by F. T. Lukens
The laugh that boomed over the comms was in a lower register than the other voices. The equipment popped and sizzled under the strain, and Ren ran to repair the imminent overload.
“We’re the remnants of the army that lost to the Phoenix Corps.”
“How is that possible? You were destroyed.”
“Obviously not. We have been here, existing in the debris. Your friend understands.”
Ren did. He’d lived in the systems and circuits for weeks. He’d lived as star and electricity and constituent elements and atoms, haunting the relays from the cargo bay to the bridge, watching as his body slowly healed. He had lived as energy and sparks and power. When he’d entered his body again, bound by muscle and skin and bone, he’d found it clumsy and inelegant. Is that how they saw him?
“I do. I understand.”
Asher leaned as close as possible to Ren. “You’ve been orbiting the prison for years. Can you help us?”
“We stay out of the affairs of humans.”
“It’s my affair,” Ren said quickly. “My brother—he can walk in dreams—is trapped in there. There are others too. A man who can compel and a woman who has visions of the future.”
The voices scoffed. “They are no friends of ours. They abandoned us when it came to fight. They left us alone to fend off the humans who would see us destroyed.”
“They left you?”
“When the war brewed, our kind was targeted as the threat due to our power. To control technology and energy is to control information and systems. The fledgling drifts were terrified of falling under our control. At first, they tried to cast us out. Then they tried to shut us away in their walls. And when we fled, they followed. We had no choice but to fight. The others hid.”
“But you were dangerous,” Asher said. “You lost your humanity. Is that true? That you lost your balance between power and blood?”
Another huff. “History is written by the winners. But it is not wrong. We gave in to our power and forgot ourselves. Our physical forms became worthless to us.”
Ren shuddered, remembering the times when he’d walked a dangerous line in his own balance. Millicent had almost forced him away from his own humanity. And sometimes he’d given in gladly: on Erden when Zag had threatened his friends, and on the ship at the siege on Mykonos. Ren was lucky he had Asher to ground him or he would’ve given in and become like the remnants floating in space around them. Ren clenched his fists. “And you were destroyed?”
“The Corps could not destroy us. They were nothing but flesh caged in ships when we were energy caged in flesh.”
“Then what happened?”
A shrill laugh broke over the comm system. Darby clapped her hands over her ears. Penelope flinched, and Lucas stood abruptly and stepped away from his console.
“We self-destructed. Our vessels were worthless, and they’d never let us be.”
“That makes no sense,” Asher said, expression livid, cheeks red. “You died, and for what? To live as memorials to a rebellion? You accomplished nothing!”
The comm crackled. The vid screen lit up with static. The hull shook and clanged. Objects thumped against the airlocks. Warning claxons blared, and the red emergency lights flashed.
Ren flooded the systems and pushed them back. Blue tendrils gathered in the corners of the ship. A swell of power and electricity rushed through the wires and systems as he chased out the would-be intruders. He flung them away, his rage at their invasion and their presumption was a palpable thing.
“Stay out of my ship!” His voice thundered outward. It shuddered through the comm system and into the cluster of debris, shook through their circuits, and bounced from one metal hunk to the next.
After a long silence, Darby cleared her throat. “Are they gone?”
Ren restored the systems on the ship to normal, but he hadn’t chased the others away. They hovered nearby. “No,” he said, eyes blazing. “They’re regrouping.” He settled his gaze on Asher. “You insulted them.”
“They deserve to be insulted.”
“That’s the Corps talking. Not you. I don’t blame them for their actions. If what they say is true, then they were as stuck as we are. Not able to rest. Not able to hide. Not able to just be. They chose their way out.”
“Is that what you’ll choose, then? If there is no rest for us after this?”
Ren was split between his body and his star. He felt the energy racing through the circuits and felt his blood race through his veins as his pulse quickened. He took Asher’s hand.
“No. I’ve chosen you.”
The voices edged back into the comm system, and Ren allowed it.
“You are too powerful, little technopath.”
“My name is Ren.”
“We will not help you, Ren. We owe nothing to you or to those in the prison. And you side with the wrong individuals.”
“And you’ll leave them to their fate? You’ll do the same to them as they did to you? You were forced to abandon your humanity. That must have been a terrible decision to make. But I won’t do that.” It wasn’t wise for Ren to challenge them, as it wasn’t wise for Ren to allow them into the Star Stream. But the crew had come so far, he wouldn’t allow these beings to stand in their way.
“We do not meddle. The Corps meddles. We are not the same.”
“Then get out of our way.” Ren burst outward, cleared a path through the field, and tossed the debris to the farthest bounds of the orbit.
“Feisty,” the deepest voice said. “You are determined. We have not met one like us in so long. It’s only been us and we’ve forgotten our flesh and the bonds of our mortal coils.”
Asher’s throat bobbed. “You’ll help us?”
After a long silence several voices spoke in a merged statement. “We’ll assist you with moving close to the prison. We’ll act as your camouflage, but we will not assist you with the prison itself.”
“That’s better than nothing,” Rowan muttered.
“That’s a generous offer,” Ren said. “We accept your assistance.”
“The dock for the prison is along the back as you approach, with the deepest piece of the debris field surrounding it. We can guide you through and hide you from their sensors.”
“We’ll go slow,” Lucas offered, sitting back in his chair and punching in the coordinates. “Thank you.”
“Good luck, Ren and humans.”
Ren nodded. “Thank you.”
There was a flicker of static in the comm, then they were gone.
_
With large pieces of debris hovering near the hull, the Star Stream crawled toward the prison. It would take hours.
Ren wandered to the cargo bay. He folded down next to the aft airlock and pressed his fingers along the seal. There were many systems in place to keep the seal from breaking and causing a loss of pressurization. Opening the ship to the vacuum of space would be disastrous for the structural integrity and for the crew. But would it be for Ren? Would he be like those that surrounded him? Could he die? Or would his body turn to dust and his energy remain, trapped in wires? Was his star his soul? Or was it separate?
When Millicent was on board, she’d tried to teach him to meditate, and he echoed her pose now. He breathed in past the knot of panic in his middle, and breathed out against the tension in his muscles. He sank into his body and released a stream of star. It rushed outward, finding the path of least resistance, and with that, Ren was out in the debris.
I’d like to talk, he said, hoping they heard him. I want to know more about what we are. How to control what I am. What else I can do.
They echoed. We don’t have much time to teach you.
Please. Anything.
A whispered conversation happened between several of the glowing pieces.
What do you need to know to help you in your foolish quest?
Ren swallowed. Gathering his memories of Millicent and the way she manipulated him, hurt him, he sent those thoughts and feelings into the ether, converted them into electrical impulses, willed them to feel how he felt. How do I stop her?
You wish to harm one of our kind?
I wish to stop her from hurting anyone else.
Another rapid conversation and then a new voice, old and scratchy, like the sound of his stepfather’s music player scratching over the antique vinyls he coveted.
She is a technopath, but she has secondary powers, just as you do. She can push and pull like the moon on a tide, or like the fluctuating gravity on an orbit. You haven’t discovered your secondary power, though you’ve used it without knowing.
Ren steeled himself. What is mine?
Can’t you feel it? She may be able to influence you, but you can overwhelm.
That’s a function of my power?
Yes. Wield it. Think of how you pushed us out. How you swarmed into us and blackened our coils and wires. You are powerful, and you burned us.
I didn’t mean to hurt you. I only wanted you out.
Focus on what you want, on what you’ve lost. Focus on your grief and your anger and your turmoil. Focus on your love and your happiness and your ambition. Those are your strongest emotions; use them to scorch.
I don’t want to hurt anyone.
You are a supernova. You will collapse.
Ren froze. A supernova. He read about when massive stars died, how they would collapse into their cores, then explode outward. Their blasts were so powerful they would send their elements into space, seeding the universe for a new generation of stars. That was the myth of the star hosts, how they gained their power from the stardust that drifted until finding its way into the bodies of their hosts and imbuing them with power.
If I can overwhelm her, if I can burn her out, will I die?
There was no answer. Ren didn’t expect one.
11
Perilous Space prison didn’t look like a drift. It wasn’t a stack of levels that spun gracefully in the vacuum of space creating its own gravity. Absent were the large viewing windows or the different-colored lights along the floors. No cheery welcoming message repeated from the communications tower with docking instructions and mentions of drift-specific sites to see or stores to visit. Instead, it sat as a square block, stark and intimidating, which didn’t look as though it belonged floating in space at all. Ren pegged the architecture as something he would’ve found on a planet, squat and cube-shaped and ugly, positioned in the middle of a field encompassed by a high fence. The only light came from a beacon on top of a spindle at the very center. It sat perfectly still in the middle of a large sea of broken parts, and broken ships, and broken dreams.
“That is the weirdest thing floating I’ve ever seen.” Darby leaned close to the view screen and squinted. “Is it real?”
“Yeah, it’s real.” Asher sidled close to Ren’s side. “Ren?”
The room Liam had shown them fit right into the overall look. It was a prison after all. Ren hoped his brother was still there and this wasn’t a snipe hunt. He needed it to be real. This was his only shot. He couldn’t ask Rowan to continue to put everyone at risk, especially with the stakes as high as they were.
Reluctant to reach out, Ren scrunched his features and closed his eyes. The low hum of despair vibrated in the depths of Ren’s veins along with the bare minimum of systems needed to keep the occupants alive—air and gravity. A large weapons system singed the outside of Ren’s consciousness, and he recoiled from the power it drew from the generators, draining and straining the grid even at rest. He’d hate to feel the weapons when they were engaged, and the thought made him shudder. It would destroy the ship with one shot, and Ren wasn’t certain he could stop it.
“See if you can check the validity of the information from the voices. Scan for the docking bay.”
Ren surged outward using the Star Stream’s sensors. He felt the brush of the other beings as they hovered close and cloaked the ship in debris. No external communications pinged his senses. The docking bay was tiny and hidden around the back of the structure, where it faced the ring of junk, which floated on three sides, caught in the small gravitational pull.
“Found it.”
You’re doing well. Keep going. You’re on the right trajectory.
Ren nodded. “They say we’re on track.”
“Good,” Rowan said from her captain’s chair. “Thank them for us.”
Thank you.
The ship moved through the debris, and the group of technopaths moved the large pieces out of their way and otherwise kept close to the hull, acting as a shield. The Star Stream moved achingly slow to avoid attention.
It wasn’t fast enough for Ren, and his anxiety welled within him and made his skin crawl. Even Asher’s hands on him, grounding him to the present, didn’t keep his stomach from twisting and his body breaking out in acrid sweat. He clenched his eyes shut and focused on his job.
Lucas piloted. Asher and Ollie scanned the sensors and comms. Darby and Penelope readied for the physical assault and liberation of the prison. Ren scanned for blueprints.
“I have a map,” he said.
“Can you cast it on the screen.”
Ren nodded, and, with a flick of his wrist, the layout of the block appeared. It was straightforward, with few twists and turns. Each floor had the same basic layout of hallways, except the lowest, which was the docking platform, and the top, which appeared to have larger rooms—maybe offices? Or labs for the experiments Liam had talked about? The four layers in between just small rooms next to each other with single exits into a large hallway.
Liam was in one of those rooms.
Ren was sure of it.
“This looks straightforward enough,” Asher said, flipping through the pages. “I only wish we knew what room Liam was in exactly. We’ll have to open the doors to them all and hope we find him.”
“Or he finds us,” Darby said. She moved from her spot by the outer vid screen to Asher’s console. She leaned over it and dragged her finger over the map. “If we could separate the guards from the prisoners, then we could have the prisoners all come down to the docking bay. Maybe trap the brass on the top floor?”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Asher said. “We lure the officers to the top and have Ren shut them in. Then we open all the prison doors.”
“Two problems,” Rowan said. “One—we don’t know where the star host prisoners are versus the actual bad guys that are housed there for things other than a little pickpocketing. And two—Abiathar. He’ll have Ren or one of the others turn on us as soon as he can speak.”
“I’ll be fine as long as Ash is with me,” Ren ground out.
We’ll be with you as well. We’ll not allow a coercer to harm you.
“So we’ll go door-to-door. We’ll lock most of the guards on the top floor, enter through the dock, and then work our way through. Maybe Ren will be able to access records and get us the right door.”
“I don’t like the idea of you all being on there for a long time,” Penelope said. “The longer you stay, the higher the chances of being crunched.”
“And I don’t like the idea of docking there long either. Don’t forget we have disembodied voices that are helping us. Who knows where their allegiances lie and what they’ll do when they get a chance.” Lucas kept a tight grip on the piloting controls and his gaze on the screen, but he grimaced as he said the words. “Did they hear that?”
“No,” Ren said. “They’re locked out of systems right now. I put up a barrier.”
“Smart thinking.”
Rowan stood and came over. “That’s our plan, then? Ash, is there a Phoenix Corps code or signal that would get everyone to congregate in one place?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
Asher nodded, face grim. “Yeah. There’s a few.”
“Great. We’re doing this.”
“We’re doing this,” Ash agreed.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Darby said, rubbing her hands together. Her dark eyes glittered. “This is the big one. The one all thieves and cons talk about and laugh that no one would be stupid enough to do.”
“That’s… not reassuring.”
She shrugged. “It wasn’t really meant to be.”
“Ren?” Asher asked. “Are you ready?”
Heart lodged in his throat and his body trembling from excitement and panic, Ren nodded. “Yeah, I’m ready.”
“We’re with you, Ren.”
We’re with you.
_
They left the bridge when there were only a few meters left of the approach. The debris had peeled from the ship and spread out toward the docking bay to cover their route.
We’ll stay as long as you need us.
Thank you.
Dressed in black, hood pulled up over his head and a pulse gun strapped to his side, Ren fidgeted as the others prepared. Darby took the offered pulse gun with a reverence Ren hadn’t seen her display for anything else. She slid it in an arm holster Rowan had tightened across her back. She also had over her shoulder a bag of tricks and gadgets that she and Ollie had developed. Ren hadn’t asked, but he would wager that included explosives. Darby did have an enthusiasm for blowing things up.
“Don’t use the pulse gun unless you absolutely have to.” Rowan patted Darby’s shoulder in a sisterly fashion. “Let Ren disable them first if he can. He’s good at it. Follow Asher’s and Ollie’s leads when it comes to shooting.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Ollie clipped his own guns at his hip and shoulder. “Don’t shoot if you can run.”
“We’ll be fine,” Asher said, tone flat, not at all reassuring. “If this goes right, we won’t run into anyone other than who we’re looking for. Search and rescue. Do not engage.”
Lucas’s voice came over the comm. “We’re five minutes out at this pace. Be safe out there. Come back to the ship as soon as you can, and we’ll blast out of here.”
