“Know what?” I backed one step away. Though I asked the question, I already knew the answer.
“Did you know they were watching? The governor’s men. Did you know they’ve been looking for you?”
Yes, I wanted to say.
I know.
“They took him.” I was sure she would slap me, but her anger paralyzed her. “My Samison…he gave me his datapad and walked back up to his office. He’d picked flowers for me…he said he’d forgotten them. But he never came down, and when I saw them go in I knew I had to run.”
I couldn’t move.
“So I’ll ask you again,” she said. “Did you know? Are they coming here next? Are they hunting me? Will they take my children?”
I didn’t want to lie to her.
They probably wouldn’t come for her children.
But you, they’ll come for, I almost told her.
They’re probably already on their way.
I stood there and shook my head. I only barely moved, but Maura saw.
“Damn you.” She glared up at me. “I don’t know the right words. I want to say horrible things to you. I want you to hurt. They have my husband, you understand? I never should’ve let you into my house.”
They’d have come for you anyway, I thought.
I’m sorry.
“Aren’t you going to say something?” she fumed. “Are you just going to stand there with your mouth shut? Or…” She reached into her bag, pulled out Samison’s datapad, and waved it in my face. “…is this all you want? Aren’t you going to ask for it? It’s got everything you need. All your stars. All your maps. Everything. Samison did all of this for you.”
“Are your sons safe?” I managed to ask.
“They’re with my sister.” Her anger faded for a heartbeat. “But why should it matter? If the governor comes for me, he’ll take my babies away. I’ll lose them. I’ll—damn you, Joff Armstrong.”
I looked at her. She had never been anything but kind to me. Years ago, I could’ve married her had I wanted. She’d loved me. Samison’s boys could have been mine.
But now she hates me.
I remembered something my father had once said. His exact words eluded me, but it had to do with the welfare of the many compared to that of the few. I hadn’t known what he’d meant when he said it, but standing there in the rising suns, facing Maura’s wrath, I understood.
One small family…
…for all of humanity.
A small price.
I reached for the datapad. Maura held it tight, relinquishing it only when I snared her wrist and squeezed with my other hand. I wanted to believe she knew what I had to do. But I’d never had children. Knowing her pain was impossible.
Eyes wet with tears, she pushed past me. Ten steps down the path, at the bottom of the stairs to her house, she faced me one last time.
“This is for you.” She dropped the satchel on the ground. “Food. Water. Two repli-skin packs.”
I didn’t understand. For her to have brought supplies meant she’d known I’d have to flee.
“Take it.” She looked disgusted. “Just take it. It’s a long walk to Mercuria. They’ll never expect you to go there. I’d have given you the cab, but I think they’re already following it.”
She vanished into her house.
Just like Aly, I knew I’d never see her again.
I trudged up to the bag and hoisted it over my shoulder. I could’ve rushed after Maura and begged for her forgiveness. A better man would’ve wept for the lives he’d ruined. A braver man would’ve stayed to protect her.
But it was as I’d promised myself.
No more feelings.
I fled to the forest. As the suns climbed high, I took to the trees and kept to the shadows near the road to Mercuria. Thunder boomed behind me, the clouds clawing away the light. Sweating, I raced through the deepening gloom.
I crossed shallow streams and slogged through muddy hollows.
I kept the road a few hundred meters to my left. I didn’t see many hovercars; Maura’s house lay on the edge of human civilization.
I expected leaving to hurt. It didn’t. I hadn’t paid it much mind, but I’d spent the last three days getting ready to run.
Again.
Hours later, the rain caught up with me. I remembered something else my father had said. ‘If ever you see a bear,’ he’d warned, ‘don’t bother running. You’ll only die tired.’
Only it wasn’t bears chasing me.
It’s time.
It’s death.
The storm swept over me. Sharp curtains of rain screamed through the forest. The black boots I’d taken from the man who’d tried to kill me held up, but the shirt and pants Samison had given me sagged under the weight of so much water. I jogged, weaved, and ducked through the wooded tangle until at last I found a tree far taller than the others. Into its hollow belly I climbed, hunkering out of the rain and lightning.
And there in the gloom, with the world shaking around me, I pulled Samison’s datapad out of the bag. The sleek black device was as thin as paper, yet rigid as steel. Soft padding lined its outer edges, protecting my fingers as I handled it.
Here I go. I tapped its screen.
I didn’t have any idea what I’d find.
Samison, true to his word, had prepared the report I’d asked. On the datapad’s top screen, I keyed a blinking icon, which opened the gateway to all the data he’d gathered. Thunder roared beyond the hollow tree. The day became as dark as night, split only by green lightning tearing at the sky. It seemed a proper setting to view such things.
I recognized the first image illuminating the screen. Back on Earth, they’d called our galaxy the Milky Way. Packed into its massive disc of light, more than two-hundred fifty-billion stars blazed in a vast spiral disc.
I tapped a blinking green dot, above which the text ‘Sumer with suns Atreya and Kokab’ appeared. I tapped it again and again, widening the image. I’d forgotten how beautiful Sumer looked from orbit. With violet clouds, vast stretches of green forests, and turquoise oceans, the planet was as beautiful as Earth.
Or at least, I thought so.
I gazed at Sumer for a time. I couldn’t help but imagine the worst for it. I closed my eyes and daydreamed its surface riddled with dark caverns, assembly grounds for armies of skeletal Strigoi. Black clouds blocked out Atreya and Kokab’s light, while Sumer’s night side teemed with factories pumping out weapons to snuff the stars.
I opened my eyes, listened to the thunder crash beyond my tree, and imagined yet another fate.
The two suns…destroyed.
Sumer broken, burned, and hurled into the darkness between the stars.
Either fate felt possible.
On the datapad, I panned away from Sumer and its suns. I tapped a blinking red light at the Milky Way’s farthest edge. There, at the galactic spiral’s tip, a data window opened:
Nosfera System
Binary stars FSR488 and FSB489
Six planetary bodies
No known human colonies
Distance from Atreya – approx. 119.8552 light years
Status: missing
Missing, I read it again.
Floating next to the word ‘missing’ I saw a static blue icon. I was no expert in datapad use, but I knew it meant Samison had written a message.
I tapped the icon.
I saw a picture of Samison’s face, smiling and calm, hovering above the message he’d written for me only two days ago.
It was written in my native language, which meant only one thing.
Maura had translated it.
She’d known.
I read Samison’s note:
Joff,
Thank you for this opportunity. I’ve always wanted to perform this search, but our labs have never allowed it. I believe in my duty as a scientist to challenge what is thought to be unbreakable truth. You gave me the courage to go beyond my boundaries. Thank you once again.
You will see t
he maps I have provided. Each blinking light will take you to a separate location. It’s my hope you’ll read this message before you study the map too closely. It will make more sense.
You asked me to track missing stars in the FS (far-space) quadrant of the spiral arm. I used our most powerful scope to do so. You mentioned the scopes on Earth were located in orbit, and you were concerned Sumer’s thick atmosphere would block our land-based scopes. This worry is needless. Nights on Sumer are clearer than most other terrestrial planets, while our scopes contain filters to cut through all the clouds.
You asked for a count of stars missing. One complication: I found the star count records for the previous forty years deleted. Therefore, I had to look for stars whose names we’d catalogued. And I had to check them one by one.
I spent one full night searching for roughly six-hundred stars in the FS region. I found what you’d told me I’d find. Of the six-hundred, more than half were missing. Most of their planetary systems had vanished, and the gravitational waves associated with each missing star were either disrupted or completely gone.
You must understand what a shock this was.
Stellar bodies don’t just disappear.
There’s more. While searching the FS region and surrounding star-fields, I noticed lower than normal light, gravity, and radiation readings. The reason for this: one of the galaxies normally seen in the FS region’s background is missing. Allow me to write it once more: one galaxy, containing a few hundred-billion stars, is gone.
For an entire galaxy to have disappeared from the scope means something almost inconceivable. It indicates the galaxy was destroyed more than four million years ago. Four million is roughly the amount of light years between the missing galaxy and our own. If this is true, and assuming the scope hasn’t been compromised in some way, it means exactly what you think it means.
I won’t say any more. When you’re done reading this, if you haven’t already, go to the map of the Nosfera system. Zoom in where the stars used to be.
You’ll see what you’re afraid of.
- Samison
I looked up from the datapad. The storm rattled the world beyond my tree. There in the shadows, as I hunkered in the only dry spot in the forest, I understood what Samison had told me.
Four million years ago, I thought. If it went dark that long ago, and we just now noticed…
The Strigoi…
…ancient.
Of all the things I thought I’d do, laughing wasn’t one of them. Yet laugh I did, loud and hysterical, drowning out the sound of the rain for several moments.
“So this is what I’m supposed to fight?” I smiled at the storm. “Four million-year old star-killers. Thanks, Doctor Abid. Thanks, everyone.”
I keyed away from Samison’s message. I didn’t know if I believed what I’d read. If the Strigoi were capable of extinguishing entire galaxies, I wondered how many worlds they’d conquered, how many oily oceans and dark-towered cities dotted the universe.
The thunder cracked as if to wake me from my daydream. As Samison had instructed, I returned to the map of the Nosfera system. I scanned the faraway images. I found what he said I would. The binary stars and planets were gone. In their place, a dark, dusty void remained.
I scanned the darkness on the tiny screen. Almost careless, I flicked the viewer across millions of kilometers of the Nosfera system.
And through the dust and broken rocks of the worlds the Strigoi had killed, I glimpsed what Samison wanted me to see.
I saw what I feared most.
And terror flooded me.
She Waits
At dusk, I waded through hip-high grass beside the road.
The rain had stopped an hour ago, but my clothes were saturated from neck to toe. My only dry possession was Maura’s bag, stuffed to its brim with dry rations and bottles of purified water. It wasn’t that the water on Sumer would kill me to drink. It was the bacteria growing in the warm shallows of every stream and every drop of falling rain. Drinking unpurified Sumerian water tended to make people hallucinate. Or at least that’s what I’d heard.
I’d never tried it.
I probably could’ve used the distraction.
I walked into the night. I’d lost all sense of how long I’d been going. I still hadn’t come to terms with everything I’d seen on Samison’s datapad. I understood why the Arcadian government had hidden the truth, but not how it was possible.
Four million years of Strigoi.
How is it they haven’t destroyed every star in the universe?
I stopped thinking about it when I saw the hovercar racing toward me. I was marching south toward Mercuria, while the hovercar was northbound for the settlements near Maura’s house. I heard its hum, and I knew it was going fast.
Of course, the car could’ve been packed with Tabir’s men. I considered the possibility as it approached. Even in the twilight, it was obvious I didn’t belong. No one walked between settlements on Sumer. Unless they had to, no one walked farther than a few hundred meters.
Yet there I was, a vagabond.
It must’ve looked strange when I leapt out onto the road. Hurtling toward me at more than one-hundred kilometers per hour, the silver car with its metallic front and pulsing blue grav-pads would’ve made jelly of me had it hit me.
And tomorrow’s rain would wash me away. I allowed myself a morbid thought.
But the car didn’t hit me. My presence on the road signaled its computer, which forced it to a stop a few meters short. The hum of its engine lessened, and its lights dimmed.
How polite, I thought.
I walked up to the left side door. In the dark, with the windows greyed out, I couldn’t see anything inside. I assumed the worst. I imagined someone sticking out a Strigoi weapon and turning me to powder with one trigger pull.
Instead the door cracked open.
A young couple, sleepy and confused, peered out at me. The woman asked me something I couldn’t understand. She was pretty despite her ridiculous, revealing dress and seven-colored hair. All the colors made her face look ashen. I wondered how long she’d had the Strigoi contagion.
“I need help,” I said to her. I knew she wouldn’t comprehend what I said. It didn’t matter. I just needed her to know I was friendly.
She looked at the young man sitting in the car’s left-hand seat. He looked disoriented. It was obvious they’d been sleeping. They’d probably been at a gala or a festival, at which they’d probably pumped any number of drugs into their bodies.
I glanced at the console inside the car. I’d guessed right.
Not their car. It’s a hovercab.
Perfect.
I said the Sumerian word for ‘hovercab.’ The girl smiled with understanding. With my hand on the door, I managed a smile back. I knew I wasn’t charming in my wet clothes and muddy boots, but all I needed was a moment of their trust.
The young man said something to me. I grinned and paused as if about to answer in his language.
And then I dragged them out of the car and hurled them into the grass.
It wasn’t as hard as I’d expected. I sometimes forgot my strength, my quickness, and my training. The people of Sumer had no reason to know how to defend themselves. More importantly, the gravity on Sumer was somewhat less than what Earth’s had been. Even though I’d lived there for twenty years, I was still stronger than almost everyone else on the planet.
The girl went tumbling into the grass, the contents of her purse splashing on the road. The young man tried to punch me, but I snared his wrist and sent him spiraling to the ground beside his lady. I heard their groans and I almost felt bad for them.
Needs of the many, I heard my father’s voice as I sat in the hovercab and sealed the doors.
At least they have each other.
* * *
In hindsight, I should’ve taken the tiny Strigoi gun I’d found in Tabir’s office. It hadn’t looked like much, only a foul lump of black, bonelike metal. But I had no doubt of
its killing potential.
And with the task I’d given myself, having a weapon might’ve been useful.
I thought about it during my long hours in the hovercab. All night, as the car sped down the dark highways between cities, I drifted in and out of sleep. My restless mind never stopped. In dreams or awake, I considered my life and what it would soon become.
I’m dead, I thought.
I don’t belong here.
I’m just a farmer.
I should’ve taken the gun.
The car never stopped. It knew where it was going. Every time it zoomed past people or other cars, I expected to be chased or blown to tatters by weapons I hadn’t conceived. I dimmed the windows, but I could still see out. Any one of the glass towers on either side of the road could’ve hidden snipers or spies. The cars behind me could’ve been packed with men tailing me to my end.
Be calm, Joff, I told myself.
It didn’t work.
In my heart, I was sure Tabir was watching. I’d buried Aly’s datapad in the bottom of the bag Maura had given me, but even so I imagined its screen lighting up with messages for the public.
Man at large, I assumed it would say.
A fugitive. Dangerous. Two meters tall. Hair like dirt. Eyes grey as charcoal. Sunburned and soaked.
Kill on sight.
The hovercab took me through three cities. It floated on the outskirts of Mercuria, with its red glass domes and slender silver towers. It rounded Arcadia, whose endless suburban streets reminded me of narrow lanes between Earth’s fields. And it cut through the heart of Venya, beyond which the great forest darkened with night’s arrival.
Sitting for so long wasn’t something I’d ever enjoyed. My legs cramped and my back tightened. I considered that the only other times I’d been still for so long had been decades ago.
During hypo-sleep.
Once to Ebes and the Strigoi outpost.
And once to Sumer.
Just when I thought I’d have to stop the hovercab for a stretch and a walk, it slowed. The grav-pads’ hum faded, and a pale blue light awoke on the console. At first I thought maybe the car had malfunctioned or that somehow Tabir had remotely deactivated it.
Shadow of Forever (Eaters of the Light Book 2) Page 8
