Star's End

by Cassandra Rose Clarke

  A rush of excitement rippled through the room. It made me sick to my stomach.

  “I have a seat reserved for you,” Dad said. “Right here beside me.” He lifted his glass in a toast. “To your first battle.”

  I lifted my empty tumbler in response.

  The lights dimmed. All the Ninety-Nines and the military officers became silhouettes. I slid into my seat beside Dad. The holo formed a U around its audience, hemming us in. The images were vibrant and crystal clear, as if we were floating in space ourselves. Off to the left, one holo showed a list of soldiers’ designations, their vitals blinking in a row alongside them.

  A hand brushed my shoulder. It was Gabriella, leaning forward. In a low whisper she said, “I know how overwhelming it is. But the battles don’t tend to last long.”

  Dad glanced over at us and Gabriella pulled away, falling into silence. I stared straight ahead and watched those empty stars.

  A ship surged through, blinking into existence in the second holo, then speeding its way through the next five. It came to a stop in the sixth holo and stayed there, dark against dark. I didn’t know if it was one of ours; I didn’t recognize the design, and it was free of any logos.

  “That’s the R-Troop ship,” Dad whispered. “Watch.” He held up three fingers and curled them down in a countdown: three, two, one.

  The ship disappeared.

  There was some scattered applause from the Ninety-Nines.

  “So, it space-jumped,” I said. “Brilliant.” My anxiety was making me surly.

  The Ninety-Nine sitting beside me laughed. “No, it just turned off its heat signatures. The holorecorders can’t pick up on it anymore, but, more important, neither can the OCI ships.” He held up his glass. “Coromina ingenuity.”

  I thought of Isabel, alone and terrified in a hospital bed on Catequil.

  We watched the stars shimmering on the screen. Every now and then, a blue-white light would blink, distantly, at too regular an interval to be a faraway sun. It was the OCI holorecorder, hovering in its designated quadrant, watching us watch it. Everything was so very genteel, two corpocracies whirling through space, waiting for their employees, their contractors, their creations, to kill one another.

  “They’ve got no idea,” one of the Ninety-Nines said, and the room rippled with throaty chuckles. My head didn’t feel like it belonged to me.

  “Probably didn’t even realize they got intercepted.” It was one of the Andromeda Corps officers. I wondered if he knew my mother. If he cared she might die out there. “Think they’re out on perimeter check. Routine.”

  More laughter. It was as if we were watching one of Adrienne’s dramas. It was as if those vitals on the last holo didn’t mean anything.

  I moved to sit up, intending to go refill my glass. But then a line of light shot across the holos. Dad grabbed my arm and pulled me back down. “It’s starting!” he hissed. “You don’t want to miss this.”

  It happened so fast that at first, my brain didn’t comprehend what my eyes were seeing: an eruption of light out of the darkness, the silhouette of the R-Troop ship against the line of light, a sudden spiraling twist of some unfamiliar spacecraft, narrow and thin—no, not unfamiliar, just OCI. I recognized it from the debriefings.

  “Got ’em!” someone shouted, and the room erupted into applause. The Ninety-Nines leaned forward in their chairs, speaking to one another in low murmurs. Dad still had my arm in his grip, and he stared smiling at the screen, the light from the explosions flashing across his features.

  The vitals were blinking, changing, moving up and down. I forced myself not to look at them but at the confused maelstrom onscreen. Lights flared and flashed. After a few moments, I was able to locate the R-Troop ship amid the storm of lightfire, and it zipped back and forth with the quick, graceful arcs I associated more with animals than with machinery. There was no way the OCI ship could keep up with it. OCI moved like the past; the R-Troop ship moved like the future.

  A loud, persistent beeping came from the speakers. Fires spread out across screen.

  “The enemy craft is down,” said the announcer. “Repeat, the enemy craft is down.”

  Everyone jumped to their feet. The Ninety-Nine on my left dragged me up with him, and the sudden movement made me woozy and disconnected. The R-Troop ship blinked off the screen. Dad wasn’t celebrating like the others but listening with his head tilted to the Alvatech General, nodding every now and then, looking utterly pleased with himself. The Andromeda Corps hadn’t been deployed yet. My mother was still all right.

  “Picking up heat signatures,” the announcer said. “OCI has provided backup, repeat, OCI has provided backup.”

  I wondered why he kept repeating his statements. We weren’t out there in space, fighting. We didn’t need to be told twice.

  Still, his pronouncement drew some of the good mood out of the audience. Sickness surged in my stomach and I slumped back down in my seat. I looked over at the vitals, curiosity burning me up. All of them were still there. Everyone was alive. It didn’t appear that any of them were harmed.

  More streaks of light filled the screen. There was darkness and then there was the sleek, contemporary design of the OCI ships’ tails, tracing across the inky backdrop like a fabric pattern on a formal gown. I counted them in my head: one two three four five six. Six ships barreling toward the R-Troop ship.

  From my vantage point in a room on the top floor of CG’s latest laboratory, it looked as if the R-Troop ship shot straight up. I knew it probably wasn’t so simple, but with that one movement, it confused the OCI ships and the lights braided over one another and looped back around, slow and lazy. By then, the R-Troop ship was already firing and the screen became a mass of light again. I watched it and felt as if I should be horrified but wasn’t—maybe the bourbon had numbed me. I thought of a light painting I had seen at the museum in Undirra City once, on a wine-and-dine trip with some potential investors. It had filled an entire wall and the light had moved and undulated in bursts and starts. At the time, I thought it was beautiful. Now I wondered if it was just a representation of war.

  There was no sound in the room save the occasional tinkle of ice against glass, the periodic groan of a chair leg. The battle was silent. I wondered what it sounded like to the R-Troops. My thoughts kept wandering away from the battle, away, away, to the realization that one of the soldiers I’d seen the other day was in that ship on the screen, strapped into an organic chair, evading fire from OCI. A real person existed in that swirl of light.

  I couldn’t follow the battle. I slumped back in my chair and let the lights wash over me. I thought I could feel them on my skin. Every now and then, the screen would blink and the announcer would tell us that another OCI ship had fallen. The screen grew dimmer. Beep beep beep went the speakers. I stared at the vitals. They didn’t make sense to me anymore. Just strings of numbers representing a human being. We all had them, those vitals. The Ninety-Nines tightened their fingers around their glasses, calculating how high their profit margin would be when they went public with the R-Troops.

  One last light streaked across the expanse of stars, and then, with a suddenness that made me jump, exploded. The speakers beep beep beeped and everyone leapt to their feet in a riotous joy. Even Dad stood up, although he stayed calm, his expression unreadable.

  The R-Troops ship blinked away again.

  “—destroyed,” the announcer was saying. “Repeat, all enemy craft destroyed. Do not currently note any heat signatures. R-Troops are advised to stay in hiding in case of—”

  But no one was listening to him. The Ninety-Nines spilled out over their seats, chattering about marketing plans and business contacts. The military officers, Alvatech and Andromeda Corps both, looked impressed. I stood up too. It had finally happened. We had finally gone to war.

  The Alvatech general was talking to Dad, animatedly, and Dad nodded along, sipping at his drink. I didn’t understand why they were celebrating already, when the R-Troops were still o
n alert, lurking amid the stars. What did they know? Should I know it too, being a Ninety-Nine?

  That thought brought with it a flood of shame. I wanted to know, deep down. Wanted to know everything they did. It wasn’t just about running secret operations for PM. I was a Ninety-Nine. I had reached the top. I got to know everything.

  The holo still showed nothing but stars. Dad and the general made their way to the back of the room, and I glanced away from the holo just as they passed. That movement was enough for Dad to look over at me, for me to lock eyes with Dad.

  What I saw there was as cold and deep as space.

  • • •

  The Coromina Group newsfeeds reported our victory that evening, running it through every Connectivity system in the Four Sisters. I didn’t get home until late, long after the sun had gone down—Dad had kept me at the Coromina Group offices to observe as he and the commanding officers analyzed the battle and devised strategies for the next one. But even as I walked across the courtyard, I could hear the distant boom of the public speakers in the village, telling the story of that afternoon’s battle. The words were too distorted by distance for me to understand them, but I suspected I knew the gist of it.

  After that, the war became a part of our lives. It happened in a way that felt both organic and catastrophic, as if all the storms of Coromina I went still. War hadn’t been a part of our lives, and now it was. Things shifted as simply as that.

  I’m not sure it affected my sisters as much as it affected me. The war was happening out in the black, away from any clusters of humanity. It was the only civilized way to wage war. I’d learned that years before from Mr. Garcia, and for the first time in my life, I was experiencing it. OCI and the Coromina Group pushed back and forth against each other, winning one battle, losing another, and not a single innocent person died.

  But innocent was a relative term. For me, every battle was a long stretch of terror. The R-Troops didn’t always fight; it was part of the CG strategy. “Don’t want to show too much of our hand,” Dad had told me in his office one day, the sun shining brightly outside. But if the R-Troops didn’t fight, that meant the Andromeda Corps troops went in instead. I had spoken to my mother briefly the day after the war started, a quick conversation in my office that I was sure was being monitored. Neither of us said anything we shouldn’t. When her holo faded away, I’d wiped at my eyes and told myself she hadn’t died yet.

  People weren’t supposed to feel this way during wars anymore. That was why companies hired professionals. But to me, it still felt like there was a crack in the universe.

  Maybe it would have been different if Dad hadn’t promoted me, if I hadn’t had to spend so much of my time at the office, away from the estate. I imagined that it was easy there, or in the village or in Undirra City or anywhere in the Four Sisters, to pretend the war was an Amanan drama. But on the CG campus, Alvatech and Andromeda Corps soldiers were a common sight, standing around the office with their light rifles. Many of the assistants were let go and replaced with bioengineered soldiers who had been produced by Genetics. I didn’t think this was fair, but I understood the theory: assistants have less invested in the company, as they hold low security levels and aren’t eligible for enclave housing, not even the flimsy apartments. In normal times, it was a chance for those outside the sphere of the company’s influence to prove themselves, to have a chance to rise up the ranks, but that sort of thing needed to be limited during war. And so, unfamiliar faces appeared by the receptionist’s desk, men and women in mercenary uniforms. They didn’t smile, they didn’t say hello. Their loyalty was bought, a package with their fighting brethren, and so it was guaranteed.

  Those new assistants, their DNA designed and crafted and copyrighted by the Coromina Group, came in the day the war started. After that, though, it was clear my workday routines were completely demolished. I barely spent any time in Genetics anymore, and I had to delegate most of my work to Miguel. The PM projects had to be put on hold, and not just because Dad knew about them—I didn’t give a damn about that. I just didn’t have time. I spent hours either at the office or at the new lab, working with commanding officers to help strategize for the war. When I went home, I slept. I didn’t see my sisters. Not Daphne or Adrienne. Not Isabel. The real world slipped away. I started talking like Dad, using the word assets to describe the R-Troops. Every day was cloaked in an insomniac haze. I could feel myself falling deeper and deeper into Dad’s world. I hated it.

  I hated it, but I didn’t stop. What I wanted more than anything was for this war to end. I wanted my mother to be safe. I wanted the company to move on from the R-Troops, move on from Isabel’s alien DNA—once Dad made his billions off the R-Troops, we could move onto something else. Something that did not exploit my sister.

  I worked, and worked, and worked. And the battles raged overhead and out of sight.

  One evening after I had lost track of the days, I entered the wrong set of coordinates into the big company lightbox. The lightbox caught the mistake immediately, wailing and shrieking, but Dad pulled me aside and told me, in a sharp, clear voice, to go home early.

  “I’m fine,” I told him, heat rising in my cheeks.

  “It happens to the best of us,” said the Andromeda Corps general, who had taken a liking to me early on. “You’ll get used to it.”

  Dad gave me a dark look. “Go home, Esme. Before you make things worse.”

  This time, I didn’t question. I should have felt ashamed and embarrassed, but I was too tired. It was a relief, really. As soon as I arrived back at the estate, I crawled into my bed and closed my eyes, and then I was asleep.

  Knocking intruded into my dreams.

  I opened my eyes, confused. Something with the war? But no, war messages would be chiming on my lightbox, not pounding on my door.

  I rolled onto my side. I had no sense of what time it was. My room was tinted with reddish light from Coromina I; the sun had set.

  “Who is it?” I called out, when the knocking didn’t subside.

  “It’s Grace, ma’am. I need to speak with you.”

  I sat up, my heart racing. “Come in.” A million scenarios flashed through my head: The war was coming landside. My mother had been killed. Something had happened to my sisters—

  Grace walked in. I always thought of her as young, wide-eyed and frightened, the way she looked when Dad announced she would be taking Rena’s place. But she’d gotten older in the intervening years, older than Rena was when she had died.

  A sharp pang of grief twisted in my chest. “What’s going on?” I slid out of bed, trying to hide my nervousness.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” Grace stammered. “You’ve been gone so much lately, and I know you have a lot to worry about—” She looked away from me. “I just had to tell someone.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s Isabel,” Grace said.

  My insides went cold. “Has something happened to her?”

  “I don’t know.” Grace smoothed down her uniform. Her hands shook. “She’s gone.”

  “What?” I sat up, cold terror crawling over my skin. “God, not again.”

  Grace sighed. “She’s not in her room,” she said. “At least, I don’t think she is. She keeps the door locked, you know.”

  I didn’t.

  “She always answers when the staff brings her meals or when I go by to check on her. But this evening, I came by with her dinner, and there was no answer.” Grace spread her hands hopelessly. “I set the tray beside her door—I thought she might be sleeping. But it’s still there, untouched.”

  I nodded, my stomach queasy. “Show me.”

  Grace and I left together and walked through the twisting hallways until we came to Isabel’s room. The tray sat on the floor, the scent of pungent spices wafting off it. This was Dad’s fault. My fault. In the endless bureaucracy of the war, I’d let her slip away.

  I thought about the last conversation we’d had, the way she’d slammed this door, the
wood carved with a baroque swan, in the face of my apology.

  I put my fingers on the doorknob and turned but it didn’t move. The lock blinked red at me.

  “Get the soldiers,” I told Grace. “They should be able to open the lock.” My heart pounded. Blood rushed in my ear. “Hurry!”

  It was a pointless command; she was already halfway down the hallway. I leaned up against the far wall and stared at Isabel’s door. A war in the sky and a catastrophe down below. I lunged forward and pounded on the door. I screamed Isabel’s name.

  Nothing but silence.

  Grace came back quickly, a soldier at her side. I remembered his name was Private Water.

  Please be safe, I thought. Please be safe.

  To Private Water, I said, “Open the door.”

  He nodded, then pulled out the disruptor that would break the electrolock. It worked easily, a flash of white light and we were in. He ducked inside first, light rifle up.

  “Don’t shoot her,” I hissed, which I knew was pointless. An engineered soldier never killed the wrong target.

  “Clear,” Private Water called out from inside the room.

  I glanced over at Grace. She had her hands clasped together and she gazed up at me with worry. “Go wake Daphne and Adrienne,” I said. “See if they know anything.”

  “Yes, Ms. Coromina.” She scurried away, and I stepped into Isabel’s room. Nothing was disturbed—her furniture wasn’t askew, and her lightbox glowed softly on the desk. But the window hung open, the sea breeze stirring up the curtains.

  I walked over to the window and looked down at the pineapple garden. Coromina I turned everything red. It was full tonight, storms surging. I wondered if they had something to do with her disappearance. She’d always loved astrology.

  “How’d she get down?” I asked, and felt a quiver in my chest—what if this was her DNA working somehow?