“And you would get attacked by a cloud of assassin nanites and a powerful energy burst would turn them all to dust.” Her mouth twisted bitterly. “You would look at defenses through a viewing field and they would suddenly activate.” That caught him off guard for a moment. He probably had Justin to thank for that one. A quick glance told him he was right; his friend must have told Angara what had happened during the tour of the defenses.
“Right, and I didn’t do anything to make any of those things happen!” He barely kept his anger in check. “I thought that’s just what the Skorahn did, right? Give someone control of the city?”
Angara’s laugh was heavy with scorn. “No, you fool. The Skorahn does not give anything! It takes from its possessor. And we do not even understand what, precisely, it takes!”
He stopped, resting back in his chair. It was frustrating, as the thing kept moving back with him as if avoiding the pressure. He stopped himself with a sigh and leaned forward once more. “Uduta Virri couldn’t do any of this?”
She barked another laugh. “Udata Virri could not command his own baser instincts. The doors in Penumbra barely acknowledged his existence.”
Well, that was surprising. “Maybe because he was such a sloth? I mean, from what you’ve told me, maybe the Skorahn was only responding to the kind of person he was? I can’t imagine Taurani not wrestling the thing to his will.”
She shook her head. “There is no ‘wrestling it to your will’. I don’t believe the Skorahn has bonded to anyone as deeply as it had to you. I told you, Marcus: the bond that had developed between you and the Skorahn, and thus between you and the city, was beyond anything I had ever seen.”
He remembered those last chaotic minutes of the fight at the blast doors. Had he truly manipulated the doors with only his will? When he thought back now it almost seemed as if there was something there responding to him, that he was not so much controlling the door, as reaching into the darkness, and feeling something pushing back at him. And that, whatever that was, had interceded on his behalf.
He had never been overly religious, but as he thought back, those moments resembled nothing in his memory so much as prayer.
“So you’re saying that Taurani will have no advantage over us if we return?” He felt that he could sense where she was going with this. He couldn’t believe she would even think of returning, but there was little other reason he could think of for them to pull out of the wormhole so close to Penumbra.
“Of course he will have advantages. He will have the entire Peacemaker fleet, for one thing.” She leaned back and he envied her that ease of motion.
“Well, I’m glad you’re willing to admit that, at least.” He could feel his anticipation of the coming argument feeding his anger, and so got even more livid despite the fact that she had not yet said anything questionable.
“Marcus Wells, what are your intentions now?” He saw them exchange a look, and knew that Angara and Justin had discussed this between themselves beforehand. He heard the two mystics rise and join them, seats rising up out of the floor. For a moment his errant brain, refusing to focus, wondered why seats hadn’t risen up for them when they had sat on the floor in the corner …
He made himself look into Angara’s strange violet eyes. It was easy to forget she was an alien when he was in the middle of things. Easy to forget all of them were. Well, most of them. It was hard to ever forget someone like a Leemuk was alien. Or that big damned fish.
Those thoughts brought him back down again, and he felt his shoulders slump. This was real. He wasn’t living some child’s fantasy. People had died, again, because of him. He looked back up, and straightened his back.
“I want to go back to Earth.” It was what she had threatened all along. Even if there had been moments in the past few months where he had forgotten his home planet all together, when he had entertained thoughts of staying in Penumbra and seeing his reforms to their conclusions, he had always planned on going home eventually, hadn’t he? He nodded. “I want to go home.”
There was silence for a moment. The Thien’ha exchanged a look, and then looked to Justin who shrugged. But Angara’s purple eyes never wavered. “You would retreat, seek the safety of your homeworld, knowing the wider galaxy that exists here and the good you could have done had you stayed?”
It was his turn to laugh, and he would put the bitterness of the sound up against the bitterness of her laugh any day. “What good can we do now? We’ve run. Taurani has won. With that fleet, you said it yourself: he could destroy the city if that’s what he wants. And what good could we have done if we’d stayed? No one wanted to listen to me. I was straining, working like a madman, and no one gave a damn for what I saw as the city’s potential.”
“That’s not true!” Justin reached across the table and tapped Marcus’s hand. “You have no idea what could have happened! I’ve lived with them, Marc. I worked with them, I drank with them. I … spent a lot of time with them.” His eyes shifted to Angara’s in temporary embarrassment, and then he continued. “Things were shifting. The people of Penumbra were just starting to wake up to what you had seen the minute we stepped into that docking bay.”
Marcus snorted. “Not enough for them to rise up with us when it mattered. When Taurani’s thugs started to work over the city, they all retreated behind their own walls, abandoning the city, me, and each other. No way do we face Taurani and that fleet now. Certainly not without them behind us.” He shrugged, muttering. “Why would we even try?”
The Thien’ha had barely spoken since the ship had dropped into the singularity. When Khet Nhan piped up, therefore, it startled Marcus enough to listen.
“There are great things in the offing, Marcus Wells. Sihn Ve’Yan and myself would not have sought you out if we did not think we would be witnessing something of vast importance.” He looked at his acolyte and then back to Marcus. “The reemergence of Humanity in the galaxy would be momentous indeed. It would rock the very foundations of civilization as it has rested for thousands of your years.”
Ve’Yan leaned forward, almost as if she was being forced, and her voice was low and intense. “It would represent an end to the longest cycle every recorded by our order.”
“You are the first Humans to escape Earth in hundreds and hundreds of your years! Your entire species is imprisoned, Marcus Wells. And you would voluntarily take up those chains again?” Angara seemed genuinely angry, but he couldn’t understand what she would have to be angry about, that his returning to Penumbra would fix.
“I didn’t know it was a prison then.” He mumbled, not proud of the position he was taking, but not seeing a way to take another and live. “It’s an entire world. I think I’ll forget it’s a prison soon enough when I get home.”
He had been thinking of Clarissa, to be honest. Thinking of going home, of finding her, and seeing if he couldn’t maybe fix something a little more personal. He wouldn’t tell her about Penumbra or the insanity that had engulfed him. Not right away, at least. He was already reconciled to the fact that no one would ever believe him. If he returned … when he returned, he would be living a lie.
But it was a lie he could live with, that was the point. Out here, everywhere he looked, all he saw were truths that were going to get him killed.
“I’m not going back.” Justin’s voice was low but intense, and when Marcus stared at him, his friend only nodded. “I’m staying out here. Even if I can never go back to Penumbra, it’s a wide galaxy.”
“Your friend will live like a pirate without a home, Marcus Wells.” Angara said. “Penumbra is the only refuge for those with nowhere else to go. It was a beacon for those fleeing oppression and tyranny. It will be gone, forever, if we abandon it now.” The anger was building, and he found her more intimidating than ever.
“Well, good luck with that.” He pushed himself away from the table and stood. There were sleeping cabins below, along either side of the ship’s hull, and he made for the one he had used on their journey out from Earth
. “I’m going to try to get some sleep. Let me know when we get back to Earth.”
He ignored their looks, their attempts to drag him back into the conversation, and the angry slap of Angara’s hand on the table.
Dropping down into the cabin, he lowered himself to the bunk and sighed as the cushion engulfed him.
He had never hated himself more than at that moment.
*****
Angara’s eyes were focused painfully on the far bulkhead as Marcus stalked away. She closed them and pushed several deep breaths through her nostrils before opening them again, cocking her head at Justin with a snarl.
“Will you follow him, or shall I?” She snapped the words, narrow eyes glaring.
Justin raised his hands in surrender. “I’ve never been able to talk to him when he’s like this. He’s made up his mind.” He looked sad, leaning forward over his folded hands. “I haven’t seen him this low in many, many years.”
Angara had had many fears about bringing the Humans to Penumbra. She had had many chances to rethink her hasty decisions on that darkened roadside. Recently, however, both of them had seemed to be adapting well, and she had even allowed herself to begin to hope that Marcus’s vision was something more than a homesick Human’s fever dream.
She rose abruptly, shaking out her long hair. “I’m not going to live the rest of my life as a vagabond because your friend is a coward. Our best chance is slipping through our fingers, and we are going to need him if we are to turn things around.”
“Good luck.” His words were heartfelt, his dark eyes sincere. It was a shock to see the depth of those eyes again after staring through the frosted lenses for so long.
She turned away before she could distract herself again, and made for the dropdown access to the small cabin Marcus had claimed.
There was a small foot pedal that would sound a gentle alarm in the cabin to notify the occupant that someone wished to enter. She ignored it and kicked at the access latch. The door hissed open, and she dropped down, ignoring the ship’s ladder.
She landed in the murky darkness of Marcus’s cabin, her knees flexing slightly with the impact. Scanning the shadows she saw the Human laid out on his back in the small bunk, sitting up with an expression that combined surprise, fear, and outrage without diluting any of them.
“What the hell—”
Two sharp steps brought her to the edge of the bed, where she stopped, her balled fists at her sides, and glared down at him, her eyes flashing in the darkness.
“I will not allow your cowardice to destroy everything we could have built, Marcus Wells. Our best hope is to return and fight the Council forces from within Penumbra. We cannot do that without you.”
He threw his legs over the edge of the bed, his hands buried in the soft blanket. His face was twisted with bitterness and anger as he looked up at her. “How the hell do you expect to do that, eh?” He flung one hand aft to indicate the distant city. “You want to turn this boat around and go back to fight off an entire fleet, and a city full of rabid bulldog aliens? The five of us?”
She wanted to slap him. She could not remember the last time she had been so angry. She knew that it was not entirely his fault, and yet there was no denying that without him and his strange bond with the city, her situation was hopeless.
“We can still sneak back in! We can infiltrate the Red Tower, reunite you with the Skorahn, and then, with the power of the city once again with us, we will have a chance! There are others who will rise—”
He shook his head, and she stopped. “Others who will rise up to join us now that we are outnumbered and outgunned, but who did not rise up to stand with us when it was just us versus a group of Taurani’s thugs?” He looked sad, genuinely disappointed and upset, and she remembered that many of the dreams that were dying behind them had started with this lost, confused Human.
“Look, for a time I thought we were going to be able to do something special.” His eyes were shining in the darkness. “I thought everything that had happened to me, every choice I had made, had finally come together for a reason.” His shoulders slumped. “I was wrong.”
It looked as if he had collapsed in upon himself. Before she had consciously acknowledged the impulse, her hand was stinging, his head was rocking backward, and the darkness in his eyes had been replaced with rage as he surged off the bed, one hand rising to his burning cheek.
“You bitch!” He did not reach for her, or prepare for a swing, which she found odd. There were so many preconceptions about Humans she had carried through her whole life. Every time he had failed to live up to them, it had been a shock. But now, with her heart racing and her flesh tingling with anticipation of a battle, his refusal to meet her was the most shocking yet.
She wanted to hit him again.
“What the hell!” He looked more hurt now than angry, and that just made her own emotions churn the harder.
She pushed him back onto the bed with enough force that he almost struck the rear wall with his head. “I will tell you what the hell, Marcus Wells. What the hell is that you are a Human that has escaped Earth! That is what the hell. You were the leader of a city that needs you now more than ever! That is what the hell! Without you, a dream that most had never even dared to imagine dies now, here, before it even had a chance to draw breath!”
She was stalking the room, pacing back and forth like a caged beast. “The people of Penumbra had come to know you, to respect you! They had come to respect a Human!”
She knew her words were meaningless to him. Even after bearing the brunt of the galaxy’s discrimination and hatred for all this time, he could not begin to understand what it meant that his words had begun to change the city. And nothing she could say was going to reach him, now.
As the realization struck her, she felt her own anger falter and die. Her shoulders slumped, and she eased herself back against the bulkhead. She was nearly panting with the exertion of a moment before, and could only stare at him.
“Look, Angara.” He watched her warily from the bed, but he had rearranged his body so that he could, if necessary, spring up again to defend himself if she rushed him. That was something, anyway. “I know this means a lot to you. I think I might even know why. But you’ve got the wrong guy. I’m not qualified to run anything, never mind a city. And really never mind a floating city full of aliens, for Christ’s sake!” He shook his head, resting his elbows on his knees and lowering his head into his hands. “It can’t be me, because it was never going to be me. And every being in Penumbra knew it.”
For a moment there was nothing but silence in the little cubicle. When he looked up, the guttering light in his eyes was proof that he had no real hope to offer her.
“Why not Justin? He’s great with people, every kind of person! He’d be a big help in any sort of desperate scheme you’ve thought up.”
Could he be so obtuse? “I have not yet conceived of any desperate scheme. But anything I could think of would require your presence. You are special, Marcus. I know you don’t see it, I know you don’t agree. But I’ve seen your connection with the city. There is something between you, something strange, and unique, and important. And without that bond, any design to retake the city would truly be a desperate, hopeless plan.”
He shook his head, looking back down at the deck. “I think you’re wrong. It was just dumb luck, and I won’t push it again.”
Marcus Wells stood up, straightening his back slowly, rolling his shoulders, and looking at her from a stern, steady face. “I want to go home.”
She felt the last flickers of hope die within her. They left behind a cold emptiness she had not felt since first being banished from her people’s fleet when she was barely more than a child. She was alone again, homeless, without refuge or shelter.
“I cannot make you fight.” She pushed off the wall with her shoulders, exhausted. “No one can make you fight.”
She turned her back on him and grabbed the top rung of the short ladder. She stopped half way
up, and spoke over her shoulder. “We lack the fuel to reach Earth. We will need to take on more, and then we will see you safely home.”
He started to say something; to thank her, possibly, or to ask another question. She ignored him and heaved herself the rest of the way up the ladder.
She had no interest in further words with a coward.
Chapter 22
A soft tone echoed off the walls of his cubicle; the ship was falling out of its wormhole and back into real space. They must have arrived at the black market station Angara had mentioned before he had exiled himself to his cabin.
He couldn’t deal with the others since the argument over returning to Penumbra. Angara had been nothing but coldly polite since the quarrel. Justin had tried to jolly him out of his dark mood, but he was one man against the weight of truth, two angry females, and an increasingly erratic little ball of fur that seemed to have lost what little contact with reality it had had.
He had made a couple forays out of his tiny cabin, but the pressure was too much. He had been taking his meals below, only venturing out to relieve himself or when the claustrophobia got too much to bear. Whenever he did go topside now, everyone avoided his eyes, kept to themselves, and gave off a distinct impression of relief when he headed back down to his cabin.
In theory, each day brought them closer to Earth, but there was no sense of anticipation or excitement. He had been expecting to feel some relief at the very least, that their harrowing experience was nearing its end. Instead, whenever he closed his eyes all he could see were Angara’s judging eyes, or the dead, empty gaze of Copic Fa’Orin, staring at him with accusation. Guilt was his ever-present companion. He felt guilty for what he had done, and he felt guilty for what he had refused to do.
It was driving him mad.
He tried to focus on Clarissa’s face, but he couldn’t seem to conjure it up in his mind no matter how hard he tried. He saw his father and his brother and sister, though. He saw them plenty. And the look in their eyes were stark reminders of the few glancing blows he had caught from Angara’s own, violet glares over the past few days.
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