by Rachel Bach
“All of it,” Caldswell repeated, his voice cold and sharp as a hard winter. “That’s an order, Eye Charkov.”
My eyes went wide in horror. It was the title from my dream. The cook flinched too, but it was over so quickly I almost missed it, and he didn’t try to argue with the captain again. Instead, he reached down and gently grabbed the top of my head. The position of his fingers was just as they’d been last night in the kitchen, but there was no tender gentleness now. He grabbed my head hard, forcing me to look up until I couldn’t see anything but him. But though his grip was as harsh as the revulsion curdling my stomach, the cook’s face was set in an expression of regret so deep it took my breath away.
“I tried, Devi,” he whispered, fingers pressing harder into my hair. “I tried.”
“Tried what?” I whispered back, my voice trembling.
He gave me the saddest smile I’d ever seen. “To save you.”
Before I could demand to know what he meant by that, Ren’s hand shot out, grabbing my shoulder in a vise, and as she touched me, her voice spoke in my head.
Remember.
The word had barely formed before everything I’d lost came roaring back.
Memories are unruly things by nature. Some come when called, but most do exactly as they please, vanishing when you need them and popping up when you’d much rather they didn’t. Mine had always had a bad habit of surfacing at the worst moments, but even the biggest fit of unwanted nostalgia couldn’t have prepared me for what Ren did to my head.
I hadn’t even realized how much I’d lost until it was all back. The past flooded into my brain like a storm surge, and every single memory was clamoring for me to relive it, thrusting itself to the front of my mind to tease me with a flash before being pushed away by the next one. I was still conscious, still aware, I could even hear Caldswell talking, but I couldn’t make sense of anything. My memories took up every bit of me, leaving no room for anything else. But then, just before the flood of memories could pull me under, Ren’s touch on my mind gave way to a new hand. A strong, familiar, masculine one.
To this day, I could not tell you what Rupert did, but he did it well. Everywhere his touch landed, the chaos retreated. The jumbled memories rearranged themselves into an orderly timeline, connecting as they fell into place until I could no longer tell which ones were new and which had always been there.
Naturally, the first thing I looked for was what had happened on Falcon 34. Every time I’d reached for it before I’d gotten nothing. Now, though, the memories came as soon as I called them, and the whole bloody night—the symbionts, Cotter’s defeat, my capture, Brenton, my own near death—unrolled in my mind. Every event was as fresh and vivid as though it had just happened. I could feel the pain in my stomach where I’d been stabbed, the shock of Cotter’s death. He had died bravely, I knew it.
Mostly though, I remembered Rupert. I remembered the haunted look in his eyes when he’d changed from human to symbiont. I remembered his fury as he’d tried to kill Brenton on the lounge floor and his speed as he’d thrown the symbiont off me, abandoning his enemy to save my life.
That memory brought others. I remembered him touching my hair the night he put me to bed when I was drunk, and again when I’d lain stretched out against him the one night we’d slept together. I remembered the way he used to smile at me, the gentle brush of his kiss against my knee in the medbay, the quiet desperation in his voice as he promised he’d never hurt me.
He’d kept that promise at first. He’d saved me twice, on Mycant and on the tribe ship. God and king, how could I have forgotten my escape from the tribe ship? I remembered it all with perfect clarity now, Rupert in his scales killing his way through the horde to save me. He’d been the one who’d picked me up when the battle drugs wore off, and then, when I was lost in the seizures, he’d been the one who held me down. He’d saved me, just as he always did. Even that horrible time in the rain, he’d been trying to protect me, to keep me safe from what he was. And then he’d told me he loved me and taken my memories, making me hate him without even asking.
I sucked in a furious breath. It was all coming together now. My inability to remember the cook’s name, the revulsion I felt every time he walked into my line of sight, it was all Rupert. He’d rewritten my mind, changed me, reordered my life as he saw fit …
Rage washed over me, clean and hot, and I threw myself into it. The bastard had actually had me believing I was nuts. I’d probably never even had a hallucination. The thing I’d seen outside the ship had certainly been real, and now that I had my memories back, I knew I’d killed a woman with the black stuff on my hands, so that was real, too. Everything was, and though I still didn’t understand what it all meant, I was sure as hell going to find out. My mind was back in order at last, bringing back all the old questions, only I was done being silent. This time, I was going to get some answers. And with that determination to pull me forward, I finally managed to wake up.
When I opened my eyes, I was alone in the captain’s sitting room. I must have been out for a long time, because we weren’t in space any longer. The gravity was heavier and the reentry shutters on Caldswell’s windows were down, which meant we were on a planet. What planet, I had no idea, but it didn’t seem immediately important, so I moved on to more pressing concerns.
They’d moved me from the chair to the couch while I’d been stuck in the memories, and though my hands were still bound behind me, I was no longer tied down. There was something on my feet, though.
I leaned over, wiggling my toes experimentally, but I couldn’t move them more than a quarter inch in any direction through the thick, invisible mass they were buried under. Inert plasma. Goddamn Caldswell had put a plasma weight on my feet.
“You can’t break it, so don’t try. We use that stuff to lock down symbionts.”
My head snapped up as Caldswell emerged from his room. Since he hadn’t bothered with a hello, I didn’t either. “Not even going to play at secrets anymore?”
“Doesn’t seem to be much point now,” the captain said, sitting down in the sturdy chair they’d tied me to before.
I leaned over to peer into Ren’s room, but it was empty. “Where’s Rupert?” I demanded.
“I sent him away,” Caldswell said. “I thought this might go smoother without Charkov. He tends to lose his head around you.”
I glowered. That wasn’t all he was going to lose the next time I got my hands on him. “What did he do to me?”
Caldswell sighed. “That’s a complicated question. The simple answer is that he returned the memories he took on Falcon Thirty-Four.”
“You mean Ren returned them.”
“Charkov guided her,” Caldswell said, meeting my scowl with one of his own. “He did it for you, you know.”
“To save me from you,” I snarled, lurching forward as far as the weight on my feet would allow.
“Yes,” Caldswell said matter-of-factly.
I rolled my eyes. “So why aren’t I dead?”
The captain sighed again, deeper this time. “I’ve known Charkov for a long time,” he said at last. “In all those years, I’ve never seen him be anything but exemplary, a model soldier in every way. So the one time he went soft and messed up, I wanted to honor his sacrifice.” Caldswell flashed me a sad smile. “I must be getting romantic in my old age.”
I didn’t believe that for a second. “A model soldier for what?” I asked. “What are you really? And don’t say a trader captain.”
Caldswell sat up a bit straighter in his chair. “I wasn’t going to,” he said. “Unfortunately, Morris, any chance of keeping you out of this is long gone, so I’m just going to lay it out straight. Rupert and I belong to an organization called the Joint Investigatory Spatial Anomaly Task Force, though no one besides government bean counters actually calls it that. We’re more commonly referred to as the Eyes, and we’re supported by every major government, including the Terran Republic, the Aeon Sevalis, and the kingdom of Paradox.
Our job is to track down and destroy phantoms.”
I’d guessed most of that from Brenton’s rambling back on Falcon 34. Hearing Paradox was in on this too was a bit of a shock, though it did explain Caldswell’s Royal Warrant nicely. “What are phantoms?”
Caldswell shrugged. “No one knows for sure. The current theory is that they’re creatures from another dimension. Our first recorded encounter with one happened a little over seventy years ago, though since phantoms cannot be detected, tracked, or seen, we really have no idea how long they’ve been here.”
“Wait,” I said. “If you don’t know how long they’ve been here, how do you know they’re from another dimension? Wouldn’t it make more sense if they were just another kind of alien?”
“No,” Caldswell said. “Even the strangest life-forms in our galaxy share certain traits. But phantoms don’t exist in the same way everything else in our universe does. They move through space without a thought for gravity, energy, even time. So far as we can tell, they are creatures of pure plasmex. They can’t even interact with the physical world until they’ve reached a certain size. Once they can, though, they start destroying it.”
“You mean like what happened on Mycant,” I said, remembering the quakes and the invisible monster’s effects on my clock. “The phantom was destroying the planet.”
Caldswell gave me a sharp look. “You figure that out on your own, or did Brenton tell you?”
“Both,” I replied, lifting my chin.
The captain shook his head. “What else did he say?”
“That phantoms break down the rules of the universe, and that the two of you used to hunt them together.” I looked the captain up and down. “Must have been one hell of a breakup. Brenton hates your guts.”
Caldswell actually chuckled at that. “John and I have differences of opinion on many things. Though when it comes to you, I’m afraid he might be in the right.” The captain’s face grew serious as he leaned forward. “It’s starting to look like letting you live was the best mistake I’ve ever made. But before we jump to too many conclusions, I need you to tell me what Brenton wanted from you back on Falcon Thirty-Four.”
I set my jaw stubbornly. Oh hell no. Caldswell might act like I was his soldier, but I was still a merc, and mercs didn’t give shit up for free. “You want info?” I asked, lifting my eyebrows. “Fine, but I’m not talking without a little reciprocation.”
“I suppose you are due an explanation,” the captain admitted. “Where would you like to start?”
That threw me. I hadn’t expected him just to give in. “How about the beginning?” I said when I’d recovered. “You’re an Eye, that means your job is to fly all over the universe killing phantoms, right?”
“Mostly,” Caldswell said.
“So why the big secret?” I asked, shrugging my shoulders as much as I could with the restraints. “I mean, you were willing to kill me back on Falcon Thirty-Four just for knowing about Rupert, but you guys are the ones protecting the universe from invaders. Seems to me that would make you heroes. Why hide it?”
That was a leading question, but I wanted to give Caldswell a chance to tell me the truth on his own. On the surface, the Eyes sounded more like glorified pest control than a secret government organization, but now that I had my memories back, I remembered how Rupert had trembled against me when he spoke of the terrible things he’d done, and I was willing to bet that being an Eye was a lot dirtier than simple phantom killing. Unfortunately, Caldswell didn’t go for the bait.
“We can’t tell the universe about phantoms,” he said, incredulous. “Can you imagine what would happen if we told people that there were giant invisible space monsters that couldn’t be detected on any sensor who could destroy their planet just by sitting on it? Oh, and they can’t be killed by any known conventional means, including orbital nukes.”
“Are you sure about that?” Because enough orbital nukes could do just about anything.
“Positive,” Caldswell said. “We’ve tried. They can’t be killed, can’t be seen, and can’t be stopped. Can you imagine how the average person would react to something like that?” He shook his head. “Panic doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
“But they wouldn’t panic forever,” I said. “I mean, phantoms have been around for seventy years, right? I’ve been all over the galaxy, and I’ve never heard about them, so you guys must have things pretty well under control. If you put it that way, not even Terrans could be worried about…” My voice trailed off. Caldswell’s face had changed while I spoke, becoming almost frighteningly blank.
“Morris,” he said quietly. “What the hell do you think you just saw?”
I gasped like he’d kicked the couch out from under me. I’d been so lost in the past I’d just gotten back, I’d completely forgotten about the disaster that had landed me here. Now, though, my mind was flying back to the monster I’d seen through the lounge window. I recognized its stabbing scream now, too. It was the same one I’d heard on Mycant, only so much bigger my mind had trouble comprehending it.
“We call them emperor phantoms,” Caldswell said when I didn’t speak. “Unity is, was a class-four habitable planet, roughly the same size as Paradox. We can’t tell for sure since we can’t sense them, but we think the emperor was there for less than five hours before the planet reached critical destabilization and flung itself apart.”
He leaned forward, bearing down on me. “Five hours, Morris. Unity was a colony of nearly twenty billion aeons, and that phantom destroyed it like a giant stomping an anthill. They never even had a chance to run.”
For several moments, I had no idea what to say. I couldn’t even imagine twenty billion aeons. The number was simply too huge, too abstract. But while I was trying to get my brain around it, a memory flashed in front of my eyes. It was a glimpse from a window of a ship, staring out at the ruins of a planet just as I’d done from the Fool’s lounge, but in this memory, there was no monster.
I paused, confused. The memory felt … odd was the only way to describe it, like trying to walk around in a shoe that’s slightly the wrong size. It was disconcerting to say the least, and infuriating, because I’d thought I was done with all this déjà vu crap. But apparently I wasn’t, because the more I tried to push the memory away, the harder it pushed back, making me see.
I was standing in the bay of an old-fashioned Terran-style cargo ship much, much larger than the Fool. There were strangers crowded all around me, and we were staring together out the window at the remains of a planet. I didn’t know which planet; the memory didn’t come with anything useful like names. Just a view of broken rocks where a home had once been and anger. So much anger and pain and grief that I thought I would choke. Suddenly, I wanted to scream, to lash out and take back what I’d lost, but I couldn’t. They were all gone, and all I could do was stand there and stare at where they’d been.
That was it. Just an image, almost like a picture, and an intense knot of feelings so tangled I could barely pick them apart. But strongest of all was the overwhelming sense that I was alone. Truly alone in a way I had never comprehended before, and that feeling was the one that brought the tears to my eyes.
Horrified, I ducked my head before Caldswell could see, scrubbing my face on my shoulders. To my relief, Caldswell didn’t comment. He just waited patiently until I spoke again.
“How do you fight something like that?” I asked when I had my voice under control.
“We can’t,” Caldswell replied. “But remember how I told you the Eyes were supported by every major government? Well, in this case, that includes the lelgis.”
I blinked in confusion. “The squids?” I didn’t even know they had a government.
“We’ve given them huge concessions in return for their aid,” Caldswell said bitterly. “But we have no choice. Their queens are the only things in the universe that can kill the really big ones. Fortunately, planet-sized phantoms are extremely rare.”
The idea that anyone could barg
ain with the lelgis was still blowing my mind, but something about this wasn’t sitting right. “Wait,” I said. “If it’s the lelgis’ job to stop the big phantoms, how did that one get to Unity?”
Caldswell’s expression darkened. “That’s something I intend to find out. But done is done. All we can do now is invent a plausible story for what happened and work with the Sevalis to cover up the damage.”
My eyes went wide. “You can’t just cover up the destruction of an entire planet!”
“Of course we can,” Caldswell said. “We’ve done it before.”
I shot him a dirty look. “You’re lying.”
Caldswell arched an eyebrow. “You’ve heard of Svenya?”
“Svenya was pulled off its orbit by a gravitational anomaly,” I said. “It’s got a Remembrance Day and everything. What do…” I trailed off, eyes going wide. “You can’t be serious.”
“As a gun to the head,” Caldswell said calmly. “Svenya was one of the oldest Republic core worlds, an established planet of thirteen billion with almost twice the mass of Unity, and yet it took an emperor phantom less than twelve hours to reduce it to rubble. We actually found out about it much faster than we heard about Unity, but this was in the early days before we’d worked out our agreement with the lelgis. There was nothing we could do except help with evacuations and watch the planet fall apart.”
I stared at him, dumbstruck. Just as with Unity, the number was simply too huge for me to comprehend. Thirteen billion souls, gone. “How did the Eyes hide something like that?” I sputtered. “We’re talking about a planet. A major colony.”
“We didn’t,” Caldswell said. “The Terran Republic hid it all by themselves. They declared the area unsafe and restricted all access. Even now, no one gets in. That’s how serious this is, Morris,” he said, his voice going sharp. “Unity and Svenya are outliers, but phantoms attacks are always happening. Situations like Mycant occur constantly all over the universe, and the only reason planets aren’t shaking themselves apart every day is because we save them.”
