Aurora Renegades

by G. S. Jennsen

  Alex: Shut up. I simply need to know…am I in trouble? With the authorities, which is kind of you?

  Morgan: Nah. We’ll get it straightened out so you don’t take any heat. As far as the public is concerned, the RRF neutralized a dangerous threat.

  Alex: Thank you.

  “I should have listened to you. But I can’t undo it now. I’ll have to live with it.”

  “I’ll help. I have a bit of experience at this sort of thing.” His throat worked. “Killing, and coping with it.”

  She pulled him closer and crushed his lips with hers. She was lightheaded and reeling, but the frayed thread hadn’t broken and if it did now she thought he’d probably catch her before she fell too far.

  Sounds and activity intruded on them; she reluctantly began to withdraw, but he refused to let her go. That was fine, too. She murmured against his lips. “Morgan says no one’s going to show up and arrest me, so…can we get out of here? I need…I need a shower and clean clothes. Mostly, I need you.”

  “We can absolutely get out of here.” She felt the curl of his smile in his kiss. “Where’s the ship?”

  “Um…I have no idea. Valkyrie?”

  ‘Allow me to provide you a locator.’

  Two blocks east, one block north, hiding stealthed in a park. She had no recollection of landing there. Or of walking from there to the burned-out safe house.

  When they reached the ship she followed Caleb up the ramp, her hand in his. The airlock closed behind her. “Valkyrie, can you take us back to the hangar bay?”

  ‘May I suggest returning to orbit above Romane for the night instead?’

  “Well….”

  When the time comes, you may appreciate the solace of the stars.

  Oh…I suppose I might.

  “That sounds lovely, Valkyrie. Thank you.”

  Caleb turned then and gathered her into his arms once more, where she intended to stay for many hours.

  Brooklyn watched the emergency crews working to douse the persistent flames with a critical eye.

  In addition to the Winslow cocksucker, they’d captured one other escapee, and both were transported to Romane’s most secure lockdown facility with a full complement of guards. Three injured people had been rescued from the wreckage; they would be under guard at the hospital for now.

  It sure looked as if everyone else was a corpse. She’d reinforced a wide perimeter net and tasked several aerial cams with patrolling the area to cover all the bases, but the strike had been quick, efficient and breathtakingly destructive. Terrestrial buildings were not built to withstand lasers designed for the rigors of space.

  Morgan appeared beside her unannounced. Brooklyn had barely heard the woman’s approach through the cacophony of heavy equipment, flames and the occasional yell.

  Now her eyes cut over briefly. The aerial surveillance had been handed off to the drone cams, but Morgan still wore her flight suit beneath her jacket. “Are you sure you didn’t do this?”

  “Of course I’m sure. Kind of wish I had. It got the job done.” Morgan threw her a scowl. “Did you think I lied to you?”

  “No. I only meant it—”

  “Your team had reached the target. I wouldn’t have put your people at risk. I wouldn’t have….” She snorted and turned away.

  “I know.”

  “Oh? You know…what, exactly?”

  Brooklyn gritted her teeth. Morgan could be so damn prickly sometimes. “I know you wouldn’t deliberately put any of our people in unnecessary danger. I was simply going to say this looked like your work. It was…supposed to be a compliment.” She rolled her eyes and watched as a crane executed a controlled dismantlement of the final section of wall which remained standing.

  Seconds ticked by, and finally she glanced over to find Morgan staring at her, face screwed up. “What?”

  “A compliment, huh?”

  “That is what I said, yes. Simmer down. It’s all good.”

  A corner of Morgan’s mouth twitched. Gradually her gaze returned to the wreckage. “Winslow’s kid. Didn’t see that one coming. It’s bound to make things interesting.”

  “They weren’t already interesting?”

  “Nah. Well, maybe a little. I’m glad you got the kid alive, so we can torture him.”

  “I thought you didn’t condone torture, what with being in command and having responsibilities.”

  “Yeah, but he killed Gianno, and I was just starting to like her. Will you torture him for me?”

  “No, Morgan, I won’t torture him for you.”

  “Damn.” She smiled playfully—good, as Brooklyn had almost been convinced she was serious. “Fine, we’ll play by the rules and respect his rights and whatever. What we won’t do is hand him over to the Alliance anytime soon.”

  “Nope. You let Alex vanish?”

  “It’s not as if I can’t reach her if I need to. But yes. And as for this—” she tossed a hand in the direction of the smoldering building “—we’ll say I did it.”

  “Dammit, Lekkas.”

  “Kidding. Sort of. Officially, the RRF as a unit eliminated a continuing threat to the public’s safety. Period, end of discussion, no?”

  “If we’re lucky. All right, it’s the official line.” Honestly, she was relieved Morgan made the call about Alex. And Morgan was in charge, after all. “I suspect OTS threw everything they could muster at us this week.”

  “And we kicked their self-righteous, bigoted asses.”

  “We did.” She paused to review incoming cam footage and clear it. “All things considered, I think this might work out.”

  “ ‘This?’ ”

  “The IDCC. The Rapid Response Force. The work.”

  “Oh. For a second there, it seemed like you meant us. But that would be too crazy an idea.”

  Brooklyn wiped ash and sweat off her forehead. Or not; it had been pathetically naive for her to think any of it would work out in any real sense.

  Her life had become a series of ‘for now’ circumstances. And for now, she found herself here on Romane. In this blatantly doomed relationship. Standing in the middle of a burning street set ablaze by a woman she was of the personal, if fairly uninformed, opinion was hardly human any longer. And this was in comparison to Morgan, who was only marginally more human.

  She missed the Marines.

  Unbidden, the memory of O’Connell blowing Gregor Kone’s head off on the bridge of the Akagi then ordering maintenance to clean up the mess flared in her mind.

  Fine, assuming they lived through OTS and Prime Minister Winslow, this was still better. And until it all fell apart, she was getting regular sex. Great sex. It was enough, because it had to be. For now.

  She didn’t betray a solitary thing about her morbid thoughts in her expression. She’d perfected that skill way back at Q Course. Instead, she nodded as crisply as if she were acknowledging an order. “Yep. Crazy.”

  INTERMEZZO IV

  MOSAIC

  Enisle Thirty-Eight

  Species Assignment: Fylliot

  Aver gazed down upon a sea of rodent creatures from the anonymity of his cloaked ship.

  Many thousands of them had been brought here, to a planet functionally identical to the one currently being Cultivated in System 4A-CC57. A habitat familiar to the rodents had been created for them here.

  Created by the Katasketousya? Certainly the scientists could create worlds—it was, first and foremost, their role. Their job function as defined by the Directorate. Ancillary duties propagated naturally from that role, all well suited to the species’ sedate intellectualism.

  But in a universe of species which had been pacified and brought to heel over the aeons by the Anadens, the Katasketousya had needed no pacification. They had arrived docile and compliant, asking only to be allowed to tinker with astronomical and biological phenomenon in the service of their new masters.

  The notion that any member of the species would defy their role to engage in subterfuge and pursue daring and dangerous sc
hemes in opposition to the Directorate? It was absurd. Preposterous.

  Yet the evidence was displayed here in front of his eyes for him to see. The fact he’d found no Katasketousya on the premises did nothing to lessen the strength of the evidence.

  They and no others possessed the expertise necessary to create functioning space and astronomical objects. Here, within their Provision Network, was an artificially created space and astronomical objects. On one such object now resided the missing population from Eridium II System 4A-CC57.

  All conclusions followed inexorably from these facts.

  Conclusion #5: The Katasketousya created a shelter space within their Provision Network for the resident species of System 4A-CC57, then led the bulk of the population to it prior to the arrival of the Theriz Cultivation Unit in the system.

  He recorded the necessary data and departed the planet. When he reported back to the Praesidis Primor, a Machim fleet would be sent to wipe this repugnance from existence.

  But for the moment, he was far more curious about where all the other low frequency signals in the Provision Network led. Several must lead to the vaunted sustenance factories. Possibly many. But not likely all.

  The network of gateways was as flawlessly organized as one expected from the Katasketousya. Signals led to and activated dimensional bridges, which led to self-contained universes.

  Many of the spaces contained stars, planets and other astronomical phenomena. Some contained nothing at all. Some contained life forms, most primitive but several rudimentarily advanced, and a few which fell outside recognized norms for life form development.

  He had thus far found no additional transplants from Amaranthe, but there were many spaces remaining.

  Conclusion #6: The Katasketousya are using the majority of the Provision Network to breed a variety of life forms in secret, without informing the Directorate of their activities or seeking permission from the Erevna Primor for them.

  Conclusion #7: While the exact reasons for and goals of the Katasketousya malfeasance are not yet known, it logically follows from the evidence that they are pursuing a subversive, treasonous agenda.

  The full nature and extent of this agenda required further investigation to determine. As it was a natural extension of his initial assignment, he set about doing so.

  PART V:

  DEWDROPS &

  FLOWER PETALS

  “Some things you know all your life. They are so simple and true they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme...they must be naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.”

  — Philip Levine

  26

  SIYANE

  Romane

  * * *

  Caleb, you need to wake up.

  He struggled up from the depths of a dream. He didn’t want to wake up. This was the best sleep he’d had in a long time, full of serenity and contentment.

  Wake up now.

  He sat straight up in the bed, instantly at full readiness, and discovered he was alone in it.

  Valkyrie?

  There was no response, but the lights in the cabin brightened slightly. Enough for him to see.

  But not see her. He leapt out of the bed and called out. “Alex? Where are you?”

  Nothing. As he moved toward the stairs to check the main cabin, he caught a faint gleam to his right. Light reflecting on shimmering skin.

  He found her huddled on the floor beside the chair, pressed against the wall. He crouched beside her. “What’s wrong?”

  She shrank away from his touch to hide her face. “D-don’t want…don’t see me l-like this….”

  Like what? She was sweating so profusely her skin glistened in the dim light, and she was shivering. Was she sick? Poisoned?

  Valkyrie, what is wrong with her?

  In a word? Withdrawal. In a few more words, acute neurological withdrawal.

  The words knocked him on his ass as surely as if they’d reached out and shoved him.

  Consequences.

  The signs of addiction had been there all along. He knew how they manifested; he’d seen them many times in his years as an intelligence agent.

  But this time he’d been too busy pampering a bruised ego to pay the slightest attention. He’d completely missed it in an egregious case of willful blindness, and instead of helping her he had tormented her into struggling with it alone.

  He might be the worst human being alive. He was certainly the worst husband alive.

  But he could begin rectifying that error right now, this instant. From here forward. He reached out and touched her arm.

  She tried to recoil, but there was nowhere left for her to go. He wound one arm beneath her knees and the other around her shoulders and drew her close. She quit fighting him and wilted into his arms.

  As he lifted her up, the shifting light exposed a new reflection. The wall behind her was streaked in crimson. In growing dread he inspected her hands and found her fingertips bloodied, nails shredded.

  She had clawed at the wall until her fingers bled.

  The magnitude of her suffering hit him so hard he almost dropped her. But he couldn’t drop her; he couldn’t let her down. Ever again.

  He carried her to the bed, then gingerly placed her in the middle and crawled in beside her. Instantly she had curled into a ball against his chest. Her teeth were chattering, so he tugged the covers up over them.

  She flailed out to shove them away.

  “Baby, you’re shivering.”

  “N-no. Hot-t-t.”

  Her skin was clammy and damp, but it was damp from sweat, so he pushed the covers the rest of the way back down before trying to move some of the stray strands of hair out of her face.

  Her eyes were squeezed shut in a grimace, and her hands were fisted tight against her body.

  …Much like during the ‘nightmare’ on Taenarin Aris, when she had been cut off from Valkyrie and by extension the ship. He was such a colossal idiot. “Tell me what I can do to help you.”

  Her head shook vehemently. “No…sorry, didn’t…didn’t want….”

  “Shush. It’s all right.”

  She wrenched out of his grasp and lunged for the broad viewport above the bed, dropping her forehead to the sill. Her shoulders heaved from fitful breaths.

  Jesus. He wrapped his arms around her from behind, kissed her neck and coaxed her back down. Then he brought his hands up to cup her cheeks. “Listen. Let Valkyrie reconnect you to the ship. We can try—”

  “No!” She tucked her head into his shoulder. “W-won’t lose you.”

  Daggers to the heart were for pansies. He fought off tears for the second time this day, year and decade. “Look at me, please.”

  Bloodshot eyes, pupils so hyper-dilated the vivid silver irises were as thin as a corona during an eclipse, struggled to focus on him.

  “You’re not going to lose me, okay? I’m not going anywhere. I promise. I…god, I never meant to do this to you. I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you, but right now, I just need you to believe me when I say you won’t lose me. So let Valkyrie reconnect you to the ship, and we’ll find another way. We’ll wean you off of it gradually, or we’ll figure out some other—”

  “No!” Alex drew back and for a few brief seconds was able to hold his gaze. Her features overflowed with pain and desperation and yet, somehow, defiance.

  When she spoke, her voice was quiet but firm. “Won’t lose me.”

  Gobsmacked by her strength and resilience, by her absurdly stubborn tenaciousness, he exhaled and tried to give her a smile. “Oh, baby….” Her hair was all in her face again, and he brushed it away tenderly. “Okay. Okay. Come here.”

  But she resisted his efforts to draw her close. She sucked in a long breath, as if summoning all her strength. “Valkyrie, l-listen to me. The answer is ‘no.’ Unequiv-v—” her jaw clenched “—unequivocally, categorically, no, now and f-forever. If I get weak later—days, weeks from now—and t-try to convince you otherwise, d-do not give in. Bu
rn it into your f-firmware now: no.”

  ‘I understand.’

  “No, d-don’t ‘understand.’ That’s quantum c-cagey-speak. Promise.”

  ‘Very well. I promise. The answer is no.’

  She collapsed, all the fight gone from her body. He brought her into his arms as the shakes returned with a vengeance.

  Valkyrie, do something. Do something to help her!

  I am doing quite a lot to help her, Caleb. Do you think I’m not experiencing her distress nearly as intensely as she, and am not doing everything in my power to ease it?

  He rocked Alex gently, one hand in her hair and the other caressing her back, but the shakes only intensified.

  I believe you. But…can you put her to sleep, knock her out for a while? Give her a few hours of peace?

  Not and continue to help her. I can stimulate and encourage the healing of damaged neural pathways, which will shorten the length of her recovery and ease its symptoms, but only while she’s awake. Or I can permit her to rest now, in exchange for a lengthier period of suffering. I cannot—

  I get it.

  There may be something else I can do, however.

  As they lay there, the wall at the head of the bed began to shimmer and fade to translucence, until the stars shone through.

  His eyes widened in amazement, and he carefully reached out and felt for the wall. His hand met solid resistance where it should be. He drew it back to touch Alex’s face. “Look up.”

  Her nose crinkled in suspicion, but after a second she complied. A gasp escaped her throat as she rolled onto her stomach and pulled herself to the edge of the bed. “H-how?”

  ‘I adapted certain features of the cloaking shield to reflect the surrounding space on the inside as well. Given my pervasive integration into the hull, I am able to do so with a high level of precision and fidelity.’

  Much as he had done, she stretched out her hand. When it met the invisible wall, she splayed her fingers out flat upon it. The tension afflicting her body palpably diminished.

  This is wonderful, Valkyrie. Thank you.