Ashfall Legacy

by Pittacus Lore

  “But . . .” Tycius tried to form a coherent question, and I was reminded of how I’d reacted back in that diner on Earth, when he’d been sitting across from me explaining the secrets of the universe.

  “The time will come to explore your history, Denzan,” Goldy intoned. “The timeline is delicate now. You must focus on the future. There is war to prepare for.”

  I snorted. “Enough with the prophecies, man.” I waved skyward. “You let Vanceval get away. You could’ve destroyed them.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “They still have a purpose,” Goldy replied. “Theirs is to blunder forward in an old man’s search for meaning to his withering life. Yours is to chase.”

  “What if I don’t want to?” I asked. “What if I just say fuck it and let them go dig up whatever big secret’s waiting on Ashfall?”

  Goldy tilted his head, considering this. “You will not say fuck it. I have seen your timelines, Sydney Chambers. In none of them do you simply give up.”

  He was right, of course. There was no way in hell that I wasn’t going to that planet. But that didn’t mean I wanted terms dictated to me by some cryptic time-warping space dragon. I’d heard enough about all his fate bullshit.

  “What do you want from me?” I asked. “What do you get out of this?”

  “You already know.”

  World killer.

  “And what if I won’t . . .” I couldn’t say it in front of Tycius. He was already freaked out enough. I didn’t want to scare away the only family I had left. “What if I won’t do what you want?”

  Goldy clasped his mechanical hands. “In most timelines, you do what you must. Together, Sydney Chambers, we are successful. We bring a long peace to the universe.”

  “And what about in the others?”

  “In some, we fail and die,” Goldy said. “In others, I am forced to find someone else. Someone whose future is less predictable, but who is capable of the same feats. I find her rather disagreeable.”

  “You can’t predict the future,” Tycius said. “It’s a lie. There are too many variables.”

  “I exist at all points in my life span simultaneously,” Goldy responded. “You always doubt me, Tycius. You always fail the boy. You always die.”

  Tycius took a halting step backward, like he’d been struck. Goldy cocked his head and focused on me.

  “I have saved your life twice, Sydney Chambers. The next time we meet, you must save mine,” he said.

  “Don’t—,” I started.

  “—count on it, Goldy,” the Etherazi finished. “Predictable as ever. Now go where you always go. Face inevitability and at last understand what you must do.” The gold light behind the exo-suit’s chipped faceplate swelled, stinging my retinas. It was like staring into a nuclear reactor. “I have no further use for this form. Avert your eyes, little ones.”

  I felt my uncle flinch behind me but didn’t have time to check on him before Goldy burst free from the exo-suit. Like a fireball tearing through the roof of the warehouse, I felt the heat from the Etherazi, even as I pressed my forearm across my eyes.

  When the hair on my arms stopped standing up and the heat died down, I peeked out from behind my arm. Goldy was gone. All that remained was the shattered carcass of his exo-suit and the Vulpin he’d turned to skeletons and spare parts. The wall of the warehouse that Goldy had caused to rebuild itself crumbled to dust, restored to its proper place in the timestream. The dead Vulpin weren’t so lucky.

  I stared out at the ocean, the sun sliding slowly behind a low-hanging moon, the sand still glittering with shards of glass.

  “Call Reno,” I said to Tycius. “We have to go.”

  30

  Tycius and I stood on the beach, waiting for our ride, our backs to the gory scene behind us. We’d signaled Captain Reno with the communicator from a dead Vulpin, the one who still had a body. Half of one, anyway. Reno was already in the skies when we called. The search party was out.

  We’d been quiet for a while, both of us lost in thought. Tycius was making a big show of staying on his feet even though his breath was whistling around in his chest. I crouched at the shoreline, dragging a fragment of glass—still hot to the touch—through the mud. The cold spray of the ocean felt good on my face. It felt like Goldy had given me a sunburn.

  Finally, I had to say something. “Did you hear what Vanceval . . . ?” I paused. “Did you hear the message he played?”

  “From your father,” Tycius said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I heard it, but I don’t believe it,” my uncle said. “Marcius wouldn’t—”

  I realized he was trying to spare my feelings. Marcius wouldn’t abandon you, he was going to say. At the moment, I didn’t care so much about that.

  “I mean the part where he said there’s no cure for the Wasting,” I said.

  “Yes,” Tycius mused. “And then he walked it back and said it wasn’t what they were expecting.”

  “That’s what they want,” I said. “Captain Reno, Rafe Butler, my mom—that’s why I’m here. They want me to find my dad, but they also want that cure. They want to go back to Earth and save the planet from itself.”

  Tycius rolled his neck and I heard a pop. “I see.”

  “Do you think they’ll still help us?” I asked. “We need Reno’s ship. If they know there’s no cure or that it’s—I don’t know, Hey, you won’t waste away on Earth, but also you have nonstop diarrhea forever. Will they still want to risk looking for my dad? Because I need to go, Ty. I need to find him.”

  Tycius considered this for a moment. “When we talk to the captain, maybe strategically omit some details.”

  “Lie.”

  “Yes.”

  “Got it.”

  Tycius fell silent for a moment. “Is there anything else you haven’t told me, Syd?”

  I hesitated. “You wouldn’t believe it.”

  “I received a history lesson from an Etherazi today,” he said. “Try me.”

  The Eastwood appeared in the sky a few seconds later, bailing me out of a conversation I wasn’t ready to have. She was a much larger ship than the sleek Vulpin attack cruiser, so there wasn’t a safe place for the captain to land. She came down on a skiff to get us. Reno stood in the entrance with her hands on her hips. She whistled through her teeth, recognizing the bizarre kind of destruction before her.

  “It was here,” she said. “Alarms are going up all over Denza. Bastard did a zigzag across the islands before breaking for space. Taunting us.”

  Tycius and I exchanged a look.

  “It’s not coming back, is it?” Reno asked, glancing up at the Eastwood. Her Battle-Anchor was way up there.

  “It helped us,” Ty said, the words catching in his throat. “It helped us, and then it fled.”

  “Jesus. You’ve got a pet Etherazi,” Reno said. Then she sized Ty up for the first time. “You look like hell.”

  “Thanks to Vanceval,” I said. “He escaped. He’s got the coordinates to Ashfall.”

  “Arkell, you mean,” Reno said. “Zara told us—”

  I took a step forward. “Zara! Is she okay?”

  Reno nodded. “Girl is tough as hell. She told us Arkell was up to something. After she got shot, the old shit-bird took off. He won’t answer any of his comms. Gone to ground.”

  I couldn’t blame Arkell for fleeing after the way I’d handled things. He probably knew he’d be blamed for whatever happened to me. There was a moment there in Keyhole Cove when I’m pretty sure he was trying to help me, though. Whatever his agenda was, we’d have to sort that out later.

  “No, it was Vanceval who sent the mercenaries,” I said. “He’s got the coordinates to Ashfall and a ship, but . . .” I flashed the cosmological tether still on my finger. “There’s a faster route. I think we can catch them.”

  “Whoa, now,” she said. “First you boys gotta catch me up.”

  Reno hooked an arm around Tycius, and together we helped
him board the skiff. She drove the ship slowly back to the Eastwood, giving us time to fill her in on what Vanceval had done and what we’d learned. Of course, we left out the tiny detail of there being no cure for the Wasting on Ashfall, emphasizing instead that we didn’t know what was there, but that we couldn’t let Vanceval get to it before us.

  “Whatever is on Ashfall, it’s dangerous in the wrong hands,” I finished.

  “If it’s even a what,” Tycius added. “And not a who.”

  “Lost People, black temples, my favorite theoretician popping his damn grape . . .” Reno crossed her arms and looked at Tycius. “You don’t think it’s worth looping the institute in on this? The Senate? I imagine your politicians would have an abundant amount of thoughts on the matter.”

  “Too slow,” Ty said. “By the time they decide on a course of action, Vanceval will have already made Ashfall.”

  Reno thought things through. “He’s out of his mind. Capable of anything. If there’s a cure for the Wasting hidden there . . .”

  I made eye contact when I lied, just like my mom had taught me. “We don’t know what Vanceval will do once he gets there,” I told Reno. “And we definitely don’t want the Denzan Senate getting to a cure ahead of humanity. We’ve already got permission to be off-planet. We need to go.”

  Reno pushed a hand through her curls. “Shit. I agree. Just wanted to make sure we’re all on the same page when we’re court-martialed.”

  Our skiff docked in the Eastwood’s hangar, and the first thing I noticed was Reno’s Battle-Anchor. The mech-suit wasn’t safely stowed away anymore; it was prepped and ready to go, just waiting for an operator to climb inside and man the guns.

  The second things I noticed were Hiram and Darcy, hanging out the open bay doors and staring out at the beach. They hustled over to us.

  “Damn, man,” Hiram said. “What the hell is going on?”

  “I told you two to stay at your posts on the bridge,” Captain Reno snapped.

  Darcy elbowed Hiram. “Told you.”

  I looked to Reno. “Wait. Is the whole crew on board?”

  She nodded. “Nobody wanted to sit around twiddling their thumbs or thumb-like appendages. Besides, I was missing my entire senior staff. I can’t fly this thing by myself.”

  “Even Zara?”

  “Of course, Zara,” the Vulpin said, rolling the “R” with gusto. She slipped out from behind the Battle-Anchor. Her abdomen was wrapped in bio-tape, an invention of the Denzans that soothed pain and accelerated the body’s natural healing process. Still, she looked a little wan, a little more hunched than usual, her shelf of fur drooping. She affected a casual lean against the laser-cannon arm of Reno’s mech-suit.

  “Get off of that,” the captain said. “My lord, can none of you cadets follow a simple order?”

  My uncle had warned me about respecting Vulpins’ personal space, but I didn’t care. I grabbed Zara into a hug.

  “Ugh,” she said.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” I replied.

  She patted me awkwardly on the back. “I could stab you so easily right now.”

  “I know.”

  I let her go, and she carefully put me at arm’s length, bristling her fur. Still, I could tell by the peaceful way her tail swayed that Zara was glad to see me, too.

  “Thanks for trying to help me back there,” I said.

  “Save your thanks. I failed,” Zara said hotly. “Gut-shot and forced to let a common merchant call for help on my behalf. Pathetic.”

  “It was like ten to one.”

  “So?” Zara tossed her head. “The bitch who shot me? Is she still alive?”

  “Nyxie,” I said. “Yeah.”

  Zara smiled. “Oh good. Then today is not a total loss.”

  “Enough with Zara already,” Hiram butted in, nearly exploding from having to stay quiet so long. “Because this dumb-ass got kidnapped, does that mean our field mission is canceled?”

  Captain Reno hesitated. “Not exactly.”

  The rest of the crew was waiting for us on the bridge. When I came through the sliding door, Aela was right in front of me. I hoped they didn’t notice how I flinched when I first saw them, or how I checked to see that the gaseous body contained in their exo-suit wasn’t tinted gold.

  “Syd,” Aela said. “I was worried.”

  “I’m all good,” I said.

  A thought occurred to me then, about Aela’s request for me to share my experience with the Etherazi. I’d hesitated telling my uncle everything that had happened to me, not just because I didn’t think he’d believe me, but because he’d be frightened of me. However, as I looked around at the crew assembled on the Eastwood, I realized that I couldn’t carry those burdens alone. Or, even if I could, maybe I shouldn’t. Where had paranoia and secrecy ever gotten me?

  “Hey,” I added to Aela. “Can you help me out with something later? Brain stuff?”

  “Indeed,” Aela replied. “I love brain stuff.”

  Melian came forward to take Tycius by the elbow as he limped onto the bridge behind me. “I finished my first aid course last semester, sir. I was a little rusty, but I got some good practice in on Zara. We should get you over to the infirmary.”

  “Thank you, Cadet,” Ty replied. “I’ll take you up on that in a moment.”

  Batzian looked up from his console, where he was monitoring the Eastwood’s communications. “Still no response from Arkell, Captain. Nor Vanceval. Should I keep pinging them?”

  “No,” Reno replied. “That won’t be necessary.”

  “Should I contact the authorities, then?” Batzian asked. “I understand Zara comes from a culture where assassinations are common, but the assault at Keyhole Cove should really be reported.”

  H’Jossu ambled forward to put one of his furry paws on Batzian’s shoulder. “Haven’t you detected the vibe, my friend? Something big is happening here. I smell an adventure.”

  “You just smell,” Hiram said.

  Batzian looked at me, then the captain, and then me again, almost like he wasn’t sure who to go to for answers. In fact, I suddenly realized that everyone on the bridge was looking in my direction. I was the center of attention. I turned to find that even Reno seemed to be waiting on me.

  “Captain?”

  She waved a hand. “You already know my position, Cadet. It’s your show. Bring the rest of the crew up to speed.”

  “Yeah, man,” Darcy said. “What the hell is going on with you?”

  I took a deep breath. “Ten years ago, my father disappeared while looking for a way to help humanity . . .”

  I ran them through the whole story, trying to be as honest as possible. I did leave out a few choice details—like the visions the Etherazi had shown me, like how he’d called me World Killer, like how my dad said what he’d found on Ashfall wasn’t the cure they’d expected. For like the first time since I’d been at the institute, none of the other cadets interrupted me. Not even Hiram.

  “I was wrong about you,” H’Jossu said when I was finished. “You’re not a Han, you’re a Luke. No! You’re a Rey.”

  Melian shook her head, looking at me with sympathy. “Vanceval will have more shame than he can carry when this is over.”

  “We have to go,” Darcy said, shooting a hopeful look at Captain Reno. “For the sake of humanity.”

  Batzian tugged at his ponytail. “The ancient home world of some forgotten society? What if they’re still there? What if they’re hostile?”

  “What if they’re ghosts?” Zara added, rolling her eyes. “Grow a set, Batzian.”

  Hiram pumped his fist. “The boring plant-rubbing expedition is canceled, bitches. We’re going to save the universe.”

  Reno held up her hands. “Don’t get too excited,” she said, using her arch-captain-y voice. “This is a potentially dangerous mission. We’re likely to face resistance from Vanceval and his mercenaries.”

  “No offense to Zara,” Darcy said, “but we’ve got four humans on board this sh
ip. Will their little blasters even hurt us?”

  “They’ll sting,” Reno said. “But just a bit.”

  “Hell yeah, so we’re good,” Hiram concluded. He ruffled my hair until I jerked away. “As long as you halflings don’t let them slop poisonous gel on you.”

  “There was a human on my dad’s ship, too,” I told Hiram, raising my voice so the others would hear me above the chatter. “He died on Ashfall. There could be things on that planet we aren’t prepared for. Things that could hurt even us.”

  Hiram grinned at me. “Dude, that just makes me want to go more.”

  Reno held up her hands to get everyone’s attention. “As your captain, I believe you all are ready for a mission like this. However, we don’t have the permission of the institute to range this far. There could be disciplinary action as a result. I’ll shoulder most of that. But, if any of you think this is too risky, for any reason, tell me now . . .”

  No one on the bridge spoke up, but all eyes slowly turned to Batzian.

  He widened one eye. “Why is everyone looking at me?”

  “They think you are most likely to object,” Melian said gently.

  “What? Because I take my coursework more seriously than the others, I am also not interested in adventuring to a far-off planet to unlock the secrets of the universe?” Batzian forcefully rolled up his sleeves. “Don’t insult me.”

  Reno waited for another loaded few seconds. “I hear no objections,” she announced, turning to me. “You have a route?”

  I moved to the Wayscope and settled into the chair. “On it.”

  “Vanceval has a head start on us and a Vulpin ship,” Zara said. “We are aboard a weaponless training vessel that isn’t built for speed. Vulpin cruisers are made to fly—to scorch through blockades and elude authorities. To—”

  “They’re faster than us,” Darcy said. “We get it.”

  “Good thing I fed them a route with a lot of detours, then,” I said, smirking at Zara as I started up the Wayscope.

  Zara flashed her teeth in approval. “Excellent stalking. You do den Eastwood proud.”

  As the goggles lowered over my face, Reno began barking orders. “Melian, get our first officer down to the infirmary and fixed up as soon as possible. Batzian and Darcy, I want you to help Syd enter our route into the ship’s navigation AI—make sure he doesn’t have any errors in his math. If we’re going to catch Vanceval, we’re going to have to haul some ass. H’Jossu, I want you to check the levels on our high-speed-travel serum, make sure we’ve got enough to keep us good and drugged for the ride. Aela, you’re now the Eastwood’s head engineer; go run the diagnostics like Arkell would. And Hiram?”