She frowned at his hand, shaking her head. “I’ll stop by the clinic at the Initiative later.” A weak chuckle escaped her lips. “One nice thing about the Chalet—the repair bench was always just across the room.”
“I don’t want to imagine you having to use it regularly.”
“I didn’t. Not too often.” She forced herself to her feet, trying and failing for a teasing smile. “How do I snap out of this malaise? I need to get back to work. Those people we evacuated from Adjunct San need my help, but all I can think about is the ones I watched fall to the Rasu. I’m trying so hard to feel hope, but all I feel is despair.”
Gods help them if her light stopped shining in their world; sometimes it felt as if it was the only thing keeping any of them moving forward. He took her hands in his. “We’re going to take a shower to wash away all this grime, and you’re going to let me kiss and hug on you until you smile, for real. Then we’ll see to your collarbone repair, after which we’ll go out there and do the best we can.”
6
* * *
MIRAI
Mirai One
Joaquim Lacese’s first stop after leaving the regen clinic in a spiffing new body was his functional-at-best apartment to change into his own clothes and confirm nothing had been disturbed in the weeks of his absence. He couldn’t think of a good reason why anyone would have broken into his place, but old habits and all.
Satisfied everything remained where he’d left it and feeling a bit more comfortable in his new skin and old clothes, he decided to head to the Initiative. It was time to try to find out what he’d done for those missing weeks.
It came as a pleasant surprise, and in truth as something of a relief, to learn that he’d been a proper godsdamn hero on Namino. He’d rescued friends and strangers alike, taken out a bunch of Rasu in clever and inventive ways, and capped it off by sacrificing himself to ensure that Nika was able to trigger the destruction of every last invader and reclaim the planet for the Dominion.
It was nice being viewed as the good guy for once. Sure, from his perspective he was always the good guy, protecting people and saving lives with weapons and attitude. But this time he was being lauded for it! Everywhere he wandered in the Initiative, hugs and handshakes and pats on the back were the order of the day.
Riding a nice, low-level buzz from all the accolades, he made tentative plans to meet Parc and a newly reawakened Dominic for dinner later in the evening and left everyone to their work at the Initiative. He’d volunteer to help with the renewed Adjunct World evacuations tomorrow, but tonight? He was simply going to enjoy being alive once again.
He stepped off the lift on the first floor and ran straight into someone not paying attention as they made to step onto it.
“Oh! Sorry.” A blonde woman leapt to the side, then did a double-take. “Lacese?”
She looked familiar, but he drew a blank. “I’m sorry, do we know each other?”
“Right. You went nonfunctional at the Rasu compound.” Her chin dropped a little, but she stuck a hand out. “Selene Panetier. We were together on Namino.”
Panetier…Justice Advisor. His countenance darkened, and he almost refused the proffered hand. But she was being polite, and if she’d been on Namino, she’d know a great deal about the events of his last several weeks. Also, he couldn’t deny that she was attractive, in the gritty, hard-edged way that Justice officers and rebels often shared.
After a brief and awkward pause, he relented and shook her hand. “Nice to meet you, again. I’ll assume we did great work together on Namino.”
“We actually did.” Her expression flickered, and she turned toward the lift to leave…then back to him. “Say, if you’d like to go get a drink, I can tell you about it.”
“You don’t have important work to do upstairs?”
“I think all the day’s excitement the Rasu brought has petered out. So…no. Nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow.”
A refusal hovered on his lips, but he craved real details about what had happened on the ground at Namino. And had he mentioned how she was cute? No, not ‘cute’—serious and deadly and quite attractive. Not that it mattered, because she was Justice. But what did matter was how she had answers about his missing weeks. And he was already going for a beer anyway….
He shrugged. “I’m up for it. You can tell me about my heroics over a couple of drinks.”
“Mostly my heroics.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, it is. You did help occasionally, though, when you weren’t too busy being an asshole.”
He snorted and fell in beside her as they strode toward the exit. “Sounds about right.”
“So you blew a hole in the torso of the Rasu bipedal. Then, before it could react, you shoved a grenade into the hole and took off running—smack into me.”
“Like at the lift earlier?”
“So much worse, and bloodier. We both tumbled to the floor just as the grenade detonated and the Rasu exploded into a hundred pieces.”
Joaquim took a sip of his vodka on the rocks, which he’d switched to after one beer. “But don’t the Rasu simply reform?”
“Yes.” She twirled the stem of her glass between her fingers. “But we were waiting on Colonel Rogers to finish deploying the drone, so we couldn’t bolt yet. Instead, you started stomping on the little Rasu slugs every time they tried to slink toward each other to form back up.”
He choked on the vodka. “I stomped on them?”
“You did. You looked ridiculous, hopping around from one to the next. But it was sort of working, so I joined in after I dug a Rasu shard out of my shoulder.”
“Ouch. What happened next?”
“You missed one of the slugs, and it started crawling up your leg. You shouted at me to shoot your leg off before the alien slithered inside you.”
“Did you?” He patted his left thigh. “This is a new body, so I’m not able to tell.”
“I did not. I managed to grab the slug off your knee and toss it down the hall.” She opened both hands and scowled at her palms. “I swear I can still feel it on my skin. Anyway, about that time Rogers finally showed back up, and we all bailed for Camp Burrow.”
He chuckled lightly; she was a skilled storyteller and embellishing for laughs, but it sounded like something he’d do. He realized his glass was empty, so he waved over the dyne server. “Another round of drinks for us—assuming the lady wants to regale me with more stories of our mutual heroism.”
She shrugged in a way he took for affirmation. “There are certainly more stories to tell.”
“Another round it is.”
Joaquim opened his eyes to reveal a blurry but unfamiliar ceiling. A soft bed lay beneath him, but also an unfamiliar one.
Ah, shit. What had he done this time?
He carefully rolled over, ignoring for now the headache banging against his skull, to see a tangle of blonde hair strewn on the pillow beside him, followed by a hint of pale skin peeking out from the covers. Well, then.
He dragged a hand down his face and tried to remember…there had been drinks with someone, possibly the blonde woman currently lying next to him. Beer had quickly become vodka then shots as the stories she’d told about their adventures on Namino had grown ever more outlandish…what was her name?
Selene. Justice Advisor.
He bolted upright and swung his feet over the side of the bed. His stomach churned, but not from the alcohol. Or not only. Cassidy’s face swam in his vision, taunting him with sad, heartbroken features. Was there any greater betrayal of her memory than sleeping with a Justice Advisor?
He couldn’t breathe. He had to get out of here. He had to get far away, then keep running.
As soon as his head stopped swimming, he eased off the bed while trying not to disturb the sleeping woman. The last thing he wanted right now was a confrontation. Once he was standing and fairly confident his legs weren’t liable to give out from underneath him, he fumbled around on the floor by the bed until h
e found his pants and shirt. Forget the underwear. He hopped clumsily into his pants and pulled his shirt over his head before checking around for anything else of importance he might have brought along. Seeing nothing, he headed for the door.
The rustling of sheets broke the silence behind him.
“So this is how it’s going to be?”
He should keep walking…but he turned around. The woman was propped up on one elbow; the sheet had fallen away to reveal the shadowy curves of lovely breasts in the darkness. Flashes of the night before crept into his awareness, full of passion and laughter and ecstasy—he shut them down with a rough grunt. “Yeah. This is how it’s going to be.”
She rubbed at sleepy eyes, and the sheet slipped farther to reveal yet more curves. “You are such an asshole.”
“After spending a couple of weeks with me, you really should have figured that out. Listen, I need to—I’ve got to go. I can’t be here.”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t, okay? You’d never understand. I’m sorry.” Why had he apologized? She was the enemy here. His chest tightened until he couldn’t breathe again, and the walls closed menacingly in on him. He spun and hurried out of the bedroom and down a short, moonlit corridor toward a door. He didn’t check to see if she followed, and by the time he reached the door he was running.
Then he was out in the hallway. It resembled a hotel…which would make sense, because her home would have been on Namino, because she was the Namino Justice Advisor. He stumbled down the hall in the direction of the lift, which was when he realized he’d forgotten to grab his shoes. Screw it, he’d walk home barefoot.
What the fuck had he just done?
7
* * *
EARTH
Earth Alliance
Milky Way Galaxy
Miriam stood in a river of blood, sticky and viscous. It painted violent streaks along the corridor walls, where the edges dribbled down toward the floor in a slow drip…drip…drip. The corridor glowed a florid crimson hue, for gore had splattered across the row lighting above.
She looked down to see a severed arm wash up against her foot as the river’s current grew more forceful. She tried to step away, but her feet were stuck to the floor.
She couldn’t move from this spot. Couldn’t elude all this death.
From out of the blood swirling at her feet rose inky aubergine tentacles. They wrapped around her ankles and slithered up her legs. No matter how hard she fought them, their grip only tightened. She reached for the Daemon at her hip, only to find it had become a third tentacle winding around her waist. It squeezed, denying her air, as more tentacles reached her neck, then her face. Liquid metal poured into her ears, nose and finally her mouth.
“You think you are alive, but you are mistaken. You never left us. We will never let you escape.”
Terror and a lack of air sent her heart racing, her pulse pounding against the invading metal. She was going to die again, and again, and again, helpless to strike down this insidious enemy.
…But she’d never been a victim in her life. Why was she so convinced she must be one now?
No. She drew in all the air she could muster through the gaps in the liquid metal choking off her breath. “NO.” She clawed at the tentacles, ripping and tearing at them until they melted away between her fingers. Metal poured back out of her mouth; metal tears streaked down her cheeks.
Her lungs began to clear, and she sucked in fresh air. Tangible, life-giving air. “I am alive, and I do not belong to you. I will never belong to the monsters.”
Miriam opened her eyes with a gasp. The reflected light from a full moon flooded their bedroom to remind her where she was, as did the warm hand gripping hers. She looked over at David beside her. He was propped up on one elbow, the fingers of his left hand wound through hers, his eyes studying her with gentle concern. “This sounded like a bad one.”
She breathed in deeply, until she was confident no slithering metal had hitched a ride in her chest, then rolled onto her side to face him. “It was, to start. But this time I…this is going to sound stupid.”
“I highly doubt it.”
Would she have been able to do any of this, she wondered, without him? The decades of waking up alone, forced to confront whatever demons had chased her through the night in solitude, were long in the past. But here, now, she remembered the difference, and having him at her side meant everything.
“Nonetheless. All right: this time, I fought back. I refused to surrender to the Rasu’s invasion. I expelled them from my body and my mind.”
“How did you manage it?”
She huffed a quiet laugh. “This being nightmare rules, through sheer force of will. I said ‘no,’ and the Rasu retreated.”
“Brilliant. If only this strategy worked on the battlefield.”
“That would be fantastic, wouldn’t it? I’ll give it a try next time I meet them there. But the point is, they didn’t capture me in the nightmare, and now….” She pushed up to a sitting position, then extended her arms in front of her and considered them anew in the moonlight. “For the first time since waking up in this new body and learning I had died, I don’t have this lingering unease that perhaps the nightmare was reality and this is the dream.”
“Oh, dushen’ka.” David sat up as well and leaned in to kiss the corner of her lips. “Nothing has ever held you captive for long. Maybe since you’ve taken charge and frightened them off, this will be the last nightmare.”
Her face lit up, buoyed by the possibility. “Maybe it will be.”
CONCORD HQ
Command
Milky Way Galaxy
Miriam arrived at the office early, and anyone who saw her might accuse her of having a spring in her step. They’d be correct, though she’d deny it if asked.
Her early arrival allowed her to sit and enjoy an entire cup of hot tea while she contemplated the series of fairly consequential meetings scheduled for this morning. Concord as an entity had suffered several blows lately, and it was important to get the institution back on track, if only so it would be stronger when the next inevitable blow hit.
Her assistant soon announced the arrival of her first appointment, and she invited the Novoloume government leader into her office. “Dean Veshnael, welcome. Thank you for taking a few minutes out of what I’m sure has become a demanding day.” She knew he genuinely had a packed schedule, so she remained standing.
“The pleasure is mine, Commandant. Congratulations on a hard-earned victory at Namino last week.”
“It is scarcely a beginning, but I am grateful for it. I won’t take much of your time. I simply wanted to thank you personally for agreeing to step into the role of Consulate head. AEGIS should be naming a new Senator soon, but it will be unfair to ask that person to immediately take on double the responsibility. You were our first Consulate leader, so I expect you’ll be able to reengage with minimal difficulty.”
“I expect so as well. I regret what has happened regarding Senator—Ms. Requelme. Is there no chance of her resuming her position?”
Miriam sighed. “I, too, empathize greatly with her. But I’m afraid our laws are clear on the matter.”
“So they are. If I can ask, do you have any thoughts on what will happen in seven months when the position rotates to the Anaden Senator?”
The mere thought of it made her shudder. “I believe I will worry about that problem when we again have an Anaden Senator.”
His iridescent skin gleamed a little brighter. “A sensible compartmentalization of mental effort. I will be traveling to the Asterion Dominion tomorrow to introduce myself to their leadership. I’ve met Advisor Kirumase, but the other Advisors need to see me as well.”
“It’s an excellent idea, which is why I will leave the diplomacy in your skilled hands.”
She saw him out, and barely had enough time to brew a new cup of tea before her next and most welcome guest arrived.
Malcolm Jenner walked in wearing crisp BDUs ove
r a heavily bandaged right shoulder. He was clean-shaven and, other than the bandage, showed no visible signs of his ordeal…except in his eyes. She’d seen the thousand-kilometer, haunted gaze on returning POWs before. Some never lost it, but she hoped he wouldn’t suffer that fate.
He stopped inside the door, pulled himself to attention and saluted her. “Commandant.”
She returned the salute, then did something she rarely did with anyone who wasn’t family—she reached out and hugged him. “I am so glad to see you alive and well.”
He cleared his throat awkwardly, and she allowed him to step back and regain his composure. “Thank you, ma’am. I want to apologize for all the trouble I caused. It wasn’t my intent, but….”
“Let’s place the blame where it belongs, on the Savrakaths. They lied to us and spent weeks deliberately hiding your presence in one of their prisons from us.” She motioned toward the small table, but waited until he’d sat somewhat stiffly in one of the chairs to join him. “Still, we were having our own share of difficulties here at Command, and I can’t help but wonder. If we—if I—had been more focused on the proper things, we might have been able to locate you and execute a rescue mission. For any lapses on my part, I apologize as well.”
His face blanched in horror. “No, ma’am. I’ve seen the reports, and Colonel Odaka and his people spared no effort in their search. I was, it turns out, quite well hidden in a secret location none of our surveillance efforts had previously uncovered. And I want you to know that I didn’t reveal any Concord intel or—”
“Of course you didn’t. You’re a Marine, one of the very best, and I’ve no doubt you comported yourself with honor while in captivity. I’m merely saying that you shouldn’t have had to rescue yourself. But we’re all glad you did. Now, we need to put the past where it belongs, move forward and concentrate on doing better in the future.” Was she talking about Malcolm, or herself? “What do the doctors say about your injuries?”
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