by Rachel Bach
I didn’t even know what the infection had felt like until it was gone. I felt like I’d been washed clean, purified. It wasn’t all pleasant, though. My mind also felt raw, like overscrubbed skin, and everything was too bright and hollow. It took me several seconds to work up the courage to open my eyes. When I did, I was sitting in the pilot’s chair.
I looked around in confusion. The last I’d known, I’d been in the back with Maat. Now I was in the dusty cockpit, looking out at the flat, purple-gray nothing of hyperspace through the bomber’s front window. But when I turned to ask Maat why she’d moved me to the front of the ship, the question died on my lips.
Behind me, the fire door to the bomber’s bay had been lowered, sealing off the tiny cockpit from the rest of the ship. Like everything else, the door was old and heavy, its once-shiny surface turned dull by age, and on that dull metal was a message.
The release lever for the bomb doors is on the far left, it read. You’ll want to hit it as soon as possible to avoid reinfection.
It took me two tries to understand what the message meant and another try to get over the fact that it had been written in blood, most likely my blood since I’d been the one doing all the bleeding. Once I got over that little detail, though, all I felt was gratitude. Maat had taken my infection and moved me away so I wouldn’t catch it again when she died. The doors were down because her body was lying on the other side, along with the final remains of Stoneclaw’s terrible, stupid weapon.
But when I reached over to follow the note’s instructions, I felt something wet and sticky on my skin, and I looked down in alarm to see another message written across the back of my hand. A much shorter one.
Thank you.
The letters on my hand were far shakier than those on the wall, but that only made them feel more real. The bloody words should have been creepy, but after all I’d been through, I was incapable of seeing them as anything other than what they were. Thanks, the most heartfelt and gladly given I had ever, or would ever, receive.
“You’re welcome,” I said, reaching out to pull the lever.
The whole ship shuddered as the bomb bay doors opened, dumping Maat’s body into hyperspace. There was a warning blip on the monitor as the thin shell protecting us from the unknown rippled, and then the corpse with the last of the virus was eaten by the unknown beyond. Another time, that would have upset me. I was a stickler for proper burial. This time, though, I felt nothing, because the girl I knew was gone already. Enna was free, just like I’d promised, and now I was alone.
I sat back in the dusty pilot’s chair, casually wiping my bloody hand on my shirt’s last remaining clean spot. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been out, how long any of this had taken really, but I seemed to have stopped bleeding. My leg still hurt like a bitch, of course. Thanks to the metal barb, my thigh was throbbing so hard I could feel it in every part of my body. My shoulder was a little better, but not much, and I had no energy to deal with any of it. I had no energy for anything.
Now that the job was done, I was tired in a way I’d never been before. I felt hollow and powerless, though I didn’t know if that was from what Maat had done to me or from the crying before. Whatever it was, the exhaustion was a blessing, numbing the ache of Rupert’s loss and my own fear. Some small part of me that still retained its logic knew this was probably because I was going into shock, but I couldn’t remember why that was a bad thing. It was nice to feel muted, to not hurt.
I sat there in the lull for several minutes, idly contemplating whether I should go back or not. I was injured enough that I could easily die here if I did nothing, but whenever I thought about it, the idea seemed insulting. She might have done it for her own reasons, but the fact remained that Maat had given me my life back. Also, if I was going to die, I at least wanted to do it somewhere I knew the king’s death guides could find me. Plus, however low I’d sunk, I’d never been a quitter, and the idea of a quiet, ignominious death in hyperspace was simply too maudlin for me to bear.
It took everything I had, but in the end, I forced myself to sit up and hit the button that controlled the hyperspace coil. I fell backward as soon as I did, landing in a cloud of dust as the coil began to spin down. Closing my eyes against the burst of pain my movements had caused, I crossed my fingers and recited a prayer to my king as the stillness of hyperspace vanished and I was yanked back into the universe.
When I opened my eyes again, the first thing I saw were the phantoms.
That threw me for several minutes. First, I’d assumed my ability to see the space bugs would have vanished with the virus, and second, there weren’t supposed to be any more phantoms. They were all supposed to have gone back home, not floating around in our universe, especially not in such vast numbers.
But even while these worries rattled around in my head, I had to admit they were beautiful. The space around my ship was so bright with them I felt like I was flying through a glowing snowstorm. Soon enough, they were in my ship, too, passing through the walls like spirits to land on me.
Having lived at the center of a three-foot no-phantom zone for so long, I couldn’t help a little jump when the first one lighted on my arm. A few seconds later, I was covered in them. The little glowing bugs were crawling over my skin and hair and under my clothes, which would have been disturbing except I couldn’t feel them at all. After that, I couldn’t help a wide grin, because of all the phantoms sitting on me, not a one was turning black.
My moment of happiness was short-lived. Just as I reached up to pet a particularly fluffy-looking little shrimplike phantom that had landed on my stomach, the bomber’s alarm started to blare. I jumped, scattering the phantoms, and looked over just in time to see three Terran fighters fly up in tight formation beside me. The next second, my little ship rocked as a harpoon struck the hyperdrive, and a man speaking brisk, no-nonsense Universal hailed my com.
“Unidentified vessel,” he said. “You have entered restricted space. You are being taken into custody under special action order number—”
“Save it,” I said, leaning back in the bomber’s dusty chair. “This is Deviana Morris, here for her funeral. What’s today’s date?”
The swift response actually gave me a stab of hope. If they were still guarding the Dark Star this actively, I couldn’t have lost too much time. The fighters didn’t look too different at least, so I couldn’t have been gone more than ten years. I waited for the pilot’s response, but he didn’t speak to me again. Instead, a jammer field landed on my ship, sending my com into a squeal of static. I cut it off with a groan and settled down for the ride as the fighters rearranged their formation to tow me in.
I didn’t have to wait long. The fighters ended up pulling me to a Republic battleship that was only about five minutes away. I tried to read the ship’s fleet number, but the phantoms were so thick I couldn’t even make it out. Still, battleships don’t hang around for the fun of it, and by the time the fighters had dragged me into the landing bay, I was starting to get seriously nervous. After all, if there were this many phantoms, then maybe Caldswell had been right. Maybe by killing Maat, I’d opened the floodgates and doomed us all.
But the phantoms were all so tiny and peaceful as they floated by like little jellyfish in a tide that I had trouble believing that. In any case, there was no way to know until someone talked to me. So when the bay doors closed behind us and gravity caught my ship, I left the landing to the autopilot and popped the front hatch. The ladder was tough on my leg. Going out through the back would have been easier, but even with Maat dead, a little more pain seemed like a small price to pay to avoid going into the bomber’s rear bay ever again.
My quick exit must have confused the pilots, because they were still scrambling themselves when I poked my head out the hatch. They had their guns ready by the time I climbed down, and I immediately raised my hands in surrender. Clearly, I hadn’t jumped too far in the future, which meant I was probably still in a lot of trouble, and if I was going to be execute
d, I wanted it done proper, not because I startled some trigger-happy Terran idiot.
“Easy,” I said, trying my best to look nonthreatening, which was a lot easier than normal with one leg shot through and my face pale from blood loss. When the soldiers didn’t start barking orders at me, though, I got confused. Were they waiting for something or—
“Well, well, look what the cat dragged in.”
My whole body froze at the deep voice echoing from the other side of the bay. No. It couldn’t possibly …
But it was. When I looked up, Brian Caldswell was strolling across the deck. He looked exactly like he always did—graying reddish hair, late middle age, confident stride—none of which told me anything since he’d looked like this for seventy years that I knew of. What really threw me was the fact that he was smiling. That was just unnerving. Maybe the trauma of losing Maat had left him soft in the head?
“I thought they were pulling my leg,” Caldswell said as he stepped up to join the pilots, looking me up and down like he was trying to spot a fake. “Damn, Morris, never thought I’d see you again.”
“Feeling’s mutual,” I snarled, glaring at him and fighting the urge to bat at the tiny phantoms flying around my face. “Let’s cut to the chase. What year is it? How long was I gone?”
Caldswell’s smile got wider, making me cringe, but his answer was what hit me like a sucker punch.
“Six days, twelve hours, thirty-eight minutes, eighteen seconds,” he said. “Give or take a second.”
I must have stood there for a solid minute, opening and closing my mouth like a fish. “But,” I spat out when my brain finally started working again, “how?”
“Wild jumps can just as easily be short as long,” Caldswell replied with a shrug. “And large phantoms thin space by their very presence. With so many emperors around ripping up the universe and distorting time, your jump was much easier than it should have been. Clearly, you have the devil’s own luck.”
His words made sense, but I’d been braced so hard for the worst I couldn’t wrap my mind around them. I also couldn’t understand why he was talking about phantoms in front of men who were clearly common soldiers. All this confusion must have been a pathetic sight, because Caldswell sighed and walked over, putting a hand on my back to steer me forward.
That snapped me out of my shock just fine.
“Don’t touch me,” I snarled, whipping back. This man had killed Rupert. If I’d thought I had a chance of actually ripping it out, I would have gone for his throat. “If you’re going to kill me, then do it. I’m not afraid, and I’d rather die taking you out than go through some sham of a trial.”
“Relax, Morris,” Caldswell said, putting up his hands. “You have every reason to want to kill me right now, but before you try, I have something I’d like to show you.”
I should have punched him. I should have gone for one of the soldiers’ guns and plugged him right in his smug face. Unfortunately, appealing as both of those actions sounded, they would have ended up hurting me far more than Caldswell. Also, part of me was curious, and since curious was a lot better than the angry, grieving hurt I’d been swallowing for the past hour, I stalked after him.
I fully expected to be marched into a prison cell. Instead, Caldswell led me down to the ship’s medical bay. I blew out a breath, expecting to be told to hop up on one of the triage tables, but though my bloody clothes and marked limp were drawing nurses like vultures to a carcass, Caldswell waved them away and kept going, leading me down a short hallway lined with private patient rooms very much like the one I’d woken up in the last time I was on a Terran battleship.
That memory put a bad taste in my mouth, but I was in this now, so I stomped through the door Caldswell was gentlemanly enough to hold open for me only to come up face to snout with a xith’cal in a lab coat. I stumbled back in shock, though I really shouldn’t have been surprised considering my escort. For his part, Hyrek didn’t even blink. He just tapped at his handset and turned it to face me.
Oh, it’s you.
I blinked at the message, and then fixed him with a glare. “That’s it? That’s all I get?”
He pulled his handset back and started typing. When he turned the screen to me again, the letters were bright pink and bobbing up and down. Welcome back from the great beyond! Miracle of miracles!
I stared at the message so long I think I scared Hyrek, because he quickly typed, That was a joke.
“No, I get it,” I snapped, suddenly furious. I was in zero mood to be played with. “Why am I here? What’s going on?”
Hyrek looked at Caldswell. When the captain nodded, the lizard reached out and pulled back the curtain that shielded the bed from view.
The man lying in it was hooked up to a dozen machines, his body covered in patches and monitoring cuffs everywhere they would fit. His head was wrapped in a bandage that wisps of black hair were already starting to escape, and though there was an oxygen mask over his mouth and a bandage covering his eyes, it didn’t matter a jot. I’d know him anywhere.
“Rupert,” I whispered, the name coming out in a choked gasp as I stumbled forward, almost falling in my hurry to grab his warm hand in mine. He didn’t move when I touched him, but his chest was rising and falling, his heartbeat measured by the steady beep of the machine on the wall, audible proof that he was alive. He was alive.
That was as far as I got before I started to cry.
I should have been ashamed of myself, bawling like that. Caldswell and Hyrek were right next to me, no doubt judging me every second, but it didn’t matter. If the king himself had been before me, I couldn’t have stopped the tears. My relief was so intense it hurt almost as much as the grief had, and after everything that had happened, I didn’t have the strength left to fight it.
It took me a few minutes to get myself together enough to turn back around. When I did, I saw that Caldswell and Hyrek had retreated to the door to give me some privacy. I felt a twinge of annoyance that they’d had to do that, but mostly I was exhausted. I’d pushed past my limits on everything, mentally, physically, emotionally, and overjoyed as I was to find out Rupert wasn’t dead, it had been the final blow.
I didn’t even have the energy left to be mad at Caldswell. Instead, I leaned on Rupert’s bed and caught the captain’s eye, waving them over without ceremony as I asked, “What’s going on?”
How is he alive? was what I really wanted to know, but I couldn’t get that one out just yet, so I settled for something broader.
Caldswell blew out a long breath and jerked his head toward the door. Hyrek took his cue and left at once, locking the room behind him. When the captain and I were alone, he sat down in the chair in the corner with a sigh. “Luck,” he said tiredly. “When that phantom or Maat or whatever grabbed my gun to save you, it bent the barrel. So, when I went to shoot to prevent your escape, my aim was off.”
“So why is he like this?” I said, nodding down at Rupert’s still body.
Caldswell arched a thick eyebrow. “I said my aim was ‘off,’ not ‘gone.’ I still hit him in the head, just not as cleanly as I’d meant. He sustained a massive brain injury, which is why Hyrek’s keeping him in a coma. We’re waiting to see if he’ll regenerate.”
Panic sent my heart racing as a cold sweat broke out all over my body. “Will he regenerate?”
“We’re not sure,” Caldswell said. “Hyrek says he’s never seen a symbiont this badly damaged who wasn’t dead. But he’s doing well so far, and if anyone could pull this off, it’s Charkov. He never was one to give up.”
I let out a shaky breath. He’d make it, I decided. He had to. I wouldn’t let him die again.
Even though I had no actual way of enforcing that decision, just thinking it made me feel much better, and I settled a little more comfortably onto Rupert’s bed, trying not to get too much blood on things as I cradled his warm hand in my lap.
“I’m sure you hate me right now.”
Caldswell’s voice caught me by surprise, a
nd I looked up to see him staring like he expected me to disabuse him of this. When I didn’t, he continued. “It seems I owe you an apology, Morris.”
“You owe me a lot more than that,” I said with a snort, lifting my eyes to the phantoms that were still flowing by. “I was right, wasn’t I? We opened the door and now the phantoms are leaving, just like I said.”
“So they tell me,” Caldswell replied. “For the record, I am not apologizing for what I did on the Dark Star. Just because your gamble paid off doesn’t mean you had any right to make it. You bet the future of all humanity on the word of a space monster who couldn’t even speak, and I was completely in the right for trying to stop you.”
“Except for the part where you were wrong,” I reminded him. “So what are you apologizing for, then?”
Caldswell lowered his gaze, and for a moment, I would have sworn he looked ashamed. “I’m sorry I tried to keep you and Charkov apart,” he said at last. “A great deal of suffering could have been avoided if we’d told you the truth right from the beginning and set out to work with both of your feelings rather than against them. It’s been a long time since I was in love and I’d forgotten what an idiot it makes you.”
That was hardly an apology, but seeing as this was Caldswell, it was probably as good as I was ever going to get. “What about Maat’s daughters?” I asked. “What’s being done for them? Are they still…”
“Alive?” Caldswell finished. “Oh yes, very. When you took Maat into hyperspace, her control over them vanished. Some, mostly the older ones, became unstable, but the majority were able to recover once Maat’s madness was removed from their shared consciousness.” He shot me a curious look. “They’ve been asking about you.”
I couldn’t help a smug grin at that one. “Still think I was greedy and prideful for trying to have it all?”
“Incredibly,” he said. “If I wasn’t so happy about how it all worked out, I would be furious.”
