers are remote activated. Sylpha and her scientists didn’t have time to build a proper device.” She sounded dejected. “But you’re in luck. I can slip in a few thousand of my nanos. They’ll fly with the S.R.’s to their targets, and I’ll activate them from the Sabre.”
“Wait…” I stopped working. “Doesn’t that mean you’ll lose parts of yourself?”
“Yes. Yes it does.” She crossed her arms.
“And you’re ok with that?”
She floated up beside my face. She was so close I felt the tingle of her body against my cheek.
“I want us to live, Joff.” She gave me a small smile. “And since you’ve committed to doing this…thing, I’m willing to do whatever is in my power to make it work. Be assured that if I could knock you out, take over the Sabre, and fly us home, I would.”
“I’m not feeling very loved.” I went back to spinning the ejector valve.
“Well you should,” she declared. “It’s only for love I’m doing this.”
The ejector opened with a hiss. I held my breath against the pressurized fumes roiling out. They weren’t anything that would kill me, but if they knocked me out long enough for night to fall…
…we’ll die without even taking off.
The fumes cleared. The oily stench stayed behind. Holding my breath, I slid the first S.R. into the hollow tube. Sylpha had made it far smaller than the clunky monstrosities Abid had showed me. These were sleek, light, and silver, designed to fit on an Exodus ship not much larger than the Sabre.
“Question two…” I pushed the second S.R. in. “How do we choose which strings to reprogram? I mean, I know we want to turn the suns’ hydrogen into helium, but how exactly do we tell these things to do that?”
“Easy.” Callista smiled. “It’s already done. It was Sylpha’s plan from the beginning, to kill Zeus and Hera. And just so you know, I already put pieces of myself into each one.”
“Already? I didn’t see—”
“I did it while you were talking.” She shrugged.
I let out a bottomless sigh. The scientist in me wanted to ask more, but the exhaustion in me didn’t care.
To be truthful, most of the rest of me didn’t care either.
I was hungry.
My body hurt.
I needed sleep so bad I’d begun to hallucinate the Strigoi lurking in the shadows.
I wasn’t sure any longer what Abid had trained me for, whether to save Earth from a ghastly demise, exterminate Frost and her people, or even test the Vezda suit against the Strigoi.
What mattered was that the training he’d forced me to do was all that kept me going.
Ironic, I thought with a grimace.
I crawled out of the Sabre’s underbelly and stood with a grunt in the hall leading to the cockpit. I touched my arms and neck with my fingers. I was dizzy, and some part of me believed the Strigoi had drained more of my life force than Cal had been able to stop.
“You ok?” She touched my arm with her hand, as if she were strong enough to prop me up.
“I’m scared,” I admitted.
“Me too,” she said.
“Do you get scared?” I asked. “I mean like really scared?”
“Happiness. Love. Sadness. Fear,” she said. “They wanted me to be as human as possible. I give credit to Doctor Tiana. I think if Abid had his way, I’d have been a little less…emotional.”
Together, we went into the cockpit. I dragged the Vezda suit behind me, and Callista floated ahead. If she’d lost a few thousand of her glowing blue pieces to each S.R., I couldn’t tell. She looked as beautiful as ever.
Maybe we should turn around.
On the Ring, we could live out my entire life.
We could go home.
Or anywhere.
I slumped into the cockpit chair and rubbed the weariness from my eyes.
“I need to eat,” I muttered.
“I know.” Cal sat on my shoulder. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea. I think we should leave now.”
Ok, I thought, but didn’t say.
Fine. We’ll do this.
Are we cut out to be murderers?
How come Sylpha didn’t want to send a few of her people with us?
We could’ve saved at least six.
I don’t want to know.
I keyed in a sequence to prep the Sabre for launch. To make sure the Strigoi hadn’t booby-trapped the ship, I tapped my palm against the screen, which initiated a swift diagnostic scan.
“Quantum engine, online,” the ship’s voice informed me.
“Weapons systems, active.”
“Scanning, life-support, gravity-control, and mechanical systems, all at full capacity.”
The computer paused.
“Cloaking system, deactivated,” she announced.
I hesitated before keying in anything else. Making a face, I looked at Cal.
“Should cloaking be off?” I asked.
“No.” Cal floated down to the terminal. “It should always be on. In fact, I don’t believe there’s a way to turn it off even if we wanted to.”
“Ring,” I asked the computer, “is the cloaking system damaged? Or did someone turn it off?”
She chirped back at me. “Cloaking system was remotely deactivated five minutes and thirty-three seconds after our disconnection from the Ring ship. It cannot be reactivated without the password.”
“Password? What password?” My face turned red. “If we’re not cloaked at least a little bit, the Strigoi will spot us the moment we hit orbit. We’ll be carved up like a leaf in a combine.”
The computer didn’t answer.
Callista stood on the control screen and keyed in commands at a dizzying rate. I sat back and watched, more than a little lost in the rhythm of her movement.
“Joff,” she said after several minutes, “there’s something here.”
“Something?”
“Well…” Her voice cracked. “It’s as if…it’s like…there’s a problem. Not only is cloaking shut off, but it’s like it was never on. We were traceable the whole time. What’s more is that I think I found a glitch in the cloaking subroutine.”
I sat up. I was probably too tired to care, but I tried to pretend.
“Tell me about the glitch,” I said.
“It’s a beacon.” She looked up at me. “It’s broadcasting a signal on several hidden wavelengths.”
I may have been exhausted, but I knew what had happened. I sank all the way back into my chair. In my delirium, I wore the stupidest smile imaginable.
“He knew we couldn’t do it,” I said.
“Abid?” asked Cal.
“Yeah. He knew even with all my training, all my weapons, and all the Sabre’s power, we’d never be able to crack into the underworld and kill them all. He said Earth had sent ninety-two others to finish this mission, and none had succeeded.”
“And?” Cal’s eyes were wide.
“And so he figured the Strigoi would do what I couldn’t. He led them here on purpose.”
“Joff, that’s—”
“More likely than not,” I finished. “You’ll see. When we take off, the Strigoi ships will be on us immediately.”
“Maybe not if we—”
“Head back for the Ring?” I laughed. “No, they’ll want the S.R.’s. No way they’ll risk Earth stealing such powerful technology.”
I could see the thoughts stirring in her. Her whole body shimmered with it. I finally saw the difference in her after she’d given up several thousands of her nanos. Her light was dimmer, and every few seconds, she flickered.
I didn’t dare mention it.
I didn’t want to hurt her.
“We’ve come all this way, Cal.” I sat up in the cockpit chair.
“I know.”
“The mission Abid gave us was a lie from the start. But it turns out we have a chance to do it anyway.”
Cal
closed her eyes.
“Let’s go,” I said. “Let’s save a few billion lives.”
I keyed in a final sequence. I felt the world move, the quantum engine reeducating the universe around us. And, if only by accident, I spotted my old teddy bear sitting on the floor. Little Alpo was looking right at me. Seeing him reminded me of Mom, Dad, and Aly. And remembering my family made me angry.
I’m coming for you, I swore at the Strigoi.
In less than a minute, we entered Ebes’ near orbit. I wasn’t tired anymore, though my muscles were strung tight to my aching bones. I was sharp again, ready for a fight. I’d armed the Sabre’s leech missiles, which never missed, and which I hoped would stick to any Strigoi ships and pull them into hundreds of tiny pieces.
“I can’t detect any enemy ships,” Cal hovered right beside me.
“They’re out there,” I said. “I know it.”
I swung the Sabre around and aimed our nose for the dark chasm between Hera and Zeus. I didn’t need the ship’s guidance systems for this flight. All I needed to do was build up speed, aim for the stars, and eject the S.R.’s.
Cal had suggested the alternative of using the S.R.’s to bombard the Strigoi planet on one side with the hope of tidally unlocking it. The idea was that the planet’s dark side would rotate toward the two suns, thereby burning all the Strigoi away.
Too slow, I’d thought.
Let’s see if they can survive two supernovas.
I was stunned to escape Ebes without a fight. My eyes were locked onto the console screen, searching for Strigoi behind us. We tore away from the dying orange planet, screaming through the void at speeds no other farmer boy had ever dreamed of going. I said a prayer in my thoughts for Ebes and all the people on it.
She asked me to do this.
She’s wanted to make this sacrifice for a long, long time.
When Hera and Zeus die, Ebes will rest in peace.
I saw a dark sphere in the distance. I hadn’t anticipated flying so close to the Strigoi world, but it was unavoidable. I used the console to zoom in on its surface, which looked exactly like Sylpha had shown me in the dream maker.
Black towers breached a cloudless night sky, taller than any structure humanity had ever conceived. Oceans of pale lights dotted an inky ocean of under-dwellings. Catacombs surged in lines unbroken for thousands of kilometers across the surface.
Darkness Between the Stars Page 21
