by Rhonda Mason
Vid grinned. “That was all Trinan, I swear!” It looked like they were on board a shuttle.
Hekkar pushed Vid’s head out of view. “Permission to dock, Captain Reinumon.”
Natali’s lips quirked. “Don’t you dare make me captain of this boat. As soon as we’re done here, I’m going planetside and never coming back. But, permission granted.”
Hekkar closed the comm line, and Kayla was left staring at a group of people, each with hands raised. Even the Yari’s survivors raised their hands. Everyone on the observation deck, with the exception of Natali, stood ready to offer their powers for the chance to stop the plague.
“Well, aren’t we all just a pack of sorry fools,” Kayla said.
Uncle Ghirhad spoke. “I’ll do it.” He looked at those gathered around him and motioned for them to lower their hands. “This is my task: let me do this for my niece.” A few of the rebels protested, arguing that they were younger and stronger, that they would hold up better under the processes, but Ghirhad just waved them off.
“I have done this before and I have survived. I can do so again.”
Kayla bowed her head. “Thank you, uncle.” She would never have asked him to submit to that torture again, but she could see in his eyes that he needed to do this for their people as much as she needed to volunteer her perfect arch. “Thank you.”
25
One of the many blessings of Corinth being immune to the TNV, Kayla thought, was that he could stay by her side for the procedure. She didn’t need to banish him to another part of the ship when Vayne arrived, TNV and all, with the Influencer.
Uncle Ghirhad was nestled in the stasis pod, wide awake but sealed inside, safe from the nanovirus Vayne was about to bring onboard.
Zimmerman looked at Fengrathen, she at him, and then they collided in the most passionate kiss Kayla had ever witnessed. She would have covered Corinth’s eyes if she wasn’t too stunned to move.
“I’ve been wanting to do that for five hundred years,” Fengrathen said when she finally came up for air. Then added, “Sir.”
They weren’t concerned about infection. They were Ordochians and they were going home, no matter what.
Kayla closed her eyes. Vayne was on the way down through the ship, but the person she wanted most in the universe, the person she needed by her side, now and forever, wasn’t there.
“Kayla?” It was Malkor’s voice coming from the comm. He and the infected octet were quarantined to the shuttle. If this failed and there was no cure to be had, some people aboard the Yari might make a life for themselves somewhere else. It only made sense to minimize the risk of infection, but it physically hurt to see Malkor so far away.
“I’m here,” she said, and waved from her perch on the metal slab of a table. “We’re getting ready to do this, all in one shot.” She held up her fingers. “Superbug? Boom.” She counted them out. “Uncle Ghirhad’s psi powers? Boom. Rig me up to the psionic amplifier at the center of this death machine? Boom. Put the TNV to bed? Boom and done. Just like that.”
“Just like that, eh?”
“Yup.”
They were both silent a moment, simply looking at each other. There were tears in her eyes and she blinked them away, not because they embarrassed her, but because they made it harder to see how absolutely perfect he was in this moment.
“I can’t have this conversation right now,” she said.
He nodded. “That’s why we’re not having it.”
And Fengrathen’s machine was beeping and Vayne had arrived and Malkor’s face was so dear and it was time to go.
“I’ll see you soon, my love,” she said.
“You better. You still owe me a sparring rematch.”
* * *
“You’re wrong about her, Fengrathen,” Kayla said a half-hour later. She could only see out of one eye and her head hurt like a hovercar had fallen on it, but somehow she was still alive.
“Her?” Fengrathen asked, and her voice was far away in one ear.
“The superbug, it, whatever, she absolutely does have a consciousness, albeit a minute one.” Currently that consciousness was crawling upside through her mind, squiggling, squirming, and wriggling its little tendrils any and everywhere. Spiderlike its fingers crept, feather-light and whisper-thin, threading through everything Kayla had ever been.
It found its perch somewhere Kayla couldn’t follow. She saw it from beyond an invisible barrier, the glass in her mind that kept her psi powers forever from her. She watched as that little spider wound its web and spun its nest, right and tight and out of reach.
At last, when it felt safe and ready, that little queen came looking for Kayla.
And boom. Superbug. Just like that.
Kayla’s eyes opened as wide as they could go and she gasped for breath as the controller interface connected with her and she became instantly aware of… Every. Single. TNV. Cell. In the entire world.
Her brain felt like it would burst. How could there be this many? Luckily they did nothing more than just exist in her consciousness or else her brain really would explode. And as she reached out, looked here and there at different cells, she realized that she wasn’t connected to every bit of the virus in the galaxy. She could sense by the shape, the pattern of those cells, that she was connected only to the TNV on the ship and the planet. The others, the controller was somehow telling her, were too far away to connect to. They’d have to travel…
The controller started thinking about traveling, and where it might like to make Kayla take it, and Kayla knew.
“It’s time,” she said, blinking away the awareness of the virus for a minute so that she could see in front of her. “Vayne, we have to do this quick. I think the controller is realizing that I’m defenseless against it right now.”
She levered herself up on her elbows, even though her head screamed in pain with the movement, and looked at Vayne.
He stood next to Dolan’s hated device, a frown so severe on his face that she thought of withdrawing her request that he use the thing to transfer Ghirhad’s powers to her.
“If you can’t do this—”
He shook his head. “That frown wasn’t for you.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “That frown was for the past, and the past is dead. Finally.”
She lay back down, unable to stand even the littlest effort to hold herself up. “Are you ready, Ghirhad?”
His voice came out muffled through the stasis box. “As ever, my dear. Do not worry about me: it doesn’t hurt if you give in.”
With that cryptic statement between them, Vayne brought the Influencer to life.
Kayla closed her eyes. Breathed. And waited.
Then she felt it—fingers in her mind, tiptoeing between the threads the superbug had laid out. A spark of power, a gem that glowed like a sun, a tiny bead sewn inside her head. Then another. And another. A glittering trail laid out, crisscrossing the landscape of her mind, lighting the way to a path she’d lost long ago.
Each spark she passed filled her a little more, giving her a boost as she climbed up and over, hunting out the next one, and the next. Until her hands were full with them, and her pockets full, and her heart full.
Tiny gems lighting a path, marbles glowing in her hands, suns forming in her mind…
Power blooming out of nothing. Glass shattering.
Freedom.
She breathed and stretched and flew.
This wasn’t someone else’s power: this was hers. Vayne had showed her the way back to it; Ghirhad had given her the boost she needed to reconnect.
Something shrilled in her ear, a desperate alarm that demanded attention.
“We’re losing him!” Fengrathen shouted.
The others didn’t know that Ghirhad was already gone. That he had given everything he had left to the cause. Thank you for your last gift, uncle.
Kayla laid there for a minute afterward, feeling her strength return, remembering what it was like to have another sense. She was almost afraid to test i
t.
Someone squeezed her hand. ::Come on, Kay.:: Corinth. She squeezed back.
Vayne’s face came into view, smiling in a way she hadn’t seen in five too long years.
“See? I told you you weren’t broken.”
She smiled, or at least she tried to. Mostly she couldn’t feel her body.
“Not broken, just lost.”
::And now you’re home:: he said in her mind.
::And now I’m home.:: But first… “Hook me up to the damn ship and let’s get this over with.”
It was all sorts of excruciating to get up off the table and onto her feet. After she proved to herself that she could do that, she gave in and let Vayne carry her telekinetically out of the airlock and to the waiting lift platform. The amplifier was several levels down, apparently.
Kayla closed her eyes as they descended. She ran through parts of her mind she hadn’t been able to access since before the coup. Places she had forgotten. Skills and strengths she hadn’t been able to use. Stars, so many of them…
But virus cells clamored at her from all over. Demanding nothing, just so loud in their existence that she couldn’t stand it. They blotted out her mind. That’s when she felt the controller stretching its grasp, trying to wriggle tendrils back into and across the path Vayne and Ghirhad had cut for her in her mind. Kayla stamped them out. Every one. It was easier as she became more accustomed to it, but that damn noise…
She might have passed out because the next thing she knew someone was shaking her by the shoulders, calling her name.
“Kayla, you have to wake up. Kayla!”
“Quit it, Vayne, I’m awake.”
He didn’t look like he believed her. She didn’t quite believe her. She was sitting in a very comfortable chair in a tiny round room that was as boring as a cubbyhole.
“If you’re sure you’re ready, I’m going to plug you in, now,” Fengrathen said. Without another warning, she did just that.
Kayla’s world expanded. Her psi powers magnified a thousand times. More. A million times. More, even. She could reach out and move a grain of sand on Ordoch’s surface with her mind. The things she could do with this much power…
But there was only one thing she wanted.
Malkor’s face came into her mind.
“This is for us, my love,” she murmured. Then she closed her eyes and sang a lullaby with her will. Wove a blanket of sleep, and laid it over every clamoring voice until each little existence, one by one, dimmed and finally winked out.
EPILOGUE
THREE WEEKS LATER ON ORDOCH
Three weeks later, Kayla stood amongst her family and friends in the center of Vankir City, surrounded by thousands of citizens who had gathered in what used to be downtown, to observe the Yari’s final flight. Every vidscreen on every building and scaffolding broadcast the footage of the ship being towed to Ordoch’s closer sun.
First Officer Zimmerman stood in a place of honor in the front, along with Officer Fengrathen, Tanet, Larsa, and the few other crew members who had been rescued. While Zimmerman’s plan to stop Ida by preventing the Yari from traveling to Ordoch had failed, he was still a hero of the people of Ordoch. They all were.
And Ordoch needed heroes right now.
Kayla felt a blunted optimism when she looked at the survivors. Each was receiving proper medical treatment now, and while some brain damage couldn’t be reversed, other damage might heal. She hoped so, at least.
On the vidscreens, the Yari entered into a steep orbit around the sun. The ship was more than a legend and a weapon, it was the casket for hundreds of ancient Ordochians who would never survive reanimation. They would burn with the ship, along with Captain Janus, who chose death over imprisonment. The punishment for Ida’s remaining allies, Benny and Ariel, had yet to be decided.
* * *
It was late, the celebration long over. Vayne roamed the Reinumon palace by moonlight, stalking through its halls, noting every wound the imperials had inflicted. For now, it was abandoned. He hoped it stayed that way. Something about the grand house just felt… violated. But that didn’t stop him from pacing here at night whenever he couldn’t sleep. It was like a sore he kept picking at, returning to over and over.
It wasn’t healthy. He knew that. I won’t come back
tomorrow. He just needed to remember tonight, to remember the before, the person he’d been before Dolan had ever come into his world.
Vayne paused his footsteps, waiting…
… but the voice never came. He was well and truly free of Dolan.
So why am I still waiting?
His wandering brought him where it always did: the en’shaar’s study, where his father and aunt had worked in tandem. More importantly, it was where he had defeated Dolan for a second time.
Something rustled in the dark as he entered, bringing Vayne’s senses to attention. He tightened the shields protecting him and reached out with his mind.
He collided with a consciousness so chaotic and full of rage that he recoiled from the strength of it.
“Natali.”
He could barely make her out by the bookshelf, the moonlight pouring in from the window making the shadows deeper next to it. He held perfectly still, willing her not to flee. For years now they’d run from the sight of each other. It was instinctual.
Only… it didn’t have to be. He could change things. He’d rather eat glass than face her, but there was no other way.
“We’ll never move on if we don’t acknowledge what happened.” The words were easier said in the dark. For a long time he thought she wouldn’t answer.
At last she said, “Perhaps you’re right, brother.” He heard her coming toward him and he didn’t know whether to force the issue by staying in the doorway or to let her pass. She simplified things by gently pushing him aside without touching him.
“Perhaps,” Natali said again, and then she was gone.
It was a start.
* * *
The next morning Kayla sat outside on a bench, in what used to be the workers’ picnic area of the old manufacturing plant. The weathered building that had shielded the heart of the rebellion was at her back, the grass at her feet, and the sun on her face. She tilted her head to catch the most of Ordoch’s sunbeams and, eyes closed, smiled.
It was treaty signing day, and all she wanted to do was take her boots off and walk barefoot, toes touching soil.
“You know what I miss?” she said to Malkor, who sat beside her on the bench, soaking up his own dose of sun. “Those damn baby rooks.” Who would have thought? “One of those guys would be sitting in our laps right now, a gaggle would be bumbling along ridiculously in the tree branches…” She could picture it, even though the rooks had only stayed at Ordoch for a few days.
Malkor chuckled. “You are alone in that one. They were always underfoot.”
“But they were so fun.” She cracked one eye open to see him shaking his head.
The rooks had left within days of jumping the Yari to Ordoch. If Kazamel interpreted their combination image– emotion language correctly, normal space made them ill. Or hurt them. Some equivalent thereof. The Mine Field, with its broken physics, was the only area in this dimension that they enjoyed. And now that they knew they were killing living creatures when they tore open ships to get at the fuel, the fun had gone out of things.
“I think,” Malkor said, “they are returning to their home dimension. Or their interdimensional home. I’m not quite sure.”
“I am never returning to space for as long as I live,” Kayla said. Leave interdimensional beings to someone else. The grass in the courtyard, the open air, the sunshine, it was all glorious.
“Never?” Malkor asked. “Does that mean I should tell Hekkar to unpack our bags?”
She sighed and opened her eyes. “Is it really time to leave?”
“Sad but true.”
Kayla had been so busy these last few weeks, helping her people begin the long and arduous process of reclaiming their
world, that she hadn’t paid attention to the preparations being made for the trip back to Imperial Space.
More importantly, for the queen bug’s trip to Imperial Space.
The thin, impossibly long arm of the Yari that housed the PD had been dismantled prior to the Yari’s demise. Engineers had extracted the only two parts Kayla needed: the psionic amplifier and the drive that powered it.
Those had been fitted to a modern Ordochian ship, which would carry Kayla on a journey through the Protectorate and Sovereign Planets until each cell of the TNV she could find had been obliterated.
Ironically, the ancient virus Ida had released on Ordoch wasn’t harmful to the imperial forces stationed there. It only attacked the cartaid arch. Once the arch was destroyed, or if you didn’t have one, as imperials did not, then the virus would simply become dormant. Thankfully, the empire was not privy to that information, or treaty negotiations would have gone a lot differently.
It had taken the imperials’ own scientists to adapt the virus to their brains, and in the process they had unknowingly unlocked the runaway replication—the real danger from the TNV. But no matter who was responsible for unleashing what, Kayla felt the ultimate responsibility for stopping all of it.
It didn’t make leaving Ordoch any easier.
“We’ll make it as quick as possible,” Malkor said. He gave her hand a squeeze. “Don’t worry, there will be plenty left to do when we return.”
“Corinth will be excited it’s time to travel,” she said. “He’s still determined to come with us?”
“He told me he’s ready for another adventure. Apparently three weeks of litter picking and debris hauling have not been exciting enough for him.” And life on Ordoch was going to be like that for some time. There was so much to be done. “Besides, I don’t think he wants to be away from Trinan and Vid.”
“Those two spoil him too much. I told them that.”
Rigger, Hekkar, Tanet, and Vid still hadn’t decided what they would do next, now that they had all been pardoned and given honors as heroes of the empire for their roles in everything. For now, they intended to accompany Kayla and Malkor on their journey, and she was glad for it.