Bolshakov unbuckled his harness and strode across the bridge, megobari eyes following him as he passed, until he stood in front of Otor. He held out his hand and Otor immediately grasped it with both of his own. “I am not known for my eloquence, Mr. Kereselidze. But if you’d allow me the liberty, there are some words I think are appropriate for this occasion. ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’”
At the familiar words, knowing what they stood for, my chest began to warm, like a rising fire in a cold hearth. I added my voice to Bolshakov’s and soon, we were all speaking these famous words as one incantation. “‘Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.’”
Otor’s voice softened as he gripped Bolshakov’s arm in a firm embrace, his eyes shining. “We have run for a very long time. And now, perhaps finally, we have found a place that may welcome us home. Let us have gratitude.”
The megobari closed their eyes.
I bowed my head and made a promise. If Earth is still alive, I will not let her die.
Our return journey to the moon base would take longer, as we were now detouring to pick up the weapon. Since we were in a stable orbit above the moon, Otor deemed it safe for us to get out of our harnesses and perhaps have a small lunch while the drone finished its work.
And after the revelations of the morning, I needed time to assess what it all meant for us and for the mission.
There weren’t many places to go to have privacy. I broke away from the rest of the human crew and found an alcove somewhere off the bridge—not exactly a room, but a place where I couldn’t see anyone else. Small as it was, I needed to be alone to sort through everything that had just happened.
I sat against the bulkhead and breathed.
Weapons and war. Why did it always come down to this? Wasn’t there a single species in the galaxy that had never heard of the concept?
We weren’t soldiers. It shouldn’t be our jobs to decide whether to bring an alien weapon of unknown power back home with us. I had no idea what was right. I knew only what felt right to my untrained gut.
Almost all my life, I’d made logical decisions—followed my brain, not my heart, as people like to say. Was this the logical choice? I hadn’t had the time, much less the mental capacity, to decide whether this was the right thing to do.
Quiet footsteps approached, and I closed my eyes, hoping somehow they’d pass by without stopping.
No such luck.
He didn’t say anything at first, but I knew it was Luka by his cautious steps. How did I know him so well and yet not at all?
It was too hard to open my eyes, to face him and the realities I’d seen of his past. He must’ve known, all along, that we’d come here, to this point. That I’d learn his truth and recoil from it. Knowing whatever relationship we had, even friendship, would be at risk of collapsing under the weight of this enormous secret.
He’d endured trauma beyond my imagining. At the very least, I could make my own peace with him. “I’m sorry. About . . . everything.”
I heard him lean against the wall, his boots shuffling against the floor near my knee. “It happened before I was born. But . . . thank you.”
If I blinked my eyes, I was afraid tears might spill from them. “Where do we go from here, Luka?”
“We go home,” he said simply.
I willed the emotion away. “You know what I mean.”
He nodded, still facing the ceiling. “It’s up to you.”
“I’m tired of things being up to me.”
He shook his head ruefully. “An unfortunate consequence of life, I’ve found.” He tried to soften his stance to something casual, shifting to lean an arm against the bulkhead. The wall glowed a soft white at his touch, as though awaiting an order. He noticed this and took his hand off it, shaking his head ruefully. “I forget myself here.”
“They respond to touch?” I asked, though I’d already noticed this.
“Yes. It’s how we communicate with the ship’s computer. A touch can send a message, issue an order to the ship, or allow for the download of information, all in an instant of intention. It works best, of course, with our original physiology, but with our implants and modifications in our suits, we can maintain functionality of the ship.” He displayed the palm of his gloved hand to me, showing the glowing aqua-blue fibers interwoven into the black and concentrated in his fingertips.
“That’s incredible.”
He smiled, just a little. “There is much we could share with you.”
My eyelids closed on their own. My bones ached. Fatigue washed over me like incessant waves. How long had it been since I had really, truly slept?
Cassie, it has been thirteen hours since you awoke from hibernation.
Oh, that was going to be hard to get used to.
“You are tired,” Luka said, apologetic. “I’ll leave you. We will soon pick up the weapon, but we can do that without needing to disembark. You won’t be missing anything. There is little to see now but darkness and ruin.”
I was sorely tempted. I peered around the corner and down the hall, where Shaw had already dropped his chin to his chest and was dozing in his jump seat. “Little to see? Luka, even the walls are interesting.”
As if on cue, a kaleidoscope of blue and purple bloomed on the wall in front of us, catching Luka’s attention.
“What does it mean?” I asked, growing concerned by his confusion.
“It’s likely nothing,” he said, eyes following the swirls of color as they moved and faded. “Radar interference on our projected flight path. Perhaps some space debris or dust confusing the sensors. The pilots will adjust our trajectory to avoid it.”
“I can’t believe this makes sense to you. How do you understand it?”
“It’s my native language,” he said, eyes teasing.
“How do you get by on Earth when you are able to read shapes and colors as words?”
“Do you not also see shapes and colors as language? A red hexagon means stop. A yellow triangle means caution. A circle with a line through its apex means off or on. You also use this alphabet.”
He had me there. “See, this is why I can’t sleep.”
For the first time since I’d awoken, his grin was warm and unguarded. I felt something—something like the old way I might have once felt. It was a flash of the old Luka. Or maybe just the true version of himself. “What else do you want to know? To sate your curiosity? I’ll try to answer anything I’m able.”
There was a swirling maelstrom of questions, and yet my mind could not pick out a single one. I settled on the obvious, the here and now. I hesitated to ask, but he had just offered to answer anything. “How did your father know about the weapon?”
He slid down the wall to sit beside me. I appreciated that he left a measurable distance of space between us. He sighed, lips pressed tight together. “He does not tell me, but I can guess. My father is—and was—a scientist. I can only assume he worked on this project during the war. His secret location here might have been why he was able to escape.”
I suppressed a chill and filed that information away for later. Otor knows more about this weapon than he is telling us.
“What . . .” I stopped, sensing this was a bad idea, but his eyebrows lifted expectantly, encouraging me. “What happened to . . . to your mother?”
At the change in his face, I immediately regretted asking. “No, sorry—never mind. I don’t need to know.”
He shook his head. “It’s all right. I am . . . strangely relieved to be able to tell you.”
That made me blink. He’d always been mysterious, quiet, a little closed off. I’d assumed that was his natural inclination. But maybe he’d been struggling with secrets for a long time.
“I was the first of my people born post-transition. As you might imagine, it was very . . . difficult. She couldn’t go to a hospital, of course. My family didn’t know all the things that could go wrong, and didn’
t have access to medicine. No one knew how the genetic treatment would affect her condition. They could not save her. After that, my family decided it was safer not to risk having any more children.”
“Luka, I’m so sorry.”
His eyes found mine, and he gave me a little smile. “I do not remember her.”
This had been a bad idea. I switched to another topic, saying the first thing that popped into my head. “This moon base seems pretty well intact. Why weren’t you guys able to just, you know . . . stay here?”
He gave me a sidelong glance that told me I had misstepped. “This moon is not a home, Cassie. We cannot live in tunnels without sunshine any more than humans can, orbiting the graveyard of our species. Yes, there is a pocket of air and some water still left in reserve. But we would be trapped, and vulnerable to the vrag, should they return.”
For a second I had a flash of humanity living that way: scattered, broken, living like galactic refugees on inhospitable planets, hiding underground. To live with only a handful of my own people on foreign worlds, surrounded at all times by hostile species. “I’m sorry. That was thoughtless.”
His hand went through his hair in frustration, and now I saw why his hair had been in disarray. He was shaking his head, like all this had been a mistake. “I wish it did not have to be like this. Believe me. I wish this meeting could have been about how our two peoples could reach new heights together. Perhaps one day, we can have that conversation.” He offered me a smile that soon faltered. “Cassie . . . the only thing I was ever dishonest with you about was my identity. Everything else—everything—was the truth.”
I smiled sadly, but couldn’t meet his eyes. Anger had drained from me. What was the point of it? After having seen his decimated home planet with my own eyes, how could I fault his people for what they did? Their worst sin had been disguising themselves, and that had been in self-preservation only. Had they hurt anyone? Stolen anything? No. They’d only been surviving. Would I have done any different?
I was too tired to maintain the energy of being angry. I was depleted of it. Instead, I was hollow and wounded and afraid.
“I only came to check on you. If you need anything, please let me know. I’ll give you your privacy.” He gave me a smile in parting, and I was relieved that he did not require anything else from me.
Six
I RETURNED TO the bridge sometime later, rejoining my crew. They each looked about as tired as I felt, but Copeland and Jeong lit up at the revelation that the entire ship was a computer interface that we could manipulate. Our suits were not the best equipped to communicate with the computer, to give it wordless orders the way the megobari did so effortlessly, but the material of our suits still allowed blooms of color to explode from our fingertips at a single touch. It was fascinating and strange, like playing a children’s game—and we were the children, comprehending nothing.
As Luka had said, there had been some kind of debris field and the ride was getting a little bumpy. We buckled into our jump seats and Copeland and Jeong continued to amuse themselves by sending dots of color back and forth over Shaw’s head, who still slept. I’d never seen the two of them like this before, grinning ear to ear and laughing like little girls when one of them managed to change their blue dots to purple, or draw a circle, or shatter their spots of color against the indent of Shaw’s helmet on the wall. It was the thrill of discovery, the joy in learning something beautiful and new. An entire alien civilization to be explored and known. Deep down I felt it, too. The thrum of excitement, of a whole new world opening up for us all.
It was almost enough to drown out the shadow that came with it: the steep price we might pay for this knowledge.
Luka came to stand beside me. “The shuttle drone has returned and the weapon has been stowed,” he said, bracing his hand on the wall above my head. “Now we will return to the base, transfer your supplies from Odysseus to Exodus, and then we can all return to Earth.”
Orange sparks, sharp and insistent, suddenly lit the bridge with the urgency of drumbeats. Luka startled upright, tensing.
“What is it?” I asked.
His face paled as he scanned the runes.
Then the ship rocked violently, throwing him into me, and the world exploded into fire.
I was thrown sideways into my harness, tearing the breath out of me. The serene bridge was suddenly madness. The megobari crew who were not strapped into their posts were thrown to the ground like toy soldiers. Small fires had erupted out from consoles near the pilots. Otor had tumbled down the corridor, a tangle of awkward limbs. The walls still pulsed with warning, now joined with an odd and fearful wailing of alarms.
Luka managed to stay upright, though the bridge was still lurching to one side, and ran to help his father. He helped him get to his feet, and then the ship rocked again, and both tumbled into the bulkhead.
Beside me, my crewmates were unstrapping themselves. Bolshakov succeeded first, and ran to aid Luka, slipping Otor’s limp arm around his wide shoulders to help him stand.
I was scrambling to get out of my harness when Shaw shouted at me. “Cassie, stay here!”
My hands stilled on the latches. Did he think I’d get in the way?
Otor’s face was pale and twisted in agony as the two men brought him back to his post on the bridge, where his eyes looked fearfully about the cabin.
“Captain,” Bolshakov shouted over the alarms. “What’s happening?”
Luka answered grimly for his father. “The vrag.”
Otor nodded, breathless, and then shook himself away from the others to rest his hands on the ship’s interface. The ship lurched again, this time forward, and I was thrown back against the bulkhead as we sped away. “We cannot let them have the weapon!”
My crewmates had all left me behind. Copeland was crouched over a megobari pilot with a bloodied face. Jeong and Shaw were helping two others put out one of the fires.
My heart raced but my body was frozen. Should I stay here out of the way? Could I actually help? Sunny’s voice was absurdly calm in my head. Cassie, an unknown ship has fired on this vessel. Evacuation suggested.
I didn’t stop to question how Sunny knew this. Maybe she was talking to the megobari ship somehow.
We can get away, I told myself, clutching frantically at the hope. The two megobari pilots still at their posts were sweating, staring into their consoles, hands clenched on the controls. Maybe we’d beat the vrag back to base.
But the megobari who were able to had all retrieved their helmets and put them back on. They knew better what was happening, and they were preparing for the worst.
I couldn’t just sit here, but what could I do? I wasn’t a member of this crew. I was barely a member of my own. I was a fool to think I was needed.
No, my role in this was the observer. The fail-safe. The go-between. The one who could communicate with Sunny.
That was it—my one useful skill at this moment. Sunny, what do I do?
But before she could answer, the ship lurched again with a sound like deep, groaning thunder. The lights flickered and dimmed. The bridge went dark, walls losing all color, and now only emergency lights outlined the floor. We were hit again, head-on this time. Screams of pain came from the dark.
I saw only shadows moving, heard only shouting. I could just barely see the outlines of Luka and his father, slumped over the controls.
Shaw was in front of me suddenly. “Cassie, are you okay?”
His face was a ghastly shadow in front of me, but he was intact. The whites of his eyes glinted in the floor lights.
“Yeah, I’m—”
But something sparked beside us, and shrapnel flew. Shaw dropped like a stone to the bulkhead.
I tugged in panic at my belt, but the latch was sticking. I screamed in frustration, the latch finally gave way, and I fell to my knees beside him.
The lights flickered back on at half strength, showing a scene of chaos and destruction. But I could only focus on Shaw, the sticky blood
coating his suit, the hunk of metal embedded in his skin. “Copeland!” I screamed.
She was there in seconds, leaning over his other side to see the wound. Her eyes met mine over Shaw’s body, and I saw in the grim set of her mouth that there was nothing she could do. Not now, not here.
I put my hands on his chest, felt the stuttering rise and fall, felt panic threaten to overtake me.
“What’s happened?” Jeong was suddenly beside us. She caught sight of Shaw’s wounds and groaned, her face going white.
I registered only a flash of confusion in her eyes before Luka skidded to his knees beside me.
He had something large and white in his hands. Bandages. With Copeland’s help, we pressed them against the bloodiest spots on Shaw’s body with expert fingers. Shaw groaned and his eyes fluttered, and hope sparked in me.
Luka’s eyes caught mine.
“Your father?”
“Okay. Shaw?”
“Not sure.”
“Are you hurt?”
It was the first time I’d thought to consider it. I looked down at myself and found no visible wounds or tears in my suit. “I don’t think so.”
“They have done exactly as we feared,” Luka said, his voice full of poison.
“Luka!” Otor shouted.
Luka held my gaze for a split second longer and then ran to the bridge. I looked down at Shaw, and Copeland spared a hand to push my shoulder. “Go. He’s as stable as I can get him.”
Jeong and I couldn’t reach the bridge without stepping over bodies, so we took bandages to those who were still breathing. I glanced up to see Otor standing on the upper deck, cradling one of his arms awkwardly against his body. Luka’s hand was touching his father’s back, nodding as his father spoke quickly and quietly.
Just as I reached them, Otor shouted an order. “Eject the shuttles!”
Two megobari who had been helping mend wounds ran to consoles and touched hands to their control screens, lighting them up with violet and green.
I searched Luka’s face, but his eyes were trained on his father. “He is dropping the weapon and the empty shuttles,” he said tersely to me. “To confuse them.”
One Giant Leap Page 5
