Inversion (Riven Worlds Book Two)

by G. S. Jennsen

  She hadn’t seen Mia since those tear-drenched moments on the floor of the Consulate office. Mia looked frozen, as if she’d been petrified in place—her olive skin blanched pale, her jade eyes coldly bright but not sparkling, her hands clasped into tight fists on her lap. Whispered tendrils of her pain leaked through the Noesis into Alex’s mind, and she hurriedly reinforced the block. Doing so made her a coward and a selfish one, but her heart was exhausted, and she simply couldn’t bear any more grief right now.

  A line of priests followed a man in traditional Catholic garments—the actual Archbishop of Chicago, she’d been told—in from a side hall to the altar. An enormous picture of Malcolm in full military dress hung in front of the altar, because of course there was no body and thus no casket. The Savrakaths probably desecrated it then chucked it into the swamp—

  She closed her eyes until the wave of nausea passed, and with it budding tears. The rich strains of an organ filled the sanctuary, everyone stood and a hymn began. She hadn’t known the words to any of the hymns on either of her previous visits, and she certainly hadn’t learned them since. Her father was raised Eastern Orthodox, her mother’s family practiced no religious traditions, and Catholic burial rituals were nearly as much a mystery to her as Taenarin and Naraida ones.

  The Archbishop read several passages from the Bible in a deep, booming voice, then David squeezed her mother’s hand as she stood and went to the altar. Because to the world, Malcolm was a military leader and a war hero, the family had chosen Miriam to deliver the eulogy. Apparently eulogies weren’t a traditional part of Catholic funeral liturgies, but if a person was noteworthy enough, exceptions existed for every rule.

  Her mother had never been comfortable speaking in front of crowds, but she’d gotten quite good at it with frequent practice over the years. The speech was solemn yet touching, suitably reverential and occasionally even a little funny. For those few minutes up at the pulpit, her mother showed no hint of the immense strain she operated under, gave no sign of her continuing struggles with dying, skipping her own funeral and returning to life.

  The Catholic Church’s official position was that regenesis was an abomination, but today the Archbishop treated her mother with the utmost respect—which was to say, he didn’t gasp and back away from her while clutching his rosary and performing the sign of the cross or grasping for the holy water.

  Miriam rejoined them in the pew, and only the involuntary twitching of the muscles along her jaw betrayed how difficult standing up there and giving the speech had been for her. Her mother wasn’t okay, not yet, and Alex found herself at a loss as to how to help her become so. It seemed like maybe her father knew how, though, for obvious reasons. And while she remained angry at her father for ‘helping’ Caleb behind her back, right now they needed to hold tight to one another as a family, lest the cosmos notice they shouldn’t exist and rectify the error.

  More hymns, recitations and readings of scripture followed, and it all felt so formal and pointless and ineffectual, though she realized Malcolm would have taken comfort from it. But funerals weren’t for the dead, they were for the living, and none of this was giving her any peace whatsoever. Only a growing frustration with a callous and capricious universe.

  When the service concluded, she excused herself from her parents to go speak to Malcolm’s mother and sister. She hadn’t seen them in years, but a proper upbringing had taught her it was the polite thing to do, and for once she followed the rules. After a few stilted condolences she placed a hand on Mia’s shoulder, but the woman just stared straight through her. Alex nodded in understanding, though she deeply hoped that she never did, turned and hustled down the aisle to catch up to her parents.

  She couldn’t take this any longer—this submissive acceptance of tragedy, this reacting instead of demanding. She needed to do something. Something to staunch the bleeding and the carnage, something to force the universe to right itself and resume spinning in the correct direction.

  27

  * * *

  SAVRAK

  Military Headquarters

  General Kuisk Jhountar’s thick tail whacked the side of his desk with every livid pivot. “Concord cannot simply have their way with us! If we let them invade our sovereign territory at their every whim, we’ve already become nothing more than indentured servants.”

  Brigadier Akhar Ghorek snarled a retort; unlike most officers, he refused to blindly kowtow to Jhountar’s power. It was, he suspected, why he was in the room. Jhountar made a show of expecting unconditional obedience from his subordinates, but even he recognized he needed someone to occasionally call him on his bullshit. “General, it is fair to say that Concord has thus far been restrained in their behavior toward us. They possess the fleets and weapons to destroy our military and civilian infrastructure, yet they have not done so.”

  “They are afraid of our antimatter weapons.”

  “No, General, they are not.”

  “They will be if we begin utilizing them on soft targets.”

  Ghorek blinked. Jhountar had always been a ruthless leader, but not a sadistic one. “General, I hope you are not suggesting—”

  “No, not at present, though I refuse to remove the option from our arsenal. But the fact remains that we cannot allow these incursions to go unopposed, else we might as well surrender to our new overlords.”

  “What do you propose?”

  “They have made the mistake of handing us poorly protected military targets right on our own soil. It is time we remove them.”

  AFS Trinsky

  AEGIS Flight Lieutenant Adam Goodwin carefully guided the Rescue and Recovery transport vessel AFS Trinsky toward the landing pad at the Savradin spaceport. His eyes scanned the horizon for threats, then the ground below for the same.

  This was his third Godjan refugee retrieval mission undertaken on Savrak. The first two had been met by much bullying and threats from Savrakath officials, but no violence. Still, the air crackled with tension and animosity. The Savrakaths did not want them here; they wanted to let go of their Godjan slaves even less and were doing so only under the threat of a full-scale Concord invasion.

  Though it technically belonged to the military wing, AEGIS’ RAR Division’s purpose was to conduct humanitarian relief operations. They did so armed because such missions often took place in unfriendly territory. Such was the case today, where RAR acted under Concord’s banner, per the Consulate and Command’s decree that any Godjans who wished to leave Savrak under Concord’s protection would be welcomed and granted refugee status.

  The landing gear touched down on the pad. Goodwin performed the standard arrival checks before motioning to the operations officer, Lieutenant Fowler, who sat beside him in the cockpit. “Open the ramp and prepare to receive passengers.”

  Fowler stood and disappeared into the belly of the ship.

  Flight Lieutenant Goodwin (AFS Trinsky): “Savrak Transportation Northern Spaceport, this is the AFS Trinsky. We have landed at Pad #5C and are ready to receive Godjan passengers. Please open the doors.”

  Savrak Transportation: “We will not aid a Concord incursion. Open them yourselves.”

  The passive resistance they’d encountered since beginning relief efforts was petty blustering, but it got tiresome. He leaned around the cockpit chair so his voice projected into the hold. “Specialist Figueroa, confirm Lieutenant Fowler is ready to receive, then get the doors from the spaceport open. Stay at the entrance to assist anyone who needs it. And take your sidearm.”

  “Yes, sir.” Figueroa also headed to the back. A minute later, he emerged on the landing pad below and approached the double doors leading to the interior of the spaceport. Thus far Savradin security had allowed a number of Godjans to enter the spaceport and depart on the RAR transports, though Adam couldn’t say what gauntlet they might have forced the refugees to endure to arrive here.

  As before, the doors opened to reveal a throng of the small, bipedal yet disturbingly frog-looking aliens. Most wore l
ittle more than rags and carried bags stuffed full on their backs and shoulders.

  Figueroa directed the refugees toward the extended ramp, where Fowler waited to get them processed and situated. To a one, the Godjans obeyed the AEGIS officers’ gentle instructions as if they’d been delivered over the barrel of a gun. It wasn’t Adam’s place to make moral judgments about other species, but it sure seemed as if the Savrakaths had cowed the Godjans into meek submission on a societal scale.

  The sounds of movement and quiet mutterings in Savrakan began to fill the transport hold behind him. They had room for two hundred ten passengers, and judging from the line that extended into the spaceport, it would be another full flight.

  Another ten minutes of steady progress brought the hold to half capacity. Many of the passengers had never experienced spaceflight, and getting them calmly situated took a great deal of patience, which was why Fowler was in charge of doing so rather than Adam. The man had raised four children on his own after his wife died in a hurricane on Demeter, and he displayed the patience of Job when it came to the fragile and the helpless.

  Motion in Adam’s peripheral vision caught his attention. The doors to the spaceport had abruptly slammed shut.

  Goodwin: “Specialist, what’s the situation with the doors?”

  Outside, Figueroa pressed repeatedly on the control panel. “Sir, the controls aren’t responding. The doors may have been locked internally by security.”

  Another petty attempt to make their job as difficult and unpleasant as possible. “Acknowledged. Keep trying. I’ll reach out to Savrak Transportation.”

  Flight Lieutenant Goodwin (AFS Trinsky): “Savrak Transportation, this is—”

  Two fiery streaks emerged from the horizon to burn hot across the sky—in their direction. Missile launch? Fuck! “Figueroa, Fowler, get on board and close the ramp now! We are being targeted.”

  But there was no time. He’d barely shouted the order when both streaks slammed into the broadside of the Trinsky. The force of the impact sent the ship skidding across the landing pad, and one piece of the landing gear sank into the mud beyond the pad. A wave of searing heat billowed through the hold, and the door behind him slid closed a nanosecond before the wave blasted into the cockpit to burn him alive.

  Goodwin: “Fowler, Figueroa, report!”

  Nothing.

  Flight Lieutenant Goodwin (AFS Trinsky)(AEGIS Operations Channel): “AEGIS Central Command, this is the AFS Trinsky. We are under attack at the Northern Spaceport in Savradin, Savrak.”

  System warnings flashed across the HUD and his virtual vision. The adiamene hull had held, but because the ramp was down when the missiles hit, the explosions had ripped apart the inside of the ship.

  AEGIS Central Command (AEGIS Operations Channel): “AFS Trinsky, vacate your location ASAP. Is your Caeles Prism operational?”

  Flight Lieutenant Goodwin (AFS Trinsky)( AEGIS Operations Channel): “Affirmative, Command. Will vacate as soon as everyone is on board.”

  He peered out the viewport, where a line of charred corpses led to the spaceport doors, ending at Figueroa’s prone and burnt form. Flames consumed the body and licked hungrily at the entrance.

  Acid burned in Adam’s throat as he jumped up, reopened the cockpit door and hurried into the hold. The stench of roasting flesh assaulted him, but sporadic cries meant some Godjans were alive. In the smoke and confusion, he didn’t see Fowler anywhere, but the lieutenant had been at the bottom of the ramp, and the bottom of the ramp was piled high with…he gagged, bent over and vomited. He was a trained medic, but no amount of training or experience prepared one for this.

  Adam straightened up even as his stomach continued to churn, then felt his way along the hot wall until he reached the control panel. He fumbled the entry, and it took him two tries to activate the ramp to close. As the bright midday sky narrowed then vanished, he sprinted back to the cockpit and initiated emergency liftoff procedures. More missiles could be inbound this second, and he had to get what survivors remained offworld.

  His eVi belatedly released nanobot-aided adrenaline to keep his hands from shaking as he pulled the ship up hard and accelerated away.

  28

  * * *

  CONCORD HQ

  Consulate

  Mia stood at the viewport in her office. Outside, thousands of ships arrived and departed, while tens of thousands more sat docked along the pinwheels stretching out from the colossal station. Ships Malcolm should be commanding.

  When this perishable nature has put on imperishability, and when this mortal nature has put on immortality, then the words of scripture will come true: Death is swallowed up in victory. Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting?

  The Archbishop’s commanding voice taunted her every waking thought. If she ever slept again, it would surely lie in wait for her in her nightmares. Where was Death’s sting? Where was Death’s sting? It could be found in the bottomless pit of sorrow now residing in her chest and in the desolation drowning Malcolm’s mother’s eyes. It poisoned the permanent chasm which had been engraved in the firmament.

  Stop this, Mia. You are torturing yourself.

  I expect I’m torturing us both, Meno.

  I will manage, but I fear you will not. Grief is a natural process, but do not destroy yourself with it. I need to believe that you will one day be mended. Let me help you, if I can.

  The notion of a world in which she might be mended existing in the multiverse made her laugh bitterly. Damn Malcolm for making her love him so, for making her depend on him. Damn him for refusing to come back to her. Damn the monsters who extinguished his life so carelessly, who had now denied her his touch for eternity.

  Nature abhorred a vacuum. And so deep in the abyss now carved into her soul, something stirred to fill the emptiness. It was dark, twisted and ugly, and Malcolm would never approve. But Malcolm was gone.

  Mia welcomed Richard into her office. “Thank you for coming—and for coming to the funeral. Malcolm would’ve…appreciated it.”

  “Of course. There was never a question….” He paused. “Senator Requelme, shouldn’t—”

  “Please, it’s Mia. We’ve known each other for fifteen years.”

  “All right, Mia. Shouldn’t you be at home, or spending time with friends and family? No one will ever fault you for taking a few days off. Weeks. However long you need.”

  “In the middle of a coup attempt and two flaring wars? I don’t think so. Besides, I don’t have any family, and my friends are diligently working on defusing said coup attempt and two flaring wars. I can do no less.”

  He dipped his chin. “It’s not my place to lecture you, so I won’t speak any more on it. What can I do for you?”

  “You have an agent in place with Ferdinand on Epithero, correct?”

  “More of a part-time informant than a formal CINT agent, but yes.”

  “Excellent. I need to get a message to Casmir.”

  “Not to Ferdinand?”

  She scoffed. “I can send a message to Ferdinand whenever I wish, but it will go unanswered and, in all likelihood, unopened. His practicing of diplomacy was always a farce at best.”

  “I’m not surprised. What is it you need to tell Casmir?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Richard clasped his hands behind his back and planted his feet shoulder-width apart; like most present and former soldiers, he reverted to a military stance when uncomfortable. “I recognize that in most Concord matters, you outrank me, as it were. But I won’t ask my informant to take any action I’m not comfortable with.”

  “A noble sentiment. My sense, from what I know of the man, is that Casmir is on our side. We can use him to further our own purposes while maneuvering him into a position where he can disrupt Ferdinand’s rebellion.”

  “What do you intend, exactly?”

  It was easy to forget that Richard’s mild-mannered demeanor did not make him a pushover. She sent him the message she’d prepared.


  He reviewed it briefly. “Does Miriam know about this?”

  “I think she would approve of this tactic.”

  “But does she know?”

  “I haven’t discussed it with her, no, as her plate is quite full.”

  “You realize I have to run it by her.”

  She didn’t want to see Miriam, didn’t want to be reminded in flesh and blood how the woman lived again when Malcolm did not. How Alex and David had seen their treasured loved one returned to them, while she found herself forever alone. But no one had said walking the path of vengeance would be easy or gentle. “Fine. Let’s go see her. Right now.”

  Command

  Miriam motioned them into her office, then rested against the front of her desk and crossed her arms over her chest. “Do the Anadens have the right of things? I’ve spent the last fourteen years balancing peace on the head of a pin. Now, despite all my best acrobatics, I find myself surrounded by war.”

  Richard frowned. “I don’t think—”

  “Never mind.” Miriam offered a dismissive wave and went around behind her desk. “If you haven’t heard by now, you will shortly. The Savrakaths just attacked an AEGIS RAR vessel that was receiving Godjan refugees.”

  Richard stopped short. “What do you mean by ‘attacked’?”

  “According to the pilot, two missiles struck the vessel and the landing pad it resided on.”

  “Casualties?”

  “Two AEGIS officers and as many as one hundred fifty Godjans.”

  Callous murderers and savages, all of them. Mia pressed her hands together at her lips. “Then this meeting is all the more timely, and my proposal all the more urgent.”