Memory's Blade

by Spencer Ellsworth

  He’s closed his eyes, focusing on the song, which is how I close the distance before he whips the sword out, and I’m too close, and by some miracle, I get my hands on his sword and yank, but he’s got a death grip on the blade—and I knee him in the thigh, and he must have a wound there because he folds, falls backward—and I get the sword turned, even with his grip still on it—

  I stab. He twists.

  The sword just connects, tearing through his body armor and into the flesh of his side, below his ribs.

  I stab John Starfire, just enough. And blood drips down my arm, wound breaking open, and white fire lashes up when it reaches the blade. And I—

  I suck up his memories like I’m a thirsty girl who just found a cache of good water.

  The jelly is wet, and sticky. The darkness is pleasant, the light hurts, but somehow he knows he must open his eyes.

  Eyes. They are called eyes. He will see with them.

  He knows things. He hadn’t known them, and now they are filling his head, one after another, like musical notes crowded on top of one another.

  The fear in his eyes is the same fear come rushing into me through this sword. And I’m being born from a vat, in the memory I steal.

  Music. He understands music. He had not, a moment ago, but now he has a corpus of the best music in his head, symphonic and rollicking, fuzzy electric and echoing acoustic, all the best music from a thousand years of empire.

  Empire. He understands that.

  The Empire he overthrew. I overthrew.

  Jaqi and John Starfire braid together.

  He is a cross. There have to be crosses, because someone has to fight the war, because there are millions of them out there, and they will eat suns and planets without the crosses to man the ships and the planet-crackers and the battles.

  And thus the Empire can have peace.

  There must be crosses.

  Crosses must fight and die.

  He twists and with a spray of blood, falls away from the sword.

  I face him.

  “I en’t you,” he says, sounding a lot like me.

  “Not yourself either,” I say, and I sound just like him.

  He gets to his feet, shaking, and faster than he should be able to, he leaps on me and grabs the sword away. He faces me, holding up the blade—and crumples, clutching the wound in his side.

  But I can’t fight back. His memories en’t like the ones I took before. They feel alive inside me, twisting through me. They hurt.

  “What did you take?” He gasps out the words. Drops to his knees, grabs synthskin packs, slaps them on his wound.

  I en’t sure if it’s Jaqi or John Starfire talking, but I need to get away.

  I run.

  I’m remembering a thing, and remembering it is vicious, like living through every hot, angry minute I ever felt. I’m remembering his first battle in the Dark Zone. Where he jumped ship.

  One minute he is rushing from one side of the medical bay to the other, plasma packs in one hand, a thermo-regulator in the other, preparing for the influx of the wounded—the next minute the wall of the medical bay is gone, open to the Dark Zone.

  The gravity generator shifts, turns up to heavy gravity to lock them to the floor. Something goes wrong—he slides, and vacuum.

  Cold. Exploding pain in his ears. He remembers his training and presses the sense-field.

  The field, and the oxygen, pop into existence around him. His lungs throb with pain as he breathes in the sweet oxygen. Bright shards flash red across space. Sickly white-blue light springs out of nowhere, danced in patterns, and tears everything apart.

  And then the ship comes apart.

  And he sees them.

  So huge, so dark, lit by the half-light. Enough to see planet-sized faces with spars of teeth, the immense bellies where stars burn.

  Their voices are like breaking glass. Little things made to die. Little things made for us to eat. Nameless little ones.

  With that memory, of seeing the devil, music rushes into me.

  I run into the hall, and immediately regret it. I have to go. I have to go somewhere—back to the ship, back to safety, where I can figure out who I am. “Are you there?” I say to the Starfire itself.

  That music cascades through me.

  “I gotta get out of here!”

  My memories—no, his memories—but they are mine too—they twist, they core me out. The cold almost has him. The sense-field has lost its air, so much of it already passed through his lungs. He scuttles across the surface of the ship he’s found, numb woodblock hands failing to find a port, an entrance that can be opened, anything—

  The moisture in his eyes is freezing. His ears burn and ring. The cold of space will take him, like it has taken his entire ship, all his batch-mates, everyone he cares about—

  He presses his hand against something like a sensor—and an airlock opens.

  The music rushes into me. “Get me out of here,” I say as I slump to the ground, bloody. “Get me somewhere safe.”

  And just like that, the music answers and a node opens up around me.

  -4-

  Araskar

  IT’S A CRAPPY DAY to go for a hike, but it’s my last day planetside, so I’ll be damned if I’m spending it indoors. Rain lashes us. My clothes are wet through despite the slicker. Rain patters off the metal roofs of the hastily constructed shelters all around us. Mud runs in thick rivers along the streets of the refugee camp. The refugees of Shadow Sun Seven, formerly the elite of the galaxy, huddle inside their shelters and thank God for a roof. Paxin walks next to me, clad in an equally soaked slicker. We hike slowly, up the hill, toward the air hangar that is the only part of the refugee camp that predates the refugees.

  The painting’s back on side of the hangar.

  I step slowly and carefully up a rapidly eroding hill of mud. Close enough to the picture to stop and stare.

  In the picture, Saint Jaqi stares out at the universe, her dark skin reflecting the light of a surrounding circle of stars.

  “Rixinius has had this painted over twice already,” Paxin says. “Actually, this one’s kind of a rush job. Last one was better. That’s not what her nose looks like at all. And they need to learn to draw hands.” She’s wearing her temporary prosthetic hands today. She points with her prosthetic finger, a thing of spindly metal.

  The fresh paint is not quite dry; bits of Jaqi run in the rain. But not her eyes. Her painted dark eyes. I can’t help it—it hits me. Just the same way it’s hit these refugees.

  It really is like looking on God.

  Or the Starfire.

  It’s not what her face looks like. She never has that beatific, wise look the painter’s given her—most of the time she just looks hungry and curious.

  But I look at this, and I realize I’ve seen it. I’ve seen her do genuine miracles. Me, who was supposed to die in the Dark Zone, who should have died a thousand times since, in our first assault or on Irithessa or when I was chasing Jaqi. Instead, I’ve lived long enough to see miracles.

  Realizing that—you also realize how amazing this day is. Sheeting rain and mud and all. Gray skies over stormy sea. People, human and otherwise, running around the refugee camp to stay out of the rain.

  Everything I’ve been through, all of it, was all for a day like today.

  I can’t help laughing.

  “You okay?” Paxin asks.

  I might be. “If you write about this at all . . . don’t fake it. Tell the truth about who we were.” I don’t even mean Jaqi, I realize. I turn and fix her with my gaze. “Tell the truth about me.”

  “I’d be happy to.” Paxin’s face softens. “But I still believe you’ll get through this.”

  Hope. It’s a worse temptation than any drug.

  * * *

  “This is wrong,” says Adept Alsethus.

  I’ve only met this woman once before. She captains the dreadnought that took on the refugees, and when I met her before I’d been up for hours, and was half bu
rnt and near frozen from splitting Shadow Sun Seven in half.

  She was angry then and is angry now.

  Consistent.

  I’ve been on a lot of shitty little shuttles lately. The Thuzerian shuttle, christened Sword of Faith 529, is rather luxurious. It’s meant to hold an elite team of Adepts, and that’s who accompanies me—all of them are big burly sentients who look like they’ve spent the week in the gym.

  “This is not what the servants of God should do.”

  I don’t bother with that. Instead, I motion to the huge people around us. “I sure could have used this group when we were breaking into Shadow Sun Seven last week.”

  “You came protecting a group of refugees, and we give you up to save them.” She interlocks her four arms in a way I’ve never seen before, but I’m guessing it’s a bit like a human shaking their head in disgust. “What have we become? I heard what happened in the Council chamber. I heard how the leader of the refugees came to defend you, and Father Rixinius instead offered you to the Resistance. Where is our faith? The Council will find an uprising of their own if they’re not careful.”

  “Easy,” I say. “Infighting only helps the Resistance. I offered myself.”

  “Yourself?” Her eyes narrow, and two of her arms cross over the enormous sword emblazoned on her tabard. “This was your idea? Do you want to die?”

  “I used to.” I hardly realize I’ve said it. It’s weird to be so honest about something. Especially with one of these religious types who place such stock in honesty. “I think life might be worth living now.”

  “Of course it is. Life is a gift. Each moment is given us by God, in His mercy.”

  Religious types seem to forget that not everyone comes to life the way they do. “In my case, life was given by the Empire.”

  “All sentient life is given by God. And do not say a word about crosses and sentience. I have always believed crosses to be sentient. None of us believed the Empire’s propaganda. This galaxy was built on the blood of crosses. It is a thousand-year-sin.”

  “Thanks,” I say. Her words could have come straight out of one of John Starfire’s speeches, but I don’t mention that. The ironies are piled high around here. Almost like every revolutionary is destined to be a despot, and every addict who finds hope is destined to die.

  Shit, I’m maudlin.

  She hits the bulkhead. “You know, if this broke, all the time I’ve had—all the beauty I’ve seen, all I’ve loved, all the worlds I’ve stood on—they would mean nothing against the cold.”

  “Are you trying to convert me still?”

  “With so much darkness, you must choose light. Faith is a choice, Araskar. You choose to believe because the alternative is despair.”

  “Oh, there is something greater than all sentience out there,” I say. “The problem is, it lives in the Dark Zone.”

  “Don’t mock.”

  “I don’t.”

  I can tell she wants to say more. Her sort wants to save my sort. That’s the way the universe is made.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I tell Alsethus. “I know death well by now.”

  “Any fool can see you want to live. I don’t need God to tell me that.”

  I can’t respond. Something stuck in my gullet.

  And then she yells. “Shields!”

  “Shield are up—” says one of the pilots—and then our shuttle rocks with the impact of shards against our sense-fields.

  Bright red shards spin in a thousand patterns through space around us. From the dreadnoughts and the gunships—Resistance fighters blazing away, every weapon they have—

  The ship topples, and this time spins—we must have been hit by a heavy-load shot—we’re free-floating now, gravity gone—and it doesn’t matter for a moment, because for a moment I think this is it, we’re dead—

  The ship rights itself. “Return fire!” Alsethus orders. “And strap in!”

  “What the hell?” No one hears me say it, but I can’t fathom this. I know Aranella. Know her through Rashiya’s memories. She isn’t the type to shoot the messenger. I grab a chair and pull myself down, strap in as the jerks of battle replace artificial gravity.

  We send a barrage back. Gunships close with us now, a swarm of them having erupted from the Resistance dreadnoughts. From three of the five dreadnoughts. Two are still holding fire. Behind the gunships, smaller brown shapes—Moths, the individual insectoid fighters.

  The shuttle takes another hit, and Adept Alsethus bellows more orders, and we go into a dive, circle, spin, dodging the clouds of shards that keep coming our way.

  Heavier shards fill space around us as the Thuzerian dreadnoughts fire back. Gleaming points of red streak across space, tear through the gunships and scatter against the heavy shields of the Resistance dreadnoughts. By the buzz on our intercom, more battle shuttles are entering the fray.

  Our ship rights itself—and another shard lands, rocking us back and forth. “Go to battle mode,” Alsethus commands. It gets colder as environmental controls minimize.

  Alsethus and her gunners yell orders back and forth. We spin around and fire at two gunships, taking them by surprise. A half-dozen Moths swarm us, spitting shards. Our ship rocks and spins and the thrusters blow all over the ship, pinging warning signs as they try to arrest our velocity to keep us from being crushed.

  Thrust five times Imperial gravity replaces the art-grav, and then the thrusters catch us, make a stomach-twisting return to zero. Then another spin and more G-forces. Several Thuzerians hitch up their masks and puke. My cross engineering holds and so does my stomach.

  “The sense-fields can’t take any more of this pummeling,” the lead pilot says. “We need to return to the dreadnought.”

  “As long as we can dodge their shards long enough,” Alsethus says through gritted teeth.

  That’s when I see it. “No!” I say. “Turn!”

  “What are you talking about, Araskar?”

  “Turn and attack. That’s a planet-cracker.”

  Right there on the sensors, although you’d have to know what you’re looking at. Right off our bow, a swarm of Moths is guarding a large white shape.

  Alsethus magnifies it on the viewscreen. It looks like a fat missile. In truth, from a better angle, we would see that the “missile” shell is only a half circle, over a shard big enough to survive entry into a planet’s atmosphere, big enough to withstand hits from orbital defense. Once there, the giant shard will tear through the planet’s crust, sending up a billowing cloud of dust that blacks out the sky and triggers a supervolcanic eruption, to make the planet completely uninhabitable.

  You can kill any planet with any decent-sized asteroid, but orbital defense platforms blow those up; firing shards at a planet-cracker will just increase its volatility.

  “We won’t be able to stop it from just here,” Alsethus says. She gets on the private intercom to her bosses; after a moment her face turns sour. “Head for the planet-cracker and suit up.”

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Our instructions are to fly as close as we can, then suit up and stop it manually. Firing at it will, at best, make it blow early. Hopefully the planet will only catch a few fragments.”

  “The only way to stop it manually is to ride it out,” I say. “Those things don’t have much in the way of navigation—you have to reprogram and to stay with it until it’s hit the new target.” For a moment, in the shaking, rattling ship, Alsethus and I both stare at each other, thinking the same thing. “The Resistance fleet.”

  “We’ve got to land on the planet-cracker and reprogram it to hit the Resistance,” Alsethus shouts.

  When she says it, it sounds even crazier than when I do.

  “Last chance, Araskar,” she asks me. “Would you like to pledge yourself to God and the Saints before death? We do not have time for a full rite, but God will understand.”

  “Ask me later,” I say, unbuckling to float toward the spacesuits, then clutching a handhold to keep from being thro
wn into the wall as the ship rattles again.

  “By then it will be too late,” she says.

  -5-

  Jaqi

  A BARE, BLEEDING BODY in pure space. I should be torn to bits by the journey, but something lifts me up and carries me into the cold.

  And John Starfire’s memory rips through me.

  Formoz of Keil has a kindly face. Most of them do, these bluebloods who find a conscience. A kindly, soft face, possibly a little windburnt from parasailing on private lakes and beachfront property.

  “You have this in writing,” Aranella says.

  Formoz holds it up. “Emperor Turka has agreed to abdicate in favor of a provisional government. I told you, we were at negotiating stage. A coalition is the next stage—and then, recognition of sentience. We’re so close.”

  Jaceren, who still struggles to think of himself as John Starfire, realizes he’s clenching his sword hilt. He’s grown so used to the feel of it. To the security of a weapon at his waist.

  It is a strange feeling, to accept that you will never stop wearing a weapon. Even in peace.

  “You’ll just have to wait.” Formoz wants to sound reassuring. “I know there’s no romance in waiting. But give it time. Democracy is slow. Every faction in the provisional government has agreed to ban custom engineering of soldiers, and to treat the Resistance as a valid political party.” He shifts. “In the meantime, John, I will send over that memory crypt I told you about, as soon as I get coded coordinates.”

  “Coordinates coming your way.”

  “Next relay opening is tomorrow,” Formoz says. “I’ll get you an update then.”

  The hologram goes dark, as does John and Aranella’s quarters.

  “I thought so,” Aranella says. “Do you think he knows about the assault?”

  “Yes. He thinks we won’t attack now.” His words are loud as the thunder of shards in atmos. “Today.”

  “Today.” Her breathing is a heavy sound in the dark room.

  “He’s right that it moves slow.” He focuses on how the sword hilt feels in his hand; clenched tight, it becomes a part of him, like a longer arm. “That’s why the sentients of the Empire forget so easily.” The other words come to his lips so easily. The words feel good, right. “I spent one hour in hard vacuum, watching a Shir kill a million crosses with my naked eyes. A short time in a man’s life, even if he is a vat-born cross. That short time changed me. Show me killing Emperor Turka on every screen in the galaxy, and they’ll remember.”