by Caryn Lix
“Whoops,” said the pirate cheerfully. “Restoring artificial gravity in three . . . two . . . one . . .”
The gravity kicked in with a whoosh, and I tumbled to the floor, fortunately landing feetfirst. Cage clattered beside me, less lucky. He swore loudly as he landed on his shoulders, but he also rolled neatly to his feet and gave me a cocky grin. I shook my head in response, fighting a grin of my own.
We collected ourselves, everyone coming to terms with the last few minutes. “Did they even ask for your ID?” Imani asked at last, her voice weak. I glanced over to find her healing a cut on her arm. It looked painful, but she didn’t appear fazed.
“Nope. Guess their attention was elsewhere.” The pirate chuckled.
“Fantastic.” Mia crossed the room in three steps, her face a barely contained explosion of rage. “Then I think it’s about time you answered some questions.”
He pivoted in his chair, unstrapped himself, and leaned back, folding his long, lanky legs at the ankle. “It’s not enough that I just saved your lives?”
“Actually, no, it is not. So, let’s start with the basics. Who are you, why did you help us, and where are we going?”
The rest of us gathered behind her. Mia might be overly aggressive, but she asked reasonable questions. For all we knew, this guy was some sort of Omnistellar bounty hunter who’d smuggled us out of Mars to turn us in. We might have leaped from the frying pan into the fire.
The man sighed and jumped to his feet. Up close, he wasn’t much older than us, maybe in his early twenties. He gave Mia a mock bow. “Liam Kidd, at your service,” he announced. “I helped you destroy that ship before it attracted any more of the aliens, which is a very worthy deed. And I am heading home, where, alas, we shall part ways. You’re on your own once we reach Obsidian.”
A resounding silence answered his pronouncements. Eyes shot open. Mouths worked furiously. For my part, I merely rolled my eyes. Obsidian was a fairy tale, a stupid story kids told when Robo Mecha Dream Girl 5 and the other anticorporate media didn’t fill their rebellion quota.
But then I caught sight of Alexei, his face twisted in a snarl. “We are not going to Obsidian,” he said, danger in his tone.
“What do you know about the aliens?” Rune demanded at the same time. “How do you know about them?”
Her question echoed in the cargo bay, maybe the most important question of all.
The pirate—Liam—sighed. “Let’s discuss this in a friendlier setting, shall we?”
“Oh, I don’t think so.” Alexei stepped forward. For the first time in a long while, I remembered him as he’d been when we first met: physically imposing, dangerous, and aggressive. His shoulders seemed to expand to fill the room, his eyes hard flecks of steel above a jaw so sharp it looked like it could draw blood. “Let’s talk about Obsidian, where we are not headed.”
“What’s Obsidian?” Imani demanded.
“A fairy tale,” I said irritably. “Alexei, you can’t believe that place exists.” Imani quirked an eyebrow at me, and I explained, “The story goes that Obsidian was an Omnistellar prison near Mars. It was an old one, housing dangerous criminals who didn’t belong on Earth—not anomalies, but murderers and the like. The prisoners overthrew it and now they control it. It’s said to be the only criminal-run space station in the solar system, but—”
“It’s real.” Alexei snarled.
“It is not. Omnistellar doesn’t make that sort of mistake.”
“Kenzie.” His voice softened. “I have been there.”
That brought me up short. Alexei didn’t lie. But how, why, would Omnistellar allow a place like that to continue? My former corporation might not be invulnerable as I’d once believed, but they were still the most powerful corp in the solar system, and not lacking in finances or resources. They would simply blow Obsidian out of the sky.
Unless . . . there was some reason they couldn’t? Or wouldn’t?
Alexei and Liam continued to argue, with Mia occasionally interjecting. Rune glanced back and forth between them, her mouth working as if she had something to say but couldn’t quite find the words. Finally, she turned to Cage in frustration.
He rose to the occasion, obviously jumping at the chance to mend some bridges between himself and his twin. “Hey!” he shouted. The other three spun on him with identical glares, and Cage folded his arms. “We can talk about where we’re going later. Right now, let’s return to Rune’s question: What the hell do you know about the aliens? And how do you know it?”
That got everyone’s attention, even drawing Reed away from the control board where he’d been hovering. Imani and I exchanged glances. We, more than anyone, knew what the aliens meant if they arrived. But then I caught Jasper’s worried expression, the way he gnawed at his lip, and remembered that his family was closest. If Liam had something to do with the aliens, if he brought them here, Jasper’s family was in the most immediate danger.
I shook my head. Liam had helped us destroy the ship. Thinking he was in league with the aliens was nothing but paranoia, my lingering terror nudging the corners of my psyche. But at the same time, we knew nothing about Liam. We’d jumped on his ship because it was that or imminent arrest. No, he probably wasn’t working with the aliens, but he could easily be Omnistellar. Or a bounty hunter. Or a murderer.
But one look at him brought me up short. All his forced confidence dissolved, and his face turned pale and drawn. Slowly, he sank into his chair. “I guess you have a right to know,” he said quietly. “You might as well take a seat.” Meeting Alexei’s frustrated gaze, he sighed. “Even in this ship, it’ll take us an hour to get to Obsidian. You’ll have plenty of time to argue about it before then. But may I ask where else you want to go? The only other location within range of my fuel is the planet we just left, and I suspect you’re about to become very unpopular there.”
I glanced at my wrist monitor to check the time. I didn’t know exactly when I’d spoken with my father, but I guessed about twelve hours had passed since then. Once Omnistellar arrived, “unpopular” would be an understatement.
Liam’s words, or maybe the change in his demeanor, had the desired effect. Alexei sighed and retreated, taking Mia with him. Without asking, we gathered crates and boxes, anything we could find to sit on, forming a loose circle. Reed perched near the control panel, still seemingly more interested in it than in anything Liam said, but as for the rest of us, the pirate had our undivided attention.
I glanced at Liam’s pallid face. We were bullying him, exactly like the anomalies had done to me when they were prisoners and I was the guard. And just like then, the reasons made sense, the ends justified the means. But I remembered how it felt, being on the receiving end of that power game. “For what it’s worth,” I said softly, “thank you. We never would have made it off Mars without your help.”
Liam looked surprised, then gave me a grateful smile that instantly made me sure I’d said the right thing. “Thanks,” he said. “But really, my motivations were selfish, at least at first. I had to make sure that ship was destroyed.” His voice wavered, and he clasped his hands tightly, but not before I caught them trembling. I exchanged mystified glances with Cage. What happened to the overconfident jackass who’d mocked us into blowing up a spaceship?
Liam continued. “I picked up the ship’s signal a day ago on Obsidian. At first, I thought I was imagining things. It’s been years since I’ve heard anything on that particular frequency. I kept checking, though, every day, just in case. It became a matter of habit. When I actually heard something . . .” He focused on his shiny black boots. He sputtered a few words we couldn’t catch, but no one, not even Mia, pushed him, and after a moment he seemed to get himself under control. “I’d almost convinced myself I was safe. That I’d never hear that signal again. I wasted a couple of hours telling myself it couldn’t be real. By the time I came around to the truth, you were already heading for Mars, and I’d missed my chance to intercept you.”
“Intercept
us,” said Imani softly. “Did you know who we were?”
Liam shook his head. “No, but I suspected. Earth already knew some of you had escaped Sanctuary, but they only had theories about how. When I saw that ship floundering around like a dying fish, I put it together, especially when you didn’t start attacking. I mean, I heard what happened on Sanctuary. No one mentioned the . . .” His voice trailed off, his face somehow going even paler, and he clenched his hands so tightly I thought he’d draw blood. “No one knew what really happened on your prison, but the timing couldn’t be coincidental. My first instinct was to try to contact you, but I reconsidered. I was pretty sure you were human, but what if I was wrong and I drew your attention? And even if you were, even if you could have been convinced of the danger of your transport, I knew the corporations couldn’t. They only see in credits. And they have a blind spot to anything that might interfere with the bottom line.”
“You can say that again,” muttered Jasper.
The rest of us remained fixated on Liam. “None of that explains how you recognized the signal,” Mia snapped. “Or what you know about the aliens.”
Liam took a deep breath. It caught in his throat. He shook it off and continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “And if you weren’t human, well . . .” He gestured to the pistol strapped to his belt. “That’s what this was for.”
“You obviously haven’t encountered those things,” I said quietly. “If you had, you’d know guns are all but useless against them.”
He stared at me for a minute. There was something strange in his eyes, something flatter, or maybe brighter, as if he had more colors than I expected to see in a human iris. “The gun wasn’t for the aliens,” he said at last.
His words settled over us with the weight of a shroud. Before anyone could ask any more questions, Liam rushed on. “I headed for Mars. One way or another, I had to know the truth. I called in every favor I was owed on Obsidian to hack the comms and figured out exactly who you were and what you’d gotten your hands on. The second I got the details, I knew you had the right idea: to destroy that ship. But I wasn’t sure you’d be able to do it before Omnistellar showed up, so I headed to the planet to make sure. I was monitoring Mars security, so I knew when you attacked, and we arrived on the landing strip at about the same time.” He gestured to a backpack at his feet. “I had some explosives with me, but you had a walking flamethrower. Once we destroyed the ship, I didn’t feel like leaving you behind at corporate mercy.”
I leaned forward, bracing my elbows on my knees and dragging my hands through my hair as I struggled to process this new information. It was too much to take in. Earth knew we’d survived Sanctuary? How? They should have assumed we’d all been blown up with the station. I opened my mouth to ask the question, but Liam wasn’t done yet.
“As for how I knew about the aliens,” he continued, glaring at Mia, who’d already opened her mouth, “I’d think that was obvious. They destroyed my planet.”
Complication, Legion. I believe we’ll need your involvement after all.
Well, color me shocked. I would never have guessed.
Can the mockery. Intel says the subjects are headed to Obsidian.
So, your source is working. Nice. Do they have the ship?
No. That’s been destroyed.
Then how in the name of corporate bliss . . . ?
Does that really matter, Legion?
I guess not. We’re on an intercept route. We have a little surprise in store for your brats.
I’m sure you do. Just try not to cause too much damage before the cavalry arrives.
Copy that, base. Legion out.
FIFTEEN
VARYING DEGREES OF SHOCK GREETED Liam’s comment. We’d known we weren’t the only ones the aliens had attacked. When I’d scanned the files on their ship, I’d found plenty of evidence that they’d done this before: injected their DNA into a planet, allowed it to fester a few generations, and then harvested the results as a sort of genetic terraforming. But that meant . . .
“You’re an alien?” Jasper demanded bluntly.
Liam shrugged. “Depends on your perspective, I guess.”
“How’d you get here?” I challenged.
“Not sure of that, either.”
“So, you just woke up. On Mars.”
“On Obsidian,” he corrected. “Otherwise, that’s more or less accurate. The zemdyut attacked our planet in force. They started small, like they did with you: a few outposts here and there, harvesting a few hundred people at a time. We’d barely start to recover from an attack and they’d return and take more. After a few generations, we were at war. My people had powerful weapons, but they weren’t any use. Yours won’t be either. The zemdyut are fast. Unpredictable. Adaptable. Much smarter than you think.”
Zemdyut. I mentally repeated the unfamiliar word, committing it to memory.
Reed chewed his bottom lip. “But, dude . . . I mean, don’t take this the wrong way, but you look exactly like us.”
“What did you expect? Tentacles? Horns?”
“Well, the other aliens we met weren’t exactly humanoid,” Jasper pointed out. Mentally, I agreed, but looking at Liam, I picked up little differences I hadn’t identified before. The sparks in his eyes. A pointed, defiant edge to his chin. A slight extra length in his arms. None of it screamed alien, but there were differences if you looked hard enough.
Now he chuckled. “Yeah, that’s what I thought when I woke up here: that you looked just like me.”
“And your world?” Cage demanded. “Is that just like ours too?”
Liam hesitated. “I still don’t know much about your solar system,” he hedged, obvious deception in his voice. “I’m a stranger here, even after all this time.” Prickles stood along my spine. For all his bluster, Liam was a rotten liar.
“Then tell us about yours,” demanded Alexei and Mia in unison. Reed pulled a face, but he was careful to do it out of their line of sight.
“Similar to Mars, I suppose. It’s dry and dusty. Has an atmosphere without any fancy tech, but we’d managed to destroy a lot of the surface before the last century. Most of the vegetation and water are artificial. Or were. I suppose it’s gone now.”
He was still hiding something, but the pain in his voice rang true, and I took pity on him. “The creatures destroyed your entire planet? How did you escape?”
Liam hesitated, then shrugged again, an almost defiant look settling over his features. “I abandoned my family when the zemdyut came through our front door. There was nothing I could have done for them. My mother and brother were already screaming. I went out the back window, stole a ship, and called up every ounce of power I had.”
Mia jumped on that. “You have powers?”
“The alien DNA has a different effect on everyone, but it always does something. Yeah, I have an ability. I can open portals through space . . . or at least, I used to be able to. I’d never transported anything so far before, and certainly never anything alive. I mostly used my ability to win games of valjorvakk.”
“Of what?” Imani asked a second before I could.
Liam frowned. “A sport I played in school. Uses a valvakk, a big yellow ball.”
“Like basketball?” I asked, ignoring that Reed was making faces at me now. I didn’t mean to sound so eager, but it had been a while since I’d done anything normal. I missed basketball. And Robo Mecha Dream Girl 5. And since I was compiling a wish list, regular showers, clothes that fit, and parents who loved me.
Liam nodded. “I’ve seen your basketball played. It’s not dissimilar. Maybe a cross between basketball and hockey. We use sticks. Anyway, prior to the alien attack, that was the most I’d ever managed. But I stole a shuttle in the chaos.” He passed a hand over his face, his strange eyes flickering. “It was . . . fire and screaming and . . . the aliens had abandoned any pretense of subtlety. They attacked to harvest and kill. Everywhere you turned, there they were.”
My brain rebelled at the description and the i
mages it evoked, and Rune threaded her arm through mine, clutching me as if I was the only thing keeping her upright. Liam’s words evoked every moment of the horror on Sanctuary. We all felt it. Tension settled over the room, physical in its intensity, until the slightest sound might have pushed someone over the edge.
Liam’s gaze refocused, and he cleared his throat. “I stole a shuttle,” he repeated with false bravado. “I got it into space, and I saw one of those ships. Just like yours. It was . . . I knew if I stayed I would die just like everything else, so I pulled every ounce of power I could manage. The doctors on Obsidian said I bit through my own tongue, I was concentrating so hard. I didn’t even notice. I pushed that ship so hard and so far, I lost consciousness. When I came to, I was in the Obsidian infirmary, and I’ve been on the station for the last five years.”
Liam sank his teeth into his lower lip. “I abused my powers that day,” he said slowly. “They’ve never worked the same since. Not reliably. Maybe I don’t want them to. I don’t know. I’m scared to try. Anyway. Is that what you wanted to know?”
An uncomfortable silence followed. After a moment, Imani leaned forward and offered him a smile and a change of topic. “But you must know where you came from. I mean, after five years, you must have seen charts. You must have wondered how far you traveled.”
His devil-may-care attitude settled back into place. “Far enough that I can’t find it on any of your maps. You know how many stars there are, sweetheart? Lots. It’s anyone’s guess which one is mine. Anyone’s guess for the zemdyut, too. We never did figure out where they’d come from. I tried to guess where my planet was, but . . . well, if I showed you a map of a random star system, do you think you could point to the pinprick that was Earth?”
Alexei’s eyes narrowed. “Five years on Obsidian,” he said in a conversational tone I recognized as his most dangerous. “Doing work that earned you a flashy ship and the freedom to come and go as you please. You must rank very high.”
Liam scowled in response. “Yeah, I know what you’re getting at, Alexei Danshov. And believe me, I damn near left you on Mars because of it.”