Darkness Between the Stars

by J. Edward Neill

  Before Hera’s terrible death consumed the entire world, I glimpsed the Strigoi towers turning to ash. I imagined the horrid creatures writhing in the light all the way from the highest of their towers and down into their lowest catacombs, into which Hera poured their doom.

  And then it was gone. Most of the planet burned away, while the charred remnant was flung out of its orbit, spiraling into the darkness between the stars.

  I hope it hurt. I smiled a cruel smile.

  A lot.

  I switched off the Sabre’s scopes. I didn’t need to see anything more. A few minutes after annihilating the Strigoi, Hera swallowed Ebes. I couldn’t see it, but I knew. I thought of Frost, of the children, of the hard lives they all had lived. Every one of them had survived under the Strigoi shadow since birth.

  And then I’d come along.

  And doomed them all.

  * * *

  Two hours later, I awoke.

  In the deep black beyond Hera, Ebes, and the Strigoi, I was safe. The Sabre, even with its gravity controls damaged, had begun to spiral down to speeds far less absurd. I looked at my position on the console.

  Nearing the edge of the solar system, I knew.

  I could fly like this for years.

  For decades.

  For a century.

  “No,” I said aloud. “I’ll go to the Ring.”

  I tapped away at the console. It was a simple matter. In moments, I programmed a path back to the Ring. It would be far slower than what I was accustomed to. With the Sabre’s wounds, I had to decrease my speed slowly.

  I guess I could do it fast, I mused.

  And see what a mess I could make of myself.

  But as it turned out, I wasn’t ready to die. I didn’t know what I hoped to accomplish by returning to the Ring. I didn’t care about going home. I didn’t feel a desire to see my family. I wasn’t dead, but I wasn’t alive either.

  Like the Strigoi.

  Maybe my one hope was that going back and spending a long time alone would cleanse me of all I’d done.

  Maybe, I thought.

  Maybe not.

  More out of curiosity than a true need to know, I flipped the vid screen on and initiated a scan of the solar system behind me. Within minutes, the images returned to the Sabre. Everything was as I expected:

  Hera had destroyed herself. Spaghetti strands of her shattered core floated through a great blue nebula. In death she was radiant and beautiful, but impossible to look at directly. Her light was the brightest thing I’d ever seen, or ever would see.

  Ebes and the Strigoi world were gone. The Sabre’s scopes found no trace of them. No rocks. No dust. I looked and saw nothing. For as much pain as I’d wished upon the Strigoi, I hoped Frost and her people had suffered none. I only wished she’d sent some of her people with me.

  It’s going to get lonely out here.

  Zeus was gone, though not destroyed. The gravity expelled during Hera’s death had ejected him out into the void. The Sabre found him trailing away at more than a million kilometers per minute. In a few days, he’d be just another star roaming the emptiness, a wanderer without a home.

  I sank back into the chair. My empty belly complained. My eyelids threatened to fall shut and never reopen. I was lonely already. Everything hurt. Cal had saved me from the Strigoi draining, but in my heart I knew they’d damaged me in a way from which I’d never recover.

  I’ll go to the Ring. I’ll eat. I’ll sleep.

  And I’ll think about what I’ve done.

  * * *

  I awoke once more. I didn’t remember falling asleep, but I felt the impressions my dreams had left on me. I’d felt rain pattering on my shoulders, and through a grey fog I’d heard a voice calling my name. I’d walked through golden fields to find it, and I’d smelled wood burning.

  I knew what it was I dreamed of.

  Earth.

  My farm.

  My mother cooking dinner.

  Cal calling my name.

  The Sabre was still two days from the Ring. I knew I couldn’t sleep the whole time away. I stood up, staggered for a moment, and then knelt to the floor. Something had tumbled beneath the cockpit chair.

  Alpo.

  I picked him up. He’d been there the whole time, watching stars die and worlds collapse.

  “You’ve seen everything,” I said to him. “And now it’s just you and me again. Just like when we were kids. Remember?”

  To my surprise, he didn’t answer.

  With my one-armed bear dangling from my fingers, I wandered around the ship. I was aimless, drifting like a winter wind across an empty field. I found something to eat, and as I chewed on the bland wafers, I walked in circles.

  I’d never been without a purpose before.

  It hurt more than everything else.

  Happy now? I thought of Abid. I’ve killed more things than anyone who ever lived.

  Is that what you wanted?

  While wandering through the cockpit, I came upon the Vezda suit. It lay in a heap on the floor. I kicked at it, and I saw the mark the Strigoi had left on the helmet, the colors peeling off the arm cannon from all the shots I’d fired. I couldn’t help but wonder, did Sylpha tell the truth about Wendall? Was he really innocent?

  I’d never know.

  I circled the cockpit one final time, and then stood behind my chair.

  Maybe…

  I don’t know…

  Maybe I should put myself into the hypo-chamber.

  Maybe I’ll dream for a few years.

  Maybe I’ll wake up and want to go home.

  Maybe not.

  I stood there for time untold, weighing my options.

  If I returned to the Ring, I could go anywhere. I could fly to systems unknown and explore. I could search for other Exodus settlements, even though Sylpha had been convinced they were all gone.

  I could fly back to Earth, I laughed inside. Take the Sabre down and blow up Dr. Abid’s mountain.

  Just for fun.

  Break the Silence

  Time was no longer something to which I paid attention.

  It might have been weeks, months, or even years.

  Over a long, slow season of my existence, I came to remember what it was to be alone. I became a ritual creature, repeating things every day until sleep and wakefulness were the same. At first, I savored it. My mind began to heal from all the things I had done, and my sorrow changed into something resembling wisdom. I remembered words Dad had once spoke to me, about how it was good for the soul to be with oneself, about the understanding that can only come with utter solitude.

  I believed it. At least for a while. But after what felt like eons of living on the Ring, eating every meal alone, reading all the many books they’d uploaded into the computer, and exercising to the point of daily exhaustion, I no longer cared about the enlightenment my father had spoken of.

  I no longer cared about anything.

  I strayed out of peaceful solitude and into a dark, lonely pattern. I found myself walking in circles through the Ring’s eight pods, gazing into the deep without end. I hadn’t ignited the ship’s engine, and so I was stationary except for the slow spin needed to maintain gravity. With every revolution the Ring made, I saw the great, ghastly nebula left behind by Hera’s death. In interstellar terms, it was a stone’s throw away. I felt at times I could reach out the window and touch the blue tendrils of dust illuminated by the pale, pulsing light of Hera’s tomb.

  I knew what being so close meant.

  I hadn’t checked into the Ring’s health station to confirm it, but I was sure the dying star’s radiation had affected me. Abid had once told me the Sabre and the Ring blocked more than ninety-nine percent of the deadly particles knifing their way through space. And yet, the overload from Hera’s annihilation had surely broken through.

  Either that, or my mind is breaking all on its own.

  I considered firing the Ring’s quantum engine. The ship had maps of other systems, other places I
could explore. It even had diagrams of systems suspected of harboring other Exodus planets. All I would’ve had to do is key in the coordinates, drop myself into hypo-sleep, and drowse away the years.

  I could have, but I didn’t.

  Nor did I really know why.

  And then one day, with my belly full of the same soup I’d eaten for months, I decided to go nosing around the Sabre. I hadn’t returned to it since docking with the Ring. Being convinced that my body had already been plundered by radiation, I had it in my head to take the Sabre for a journey into the nebula. I wanted to scatter stardust with the ship’s wings, to fly through the beautiful blue light just like Mom had driven our old car through the grass between home and Donva.

  Barefooted, wearing a tunic I’d not taken off for days, I set foot onto the Sabre’s cold black floors. I saw Alpo right where I’d left him sitting in my chair. He had the same expression as always.

  “You want to take her out for a spin?” I asked the little bear. “How many one-armed teddies get to fly through stardust? Not many, I bet.”

  Alpo looked up at me as if to say, “Sure thing, kid. I’ll drive.” And I laughed to myself.

  Against a wall, I found the Vezda suit. It lay in a heap, piled up like a load of forgotten laundry. I considered putting it on to see if it still fit, but instead kicked a tiny cloud of dust off its shoulders and decided against it.

  No Strigoi left to blast.

  No Wendalls, either.

  Why bother?

  With one last circuit around the cockpit, I swiped my old chair clean and sank down into it. The leather crackled beneath me, resisting my presence. It was at that exact moment, just as I stretched out my fingers to awaken the console, I heard something behind me.

  What the—?

  I looked at Alpo, sitting on the armrest, as if he’d made the noise.

  “No? Not you?” I asked him.

  No. Not me. His blank stare replied.

  I rose from the chair and walked to the cockpit’s rear. I hadn’t turned any of the lights on, and so the shadows were heavy, broken only by the blue glow of Hera’s nebula seeping through the Sabre’s front window. I knelt in the darkness and listened.

  I was sure I’d heard something.

  Or am I going crazy?

  Wait. There it is again.

  Is someone crying?

  Behind the panel sealing off the Sabre’s back chambers, I heard it. The sobs were softer than whispers, echoing faintly against the hard metal.

  “Who’s there?” I asked.

  No one answered.

  I flexed my fingers and pried at the black panel. The seams were too tight. I couldn’t get between them. I had the notion to use the Vezda’s arm-cannon to blast it off, but checked my foolishness in a heartbeat.

  I paused. And I heard the soft sobs again.

  “Who’s in there?” I asked. “Am I going mad? You’re not in my head, are you?”

  I opened the storage chamber to the left, but found no way in. I hurried to the hypo-chamber on the right, and with one touch knew the walls were sealed tight.

  “How?” I felt my heart race. “How do I find you? How did you get back there?”

  I thought I was going crazy.

  And then I remembered. When I’d gone into the Sabre’s underbelly to find the piping to put the S.R.’s in, I’d used a tool to pry an opening. Scrambling, nearly falling over myself, I crawled down the hall outside the cockpit and found the tool right where I’d left it so many months ago. It reminded me of the tools I’d used back on my farm, sharp and flat on one end, just the kind of thing I’d need to open the panel.

  I pried and pried. I worked every seam on every one of the panel’s sides. When the sobs went silent, I panicked, fearing I’d lost my mind.

  Or maybe I hurt it, I worried.

  Maybe I killed whatever was crying.

  With one last twist of the tool, the black panel clattered to the floor. I’d done a fine job of ruining it; its sides were curled up like burnt paper.

  And there, nestled in the shadows amid bundles of wires, I saw a soft blue light.

  And I remembered.

  She’d stopped sobbing once she realized I was trying to free her. With the panel torn away, she looked up at me. She was only a fraction of her former size, maybe a tenth of what she’d been. Her light was dim. She reminded me of a candle, flickering and wavering in the dark.

  “Cal?”

  She floated out and hovered before my eyes. She looked at me as a child might. If she’d truly sobbed only moments before, her face was now full of wonder. It was as if she was meeting me for the very first time.

  “Do you remember me?” I asked her.

  She looked to the floor, then up again. A tiny smile broke on her tiny lips.

  “I remember.” Her voice was but a whisper.

  And then it was me who sobbed.

  * * *

  Over the next weeks, Callista became herself again.

  It wasn’t easy, but together we worked at it, repairing her amnesia one memory at a time.

  I learned what she’d done to save me, and how she’d left a tiny part of herself behind to love me.

  “I had to take most of my core memories and skills with me to the Strigoi ship,” she explained one day as I sat on my bed. “I calculated the tenth of me I left behind would need a defragmentation period of about two months. Turns out it was longer.”

  “How long?” I asked. I still hadn’t tracked the time since I’d returned to the Ring.

  “Nine months and seventeen days.” She looked sad. “And even now I don’t have all my memories…or my abilities. I can’t split up like I used to. All my files of weapons, tech, and physics are gone.”

  “It’s ok,” I consoled her. “You kept the important things.”

  “Oh, you mean how much I like you?” She smiled.

  “Not exactly,” I laughed. “I mean your sense of humor.”

  It was true. She hadn’t lost everything. She still crossed her arms whenever she got flustered, which was twice as often as before. She still huffed, puffed, and gave me stern looks. Whatever she’d done in the split seconds before her other nine-tenths had destroyed the Strigoi ships, she’d done it well. If anything, I liked her more than ever.

  One day, while on my walk around the Ring, she floated up beside me. I hardly noticed her at first. She was a little blue firefly, and with Hera’s deep blue light shining through the window, it took me a moment to realize she was near.

  “You startled me,” I admitted once I saw her.

  Cal’s beauty wasn’t diminished, but she did have a childlike glow about her. Her eyes were full of a curiosity she hadn’t had before. She wasn’t exactly forgetful, but sometimes I had to remind her of things she’d already relearned.

  “We did that.” I pointed at the window, beyond which Hera’s nebula stretched into forever. “Remember?”

  “I remember.” she nodded. “You fired both devices into Hera. When she went supernova, she knocked Zeus right out of the system.”

  “Couldn’t have done it without you,” I added.

  “I know,” she laughed.

  We moved in silence for a time. And then, after we rounded the Ring a second full circuit, I asked the question I’d been waiting to ask.

  “I know you probably can’t remember.” I slowed. “And maybe you really were telling the truth that day. But I wonder if…maybe…well…”

  “If what?” She sat on my shoulder.

  “When we were on Ebes and you were cracking into the Strigoi coffin spheres, they said things. Or at least, that’s what you told me. So I wonder if maybe you could tell me what they said to you. If you remember, that is.”

  Even in her tiny body, I sensed her emotion. She flitted off my shoulder and wandered in the space before my eyes. The Ring rotated away from Hera’s nebula, which draped us in shadow. Cal’s fragile light was all I could see.

  “I remember,” she said. “And I remember what they
said to you while they chased us toward the blue star.”

  “The same things?” I needed to know. “Did they say the same words inside their coffins as they did to me in the Sabre?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No. They said different things in the coffins. I think.”

  I shivered. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know any more. I’d spent the last nine and a half months trying to forget the Strigoi. And now I could feel them again, draining me even after their destruction.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “It was a riddle, I think.” Cal hesitated. “I’m not sure.”

  “Are you lying?” I made a stern face. “You don’t have to, you know. Just tell me, no matter how horrible.”

  “Joff, I’m really not sure.” She looked wounded. “Their words were in the language the Frost woman’s people used. I hadn’t fully translated it at the time. Actually, I still haven’t, nor will I ever be able to.”

  I exhaled. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to know. It was almost as if I already knew what they’d said.

  But that’s impossible, I told myself.

  I was about to give up asking when Cal fluttered away, said something to herself I couldn’t hear, and came back to me.

  “I think they said something like…and I don’t know this saying, but I think they said, ‘an eye for an eye.’ They said other things, too. But ‘an eye for an eye,’ was the one I understood for certain.”

  I walked ahead of her. I was sure I didn’t want to hear another word. Cal didn’t know what an eye for an eye meant.

  But I did.

  The Last Earthling

  For three months after reuniting with Cal, we lived in peace.

  Considering we existed alone on a space station trillions of kilometers from Earth, our lives were easy. We spent our time roaming the Ring, inventing absurd stories to amuse each other, preparing outlandish—and sometimes disgusting meals, and plotting trips to parts of the galaxy no human or tiny blue girl had ever been.

  None of which we’ll ever actually go to, I thought.

  We reached an equilibrium, she and I. She grew sharper and more like the old Cal, and I found a comfort with my life I’d never really known. I grew a beard, a long, long beard. I made dyes using the food stores and used them to paint images on my clothes, on the floors, and on the white crates in the storage pods. I dictated stories and journal entries into the Ring’s computer. Some were true tales of what I’d done, while others were complete fiction. I didn’t say during any of my dictations which stories were which. I rather liked the idea of someone finding the Ring long after I was gone and being totally confused.