The Oceans between Stars

by Kevin Emerson

  The blast wave from the warheads had put the skim drone in a slow spin, and now the huge fiery eye of Centauri A slid into Liam’s view directly in front of them, its orange light bathing his face.

  Liam glanced at Phoebe, slumped on the seat beside him, breathing weakly, making tiny clouds of vapor in the rapidly cooling cabin.

  This was it, then.

  The future he’d seen.

  He almost laughed, his eyes welling up. A dead end, literally. He’d been so stupid to think it might be anything else. They were going to freeze to death here. And then a supernova would wash them away. Their people would destroy each other, or most of each other, and one by one the stars would keep going dark until reality tore apart and collapsed on itself.

  The feeling closed in on him from all sides. Liam fished the beacon out of his shirt and pressed the top. No response, of course, but he at least smiled momentarily, imagining Mina’s pod lighting up, his glow around her, even if she had no idea, as she was whisked to safety, at least for the moment.

  The skim drone kept spinning, as it would in the vacuum with nothing to slow it down, until it was destroyed. Liam saw the brilliant shine of Centauri B. He saw the glimmer of the trio of starliners, mere dots now. And back around into the angry glow of Centauri A. He almost wished he could stay alive long enough to see it explode. Maybe if he put on his space suit, he could conserve what little body heat he had left. But then he’d just have to watch Phoebe freeze first.

  She coughed. Liam rubbed her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, fighting back tears. Maybe she would wake up before they succumbed to the cold. He could say good-bye. Or maybe it was cruel to hope she’d wake up only to suffer.

  Liam let his head fall back against the seat. He closed his eyes and listened for that wind inside him, the sense of time blowing him around. If he finally went forward, would he see his body die? Maybe he should have checked before now. Risked the Drove, or, to be honest, risked knowing. Then maybe he could have done something differently, but what?

  There had to be something. Liam closed his eyes and pictured his timeline. Catching Phoebe, leaving the starliner . . . what could he change? He couldn’t ask JEFF to alter the plan with the starliners or their attack on the Telphons. All of that was too important for far too many lives. Lives Liam had saved by having JEFF wake him up from the stasis pod and, in a way, by getting caught in the first place. And he had to arrive on the Scorpius in order to make that happen. What about before that? The chronologist’s office: but if they didn’t go there, they couldn’t deliver the data that she needed. Could she help somehow if he visited her? But she was gone to die, and everything before that all the way back to Mars seemed too important for finding that data, and for saving his parents. Liam couldn’t see a way to not do any of it. It all mattered for the lives of so many people, even the universe. None of it could really be changed.

  Well, there was one thing he could try to change. Right at the very end. Right before this.

  I could go back and convince myself not to come for Phoebe. Then he could leave on the Scorpius. He wouldn’t be here at all. Except—

  Would I listen to myself? Would the Liam of twenty minutes ago really not come out here?

  He was pretty sure the answer would be no.

  So this was it then. There was nothing to be changed, nothing to be done. He was here, in the cold skim drone, Phoebe beside him.

  For a moment, he actually smiled. Why would I change it? the chronologist had said. Liam thought of Mars, of Lunch Rocks and running through the tunnels. He thought of before that: his apartment and his family, school, going to grav-ball games and arguing with Phoebe about the stats, gazing up at the blinking lights of the starliner docks in the night sky. Maybe it had all had a purpose. Maybe he’d played his part. Or maybe it just was, and if that was the case . . .

  We prefer what happens to what could have happened.

  It had been good, hadn’t it? He’d been lucky, he’d been loved, he’d had an adventure. . . .

  But his heart still raced. This was still terrifying.

  His breaths were getting thin, making clouds in the skim drone’s cramped compartment. It wouldn’t be long now before he passed out.

  Tears streamed down his face. Maybe he should just go backward. Back to the balcony on Mars, to sit with his family for these last few moments. Maybe stop by Lunch Rocks and see Phoebe’s smile one more time. He could just be there, home, and maybe he wouldn’t feel what was about to happen here—

  Wait.

  If he went back to Mars, there was something else along the way.

  The doorway.

  The last time they’d encountered it, it had transported them completely off the cruiser. He could push back there, and maybe he could find it. But he couldn’t bring Phoebe with him, unless . . .

  Liam fought off his shivering and pulled up Phoebe’s sleeve. There was the chronologist’s watch, and it was blinking blue, the only thing still working after the electromagnetic wave.

  “Phoebe.” Liam shook her gently. She shifted, made a soft groaning sound.

  He wriggled the rest of the way out of his suit, his cold fingers fumbling to get the bulky thing down and off his legs. It was hard to even lift them, feeling gone in his toes, and barely enough room in here—he yanked it free of his feet and kicked it down into the footwell. The movement caused stars in his eyes, his head swimming. Too cold. Not enough air.

  “Hey.” He pulled Phoebe up to a sitting position. She coughed violently, her body shuddering. Liam spied his Dust Devils jersey half beneath her. He pulled it free and struggled to tug it on over his head. Then he took Phoebe’s wrist and slipped off the watch, fumbling in his numbing fingers, and put it on his own.

  “Hang on,” he said, teeth chattering. “We’re getting out of here. I hope.” He leaned as close to her as he could and wrapped his arms around her, his cheek against hers, feeling the slight bristles of her skin, her faint warm breath. Then he reached around behind her head and turned the watch two notches to the left.

  The world blurred, two cold bodies in the skim drone with time running out but also traveling now, backward through time, to the Scorpius, to finding Mina, back through a flash of stasis and the blur of his time trips, which made his head ache. Back out of stasis, encountering the Telphons in the hangar and then onto the cruiser, retreating into space, the Centauri system shrinking.

  Things spun wildly, Liam’s brain stretching, and then they were in the chronologist’s office, talking to her in reverse, all the little lights floating around them. Liam checked the watch. It was still blinking blue, the symbol in its left hemisphere still flashing.

  And yet his vision of it seemed to be dimming, and there was a pain clouding over him. I’m freezing, he thought, and losing oxygen. Hypothermia. Asphyxiation. Just a little farther.

  In the timestream, the world spun again, Liam’s head aching like it was being torn in two, and they were back on the Artemis, retreating down its halls and core segments filled with red flashing light, getting closer.

  But all of it was foggy. Syrupy. Like the time was moving right along but he wasn’t quite able to keep up with it. Cold, so cold, the world getting gray and heavy.

  Come . . . on. . . .

  White spots in his vision.

  Where are you?

  The wind through him slowing.

  And then the watch began to flash red, the two hemispheres blinking at once. Crackling and buzzing, and Liam felt like he’d been crushed back into himself. Time seemed to halt. Formless gray around them—

  There it was. The doorway.

  Its black trapezoidal frame flickered with silver circuitry. He’d found it! Or it had found him, as the chronologist had said.

  “Come on, Phoebe,” he said into her ear. He put his arm around her—so much effort just to lift his arm—and stumbled through the strange gray fog toward the dark, beckoning doorway. “We can make it.”

  But the door didn’t seem to
get closer, or maybe it did. It swayed in his vision, fading, everything becoming a gray nothingness. He struggled to press his feet down, to push harder, dragging Phoebe along, his arms and chest aching. Freezing. . . . Had to make it to the doorway. Its dark, liquid sheen.

  We can make it. Stumbling ahead now, holding on to Phoebe, and Liam gave one last gasp and lunged for it. The door blurred, and Liam felt cold in his bones, his vision going white. He lost track of his legs, of the world around him, but still held on to Phoebe tight, telling himself, telling her, over and over, We can make it. . . .

  We can make it. . . .

  EPILOGUE

  CENTAURI SYSTEM

  “Go back,” said Marnia-2. “Please.”

  Tarra studied the navigation screen, the triangle of dots blinking there. “We should attack the starliners immediately, before they reach reinforcements.”

  “She is one of us!” said Marnia.

  “She made her choice,” said Tarra. “She chose the enemy.”

  “She chose her friend,” said Calo-6. “She’s our daughter. The only family we have left. And she’s our future.”

  “It’s too dangerous to risk going back near that supernova.”

  “Tarra,” said Barro, “you know in this ship we can afford to risk it. There are so few of us.”

  Tarra pursed her lips and crossed her arms. “Fine.” She turned to the two Telphon navigators standing on either side of the hovering orange crystal. It was two meters in diameter and functioned not only as the ship’s power source but also as its controls—accessed by placing both hands on its surface. “Take us back.”

  The crystal powered up and the ship hummed. Marnia closed her eyes and gripped a railing along the wall. There was a flash, and a nauseating feeling of squeezing that made it seem like your eyes were going to pop out of your head. Then a lurch as the ship transited the space fold it had created and emerged back where they’d left. Centauri A still boiling away, the supernova imminent. The starliners out of sight now.

  “Retrace our course and scan for ships,” said Tarra.

  A clang echoed through the hull, vibrating the floor.

  “Lots of debris out here,” said Barro.

  “Assuming it’s in one piece, the skim drone should be larger than this wreckage.”

  Marnia reached for Calo’s hand.

  “We should never have let her spend so much time with them,” he said.

  Marnia peered at the scanners, looking for any kind of sign. Liam’s words ran through her head. We’re going to find another way. He’d saved their lives, warning them about the warhead trap. Which changed nothing. It didn’t bring back Telos. It didn’t bring back Mica, their sweet, wild little boy. And yet . . .

  “Scans are picking up a larger object up ahead,” one of the navigators reported.

  “Looks like a skim drone,” said the other.

  Please, Marnia said to herself.

  Calo curled his fist. “If the boy is there—”

  “You will leave him alone,” she said.

  Another chunk of fighter debris caromed off the hull.

  They slowed, the nearly nova star straight ahead.

  “Do you really think someone is blowing up these stars on purpose?” Barro wondered aloud. “How could that even be possible?”

  We could have listened to her, Marnia thought.

  “Should be dead ahead,” said one of the navigators.

  “There it is,” said Tarra. She pointed to a small black dot silhouetted against the boiling star.

  They closed, and the outline of the skim drone took shape. It looked intact, but it was dark outside and in.

  “No life readings,” said Barro, “but there’s a lot of interference.” He tapped the screen, as if to try again.

  Marnia rubbed the skin in the crook of her elbow. She couldn’t lose another. . . .

  “Pull it into the docking bay,” said Tarra quietly.

  They filed back through the ship and down a spiraling staircase. The skim drone lay on a wide metal floor in the center of a circular hangar. Its exterior steamed with melting ice. Calo put his arm around Marnia as Barro approached the craft.

  Marnia knotted inside. She wanted to look away but told herself no. She’d have given anything to see her youngest child one more time, even dead, as strange as that sounded. She would be here for Xela, even if only to see her into the arms of Ana.

  Barro peered through the icy canopy. He tried to pull it open but it wouldn’t budge. “Get me something to pry it with.”

  Soldiers moved around the perimeter of the hangar. The walls were hung with strange contraptions that looked like combinations of space suits and stasis tubes, cylindrical and glassy with arms and feet, which the Telphons had no idea how to use. One of the soldiers returned with two bars with flat ends. She and Barro pried at the canopy, straining. With a sharp crack, it popped open.

  Please, Marnia thought again as they lifted the cockpit canopy.

  Barro looked inside for a moment; then he reached in and pulled out an empty human space suit. “They’re gone.”

  SALVAGE FREIGHTER CARRION

  0.09 LIGHT-YEARS FROM ACCESS PORTAL FOUR

  “Watch out for that debris,” said Jordy.

  “I see it.” Kyla adjusted the thrusters with one hand and scratched at the stubble on her head with the other. “Do you have eyes on our target?”

  “We should be close.” Jordy spun the spherical navigation ball, sticking his fingers inside and enlarging it.

  “How are the life readings?”

  Jordy frowned. “They come and go. It’s weird. Like they’re there but they’re not.” His fingers danced around in the light sphere and then he shrank it back down. “Course plotted.”

  “Roger that.” Kyla adjusted thrust and ducked the craft as a huge chunk of supernova debris sailed by. She wondered if it was another bit of Pluto and Charon, or maybe one of Neptune’s moons.

  A light flashed on her windshield. “Okay, there it is.” She fired the retrorockets.

  “Kyla,” the captain called over the feed, “what’s your status?”

  “We’re closing in on the possible survivors,” she said.

  “We are waiting on you to shut down. Readings are starting to deteriorate and we may be in for another cascade event.”

  “Just for the record,” said Jordy, “I am out of meds and I’m not okay with seeing myself as an old man again without them.”

  “Relax.” Kyla watched on her scanners as the last green-glowing ship winked out of sight. “Just a couple minutes more, Captain.” She turned to Jordy. “You do the walk this time.”

  Jordy groaned. “I did the walk last time!”

  “And I did the flying. We play to our strengths.”

  “All right, fine.” Jordy unbuckled and ducked out of the cockpit.

  Kyla slowed, and their lights fell on a midsized ship. It was sleek and shiny, some kind of private craft.

  It was also severed nearly in two, like someone had peeled it apart down its center. The sides were torn and frayed, with circuitry, cabinets and other supplies hanging out into space. Some of the frayed wires were still sparking, now and then. “Not sure you’re going to find any live ones out there,” Kyla called over her shoulder, “unless maybe they’re in stasis pods.”

  “Uh . . . ,” Jordy said from what sounded like just down the hall.

  “What is it?’

  “Can you come back here for a second?”

  “You’re not getting me to do the walk—”

  “It’s not that. Just get back here.”

  Kyla sighed and unbuckled. She pushed out of the cockpit, floated through the narrow hall and into the main staging room of the ship. Jordy stood with his back to her. “Stop being a wimp about—” She stepped beside him and her words caught in her throat.

  There were two kids lying on the floor. Teens. A boy on his stomach, a girl half curled on her side. Her face was strange; she seemed to have lavender-spotted skin. Th
ey were dressed in black clothing, the boy with some kind of red shirt. Both alive, their chests rising and falling, but unconscious. Their faces were flecked with ice.

  “Okay, that’s not what I was expecting.”

  “Who are they?” Jordy said quietly.

  “How should I know?” Kyla kept staring at them. “Where did they come from? How did they—”

  “Hey, look.” Jordy knelt beside the boy and fiddled with his arm.

  “Don’t just touch them without a suit on or something,” said Kyla.

  “It’s fine.” Jordy stood and held out an object: a strange silver watch. “What do you think this is?”

  Kyla looked from the watch back at the kids. “Something the captain’s definitely going to want to see.” She turned toward the cockpit. “Come on, let’s get back to Dark Star.”

  “Yeah,” said Jordy. He glanced at the kids again. “Um, yeah.”

  The sleek ship turned away from the rolling eddies of the sun’s supernova and aimed itself directly at the great trapezoidal doorway hovering in space, its sides glowing with silver circuitry, its center inky black. Thrusters burned, and the ship disappeared into the void.

  END OF BOOK TWO

  BACK AD

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo by Annie Emerson

  KEVIN EMERSON is the author of the first book in the Chronicle of the Dark Star, Last Day on Mars, as well as The Fellowship for Alien Detection, the Oliver Nocturne series, the Atlanteans trilogy, Breakout, and Carlos Is Gonna Get It. A former science teacher, Kevin is also a drummer and singer, most recently with his bands Northern Allies and the Board of Education. He lives in Seattle, Washington. You can find him online at www.kevinemerson.net.

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  CREDITS

  Cover art by Vivienne To

  Cover design by Katie C. Fitch