“I will miss him dearly,” Aranella says, staring right at the girl.
“We all will,” she replies, looking everywhere except at Aranella.
I watch the cross’s face carefully. This girl doesn’t believe John Starfire’s dead. Aranella wasn’t kidding.
“Just give me control of a node-relay, and we’ll be on our way.”
She does so, leading Aranella to one of the big monitors among the wires and knobs, and hardly gives me a second glance—but this girl is nervous.
Thing about being a soldier—you train so you won’t be nervous. You shoot and swing a sword enough times, the training takes over. But you’re not trained how to deal with a conflict in your orders. When your orders don’t make any sense, then it’s clear the higher-ups don’t care about the troops in the field.
And so I put one hand on my short soulsword, and draw it very slowly, as quietly as I can, tuck it up into the crook of my arm.
“Do you have the frequency? I should really—”
“I’ll input the frequency myself,” Aranella says.
“Oh, but I’ll have to transmit the clearance code.”
Aranella speaks through gritted teeth. “Tell me the clearance code.”
Poor little no-name communications officer, possibly to be called Dinetrifi, possibly to be dead if she irritates Aranella.
And Aranella is wearing a soulsword—the easiest way to just take the knowledge from her mind anyway.
“Give her the clearance code,” I say, making my tone clear.
To - be - Dinetrifi mutters, “Five-nexus-seven-mercury-nine.”
“Thank you.” Aranella sits down and begins hard-encoding the frequency and the clearance code both, a process that requires a lot of knob-twisting and button-pushing, a process, I’m guessing, that is designed to be confusing to anyone but a trained communications officer.
“It’s transmitting,” Aranella says to me, and leans in and whispers, “The Thuzerian Council is going to get my request.”
Let’s hope they don’t take too long to call back.
And right on cue, there are footfalls. Running soldier feet, echoing down the corridor.
Aranella stands up, looks at me. “Are you going to try and hide yourself?”
“Not exactly,” I say.
Here they are, led by me.
My face, though with only one scar instead of the jigsaw I bear. This one’s wearing the Secondblade insignia, my old insignia that I left at Trace.
“Kineroth,” Aranella says to the new arrival, who has brought a whole squad with him. “Thought you were in orbit.”
“I know who this is,” Secondblade Kineroth says, his face twisting in anger. “The Regent is dead, you said?”
Aranella doesn’t answer.
“Shortly after you told us he had died, we got an encrypted message from the dead Regent.”
“Let me guess,” she says. “He ordered you to attack the Thuzerians, against my orders to accept the prisoner transaction.”
Kineroth raises his soulsword. Several emotions war in his face, as if he’s trying to find a way to explain Aranella’s behavior to himself. “The Regent’s consort is confused. She is not making sense.” He glares at me, a kind of hilarious expression with that babyface. “And this one—”
He can’t say what he wants to about me, because Aranella draws her soulsword faster than I’d thought possible and attacks.
Aranella isn’t the swordsman that any trained soldier is, though, and that becomes clear a second later when Kineroth disarms her, and she falls backward, against me, and turns and looks at me—
And I put my sword up to her neck. “Sorry,” I say. “The Regent has one more agent here.”
“What?” Aranella says.
“What?” the Secondblade says.
“It’s true,” I say, hoping that both Aranella gets it, I sound convincing, and I don’t drop the sword, because shit, does it feel heavy. I should have had more ice cream before I took another stupid risk. “I was the Regent’s agent from the beginning, investigating the rival Chosen One.”
“That’s insane,” the one named Kineroth says. “Drop the sword, before I—”
“That would be how I know about Black Martha.”
“What the hell is Black Martha?”
Everyone looks confused, except for one of the soldiers standing behind Secondblade Kineroth. She is looking at me as though I’ve just grown another head. And while I stand there she steps up, and says something, and Kineroth the Secondblade’s face contorts. “You’re black ops.”
Black Martha was the nickname Rashiya and a few of her compatriots gave to the memory-crypt only they had access to. It’s a long shot, in this case, but just about everything has been so far.
I try to sound very calm. I think that being tired helps. I don’t think I’ve ever lied so totally in my life. “I’m black ops. I infiltrated the Reckoning, and extorted a promise of help from the Thuzerians. “
And for a moment I catch a glimpse of Aranella’s face.
As she realizes that I lied about taking her daughter’s memories.
For the first time, I see what Rashiya saw so often—Aranella, knowing that she’s been betrayed.
“Come with us,” Kineroth says.
“Yes, sir,” I say. “Interrogation?”
“No time for that. Maybe you can shed some light on what the hell we’re supposed to do about the Shir.”
* * *
Jaqi
Back through the node to Earth that was lost. Back to face John Starfire.
I stagger and nearly fall over—and it’s a damn good thing I don’t, because my musical friend en’t sent me back to the floor of the Archives Tower.
No, I’m on a catwalk about a thousand feet up. A spindly, thin catwalk, barely big enough for both of my feet, going from one archive pillar to another.
There’s a whole web of these catwalks, going from pillar to pillar up here, but I don’t so much pay attention to them as I do the dizzy sight of them pillars, stretching an evil way down to the floor, and a speck on that floor I think is Whirr.
And I puke, all the decent food left in me, watch it sail all the way to the floor of this Archives Tower.
Takes a good long time to get down there. Any other time, I would have been highly entertained by such a thing. At least the gravity in this spot is light, the field having given out. If I fall, I won’t fall too fast.
I catch my breath, gasp, and look up.
There’s John Starfire, on the same catwalk.
It’s dark up here, so only the white light of his soulsword illuminates his face—all them smile lines and the scars and the hairs of his beard in bright white light.
“So you’ve talked to it. You think I haven’t?”
Okay, I say to the thing made of music—the uncorrupted devil—I wanted you to send me back with a bit of an advantage! Except the moment I think it, the dull blue light along my soulsword flickers and starts to go out. I stop thinking about that, and try madly to think, evil loud:
I can do this. I can beat this bastard. Said to myself, not to anything else.
The blue fire comes back, feeding off my faith in myself.
“You think I can’t see how you did it?” he asks. “I can. I saw you make the node and jump here, and I followed you. I saw what you just did. You’re moving the original node, the one from the planet in the Dark Zone to here. It goes wherever you go. It’s tricky, but I can figure it out.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I say. “Did you conquer the Emperor with talking?”
The flame on my blade burns brighter. Seems it works off faith and mouth both. Evil good for me. I en’t much for faith, but I got plenty of mouth.
He comes at me and I again make just a pathetic slash to knock his sword away, barely keeping him from carving me to bits. I slide my feet backward, feeling my way along this catwalk.
“You don’t understand, do you?” he says. “I see what makes you special now, a
nd that means I can do it.”
“Lots of creeps spied on me. Happens in the spaceways. Don’t mean you learned everything.”
He rushes forward, trying to use the light gravity to his advantage, throw me back. I’m too busy trying to back up along the catwalk, keep my balance, and slide my feet back and back—so he gets me, knocks my sword aside, and cuts a slice right out of my right breast. I jerk backward—
Right into Imperial standard gravity. I nearly fall, just catch myself. Suddenly my balance is a hell of a lot harder to maintain. Burning art-grav!
The music swells and I reach out and think, Get me an advantage and—
I shift, but unlike taking a node from one galaxy to the other, this is hardly a shift at all—except that now I’m on a different catwalk, another spider-web thin thing all the higher than the last one, looking down at John Starfire. I even forget about the blood rushing down my chest for a moment.
“Ha!” I shout down.
And then, “Oh shit.”
He twists, and just as sharp as if he’d stabbed me again, here he is, coming through the mini-node I’ve just used. His bright sword appears first, and then the rest of him appears from the air.
So this is what the uncorrupted devil meant. He can use all that same magic I can.
He comes at me again—but he staggers, like he’s drunk, grits his teeth. I raise my sword. Blood trickles into the waist of my pants. But he’s been hurt too. “It don’t work for you like it do for me,” I say. “That thing—the creature of Starfire—it don’t like you, do it?”
“Pain never stopped me before.” He rushes me and I try to smack away the soulsword blows, ignore the way that moving tears the rip in my breast all the more.
“Not everyone loves you, handsome,” I say. “Bet that just keeps you up nights.”
His face contorts and he growls, “You’re just a loose end. Just more consolidation.”
There’s another catwalk within jumping distance. But the gravity’s Imperial standard here, and were I anyone with sense, I wouldn’t try it.
I’ll never match this fella in a swordfight, so I jump.
And land, and my feet slip out, and I grab at the catwalk, and start to fall—
“Aiya!” I reach out for the music and twist through a node—
And land on another catwalk, even higher.
Low grav again. Phew.
This is getting interesting. Okay, Jaqi, you got your own private node here and it obeys you real nice. Can you tell it not to let him through?
I can’t think how. It’d take years to get skill with this.
The huge central reactor at the top of these pillars is humming along, pulsing blue light. Must be one of the first things folk built to be powered by solar power and space radiation, and them automatons have kept it in shape all these years.
Looking down, I see John Starfire jump from one catwalk to another, and twist, and vanish, and—
I turn and stab at the empty air in front of me.
And he appears behind me. Shit. I run along the catwalk, and he chases me. This particular spindly little catwalk won’t get me much of anywhere; it dead-ends into one of the pillars, and it’s harder to stop in this low grav—I slide a good long ways along the catwalk after I put my feet down. The sound of me sliding echoes among the big empty space all around the pillars. I turn and face him, see the pain on his face, and I reach out to the music again. It sweeps through me. My mother’s voice, big as all of space, singing.
Bend, pull, bend, pull, pick the cotton, shear the wool, go until the wheelbarrow’s full.
I jump through the node again.
I’m high as I can go, and back in high gravity again, ready to pull me to a splatter on the floor. Just below the main reactor now. The blue light washes out the blue flame of my sword. Can’t risk any more blind jumps, as they just seem to be taking me a little bit higher, unless I can figure out how to go lower.
I reckon I en’t got time to figure anything out. You gotta win this swordfight, Jaqi, or die.
Here he comes. In front of me, but a little farther away this time, he materializes, a good two feet away from the catwalk, out in open air—
And before he’s finished, before he can fall, he just leaps right over to the catwalk.
Shit.
“You run. That’s all you do. I don’t run.” He approaches me, sword out. “I’ve never run. That’s why it’ll be me, not you.”
Okay, I say to the music, I reckon I got my head on straight here. This is the plan. I visualize what I want to do.
“You think the uncorrupted Shir is somehow magic,” he says as he gets closer. “I know. You’ve heard stories of the Starfire, nonsense from Bible-pushers and bluebloods, and you think this is the incarnation of everything godly. But it’s just an animal. It reaches out blindly.”
The music fills me up. Once again, it’s like I’m standing over Z with a sword. Like I’m on Shadow Sun Seven reaching out to save seven thousand folk. And like my mother is there, running her rough fingers through my hair while she sings.
I taste something familiar, as familiar as the music. Crisp and sweet, dusted with salt. A fresh tomato. Well, I’ll be.
“There is no purpose to what it does, and no purpose to what the universe does.” John Starfire comes closer. “And when I take all your memories, it’ll be happy with me as its bond.”
He lunges.
I enter pure space—and I go right through him, turn around, and find myself facing his back.
And, not that it’s sporting, but I stab him in the back.
-15-
John Starfire
YOU WOULD HAVE TO be an idiot not to be afraid. To stare at a wide expanse of starless space, the darkness full of the nightmares of a few trillion sentients?
He’s afraid.
The fear sharpens the hope.
Not two hours ago, he stood in the Imperial Navy’s central hub, examining supply lines. Dreadnoughts blinking in and out of the Dark Zone. Casualty numbers from a never-ending war against the Shir.
John Starfire pushed a few buttons, activated the clearance he’d taken from the Emperor’s mind with his soulsword, and changed the node-codes. The pure-space relay pinged. Military node-codes were changed on a fairly regular basis anyway. This would have been routine, as long as the new codes had been communicated.
But they hadn’t.
No one knew these new codes but him.
That quickly, and the lines of supply stopped. Not a single dreadnought in the Dark Zone would ever leave. As soon as they ran out of ammunition, they’d be Shir food.
The only way they might escape would be if there was one of the very rare cases among them, one of the crosses born with an instinctive ability to manipulate nodes. But John Starfire looked all over the galaxy for one like that, and found no one.
Now, he stands before the Dark Zone.
Within those nightmarish light-years, that massive section of starless space, whole Imperial dreadnoughts are being torn apart. Billions of soldiers are dying, firing off their last planet-crackers and missiles. They will each be fighting the fear, trying to die with what little honor they thought they owed their masters. They will be swimming in vacuum. Looking for hope, like he once did.
He hates to think of it. They don’t deserve to die. But he has done what he must.
He breathes in the stale, recycled air of his small ship.
He breathes in his own fear.
You don’t need to be afraid, he tells himself. You’re it. You’re the prophesied one, the Son of Stars. It feels real, feels right, coming from his mouth. The children are the key. All he has to do is let the Shir bear one generation of young.
What if you’re wrong?
He curses that voice. It’s normally quiet, but two days ago Aranella doubted him, and it’s been all the stronger since.
“Our daughter is in one of those units that’ll make planetfall,” Aranella says. “On Irithessa. John, I can’t think of her
doing—”
“She made her choice, Nella.”
“No,” she says. “Formoz is right. If there is a chance to wind down the war slowly, with negotiation, we should take it. Think of how many troops will die when we attack Irithessa.” Aranella stands up. “Be patient this time.”
“I am speaking as the Son of Stars, Aranella.”
She fixes him with her gaze, the words unsaid trembling on her lips. “It cannot be that easy. You’re speaking the words of God, just because you want to be right?”
“I know when it’s destiny. I can taste it. I can see it all, laid out in front of me.” The words taste right. He can feel the truth on his lips.
“I don’t believe you.” She puts a tender hand on his arm. “For one thing, you haven’t slept in a week.”
He yanks his arm away from her. “You doubt me? Now? Just because our daughter is in danger?”
“I’ve always doubted you,” she says. “Someone has to.”
“Not anymore,” he snaps.
“If our daughter dies, Jaceren, I won’t forget this.”
“She won’t die,” he replies. “Trust me.”
The big moments unroll before him. The Empire, falling. The Shir, bearing more children.
Now, he enters the node. Punches in the code, vanishes into the darkness.
It’s cold.
It’s dark.
The cockpit is lit only by a sickly blue half-light, like rotting vegetation. Voices whisper, and he’s chilled, and his fear all the stronger.
The fear speaks with his voice. The humans know. They know what you’re doing. They’ll regroup, and then you’ll never be rid of them. They’ll get into everything. They’ll make you serve. The humans. The humans.
A fear even louder than the voices. You are one of them. You are just a human, and Jorians are just a myth.
And the voice he recognizes. You aren’t the Son of Stars. You’re a cross who got lucky. The words feel right because you want them to be right.
He grits his teeth against that one, against the way it tears into him.
And then a different voice, one as cold as vacuum. You have no name.
He doesn’t know how they do that. “I have many names. You can call me Jaceren.” He doesn’t hesitate to use the Jorian name anymore, even if it’s not the one that made him famous.
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