Before the Shattered Gates of Heaven

by Bryan S. Glosemeyer

  “The Gods always demand a sacrifice, you were right about that,” said Sabira. “Whether it’s Warseers hunting me across the stars, or Gods exiling me from Heaven, if that’s my sacrifice so be it.

  “But see me now, Daggeira. I see you. I see you like no God or Master ever could. Do you see me, too, here now, before you?”

  “I see you, Stargazer. I always have.”

  “Then believe me, this isn’t a trick. It’s not a game. We can escape the Unity forever. We can travel to the farthest end of the galaxy, together, free. Or we can die here now, together, for nothing. For nothing at all.”

  47.

  DYING, ONCE YOU got past the first horrified shock, always had an unreal quality to it, like slipping from one dream into the next, like stretching across a deep, silent blankness. In the pit, on the alien rooftop, under the sway of eon, each time death came for her it came cloaked in dream.

  Dream or not, Sabira wasn’t letting go. Not yet, anyway. She willed her eyes open. Everything appeared doubled, blurry. They were in the dropper’s hold. The light strips were tuned to a dim glow. A handful of blurred forms were harnessed in around her. The incessant thrum of engines and wet rhythms of Dawn sobbing sounded oddly distant, muted.

  The dropper’s only purpose was to transport weapons—servants and granks—planetside and back without getting obliterated in the process. It was little more than cargo holds and engines encased in a shell of heavy armor. The upper hold, wide enough to transport an entire task, consisted of human-sized harnesses, arranged to face each other across three open aisles. Three grank pens made up the lower hold. A cockpit designed for warseer pilots perched on top of the ship. Other than armor, engines, and guns, that was it. No stealth fields. Not even gravity or inertial generators. So every maneuver and thrust sent her internal organs tumbling over each other.

  Blackness stalked the edges of her vision, threatened to sweep over and take her. Though her head felt like a broken slab of granite and free fall made her guts twirl up to her throat, she held on, refusing to let that other, internal gravity pull her down into the black.

  Willing her eyes to focus, Sabira looked around the hold for the others—to remind herself, yes, Torque and Derev hadn’t been left behind, all her brood-family was here—and secretly hoped to see Daggeira sitting with them.

  But Sabira saw her only in memories, slippery as dreams.

  Memories of Daggeira in the hangar, staring with that ice-sharp glare of hers, the ache of betrayal showing through clear and unmistakable. Heartbreak and rage resonating in every word, every threat.

  Daggeira choosing her own way, neither to fight nor join, but to leave.

  Daggeira turning her back and disappearing inside one of the two remaining droppers. The ship disappearing behind the thick metal doors of the airlock.

  Sabira tried to see herself through Daggeira’s eyes. Last she would have remembered was the two of them alone, bleeding, desperate for every rasping breath, stranded on a hostile planet as the sky burned. Then coming out of a coma to find her crewmate saying and doing the most unimaginable, blasphemous things. And before any sense could be made of their situation, before Daggeira had any chance to understand and be liberated herself, scooped back up by the Unity. Only to have that implode around her, too. Of course, she wouldn’t come with Sabira. She could never have possibly understood what was happening to them. Sabira could barely understand it herself. Soon a galaxy would separate them, forever leaving them somewhere between sworn foes and lovers.

  Stirred back to the present, Sabira heard the thick splash of someone getting sick and wasn’t entirely sure if it was her or somebody else.

  “Hold on tight,” urged Orion’s disembodied voice. “It’s pretty glitchy out there. I had to move the Shishiguchi another few thousand clicks out. Good news is Gabriel and Ed are safe on board. I’ve got their transport on a return interce—”

  Orion’s voice dissolved into fuzz, and the ship lurched violently. They spun ass-over-head more times than Sabira could count. She knew for certain that she was the one getting sick this time. The remaining bile burned the back of her throat.

  The ship leveled out, though Sabira’s brain continued to somersault. The lurking blackness crept across her vision. She fought back. Refused to let it slip up and over her one last time—not yet—and spat out the sour bile still clinging to her throat.

  Orion’s voice came back, spewing profanities in several languages. “Sabira, I can’t access the weapons array.”

  “No automated weapons,” she slurred. “Against Will. Only manual. Main gunnery controls, cockpit. Secondary, crew hold.”

  “Damn superstitious primitives,” he said. “Fine then. Who can man the guns?”

  Even through the blur, she felt all the faces turn toward her. Of course. Who else? The yarist gem, she decided, it was the only way.

  “I’ll do it,” said Cal. “Let me try.”

  “Me, too,” offered Zonte.

  Sabira wanted to thank them, then decided not to waste energy on speaking.

  Orion said he found the interfaces for Cal’s and Zonte’s harnesses. With a buzzing and whirring, control panels opened next to the boys and rose up to be easily reached. Word by painstaking word, Sabira instructed them how to turn on the display. The empty space along the center of their aisle blossomed into light and color and information, a holo targeting display piped in from the ship’s sensors. She instructed them on what they saw. Ships tagged red were Unity. Ships tagged yellow were Monarchy. The concentric red and green triangles were for assigning target locks. Anything flashing orange and black was a missile target locked on them.

  In the dead center of the display floated a white wedge of light indicating their ship. The rest of the holo tilted and swayed around its axis point. The purple-green curve of Dlamakuuz filled the bottom edge of the display. After the planet, the Zol-Ori loomed largest. Hundreds of multicolored fires bloomed from its hull, billowing out into vacuum. Swarms of wreckage twirled and scattered into clouds. Farther off, two more pyramids discharged a visual cacophony of missiles and heavy plasma bolts. Sabira couldn’t count all the Monarchy ships in the fray and more kept appearing in the holo every moment.

  “I’m getting us out of here as fast as this brick can go,” said Orion. “Which isn’t very. Don’t shoot at anyone or anything unless it gets too close. We want to draw as little attention to ourselves as possible. Got it?”

  “It’s blinking. It’s blinking,” shouted Cal and Zonte.

  To Sabira, the holo had dissolved into a pond of suspended colors, lines of trajectories rippling across like waves. Even so, she could discern the orange and black flashes pulsing through the currents.

  “Now that you can shoot,” said Orion.

  Cal and Zonte frantically punched at the weapons controls. A flurry of holographic red lines sprung from the center wedge and arced toward the incoming missiles. Missed. The flashing orange and black grew steadily closer in the display. Orion announced the missiles were two thousand meters out.

  “Be steady,” Sabira instructed, unsure if she spoke loud enough to be heard. “Focus. Line up the shot.”

  Eighteen hundred. Their defensive fire missed again. The target locks were failing. If the Monarchy found a way to jam the Unity locks, those pyramids had little chance of victory. Or survival.

  Sixteen hundred.

  Fourteen hundred.

  “Yes, yes, yes!” Orion shouted. “Get ’em, boy.”

  A pulse of red light streaked into the holo display, stroked the vacuum a hundred meters out, and homed in on the incoming missiles. Must be the other dropper under Orion’s control.

  Twelve hundred.

  The red line slammed into the flashing orange and black holos and disintegrated into a fray of high energy particles.

  Sabira hadn’t realized she had been holding her breath until she let it go. The tense squeezing in her chest melted away. The other drop ship had ta
ken out the pursuing torpedoes. They were safe.

  No, they weren’t. A flash of orange and black spat out from the debris cloud. One missile still locked on.

  Nine hundred.

  “Fire! Fire!” she croaked, unable to yell.

  Cal and Zonte fired like mad, every barrage missing the target.

  Seven hundred.

  “Not where it is,” she rasped as loudly as she could, “where it will be.”

  Five hundred.

  Wails of terror echoed through the hull. Sabira didn’t know who was screaming. Maybe all of them. Orion piloted the shuttle into a wild, evasive spin. Her entire body felt sick, down to the bones.

  Three hundred.

  I chose this. If I die now for my choices, my freedom, so be it.

  The ship lurched violently out of the spiral. Every fiber of bone and tissue in her body compressed itself into the harness. Like an entire Labyrinth caving in on her skull. The dull blackness, finally triumphant, flooded up from the edges of vision, instantaneously drowning out the fear, the panic, the screams, with the harsh numbness of oblivion.

  Still not dead.

  For someone who seemed fond of visiting, death apparently felt less inclined to stick around. Sabira knew she wasn’t dead because that’s exactly what the voices were shouting.

  Something strange was happening with her insides. It took her a second to realize her kidneys weren’t floating up into her throat anymore. Gravity.

  Hands were all over her, supporting, lifting, carrying away. Whispers through a fog told her to hold on, they made it. Told her she was safe. Sabira, quite certain that they all should be dead, wondered if perhaps this, at last, was death’s final dream.

  A sharp sting in her neck sent electricity arcing down her spine, tingling in her fingers and toes. Her eyes snapped open. She lay in some kind of medical ward. Two faces lurked overhead, silhouetted by the ceiling lights.

  “Sabira, can you see me? Are you hearing me alright?” asked the spiky-headed silhouette.

  “Orion? Is that you?” she asked.

  “Good. It’s working,” he said. “Don’t worry about a thing, Sabira. We’re going to get you up and causing trouble in no time. You are one of the biggest badasses I have ever met. You know that? And I have met some major badasses in this galaxy.”

  “Are you trying to tell me I have a big ass?”

  The other silhouette laughed wearily. “Orion’s colloquialisms don’t always translate well, do they?”

  “The missile?” Sabira asked.

  “The missile?” responded Orion. “No, no. Cal nailed that bastard, can you believe it? Eighty meters out.”

  “Just rest,” said the other, larger silhouette. The voice, deep and resonating, could only be Gabriel’s. “You’re alive. You got them out alive. You can rest now.”

  “Not all. I failed them. I failed—” Sabira broke off as the entire room suddenly twisted up and over. Everything rattled. Fields of artificial gravity and inertia tugged, jerking them back and forth before equilibrium returned.

  “Have they found us?” asked Gabriel. “Are we hit?”

  “No,” said Orion offhandedly. “That wasn’t a missile hitting us, that was a shockwave. The Zol-Ori just blew. We got tossed for a moment, but our shields held. We’re fine.”

  Gabriel knelt so his face was level with where Sabira lay. She could see him clearly now, the swelling, purple bruises, the crudely shaved scalp, the glint of his golden eyes.

  “You didn’t fail Rain or Maia or anyone,” he said, softening his heavy voice. “We failed you. You warned us. You insisted, but we didn’t listen. We were—I was—too proud to listen. I thought I could keep us all safe. Their deaths are my failings, not yours Sabira. This disaster is my fault and mine alone. Without you, we’d all be dead or enslaved. Just rest now. Let Orion heal you up. You did it. You got them here safe. You can sleep now. Sleep as long as you need.”

  Sabira wanted to argue, tell him no, make him understand that Rain and Maia died because of her. Because she hadn’t fought hard enough. Hadn’t struck fast enough. She had to let him know. But the heavy gravity in her core had returned, as irresistible as it was insistent. The alertness brought on by the zap to her neck waned, dropped away, revealing the deep black numbness that had been waiting there all along.

  48.

  THE SHISHIGUCHI ORBITED a blue gas giant on the far side of the Av system from Dlamakuuz. Orion had parked them out there after fleeing the battle, where they could wait and see who won.

  They all collapsed from exhaustion for a few days, and the lems tended to their wounds. Ed was successfully treated for bioweapon and had the biomech respirator removed. Torque and Derev were given forma prosthetics. Orion-lem, with help from Coraz, surgically clean-cut their stumps to even out the wounds’ surfaces and expose all the nerves before attaching adapters that looked like thin, bronze caps over their stumps. Preprogrammed forma attached to the adapters and shaped itself into a forearm and hand for Torque, and a knee, leg, and foot for Derev. Unless Sabira looked intently, the difference between the original and prosthetic limbs was almost unnoticeable.

  Sabira spent the majority of the last nine shifts laid out in bed, too drained to move. Sometimes, when she got up to relieve herself or to eat, everything would abruptly start spinning, and she’d stumble to the floor. Gabriel told her she had multiple concussions. As long as she got plenty of rest and took her medicines, she would recover in a few days. After three shifts in the infirmary, she was well enough to walk down the short hall to a crew cabin. Inside, two forma mattresses rested on low frames. Torque lay curled in a ball in one bed, the other was unoccupied. There Sabira resumed lying around in slightly less misery.

  Often, when they were alone together, Sabira pretended as if she were asleep while sneaking glances of Torque examining her new hand, trying to coax different shapes out of her fingers. From what Sabira could tell, Torque was slowly but steadily improving her control over the forma prosthetic. After a few shifts, she could transform her new fingertips into basic tools and back with nothing but a thought.

  Just like all the others, with the exception of Dawn, who had never drunk the eon, a thin, soft fuzz of hair had begun growing on Sabira’s scalp. When she first noticed the hair with her fingers, she pulled away in disgust. She plucked a few small strands to examine. They were so fine, she had to strain to see them. From what she could tell, they were the same stark alabaster as her skin. Originally, she’d planned to ask a lem to shave them for her but grew less and less certain with each day. She decided to wait, for now, and see what having hair on her head might be like. The thought of covering her old bloodline and ownership glyphs felt right, even if it was with something as unsettling as a mop of hair.

  When Sabira wasn’t sneaking glances across the room at Torque, she noticed that each time she drifted back to wakefulness, the fresh cuts and bruises from their escape were steadily disappearing. The old scars remained, of course. Even those could be healed too, Gabriel had promised, once they arrived in the Constellation. If she wanted, that is.

  Like the tattoos on her face, each scar had been earned, had its own story. Each a thread woven into the fabric of the story of herself. Could she give that up just to look prettier? Not that Gabriel’s promise didn’t tempt. She could have two whole breasts again. Why should she feel guilty for wanting something as natural as that?

  During those long shifts of drifting in and out of sleep, she often returned to the same dream. Worms crawled out of her heart by the hundreds. They burrowed through her skin, deforming her, mutilating her. Until, finally, the worms enveloped her completely in a leathery cocoon of scars and old memories.

  Maybe wiping away the old wounds could be part of her story too, she thought, after waking from such a dream. Yes, those cuts and burns were intrinsic to her story, but that tale wasn’t finished yet.

  Exhausted as she felt lying there hour after hour, she also felt something
she couldn’t fully grasp yet. As if not only was she recuperating, but rejuvenating, growing stronger. As if she were still only at the very beginning of her story, after all.

  Yet, it was impossible to consider how her tale might only be getting started without feeling the weight of Maia’s and Rain’s absence. They weren’t the first to die before her very eyes in an instant. A dread certainty settled over her that they wouldn’t be the last. And yet, somehow she remained convinced her story was just getting started, even though she knew better than most how a tale could find its end from one breath to the next.

  The dead were on Gabriel’s mind as well. He came to their cabin to tell them about the funeral ceremony for Maia and Rain. He was going room to room to invite everyone individually but had come to them first.

  “It’s time for us to leave,” he said. “Four days’ ship time doesn’t possibly seem long enough, I know, but it’s all the time we can give. But first, we need to pay our respects to our dead. Then we will talk about what comes next, and we get moving again.”

  Sabira had never experienced a ritual ceremony for the dead before. Never even considered the possibility of one, not for a human at least. There were stories of great rites performed in the domed palaces when a Divine Master passed through the Gates, but she never knew of it happening in her lifetime. The old hens whispered how the Godseers sacrificed thousands of the unseen. The rites didn’t end until the dead Master’s palace was painted, spire to foundation, in hearts’ blood. But funeral rites for a human? To even consider the thought would have been blasphemy.

  One more blasphemy to add to my score.

  “What are you going to do to us at the ceremony?” asked Torque, her gaze lowered, fixed to a single blank spot of the deck floor. Her right palm rubbed back and forth across her left elbow.

  “Talk, mostly.” Orion kept his large voice subdued, intimate. “And listen, too, of course. If there’s anything either of you’d like to say, you’re welcome to. Maybe a favorite memory about them, or a conversation. Anything you’d like to share, really.”