With his heart threatening to pound its way out of his chest, Jahx didn’t know if he would pass out or vomit. He focused again on his breathing, and on the voice that led him here.
(This is the way it’s supposed to be. Trust yourself.)
They squeezed through another passageway, and the smell of rotting flesh assaulted his senses. M’ah Pae extended his limbs so Jahx could get a better view of the chamber.
“Why?” Jahx whispered. Bodies piled upon bodies well into the thousands. Adults, children, and the elderly of every gender from a wide range of Sentient races created obscene mountains. Only a few remained untouched, the rest missing limbs or having the beginnings of mechanical devices fused into their decaying flesh.
“These are the ones that have failed,” M’ah Pae said.
“What did you do to them?”
“They were unsuitable, unusable in the confines of their flesh. I have made them useful. I have made them necessary. Even if they cannot survive to become a Liiker, they will be purified into usable proteins, into fuel, and they will have a purpose.”
This time Jahx was sure the screeching sounds were laughter.
“I will purge and perfect you, too, Jahx,” M’ah Pae said, smiling. Black gums oozed yellow fluid. “I will show you a life without the disease of the flesh.”
Jahx threw up, his stomach cramping until it emptied completely. “You defile life,” he said, tears streaming down his face. A dark satisfaction spread through M’ah Pae’s thoughts, seeping into Jahx’s mind and making his insides feel cold and lifeless. Gritting his teeth, Jahx’s mind burned with impulses he had never felt before, even on Fiorah.
“The Motti do not defile life—we purify it. This universe is polluted by excess, by the stink of immoderation. We destroy what is useless and purge the flaws of the flesh.”
Jahx noted the subtle falter in his voice, the change in the consistency of the vocalizations, and realized his opportunity. But it meant delving beyond the corrosive exterior of the Overlord’s mind and contending with whatever malignancy lay beneath. He would have to push further then, risking more than he had ever risked before for his one and only chance.
Every nerve fiber lit up in his scope of awareness, as if to protest the idea. It’s madness, an empty sacrifice. You can easily save yourself.
After all, M’ah Pae was just like Yahmen. He fed off of pain and thrived in the face of suffering, hiding his true desires beneath his twisted philosophy. The last time Jahx had entered Yahmen’s head it had nearly killed him, and he would have lost himself in the tangle of his owner’s shadow if it hadn’t been for Jaeia. Besides, maybe he was wrong and Jetta was right; maybe he wouldn’t be able to connect with M’ah Pae any more than he had been able to with Yahmen.
Jahx closed his eyes. He could hear Jetta whispering in his ear, telling him to kill the monster.
No, he countered. That’s the easy way out.
He couldn’t shake his belief—the same one that kept him from killing the Dominion officers, the cadets, the laborminders, the child laborers—any Sentient that had hurt him. He believed that even in a beast like M’ah Pae a seed of hope existed.
My faith with kill me...
Even if you’re right, Jetta once told him, that doesn’t mean everybody’s worth saving.
No, Jahx thought, the blood rushing in his ears, this is the one Sentient I absolutely have to save, or there will be nothing left for my sisters, for anybody.
He couldn’t explain the thought, even to himself, as the terror choked his bowels. But his inner determination would not yield.
I am a coward for not acting sooner, he thought. Jetta would never have hesitated to act on her beliefs.
Holding the memory of his sisters as an anchor, Jahx delved past the Motti Overlord’s mottled skin, past the synthetic blood pumping through his veins. He strained through the clicking and buzzing of machinery to find what was left of his decrepit organic brain. Almost immediately the icy consciousness of M’ah Pae engulfed him, suffusing him with the Motti Overlord’s vision for the future of the Starways—the replacement of corrupt, untidy neurons and gray matter with the beauty and precision of circuit boards and central processors.
Bone-splintering cold dulled his senses and dimmed his sight, but there was no pulling out now. If he did not find what he was looking for, he would break apart.
“There are evil people, Jahx; why can’t you just accept that? We can kill Yahmen and be done with this—we can save our aunt and uncle and be free! You’re the one that’s keeping us back.”
Jetta’s words cut through him, spurring him forward as semi-optic shadows dragged at the edges of his consciousness, making it harder for him to differentiate between himself and the half-dead machine. Dizziness and nausea had faded along with any other recognizable sensations, replaced by line codes and subprograms that sent little vibrations through his six spiny legs. The same obsessive thought repeated over and over again in his head: With eyes open, they burn—
(No!) Jahx screamed, trying to keep hold of himself. (Please,) he pleaded, (give me the reason...)
Voices assailed him from the depths of the dead machine, whispering in a language long forgotten as macabre scenes played out across his cortex. He felt his legs, transformed into pincers, selecting torsos from an overcrowded bin of discarded carcasses. He analyzed metal alloys and transducers before selecting which ones to introduce into a live specimen. He saw his own reflection, bereft of humanity, in a discarded sheet of metal left in the junkyard as he searched for new parts for his creations.
If he couldn’t find it, then he confirmed his sister’s accusations—he was weak, cowardly, a waste of undiscovered talent. Everything he had done—or hadn’t—would amount to nothing. All those times he could have stopped Yahmen, all those times he could have saved Jetta and Jaeia, his aunt and uncle...
He felt himself calving like an iceberg, splinters disintegrating into the darkness as he descended into the fetid depths of the Overlord. He saw a man with obsidian eyes and a glittering, savage smile. The man’s nettling voice made his skin crawl with desires he knew were not his own.
His mind jerked away, and Jahx found himself standing in the middle of a smoldering city, hovering over the broken body of a blonde woman he had killed. Her blood seeped out of her ears and nose as she whispered a name: Josef...
(Please,) Jahx pleaded, (please be there!)
Trusting his intuition, Jahx held fast to the name the woman whispered, focusing on it, bleeding the last of himself into its fragile existence. Just as M’ah Pae’s shadow eclipsed the last of Jahx’s consciousness, he found something unexpected buried under the ruin of malice and disillusion.
The rush of hope brought revitalizing warmth to his awareness, driving back the shadow long enough for it to lose its hold on him. He remembered himself and resurfaced with a new understanding of his purpose.
Jahx’s eyes blinked open. “You cannot lie to me,” he whispered. “And you cannot hide anymore. I see you.”
M’ah Pae’s face contorted and his grip slackened just enough for Jahx to draw in a real breath. “Why did you awaken me?” Jahx said, voice changing pitch and intensity, surprising both of them. “Did you want me to tell you of your own undoing?”
A mechanical leg sliced upward, and his face exploded in pain. Jahx’s tried to hold together what was left of his nose as blood spurted down his neck and chest.
“No,” the Overlord hissed, his eye seething in its socket. “I will tell you of your undoing. You are the most powerful telepath in this galaxy. You could destroy me, this ship—the entire enclave—with a mere thought. You know you have this power, yes?”
Jahx alternated between swallowing and spitting out the coppery blood that filled his mouth and throat. If he could have answered the Overlord, he would have told him that he had always known he had such power. Even back on Fiorah he could have killed Yahmen with a single thought, but that wasn’t what he believed his powers were for, despite
everything that had happened to him and his sisters.
“And yet you do nothing. Your senseless compassion is your undoing,” M’ah Pae said.
“I know who you are,” Jahx choked out, “and I know why you chose me. I will help you even if you kill me.”
M’ah Pae spat in his face, corrosive saliva eating through Jahx’s skin and exposing the white of his bone. “I have no intention of killing you, Jahx. But I will destroy your soul.”
BLACK FIRE TRACED EVERY nerve in Jahx’s body as bioelectric wires burrowed underneath his skin. As mechanical probes dislocated one arm, then the other, and fed wires into the joints, he struggled to stay conscious through the pain. This wouldn’t be for nothing, he told himself again and again. When cold steel pierced the back of his neck and his head filled with thousands of wriggling worms, Jahx realized this would be his last moment owning all of himself.
The smell of charred flesh reached his nostrils as his vision faded to black. “Welcome to oblivion, number 00052983,” a voice hissed in the dark.
Please don’t let me be wrong...
Emptiness whistled past him as he fell, offering no resistance. He fell and fell, away from the pain he was already forgetting, when something collided with him, pinning him down like a living insect to a specimen board.
Other minds, gifted like his, fluttered around him like frenzied moths, trapped alongside him in some nether existence on the brink of life. They tore at him, and their pain became his pain until he hardly knew where he ended and they began. Part of him wanted to let them devour him, to simply allow his light to dissolve into the scatter of restless wings, but he knew he couldn’t—not after all he had gone through—and he fought with every last ounce of strength to maintain what little was left.
Reaching out and away from the tangle of tortured minds, Jahx stretched farther and thinner until there was nothing left of him to stretch—and with one final thought, connected.
NUMBER 00052983 TOOK its place on the buzzing walls of the comb. While only a single entity in the maze of rows forming the ship colony, it connected physically and psionically with rest of the Liiker enclave, forming the massive networked mind.
Hearing and seeing all of the Liikers, speaking to and for them, Number 00052983’s purpose illuminated in the bioelectric lattice of inner space:
Purge and purify.
With eyes open, we burn.
The humidity in the living ship brought beads of sweat across its one remaining brow. Fleshy portions of skin still exposed to the air, red and swollen with the newly installed wires and circuits protruding from its orifices, wept sanguineous fluid. Accessory Liikers smeared organic stabilization goo over its body as Number 00052983 inserted a feeder into the network and integrated into the central intelligence.
Chapter IV
Jetta opened her eyes, but it was too dark to see. She thought she had gone blind until the shadows shifted, and she could discern the layers of dark matter swirling and pooling around her feet.
(Hello?) she cried, trying to make sense of her surroundings. She couldn’t feel anything of substance, not even beneath her, as if she floated in midair.
(Hello?!) she cried again. She didn’t want to be alone—not in this place. The cold confinement of emptiness was more terrifying than any enemy she had ever faced.
Something stirred within the shadows. Someone else was there. Someone familiar. (Hello!)
She tried to find her arms and legs, but her body, appearing and reappearing, was no more tangible than smoke.
A voice, concealed by darkness, whispered ever so softly into her ear: (Please, oh please, find me, find me—kill him.)
(That voice—I know that voice!) Jetta thought excitedly, trying in vain to turn around.
The dark world shuddered, and the shadows drew in around her like a circling predator. A low rumbling gave way to footfalls that grew louder and faster with each step. She thought of Yahmen and all those nights he would come charging down their hallway in one of his drunken rages, but these footsteps were made by someone—something—much bigger and meaner.
Panic fired into her heart as the footsteps neared. She couldn’t move, and she couldn’t see into the darkness beyond herself. She was four years old again, hiding in the closet, knowing that it was only a matter of time before Yahmen found her.
Something brushed past her essence, sending her senses reeling.
(Jahx!)
She breathed in his scent, his aura, and it filled her with joy. But as soon as she thought to cry out his name, something bit into her, sending spasms of pain down phantom limbs. Jetta screamed, commanding her body away from the agony that gnashed its way deeper and deeper into her core, but she remained hovering above the groundless plane.
A behemoth roar reverberated all around, drowning out her cries as the shadow world changed. Serpentine tendrils unfurled from the pitch, slithering toward her as she writhed and wriggled in midair, trying desperately to gain purchase.
Then someone—something—latched on to her and yanked her from the encroaching menace, sending her spiraling away from any sense of body and self.
(Please—oh please—find me, find me—kill him.)
Jetta snapped forward, grabbing a handful of rocks. Breathing heavily, she took aim at every rock formation in the cavern until the memory of the dream crept back into the shadows. Slowly, she put the rocks back down.
“Skucheka...” Taking deep, calming breaths, she told her pounding heart that she was safe.
Wait—what is—? Jetta thought, touching her aching left side. She lifted her shirt and gasped at the ugly scratch marks that twined their way across her stomach and bloodied her clothes. Looking at her own hands, she saw the blood caked underneath her fingernails.
“Jaeia,” she whispered. Her sister had fallen asleep propped up against the wall of the cave, just as she had last seen her before their encounter with the Grand Oblin. When she didn’t wake, Jetta sent her a silent message. Jaeia!
Jaeia’s eyes popped open. “No!” she cried, throwing her arms out to prevent herself from tipping over. It took her a moment to get her bearings. “I had a terrible dream...” she whispered, pulling her knees against her chest. When she saw Jetta’s wounds, she uncurled.
“Who did that to you?” Jaeia asked, crawling over to her, eyes wide with concern.
Jetta bit her tongue, trying to hold Jaeia’s mind at bay as she struggled to make sense of what had happened as she slept. I can’t remember.
Her mind felt clouded, like it did back on the Core ships. She wanted to just ignore what was happening, but her left side got worse with every breath.
Closing her eyes, Jetta searched her memory.
“Oh Gods,” she said as a headache split her concentration. Spotting some of the Oblin’s leftover sleeping root in a bowl near their bedding, Jetta realized what she needed to do.
Jaeia crept closer and tentatively took hold of her arm. “Jetta, after all of this—I’m scared. We should go.”
It pulled at Jetta’s heart to see her sister like this, but she couldn’t leave without knowing more. “I agree—and we will—but this first.”
“Jetta, no!” Jaeia said as Jetta grabbed a root and milked the orange gel from its tip. “That—that thing down there—my dream—please Jetta, please—”
When she closed her mind to Jaeia, she heard a muffled sob.
“I saw Jahx,” Jetta whispered. “I have to go back.”
Jetta smeared the orange gel on her chest, closed her eyes and willed herself back to sleep.
AT FIRST SHE SAW NOTHING but the bloodlit darkness behind her eyes. Jaeia’s pleading and the pain of her bones grinding into the rocky floor receded as she focused on how she had felt in her dream. If it was something more, her only hope of recapturing it was following its psionic vibration.
Nothing happened.
Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. Jaeia’s hands gripped her arms, shaking her. Even with the sleeping root she could never fall asleep w
ith this much distraction.
Concentrate.
Focusing all of her thoughts on Jahx, Jetta remembered the calm blue of his eyes, the soft curves of his face. His shy half-smile lit up her heart as she imagined him twirling the hair at the base of his neck around his finger, his other hand reaching out to her.
Reaching back to him, Jetta’s awareness drifted away from the cave, her connection to her body narrowing to a pinpoint of light. Her sister’s cries, once in her ear and in her mind, disappeared.
Jetta opened her eyes to pitch black nothingness. (I’ve returned.)
(Where are you?) she called out repeatedly, meeting only a stillness both infinite and lonely.
Still without a body she could recognize, Jetta fought for one, as if inside a lucid dream. She stared into the abyss until her grasp resolved into hands, and her footing found an invisible surface to anchor her consciousness.
Satisfied, she tried moving forward. The air, soupy and frigid, smelled like ashes. With each step she took, the legs she could not see became colder and harder to move.
(Where are you?) her voice echoed into the nothingness. The sound had all but faded when it intensified and came rushing back at her with renewed force.
She covered her ears as her own words split into a thousand screaming voices, sharpening into the shriek of metal on metal. As she curled up into a ball, trying to shut out the noise, she remembered. (I know that sound—)
Raw fear surged through her phantom body, dissolving her limbs. I have to concentrate—
Heavy footfall sounded in the darkness, breaking through the shrieks in a discordant symphony. Her heart lodged in her throat, and she shut her eyes. The footsteps rushed at her, cutting across leagues of endless darkness in the giant, pounding steps of a hungering animal.
Suddenly, a familiar smell settled over her, triggering her earliest memories in a sweep of supercharged emotion.
(Jahx!) she sobbed, reaching out blindly into the shadow.
Concentrating as hard as she could on the memories of her brother, she opened her eyes. Two blue eyes stared back at her, distant and pale.
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