by Erica Rue
“Which is a stupid plan,” Lithia added.
“All the more reason to think the Ficarans are behind it,” muttered the manager.
“I’m telling you, they were Aratians,” Will said. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but the evidence is there.”
Benjamin lowered his head and raised his hand. “Enough,” he boomed. “We’ll look into these claims. In the meantime, there’s work to be done, and rest to be had. We will need to be vigilant tomorrow.”
Someone called out from the crowd. “What are we going to do without the flaminaria?”
“Fight,” Victoria said, “and win.”
The Ficarans cheered at that. Even some of the Aratians joined in, but Dione shivered as a chill went through her body. Without the flaminaria mines to thin out the Vens, what chance did Kepos have? What chance did she and her friends have of surviving? Now on top of the Vens, they would have to worry about the Green Cloaks.
Dione approached Benjamin. She had to talk to him about the inscription.
“About the rock we found at the shrine.” He turned towards her as she spoke. “It was carved with a message. It said, ‘The Farmer lies. Do the Vens tell the truth?’”
Benjamin’s frown deepened. “You mentioned this already. What’s your point?”
“Some of your people may believe that the Vens are the only way they can learn the truth. So they’re doing everything in their power to help them. They’re tired of being lied to.”
“We don’t lie to our people,” Benjamin spoke sharply.
“Maybe not intentionally, but they’ll find out the truth soon enough. If these Ven worshipers beat you to it, your people will never trust you again. Doubt can be powerful. They must be asking questions with everything that’s going on.”
As Dione walked away, Benjamin looked shaken, but skeptical about what he had learned about the Vens. The Vens were a terrible enemy, but they weren’t shy about it. These Green Cloaks on the other hand? They could be anywhere. They could be everywhere. And they were desperate enough for answers that they would sacrifice their own people.
***
“I have more bad news,” Oberon said, once they were away from the crowds. It was just the five of them, the original crew of the Calypso. “We figured out what these discs are for.” He held up one of the white composite discs that Bel and Moira had fished out of the Ven.
“Why, what are they?” Lithia asked.
“They are short-range communicators and memory recording devices. A record of all that a Ven sees, hears, and experiences is stored on this device.”
“How is that possible?” Dione said. She had never heard of technology like that.
“I’m not entirely sure, but I imagine it’s somehow linked to their already-confusing physiology. They may not store memories in the same way we do.”
Dione closed her eyes. She didn’t want to ask her next question, because she thought she knew the answer. “Why record their memories?”
Professor Oberon frowned. “I’m not sure how detailed the memories are, but we know they link up to the ships. When a Ven dies, its memories get sent to its ship. From there, we think it gets transmitted to nearby Ven ships, or all the way to a Citadel ship.”
“A Citadel ship?” Lithia asked.
“Only one or two exist, but they house tens of thousands of Vens. All of the smaller ships we encounter have launched from one of these Citadels.”
Dione’s hands were shaking. “How do you know the recordings aren’t sent out automatically?” she asked.
“We don’t, but Sam has been monitoring their ships for transmissions. She’s picked up a lot of short-range communications, but she hasn’t detected any sent off-world. We know that several Vens have already been killed, and they haven’t sent those memories back yet. They might just use the memories as a teaching tool,” the professor said.
“It explains why they’re so willing to sacrifice themselves. Maybe if they die heroically, they are honored somehow,” Dione said.
“Or maybe they believe they’ll be reincarnated as a bigger, more powerful Ven,” Bel said.
“You don’t think they use clones?” Zane said.
“I don’t know. But once we get their datacore, we’ll know a lot more,” Bel said.
“What do you mean?” Dione said. Bel and the professor exchanged a look. They had already talked this over, it seemed.
“We can’t take the chance that they’ll come find Kepos if the memories get sent,” Professor Oberon said. “We have to shut down Ven communications permanently, and as soon as possible. The Vens haven’t sent a distress signal yet, probably because they think they can win and that there’s no need to share the glory. But if we do defeat them all, their memories will get loaded into a transmission and sent back to the Citadel ship. Or the closest Ven ship. It’s not efficient. It could take years for the signal to be found, but we haven’t exactly been lucky in that regard.”
Dione felt the despair that she had been keeping at bay threaten to overwhelm her. “What about a dampening field? Does Sam have enough power yet?”
“Even with the Ficarans jumpstarting more of her energy cells, it will be days, at least, before she can initiate another field,” Oberon said.
“There’s more,” Zane said. “Remember how I said that you’d go crazy if you downloaded your consciousness into a computer? Well, Sam’s been working over time. She’s been splitting her attention a lot, which is really taxing on her… mind. She’s starting to forget things. I don’t know if she’ll still be able to initiate a field in a few days even if she has the power.”
“Why doesn’t she just shut down? It sounds like she’s dying,” Lithia said.
“I don’t think she wants to,” Professor Oberon said. “She feels responsible for these people, and she’ll help as long as she can.”
“You’re right,” Sam said over Zane’s manumed. “It is becoming increasingly difficult to focus, but I don’t think the situation is quite as dire as Zane makes it out to be. I think in a week I will be able to initiate a dampening field, but we don’t know if that’s soon enough.”
“Then what do we do?” Dione said. Her heart was racing, and adrenaline was driving off the exhaustion that had come with the end of a long day. She needed to know they had a plan.
“I’ve already told Benjamin and Victoria, but they don’t want to send anyone. They won’t admit it, but they’re afraid,” Professor Oberon said.
Dione saw where this was going. “You want to go to the ships ourselves.”
“Yes, we need to disable their power and their transmissions array,” he said. “There’s also a chance we could get one flying.”
A way home. That’s what the professor was talking about.
“Is that even possible?” Lithia asked. “Flying a Ven ship? Jumping a Ven ship?”
“I don’t know,” Bel said, “but unless Kepos is hiding an interstellar vessel, a Ven ship is our only way out of here.”
Lithia was unconvinced. “And how are we supposed to fly a completely alien ship? It’s not like we have a user manual, and if we did, we couldn’t read it anyway.”
Bel beamed at them. “Zane wrote a translation program.”
“I’m sending it to your manumeds now,” he said. “Oberon, you already have it, and it will work with your holo interface.”
Lithia’s jaw dropped, though Dione wasn’t sure if it was because of Zane’s program or the fact that the professor had brought a holo interface for himself.
“Who’s going?” Despite the glimmer of hope that she’d make it home again, Dione shuddered at the thought of returning to a Ven ship.
“I am,” the professor said, “and so is Bel.”
“I’m going to download their datacore once we disable the communications.” Dione barely had time to wonder what Bel wanted with a Ven datacore before Lithia volunteered.
“I’ll go,” she said.
“No, they need you here,” the professor said
. “You’re the best shot of us all, and if the Vens breach the walls, your stun rifle will save a lot of lives if they start biting people.”
Lithia opened her mouth to protest, but stopped. “All right,” she said with some resignation.
Dione wondered if her desire to atone for Roy kept her from arguing. The professor looked a little surprised that he wouldn’t have to press the issue.
“I’d like to stay as well,” Zane said. “I’m close to getting some of their larger machinery running. Might come in handy.”
“Dione,” the professor said, “you’ve been on one of the ships before.”
It was a not a statement, but a request. “I’ll do it.”
He looked at them each in turn. “I’m sorry that you’ve all been put in this situation. It’s something that no one should have to go through, and I hate to put your lives in danger. But we have no choice. Locking you all up in the Mountain Base might keep you safe for a while, but it would only be a matter of time before the Vens found their way there. This is our best chance. I have to trust you. You are the most capable students I’ve ever taught and, as I can now see, the bravest.”
Dione could see Professor Oberon’s eyes watering. He was afraid, not just for himself, but for all of them. She was afraid, too, but the professor was right. This was their best chance.
Melanie approached them. “Things have cooled down a bit,” she said. “The Aratians are serving dinner for everyone, if you’re interested.”
She didn’t need to offer twice. Some food, then rest, sounded like the perfect end to what had been a very long day.
“I’ll catch up,” Lithia said, falling behind.
Dione reached the front of the Temple where a bunch of tables lit by glowglobes had been assembled. Despite the earlier tensions, and a general division between Aratians and Ficarans, some groups did seem to be mingling, even laughing. It seemed a simple meal could bring people together.
Dione shivered in the cool night breeze. She had left her jacket on the shuttle. Despite her hunger, she knew that she’d enjoy her meal much more if she were warm, so she headed back to the Flyer.
As she approached, she could see that two figures were talking, dark silhouettes backlit by a floodlight. She couldn’t make out who they were, but they looked like they wanted privacy. She decided to walk around the other way, when she heard the girl laugh.
Lithia. What was she doing? Who was she—? Brian. Her heart sank into her stomach. This would explain why he had been acting so weird around her lately. Dione stopped in her tracks, and that’s when they noticed her.
“Di, I thought you were getting food,” Lithia said, like nothing was the matter.
“Forgot my jacket.”
“Grab it. We’ll wait for you.”
“Let me come with you. Lithia, we’ll catch you at dinner,” Brian said.
Lithia nodded and left her alone with Brian.
“Hey, I wanted to talk to you,” he said. He put a warm hand on her back, and it gave her butterflies. She couldn’t control those involuntary reactions, but that didn’t mean she was helpless around him. Dione quickened her pace and felt the cold settle back in where his hand had been. She shivered.
“How’s Canto doing?” she said. She would take control of the conversation.
“He’s a lot better. Still at the mountain, though. I figured he could use the rest.”
“That’s good.” Dione was at the shuttle. There was no guard now, but she assumed that Victoria had figured out how to lock the controls herself. She went inside to grab her jacket, and when she turned, Brian was standing in the doorway, almost blocking her exit.
He didn’t back away when she approached, and she grew aware of how tall he was. She tried not to look him in the face, but he put a hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him and tried to ignore how his wavy hair had fallen to cover one of his warm, brown eyes. Her heart pounded in her chest when he leaned down to kiss her gently on the lips. She let him, but when he tried to pull her into an embrace, she got a hold of herself and stepped back.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on between you and Lithia, but—”
“She told you?” he said.
“Told me what?” Dione’s chest constricted. She knew what was coming.
He looked confused but explained anyway. “The night the Vens first attacked, we kissed. Technically, she kissed me. There was alcohol involved, and…” He trailed off. “But that was it. We decided it wouldn’t happen again. It meant nothing.”
“Well, it didn’t look like you were talking about nothing.” Dione brushed past him. She was sick of feeling this way. Lithia always got the guy, and that was fine. Normally the guy didn’t kiss Dione first, though.
“That? We… we were talking about…” He trailed off again.
She shook her head. “I don’t want to hear it. We’re not together, and you can make out with whoever you like. I never told Lithia about the kiss in the smuggler’s den, anyway, and I’ve gathered that you just tend to go around kissing girls. That’s what Melanie said, right?” She was getting angry.
“That’s true,” he said defensively, “or at least it used to be. But you’re different. Even before Lithia, I realized that. I was drunk, and I honestly thought I was going to die.”
“And you just couldn’t bear to die without kissing someone first. Is that what this is? End of the world, take two, and this time I’m the most convenient girl?”
Brian took one of her hands in his. “That’s not it. You always find some clever solution to your problems, and I think I’d forgotten that. Here we’ve been so focused on fighting that we’ve lost sight of other possibilities. Dione, you’re special.”
He was right about that last part, but she didn’t need him to realize it. She pulled her hand away. “I’m not interested in competing with other girls for your attention. Or any guy’s attention. I am enough, and if you need to tell me that I’m special, then you’re probably trying to convince yourself, not me.”
Dione had no idea where that came from, but she filed it away for later. She zipped up her jacket and walked back toward the cheerful glow and laughter of the dinner, refusing to shed a single tear or look back.
I am enough. I have always been enough.
34. DIONE
A good night’s sleep was like washing clothes. All the stains of yesterday were a little faded, and things looked brighter. Dione woke up in the Ficaran quarters between Lithia and Bel. Cora had offered them the floor of her room, another surprising gesture of good will, but they had decided to stay in the town in case the Vens arrived in the middle of the night.
The Aratians were preparing more pila blades, wrapping their ends in a rubbery material to form makeshift hilts. The “blades” came from something called pila trees, which looked a lot like large pinecones with very sharp points growing out of the ground. They were flat, like her machete, rather than round, and while they were not as tough as metal, they were strong and abundant and slightly flexible. The cavalry used them, from what she could gather.
Dione spent the day fortifying the settlement, and by late afternoon, she was more than ready to get her mission over with. She waited in one of the shuttles for the professor, but Colm arrived first. Ever since she had seen his reaction to the Matching, she hated him a little bit less. There was a story there, and she could tell it was painful.
“Are you coming with us?” Dione actually wouldn’t mind his company on this mission. She didn’t know what to expect, and having some muscle along was probably a good thing.
“No, I’m just dropping you off,” he replied. “It’s not too late to abandon this fool’s errand.” He gave her a concerned frown.
He was right to be skeptical. How in the world were the three of them going to pull this off?
As if in answer to her unasked question, the professor and Bel came on board. Professor Oberon said, “Sam’s latest images show that the Vens are
on the move, and they’ve only left a handful guarding the ships. Now’s the time to go. They probably don’t expect anyone to attack their ships in the middle of a battle, and they can’t fly them away, or Sam will shoot them down with the Icon.”
By Dione’s count, that left plenty of Vens to attack the Aratian settlement. A strange weapon at the professor’s waist caught her eye.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Flare gun. Figured it was better than nothing.”
Like Dione, Bel was wielding a machete.
“So should we head out, then?” Dione asked.
“We’re waiting on one more. Brian said he wanted to come along.”
Dione’s heart pounded in her chest. This was the last thing she needed right now. “If he’d meant it, he’d be here already. We should go.”
The professor raised an eyebrow at her. She wished she wasn’t completely transparent. “I… thought you might appreciate his help. I’m sorry,” Professor Oberon said.
Before she could object further, Brian entered the shuttle, carrying a pila blade and a pistol. Dione quickly buckled into the copilot seat so she wouldn’t have to make small talk with him. He seemed cheerful after last night—all the proof she needed that he didn’t really care about her.
She decided to move on to a different topic, only to realize she was now running through the layout of the Ven ship in her mind. She had memorized the layouts of the two ships, based on the scant information available. The Invader class layout, though, was an extrapolation based on the study of other ships. Apparently one had never been captured, or at least the records hadn’t been made public.
Colm dropped them off a short walk from the ships so that the Vens wouldn’t be expecting them. Still, the Vens had landed their two surviving ships in the open fields. She and the others would be exposed the moment they left the cover of the forest. She hoped the professor had a good distraction planned.
