Then they flowed apart, and the Marilyn emerged into space, and they saw the alien ship no more.
On other days, they saw other ships. One massive ship, nearly the width of the entire wormhole, was made of a flowing sail held between four points, a great glider of the cosmos. Another ship was a flying terrarium, and an alien forest grew within, home to colorful birds. One ship looked like a dragonfly, its four wings coated with solar panels. Other ships were giant bubbles full of water, and swirling aliens with no physical forms, merely swirls of liquid, lived within. One ship looked like a giant conch, spiked and shimmering. It reminded Marco of the conch the ghostly, masked girl had given him on Haven, which he still kept among his possessions.
"I wish we could talk to them," Ben-Ari said wistfully, sitting at the bar as they traveled toward the next wormhole. "These are unknown species. Humanity has never ventured this far. Our galaxy, once thought to be mostly just emptiness, is teeming with life." She sighed. "My father would have loved to be here."
"I wish Addy were here too," Marco said. "She'd have loved this." He wiped a tear from his eye. "When we save her, I'm bringing her back here. Our little vacation among the stars."
Ben-Ari smiled—a smile of such sadness and warmth that Marco nearly cried. She placed her hand on his.
"I will do everything I can to bring her back, Marco. I will not rest until we find Addy. I promise you."
He nodded. He found himself unable to speak. They entered another wormhole, shooting forward through streams of light.
Three months after fleeing the devastation on Haven, the ESS Marilyn emerged from the last wormhole.
They reached the end of the Tree of Light.
They floated through space, three thousand light-years from Earth. They had crossed just a small fraction of the Milky Way galaxy, barely even leaving their galactic neighborhood. But it was the farthest any human had ever traveled.
The crew gathered on the bridge, stared forward, and tears filled their eyes.
"It's beautiful," Marco whispered. "Look at it. And I think it's looking at us too!"
It rose before them, as large as a full moon as seen from Earth. The Cat's Eye Nebula. A great eye in the sky, blue and silver, shimmering with light.
"This is the landmark," Lailani said, though her voice sounded strangely flat. "According to what we studied in the Oort Cloud, the Ghost Fleet should be behind it."
Excitement grew in Marco. "So let's go! We're almost there! We'll find the fleet. We'll find help for Earth. Come on! Kemi, what are you waiting for?"
They were all staring at him, silent. Kemi bit her lip.
"What?" Marco said.
Kemi looked back at the Cat's Eye and sighed. "Marco, it's still a light-year away."
"That's . . ." Marco winced. "That's still very far without a working azoth engine, isn't it?"
"It would take centuries," Kemi said.
"But . . . the wormholes!" Marco pointed at the glowing tree Keewaji had drawn. "The Tree of Light! Can't we—"
"We've reached the end of the line, buddy boy," Lailani said. "This is the last stop. It took us three thousand light-years within days. An azoth engine would have required months to cross the same distance. The Tree of Light took us almost the entire way there." She leaned back in her seat. "And we're stuck on the last light-year. Without an azoth engine, we ain't going nowhere."
"So what do we do?" Kemi said.
Lailani raised her eyebrows. "Play poker and drink milkshakes until we die?"
"No," Marco said. He rose from his seat, stared at the nebula ahead, and nodded. "We hitchhike."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The convoy rolled out: an armored truck, five motorcycles, and three vans. Fifty rebels, armed with rifles, handguns, and grenades. They left the Ark behind, rattling into the snowy wilderness.
We'll find the others, Addy thought. We'll find White Lion and his rebels. We'll build an army.
She rode at the lead on her motorcycle, her rifle slung across her back, her handgun on her thigh. The cold wind whipped her face, flapped her hockey jersey, and ruffled her short blond hair—whatever had grown back after the marauders had shaved it off. Steve rode at her side on another motorcycle, wearing an old leather jacket and bandanna. Jethro drove the armored truck. The gruff old graybeard wore a homemade peg leg engraved with dragons, and he still wore his tactical vest and camouflage pants, one of the pant legs cut off.
We don't look like much of an army, Addy thought. But the HDF shattered. We, the rebels, the misfits—we're still fighting.
The sun was high and bright but the day was cold. The forest swayed alongside the road, branches coated with ice. Cars lay dead on the highway and along the roadsides, and they navigated around them. Several times, they had to stop and shove cars off the road before they could keep going. Fifty kilometers north of the Ark, they reached a massive cobweb that rose ahead, blocking the road, and ten marauders leaped down and scuttled toward them.
"Fire!" Addy shouted, sending forth a hailstorm of bullets.
The other rebels needed no encouragement. Bullets and grenades flew. Three marauders made it past the inferno. One lashed out a web, caught a man, and yanked him off his motorcycle; he died between the beast's jaws. Another marauder vaulted toward the armored truck and cracked its windshield. Jethro knocked it off with bullets, then crushed the alien under the tires.
One marauder came racing across the road toward Addy, and all her bullets could not stop him. She roared forward on her motorcycle, skirted around the alien, then spun back toward it. They charged back at each other like ancient jousters. As the marauder leaped, Addy raised her rifle, piercing an eye with her bayonet. The creature knocked her off her bike as it died. She tore her hockey jersey, but her body armor absorbed most of the impact, and she emerged without broken bones. A few bullets into the remaining eyes finished the job.
They burned the cobweb. They buried three dead rebels. They rode on.
Three dead, Addy thought as she raced down the highway on her motorcycle. Three lives. Three entire worlds. You better be worth it, White Lion.
Still that call on the radio bugged her. The voice of White Lion, familiar and troubling, taunting her in her dreams. The man had claimed to have over a hundred fighters holed up in a military base, that they had more weapons than hands to wield them. They had agreed to join forces, but as Addy rode onward, her anxiety rose.
Three dead. Maybe more along the way. And I can't shake that bad feeling.
They rolled along the hills, and they saw more webs on the trees. Five more marauders leaped toward them. It took a dozen grenades to knock them back. The encounters grew more frequent the closer they got to their destination, the military base where White Lion and his rebels waited. Soon, marauders were attacking along every kilometer of road, and bullets rang across the countryside.
Finally Addy saw it in the distance. A concrete complex, engulfed in barbed wire. Once an HDF base, it now housed White Lion's Rebellion. Addy could see guards patrolling its fence and manning its towers.
Let my Resistance and their Rebellion unite, Addy thought. I'll find every militia, every surviving HDF unit, every survivalist in the wild, and I will lead the greatest uprising the world has known.
They were almost at the base when shrieks rose, and a hundred marauders leaped from the trees toward the convoy.
For an instant her heart stopped.
Fuck.
Then Addy shouted.
"Onward!" She raised her rifle, roaring forward on her bike. "Break through them! To the base!"
Bullets flew. Grenades exploded. The marauders leaped everywhere. A stray bullet ricocheted off the asphalt and hit Addy's motorcycle, and she careened off the road, flew from the bike, and fell into the snow. Her helmet banged against an oak root.
She leaped up with her assault rifle firing. A marauder squealed before her. The creatures were everywhere. Addy kept shooting, couldn't kill the marauder before her. The beast reared, expo
sing its hardened belly, and lashed a claw toward her. Addy parried with her barrel. She fell back. It lurched toward her, jaws snapping. She pulled her leg back an instant before it could bite it off.
"Addy . . ." the creature hissed. "We know your name. My master much desires to eat you . . ."
"Eat this," Addy said, lobbing a grenade into its mouth.
Not her cleverest quip, perhaps, but it did the job. She ran, leaped downhill, and covered her head. The explosion raised fountains of snow, rock, and shattered marauder.
Addy rose, ears ringing, and stumbled back onto the road. A hundred marauders were still there, surrounding the convoy.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, Addy thought. Every instinct in her body screamed to flee, to vanish into the forest.
But Steve was still fighting. Jethro was still fighting. The whole damn world was fighting, and Addy wouldn't run. She had never run from a fight. Not in the army. Not in the tunnels of Haven. And not now.
She raised her rifle. She fired. She shouted.
That is all I am now. Tears flowed down her frozen cheeks as hot casings flew around her. A warrior. A killer. A machine. That's what they made me. That is how I will die. At least I will die on my homeworld.
She was almost out of bullets, prepared to go down fighting with her bayonet, when the helicopter roared above.
Wind blasted her. Bullets stormed down from the helicopter, tearing marauders apart. A second, then a third helicopter joined it. Marauders shrieked and died in the hailstorm. Twenty Grizzly-class armored vehicles charged up from the military base ahead, and men stood in their turrets, firing machine guns. More marauders fell. The surviving aliens turned tail, only for the helicopters to chase them and slay them on the hills.
Addy stood panting, bleeding in the snow, her ears ringing. Steve walked up to her, coated in sweat and marauder blood.
"Well, I'd say we found White Lion's Rebellion," he said, grinning. "Fuck yeah!"
But Addy only stared. A chill ran down her spine. Her heart sank.
No. Oh God, no.
For the first time, she saw the symbols painted onto the armored vehicles and helicopters, the flags fluttering from the base ahead.
"Iron crosses," she whispered.
Steve frowned. "What's that mean?"
Addy took a deep breath. "It means we're fucked."
One of the armored vehicles rolled to a halt before her. The door opened, and a beefy man emerged, his head shaved. He carried a riot shield with a white lion emblazoned across it. An iron cross was tattooed onto his forehead, and a swastika was stitched onto his leather overcoat.
"I knew your voice was familiar!" he boomed, a grin splitting his face. He stretched out his hand in a Nazi salute. "Addy Linden! Hail to the heroes!"
She remembered him now. Of course she did. He and his goons had rallied to her cause outside the library two years ago. She could still hear their voices from that memory. Hail to the heroes! Earth Power! Hail Hunt!
"The White Lion," she said to him, unable to hide her disgust. "Hunt."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
"Hitchhike?" Lailani gave him a sidelong glare. "Are you mental?"
Marco shrugged. "Why not? We're parked next to the last station of a galactic subway network, aren't we? We've seen other ships traveling the tubes. So we just wait. Somebody will show up—with a working warp drive, ideally—who's traveling to the Cat's Eye Nebula."
"And what, we just stick our thumbs out the porthole?" Lailani said.
"I was thinking more along the lines of a sexy leg in a fishnet stocking," Marco said.
"Well, then you better shave that leg of yours," Lailani said, "because the only thing I'm doing with mine is kicking you."
They waited.
A day passed. Another day.
Nobody else emerged from the wormhole behind them.
Marco spent his time reading, but he found himself unable to focus. He tried to work on Le Kill, to delve into the cyberpunk world of neon lights and graffiti, of evil corporations in decaying cities, and of the heroine Tomiko with her magical kabuki mask and her quick katana. But his thoughts kept returning to Earth so far away. As they had dinner one day—packages of meatloaf, peas, and lima beans—he tried not to think about their dwindling food and water, how the frozen burritos and pizzas were already gone, how they'd soon be forced to tighten their belts.
If we can't reach the Ghost Fleet, it won't matter, he thought. Nothing will.
On the third day, Kemi sighed. "I'm ready to wear that fishnet stocking if it'll help."
"It won't," Marco said, "though I'd love to see it anyway."
"Get us home alive," Kemi said, "and I'll dress up as Slave Leia for you."
"I'll get out and push," Marco said.
It was another day before a ship finally emerged from the wormhole. At least, they thought it was a ship. It was formed from a dozen white disks, each engraved with a red rune, that spun around one another, casting beams of light back and forth. Lailani tried signaling the alien vessel, but it vanished into warped space without a word. The next day, yet another ship emerged, a gleaming rocket lined with portholes, its wings denoting atmospheric capabilities. It seemed promising until it flew nearby, and they realized it was the size of a cigar. A third ship emitted so much radiation that they had to blast away as fast as they could; it was like flying near a miniature star.
"What are the odds we'll find a flying Taco Shack?" Lailani said.
"Not good," said Marco.
"Hey, this is a flying ice cream parlor, so it's possible!"
After a week of floating here, eating meatloaf after meatloaf—the only meals still left—they began debating going back into the wormholes.
"All right, how's this?" Marco said on the eighth day of hovering uselessly. "We don't have much fuel or food left. Soon we'll be down to eating the condiments, then the cushions. So we backtrack. We return into the Tree of Light. When I first arrived on Haven, I didn't know the city. So I took the subway and stepped out at each stop, rose to the surface, and looked around. We do the same thing here. We hop between the wormholes until we find a friendly planet—somewhere to land, gather food, maybe find a civilization that can lend us a starship with a working warp drive. The odds of finding such a civilization are small, but they might be better than waiting here, failing to hitchhike, until we starve."
Lailani shook her head. "It won't work. The wormholes never exit too close to a star. They'll hop five hundred light-years at a time, but then stop a light-year away from any world. Probably they can't work with a star's gravitation field nearby. Anywhere we emerge, we'll face the same problem—that last light-year to cross, impossible without an azoth engine. It's like taking a subway in a wheelchair, and every station has a staircase and no ramp."
Frustrated, Marco turned toward Keewaji. The little alien, over the past week, had aged beyond recognition. He could now barely walk, even with his cane, and his limbs were twisted. His beard flowed to the floor.
The poor guy will die of old age before we reach our destination, Marco thought.
"Keewaji, any old legends in your land?" he said. "Any ideas?"
The Nandaki shook his hoary head. He spoke in a hoarse whisper. "I am sorry, master. I have failed you. I did not think that I would lead you to this dead end." He wept. "I am so sorry."
They all looked at one another.
"Are we going to die here?" Kemi whispered.
They were all silent. They all knew the answer. They dared not speak it.
That night, Marco lay on his cot in silent despair. The others slept around him in their bunks, but Marco could find no rest.
Yes, we're going to die here, he thought. We're going to starve to death, so close to the end of our journey.
Claws seemed to clutch at his chest. The old pain returned, the pain that had driven him to doctors again and again on Haven. The pain that hadn't left him since Corpus seven years ago. The pain that even now brought cold sweat to his skin and spun his head.
/>
And as bad as starving to death was, he knew that Addy was suffering far worse. He thought back to their times together. To their first meeting at the planetarium. To taking her into his library after her parents had died. To their good times at boot camp, to their hard times on Haven, to how they would argue and fight but always remain best friends. He knew that they would forever love each other, forever be there for each other.
But how can I be there for you now, Addy? How can I help you when I'm stuck halfway across the galaxy?
He thought back to their two years in Haven. How he had descended into a pit of addictions and trauma. How he had hurt Addy, had almost driven her away. How, in his spiral of self-destruction, he had nearly lost his best friend—had nearly lost his own life.
"I'm sorry, Addy," he whispered. "I'm sorry for those years. For how I treated you. And I'm sorry, Anisha. I'm sorry for what I did to you. I'm sorry, Terri. I'm sorry, Liz. I'm sorry, Ria." The women in Haven, women he had loved, some for a night, some eternally. Anisha. Terri. Liz. Ria. He didn't know how many others. "I'm sorry, all those I hurt because I was so hurt."
And here on this ship, deep in the darkness, Marco felt lost again. Lost like he had been on Haven. Trapped like he had felt trapped in his old apartment, the storm all around him. Again, as he had on the rooftop, he faced death. And this time not his death alone but the death of his friends too, of his species, and the pain seemed too great to bear.
I was lost then in darkness, he thought. I stood above a storm, the shadows all around me, my death looming below. And she came to me.
His mind returned to that night. To the figure emerging from the mist on the rooftop, clad in a tattered, ashy dress, her black hair flowing in the wind, blown back from her kabuki mask. To the clawed hand, a hand with three large fingers, that held out the shimmering conch.
A gift from the cosmic ocean, she had said. May it shine in your deepest darkness.
She had saved him that night, whoever she had been. She had given him a beautiful, glowing gift, and he had stepped back from the abyss. Now Marco faced an abyss again. Now again he faced death, and the darkness again wrapped all around him, endless, enveloping.
Earth Shadows (Earthrise Book 5) Page 25
