by P. K. Lentz
“Something’s happened, Captain,” Zerouali reported calmly. “An incident at Miryth’s execution site. Gunfire, explosions, dozens dead. No details yet.”
The news drove Kearn’s dismal mood still lower, if that were possible. “I’m not sure it matters anymore,” he answered slowly, painfully.
“What do you mean? What did Sallat tell you?”
Zerouali’s voice didn’t seem real. Nothing did. Kearn had to remind himself to answer her.
“Ona is going to be cleansed,” he said, and left it at that.
“What? Captain, what does that mean?”
Kearn fumbled briefly with a reply, but gave up. “I’ll forward you the recording,” he said instead. “Kearn out.”
Retreating from the comm station in a daze, Kearn returned to his quarters. A short time later the Onari commerce authorities commed Maseilya to suspend the transfer of goods pending investigation of a violent incident in their capital.
But did it really matter anymore? Did anything?
***
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Sitting in his small office, Liam Jagr listened anxiously to the official Onari government channels. Details were trickling in about the recent massacre at the civic arena. Jagr’s initial reaction had been fury--the rescue was supposed to have occurred at the detention facility. But apparently Miryth’s executioners had changed their schedule at the very last minute in order to foil just such an attempt. With some effort Jagr managed to convince himself he was fortunate that his proxies on the ground had managed to recover so quickly from the setback and mount the operation anyway.
The reports spoke of massive carnage, dozens of fatalities. That was fine, so long as Miryth wasn’t one of them. That’s what Jagr was truly waiting to hear.
It was nearly an hour before that word came, confirmed by a guard who’d survived the crash of her prison transport.
She was dead. The moment her captors had realized there was no escape, they’d executed her on the spot.
Jagr’s head fell forward onto his desk. His efforts had only served to change the manner of Miryth’s murder.
He listened in a daze as the reports continued, hoping in vain that it was all propaganda or some ghastly mistake, that maybe she really had been rescued after all. But he knew this was just fantasy. The comm feeds he monitored were the private channels of Onari Security. This was where the lies originated, not where they passed as truth.
Some time later, an entry request at Jagr’s office door sent him bolt upright in his chair. He quickly composed himself, or tried to, and bid the visitor enter. The hatch slid open to reveal the Commissioner flanked by two armed guards. As they entered, Jagr understood that his career, maybe his life, was finished.
“The Directorate has given orders to close operations and evacuate groundside assets,” the Commissioner said.
Strange. Perhaps the visit wasn’t about Miryth after all.
“The beacon went off course and we received the order late,” the old man continued. “There is no reason given for the evac. We get precious little news out here, but apparently there’s been talk back home of eliminating some of the less favorable outposts. It seems Ona will be among them.”
Jagr swallowed past a knot in his throat. “I heard about that,” he said cautiously. “I never thought they’d go through with it.”
“Well, they are. We’ve already begun withdrawal.”
“That’s...that’s...”
What Jagr really wanted to say was that he was glad. That Miryth’s murderers deserved to be removed from any civilized universe. That their whole accursed backward society was guilty of criminal ignorance.
“...unfortunate,” Jagr finished instead.
The Commissioner nodded agreement. “However,” he continued gravely. He reached into his pocket for a data chip, which he set gently on Jagr’s desk. “The fact that Ona may be slated for obliteration fails to absolve you.”
Jagr stopped breathing. Just when he’d begun to think that he might emerge blameless, with all evidence of his misconduct conveniently and permanently erased by Fleet itself, it was over.
“These gentlemen will escort you to a holding cell pending full review of the evidence against you on charges of Unauthorized Intervention.”
With those words, Jagr found himself facing an ugly choice: submit to decades of imprisonment for a crime that, even if successful, would have achieved precisely nothing...
Or...
His mind was already made up. As he reached for the sidearm in his desk drawer Jagr was careful to telegraph the move. Naturally the two guardsmen took notice and drew their own weapons. Jagr froze for an instant before reaching again for the drawer.
“Hands in sight!” a guard ordered.
Jagr paid the command no heed. Instead he slid his drawer open and picked up the sidearm within.
The guards must have fired then, for Jagr felt a tremendous impact followed by a tingling in his chest.
A nonlethal blast. No--they were supposed to kill him!
His limbs went leaden and the weapon in his hand suddenly weighed a ton. There was not far to go. If he could only raise his arm a few more inches, he could finish the job himself.
Jagr channeled his every ounce of energy into lifting that one arm, a lifeless sack of meat. Success! With superhuman effort he managed to guide the barrel to his head.
Another concussive blast pressed him backward into his chair. Jagr willed one numb finger to depress his trigger.
Apparently it worked.
***
Sitting alone, belted into a station on Lady’s bridge, Kearn waited. Waited for almost anything--for news from Fyat or Sallat or even Liam Jagr, for instructions from the Onari authorities, for signs of another Fleet vessel. Anything. But for three long hours there was nothing. The frustrating silence was broken only by occasional reports from Zerouali updating him on Onari newsfeeds.
These did not offer much. The planet’s media was tight-lipped and probably heavily censored. They were emphatic about one thing, though. Miryth was dead. Of course they would say that. Even if she’d escaped, a government like Ona’s had a vested interest in quashing legends before they were born.
Honestly Kearn couldn’t bring himself to care whether the woman was dead or alive. There was only one person on Ona he cared about. Besides, the deal with Jagr amounted to nothing if the Onari authorities refused to allow Lady refueling privileges. And even those would be meaningless when Fleet arrived bent on annihilation. How much he missed the old days--really not very old at all--when disaster meant revisiting a world to find out that its economy had collapsed and his accounts there were worthless. Those days seemed a universe away and likely never to return.
Kearn’s comm chimed. Probably just Zerouali again with another dose of Onari non-news.
He was half right. It was Zerouali.
“Help!” she cried. “It’s Lisset, she’s crazy!” A loud crash punctuated her plea.
Kearn unbuckled and shot toward the exit. “On my way. Is she attacking you?”
“Help!”
“Get away from her if you can. I’ll comm the rest of the crew and--” An ominous crack, a groan, cut him off. “Doctor?” Kearn asked frantically, hurtling toward the hab module. “Jilan?”
Several beats passed without response.
Kearn sent a shipwide comm. “Medical emergency in hab module guest quarters. Anyone in vicinity, return comm immediately. Thorien, I’ll meet you there.”
Even as he spoke, Kearn cursed himself as an idiot. After all he’d learned, how could he have failed to treat Lisset as a threat? Tempting as it was to just shut off his brain under the weight of recent events, it was the last thing he could afford to do right now. He should have taken precautions.
One crewman reported back, an off-duty assistant of Ilias’ who’d been drafted earlier for a shift in the cargo holds. Kearn dispatched him to Zerouali’s guest quarters.
“I’m at the door, Captai
n,” the man reported shortly, while Kearn was still en route. “What should I do?”
“You hear anything inside?”
“Nothing, sir.”
Kearn passed into the hab module’s axial passage, still at least a minute away. “Just wait there for now,” he instructed the assistant. “I’m on my way. Tell me if there’s any change.”
The delay could conceivably cost Zerouali her life, Kearn realized, but if Lisset really was a threat he couldn’t justify sending her another potential victim. If there was danger to be faced, he’d face it himself. For a change.
He arrived to find the attending crewman poised cautiously outside Zerouali’s quarters. No disturbance seemed to emanate from within. Standing tensely to one side of the door, Kearn keyed it to open. When a feral Lisset failed to burst into the corridor and attack, he ventured a look inside.
It took him several slack-jawed seconds to take in the whole scene, a few more for it to fully register. Zerouali lay face down and motionless just past the room’s the entrance. The chamber around her had been thoroughly wrecked. Every object that could be picked up and several that couldn’t had been overturned or shattered. Curled on the couch at the center of the chaos was Lisset.
Crying. The girl paid Kearn no notice as he rushed to Zerouali’s side and rolled her over. The soft moan Zerouali emitted upon being manhandled offered some degree of relief, despite the copious amount of blood on her face.
“Jilan,” Kearn whispered close to her ear. He found himself almost afraid to speak for fear of attracting Lisset’s attention. The girl terrified him now. He very much wanted to drag Zerouali into the corridor and seal the door, but he refused to take risks, however slight, with her life. He’d wait here for Thorien instead.
Though Zerouali failed to respond to repeated calls of her name, her head did loll back and forth. Kearn guessed she’d make it, assuming the unlikely perpetrator of this violence--still weeping and evidently indifferent to their presence--made no attempt to finish the job.
Kearn’s eyes darted between Zerouali’s bloodied but serene face and the deceptively innocent-looking Lisset. He placed a steady, reassuring hand on Zerouali’s cheek. “You’re safe,” he said quietly. As his thumb brushed her bloody lips, he thought once more, impertinently, of his earlier clumsy advance on her.
Dismissing the stray thought, he resumed his watch on Lisset until Thorien arrived. After a cursory exam the doctor issued a comforting prognosis.
“Scalp wound,” he said. “Looks worse than it is. Maybe a mild concussion.”
“Let’s get her out.”
Together the two carried Zerouali’s inert form over the threshold and set her carefully on the floor in the corridor.
“I’m going back in,” Kearn said when that was done. “Don’t open this door under any circumstances. Until I say otherwise, Lisset is to be treated as hostile.”
With that Kearn stepped back into the guest quarters and sealed the door with his personal override. He stood quietly staring at Lisset for some time before he worked up the nerve to approach. Her appearance didn’t exactly inspire terror, but the room itself gave another impression entirely. The quarters weren’t just trashed; they were quite literally in a state of chaos. Solid, heavy objects were mangled and misshapen far beyond the capacity of any unarmed human, even an enhanced one like Fyat. The chair that had served as Zerouali’s home during her long vigil over Lisset had been torn into halves, one of which was lodged seamlessly inside a fibresteel bulkhead. A dining table was similarly embedded at a steep angle in the floor. Given the maelstrom that must have occurred here, it was a wonder that Zerouali had escaped with only a scratch.
When Kearn finally came to stand directly before the one presumably responsible, Lisset looked up mournfully with desperate and very human blue eyes. Her tears were gone, but their tracks still showed fresh on her pale cheeks.
“I’m sorry I hurt her,” she said in a voice that threatened to crack. “I lost my temper.”
“She’ll be alright,” Kearn said, and could think of nothing more. What did he even want from her now? Answers?
Before he could decide, Lisset raised a trembling hand toward Kearn. The palm was up, as if in a plea. For what? Forgiveness? Kearn just regarded her open hand, avoiding her eyes until she gave up and buried face in her palms instead.
Kearn continued to stare at her with a growing sense of unreality, thinking of all that was alleged to have occurred because of her. Her gift of translight, whatever its intended outcome, had been an unmitigated disaster. The Interim was her fault, her creation.
But would anything have been better without her? The monsters currently en route to cleanse Ona were humans, weren’t they? Tempting as it was to believe otherwise, humans needed no help bringing themselves to misery. It had been in their blood since Earth. Translight had only let it spread faster and wider.
Such thinking brought Kearn to a simple realization. Whatever Lisset was, however callous she had been with human lives, she had not wanted this outcome. And now, in evident defeat, she sat here on Lady reacting to events not as a god or omnipotent alien, but as what she appeared to be. A human girl. A baby.
No longer afraid, Kearn closed the remaining space to sit beside her. Lisset looked up with tearful eyes and slumped sideways onto his chest. The arms that snaked around his torso were warm and, thankfully, un-corpselike. Kearn draped his own arm over the girl’s back.
“What are you?” he asked gently. He didn’t really expect a straight answer to this question, one that Zerouali had already put to her at least twice already.
“Alone,” said the sulking Lisset. “Scared. An exile. Soon I will be nothing.”
“Exile?” Kearn repeated. “From what?”
Lisset shook her head against his chest. “I’m tired. Their war against me has consumed countless layers already. But I’ll surrender to them now, before it claims yours, too. It’s one of my last.”
Intrigued, but also thoroughly lost, Kearn wished Zerouali could have been present to question the. Since she wasn’t, he instead said lamely, “I don’t understand,”
“No need,” she said. “I only want you to help me feel human again for a short while, before I die.”
“How do I do that?”
“Talk to me.”
“About what?”
“How is Serenity? I went to a lot of trouble for her sake, and all for nothing.”
“She’s fine,” Kearn said. But damned if he would sit here with a deity in his lap and make small talk. He dared a tepid accusation instead. “Why did you do what you did? To us. To Halo.”
“I know the results were not ideal,” the girl replied. “For any party. Not even for my hunters, I’m glad to say. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? For playing with our lives? For exterminating whole planets?”
Lisset turned up a tear-stained cheek to flash Kearn an affronted glare. “I’m not feeling very comforted.”
The petulant look and juvenile words toughened Kearn’s resolve to treat Lisset like a child. “I’m not here to comfort you,” he said, firmly but without ire. “If anything you should comfort me. If you’re what Zerouali thinks you must be, then you owe us all a lot more than that.”
From her position on his chest the girl studied Kearn with narrowed eyes that were suddenly more mischievous than sad. “What is it she thinks I am?”
“A god,” Kearn admitted. The statement made lots of hairs stand on end.
Lisset smiled. “I’m no god.”
Kearn was relieved to hear her say so, even if he didn’t quite know whether to believe her. “Well...you’re no human,” he said. He hadn’t meant the observation as an insult; he realized too late it might easily be taken for one.
The soft chuckle Lisset issued in response was not childish at all, but neither was it menacing. “Not human?” she said. “I’m more human than you. More than any to ever live.”
The talk of humanity directed Kearn’s thoughts to what Zer
ouali had told him of Prophet and the cores. “You’ve been to Earth,” he said resolutely.
The girl’s smile widened. Her head sank back onto Kearn’s chest. “Born there,” she said dreamily. “Died there. Wish I could be there now.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Yours has...precious little to recommend it.”
“Mine? My what?”
But Lisset gave no answer. Her soft, regular breaths said she might have fallen asleep on his chest.
“My earth?” Kearn muttered, mostly to himself. “How many are there?”
When a few more moments passed in silence he craned his neck to confirm that Lisset’s eyes had closed. He shook her a little, eliciting a feeble moan.
“It’s over,” she said as she stirred. She pressed her cheek harder against Kearn’s chest, as if wanting to burrow inside. “I don’t want it to be over. It was only the beginning. So much depends on me.”
Kearn tightened his arm around the girl, granting her wish for closer contact even if what he felt toward her stopped well short of sympathy. Maybe the ‘comfort’ she sought would make her more talkative.
“A certain someone,” he said, meaning Zerouali, “would kill me if I didn’t ask you what it was that’s ‘over now.’”
Lisset squirmed in Kearn’s arms. Her breath came heavy. Her face ground against him, fingers clawing deep into his thigh. Kearn squeezed her tighter and stroked her hair.
“What’s over, Lisset?”
In a single, spastic move the girl wrenched her neck to gaze upward. Brilliant blue eyes, now glassy, seemed fixed on something far outside the confines of Lady’s hull. Kearn had never actually watched anyone die, but he imagined this was what it looked like.
“Tell me,” he said. “What’s over?”
The response, if response it was, came in the form of nails digging deeper into the flesh of Kearn’s leg. He bore the pain, sensing he couldn’t have broken her grip if he tried. Lisset’s fingers, along with her every other muscle, had seized up like coils of fibresteel beneath her thin flesh.
