by Rachel Caine
Just then, Suncross’s ship burst out of its shelter and fired, a shocking, utterly devastating barrage, taking out Phage in thick layers. It was a bold move, one without an iota of self-preservation. The lizards didn’t have enough juice for shields and clearly didn’t care, and the Phage swarmed the ship. Began ripping it to pieces.
The console screen flickered and suddenly Suncross was there, his crew standing behind him at attention, sober and silent as they never were. I remembered playing forfeit-or-pain with them, drinking, sleeping, sharing stories. Our trek down to the asteroid and my time aboard their ship, breathing in their life. Fear lanced through me, and I couldn’t bear to hear what he said next. Tears gathered in my eyes, because I knew I would never see him do that damn victory dance again.
“We have breach, Zara Cole.” At the end, he said my name right, and I’d have given all my worldly goods to hear him say it wrong, the way he did when he was messing with me. But now was too somber a moment for that. The tears slid down my cheeks, buzzed my nose, and dropped off my chin. “All other plans have failed. Little power remains. Now we can only offer our sacrifice to the gods of victory as we send our stories to the stars. I have chosen one to survive. Retrieve him when the battle is won. TO GLORY!”
The mech ship loosed a small, fragile pod and it jetted away from the battle, then Suncross fired the last of his engines, spun his ship into the center of the reforming Phage, and with a roar that rocked the stars around us, ignited his own ship in a massive, uncontrolled explosion that destroyed an equally massive swath of the Phage. The ship. Suncross.
Gone.
For several impossible seconds, I couldn’t believe it. The lizards were always boasting about dying for glory, but I’d thought it was all talk. Yet they’d sacrificed themselves for a world they’d never seen, for a people who had only shown them a few good angles. I tried to choke back the sobs. Couldn’t. Bea wrapped her arms around me and held on. We cried into each other’s shoulders until my eyes were hot and swollen, until I could hardly breathe.
“The Phage,” I choked. I checked. The survivors of that suicide run were regrouping. “Nadim, Typhon . . .”
“Firing,” Yusuf said. He sounded shaken too, but more in control than I was. Nadim sent me comfort and shared sorrow, and I felt the pulse of his guns battering the Phage too.
They ran. They ran.
I felt sick and lost and cold, but I kept myself upright. I was crying for Suncross and my friends. I tried not to, to stop, but this new Zara, the one who’d healed the broken parts inside, she needed this. I let it happen.
Nadim finally said, quietly, “Zara, we need to collect the one Suncross chose to live and tell their story. That is the Bruqvisz way.”
Sniffing hard, I knuckled my eyes. “I’ll get Yusuf to pick me up, and we’ll save the survivor.”
The pod was too small for Nadim to maneuver close. We might accidentally smack into it and knock it into the gravity well of the black hole. No, this rescue had to be delicate, and I wished Bea would go with me. Fortunately, I didn’t have to ask. The ragged remains of the Phage swarm were in full retreat, so we were clear to depart.
Except that we found C-X collapsed just outside the docking bay, covered in blood. Even the blood looked different, no longer red, but so dark that it was almost purple. Her knife-fingers had gouged deep runnels in the floor and walls. No wonder Nadim was scared. Even if it didn’t hurt him a lot, he must have felt those wounds on some level. If C-X had been herself, she would never have harmed any Leviathan.
Bea took a reflexive step back, and I could tell she didn’t want to linger. She’d always been more scared of the Phage than I was, and it didn’t help that it felt like Xyll was wearing our friend like a new summer suit. “Get Marko,” I said. “Hurry.”
“Nadim, can you get in touch with the Bruqvisz survivor? Find out how long he has, and get Yusuf or Starcurrent to bring the Hopper.”
A few seconds later, he replied, “The pod only has an emergency beacon. I cannot speak directly to him.”
Well, that made sense. If you got ejected in a life pod, you wouldn’t want to have a chat before getting picked up. The goal was immediate rescue. But I couldn’t leave C-X lying here. I tapped my comm. “EMITU, we have injuries. Get here ASAP.”
Though he bitched at me, he came rolling up, faster even than Marko and Bea, who were rounding the corner behind him. “What have you done to my patient?” he demanded.
“Hell if I know. We found her like this. I guess the mission didn’t go well outside. I think she saw some combat.” That was obvious from the deep wounds carved into the still human parts of her body, but the signs of a struggle inside with no enemy to be found hinted at mental anguish that might be even more worrying.
EMITU had a hoverdolley, and Marko hesitated only a moment before he picked C-X up, depositing her on it with great care. He turned to face Bea and me with a serious expression. “Go on with the rescue. I’ll stay with Chao-Xing. That’s why I’m here, after all.”
In that moment, I saw an echo of the Honor Marko had wanted to be when he’d dragged me out of Camp Kuna.
Nadim said, “The Hopper is in the docking bay. Yusuf is heading to check on Chao-Xyll and will return to Typhon when the rescue mission is complete.”
I nodded. “Bea, you ready?”
“I’ll do the piloting. You’ve done space retrieval before.”
The last time we did this, Chao-Xing sat in the driver’s seat. A pang went through me when I stared down at her, so completely changed and struggling to survive in this new form. Marko gently took hold of her hand, avoiding the insectile blades that were her fingers. “You’re stronger than this,” he was saying softly. “So wake up and get your shit together. I know you can.”
That rubbed me wrong for some reason, like strength and weakness were a binary, when life came at you fast and it was more a matter of what you could survive. And Marko didn’t have a damn alien parasite docked on his spinal cord. With effort, I ignored him. At least he was here for her. I’d judged them before because they didn’t seem to care about each other, not like Bea, Nadim, and me, but clearly, I didn’t know what I thought I did about the bonds between Marko and Chao-Xing. Only stood to reason they’d have one, even if I couldn’t see or fully understand it, considering they had spent a year together with nobody else to rely on.
“Nadim, you all right?”
“I grieve,” he answered.
He was talking about the lizards’ dramatic final act. Since I had been asking about the wounds C-X had inflicted, he must be healthy enough. I followed Bea into the docking bay and put on my skinsuit, including helmet. We’d need that life support when she popped the Hopper so I could pull the pod in. Bruqvisz emergency units looked different from the space placentas we had on board. They were silver and cylindrical, more like a high-tech coffin. Given how long their arms were, the sole survivor must be lying with them folded, waiting for death or rescue.
Damn, I was in a mood.
“Fire it up,” I said to Bea as I hopped in back.
She checked all the panels, then did as I requested. Nadim didn’t wait for us to ask for an exit; he opened the way and she swooped us out. Considering the massive battle that had taken place here, there weren’t many Phage bodies floating. Between the black hole and the heroic boom of Suncross’s last stand, the area was mostly clear.
“I’ve got the pod on screen,” she reported.
“Let me know when we’re close. I’ll need you to swing around so I can get it inside.”
“Understood.”
“Hold on, Zara!” Up front, Bea was struggling with the pull from the black hole. I hadn’t been paying much attention to that; too much else to worry about. But Bea was all in with it, and now that I was paying attention, the terror of being caught in that thing’s utterly unmerciful grasp was a very real thing. We needed to get free.
The tug was much stronger on the Hopper, and the pod was drifting toward the black hole
as well. We had to be fast.
She took the first turn wide, then reversed. I felt Bea immediately accelerating, pulling against the black hole’s influence, and with a sudden snap, the Hopper broke free. Bea, on comms, said, “We’re out. We’re good.”
Now we were close enough that I could use the magnetic cables to lock on and haul the pod in. There would barely be space at the back of the Hopper. It took me a couple of tries, but the cables eventually snapped into place. With all my strength I hauled. Even in vacuum, it wasn’t easy to move this thing, and it scraped along the sides of the Hopper coming in. In fact, the hatch wouldn’t close, but I waved Bea on.
“It’s fine. Our suits have twenty minutes left. We can get back to Nadim without locking up.”
She nodded and swung the shuttle around. I loved so many things about her—this confidence, her sweetness, how smart she was, and how quickly she got obsessed with some new tech idea.
I kept my arms on the cables, just in case the pod tried to float away as we were moving. For good measure, I wrapped them around some metalwork and used that to brace since I didn’t want to get yanked out either. The stars were bleak and beautiful, no longer blotted out by the swarm.
Nadim opened for us, and coming back felt like a warm hug, one I desperately needed. Once Bea shut the Hopper down, Nadim closed the doors and I waited for the room pressure to equalize, then I motioned to Bea. “There’s no room to open this and let him out. Help me work it loose.”
That took some doing, and Nadim eventually had to lighten the gravity so we could manage it. Finally, the pod plonked onto the docking bay floor, and I hit the escape hatch button as gravity came rushing back in. Felt like the weight of all my doubts, tied to the shadow of my regrets.
The pod cracked open and Ghostwalk stumbled out, dropping to one knee in bitter confusion. He spat some words in Bruqvisz, translated a microsecond later. “Should have perished with my brothers. Stories are not worth the pain of surviving alone.”
There had been no chance for me to study their culture as I’d wanted to, so I was feeling around in the dark here. In trying to comfort Ghostwalk, I could make things exponentially worse. Nerves on the ragged edge of no return, I sank into a crouch beside him, but I didn’t reach out.
“There’s a reason Suncross chose you to carry on. You’d know what that is better than me.”
Burning, angry eyes met mine, the nictitating membrane flicking in and out of sight, probably a measure of his agitation. “Because I can bear it,” he said finally.
“I don’t know what we’re supposed to do right now, but I think I know what Suncross would want.”
“And what is that, Zeerakull?”
“We won that fight because of him. We’re here because of him. You know damn well he’d want us to dance.”
After the victory dance, I left Ghostwalk to record their story and headed for Ops to see how close we were to Earth. This wasn’t over, not by a long shot, but I didn’t have the mental reserves to comfort anyone else.
Not when I was already one big red ball of sorrow over Suncross, underscored with fear for Chao-Xyll. I could admit privately that I didn’t see a way out. That quick and merciful death in the lizard files might soon be her only option, and it was killing me to watch her fight and fight and lose. Soon, there might be nothing of my friend left. She’d gone out to try and help us, but she only got herself hurt. I’d never seen Chao-Xing fail before, but she’d never faced an enemy like this either, one that was warring within her own body.
I headed to my room, aware that I was sweaty, and when I started cleaning up, it was like I was getting ready for my last huzzah. That made it special, I figured, so I took my time, like I’d never do my hair or notice how pretty my brown skin was again. When I finished, I dressed in clothes I’d bought on the Sliver, stuff that couldn’t be replaced, as it was likely the vendor was dead now. Today, I wore red.
Red for anger. Red for the human blood that would be spilled on Earth if our timing was off, even the slightest bit.
“Zara . . .” By his tone, Nadim was frightened by my mood. He didn’t tell me how brightly I shone. Just as well—I wouldn’t have believed it. “You don’t think we can do this.”
Trust him to cut to the heart of it, like he always had. “It doesn’t matter what I think. We can only do what’s possible. And we have to try, regardless.”
And the facts were: We’d lost our drones. Used up our extra weapons. Watched our friends die. C-X couldn’t influence the swarm the way Xyll had. It made sense; she wasn’t pure Phage, but when I considered our assets left in this fight, they were damn few.
Once, I might’ve suggested we run. I wasn’t that person anymore. Part of me wished I was, because maybe I could’ve saved the ones I loved, but I didn’t even think that was a good thing—to live another day by letting everyone else die. Nadim had finally rubbed off on me to the point that I couldn’t imagine reacting any other way. Whether I liked it or not, I was a hero now, poised to make my own ridiculous sacrifice.
The only question was whether it would be enough.
Bea came looking for me before I left my room, but she wasn’t sad-eyed or tearful, thankfully. I didn’t have the reserves to comfort her. Maybe I had the strength for this final battle if nobody asked anything else of me.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said softly.
“About what?”
“We don’t have that long until we hit the Sol system.”
I stood in the doorway to my room, still not sure where she was going with this. “That’s right.”
“I don’t want to go into this fight with regrets, Zara.”
“You’re going to have to say it plain. I’m not at my sharpest right now.”
“There’s only one thing I want,” Bea told me.
“And what’s that?”
“To spend that time with you.”
At first, I wasn’t sure if she meant what it sounded like she did, but she came on strong, pushing me to the wall and cupping my face for a kiss that left me dizzy and breathless. Hell yes, it was past time to do this. I let her nudge me back inside, and while we were kissing, touching each other, I stopped caring that my world was about to end. Bea became my world.
We stumbled back to the bed, and I was getting my last pristine outfit wrinkled as hell, but I didn’t care about that either. When Bea pulled at my shirt, I yanked it over my head and threw it on the floor. We tumbled to the bed together, all silk and sweetness, hands smoothing skin, mine brown, hers gold, and her hair was so soft spilling against my hands. She was hotter and more aggressive than I would have imagined, and I let Bea have her way, gasping softly into the curve of her throat as her hands got busier and mine did too. Hard to say who pulled Nadim in first, but we’d gotten in the habit of sharing all good and lovely things.
He made it deeper and better, physical sensation threaded with sheer emotional warmth, and his pure joy flooded us. Everything expanded, and I became Beatriz, feeling my hands on her skin; her gasps felt like mine. She twisted against me, above me, her face tight with yearning. I pulled her back down into a desperate kiss. Her mouth moved on mine with the same longing, the same fear that this moment might never come again.
We’d lost and might lose more, but for now, we were together, affirming life.
“Zara.” She kissed me again. Again. Soft. Hard. Fierce.
“Zara.” Nadim, in my head, in my ears, drunk on what we shared with him.
I whispered both their names, dug my hands into Bea’s hips. Her head fell back.
When the pleasure spiked, we went hard, and our minds opened to Nadim, pulling him into the bond just before everything was washed with gold. Afterward, we curled up together. I petted every inch of her skin that I could reach, faintly resenting the fact that I could be this happy just before losing everything I loved. But I couldn’t even hold on to that brief bitterness when I was floating in beauty like this. Bea kissed my shoulder, my throat, and finally my lips.
/>
“We finally did it,” she said. And she seemed satisfied too.
“I’m glad you decided you didn’t want to leave something this important undone.”
“Beautiful.” Nadim sounded dreamy, and I figured we’d passed the point of no return, sharing this with our Leviathan. “This was never mentioned in any files.”
I was almost tempted to ask if it was good for him too, but he probably wouldn’t get the joke. Bea rested her head on my shoulder, and I settled her close, breathing in the delicate scent of her skin, flowers from the scented soap she’d brought aboard.
“I love you both,” I whispered. She curled into me with a contented little purr.
We dozed a little, or I suspected we did, because somehow the seconds spun out into minutes and then to hours. Soon Nadim was whispering, “We enter the Sol system in half an hour, Zara.”
I nudged Bea. “Time for us to get up.”
It was time, period. Lifekiller couldn’t be far off, and he’d have the other half of the swarm with him. Maybe we had a shot, but I couldn’t see it. This time, my ability to pinpoint weakness just had me looking at us. I could imagine him draining Earth and moving on to Greenheld. Our epic resistance wouldn’t even be a footnote in the god-king’s march to conquest.
It was hard to picture what he’d do unchecked. Devour everything? Found another draconian empire, where beings served or got eaten? Or maybe the time in cryo had driven him mad, so like the Phage, he no longer followed an actual plan. He just lashed out in untrammeled fury. I remembered the boom of Lifekiller’s voice:
I AM COMING YOU WILL KNEEL
Would he make that offer to Earth? Hell, maybe humans would kneel.
Sighing, Bea rolled out of my head, disrupting my dire thoughts. By the time we had our clothes on, Nadim was stirring, anxious again. “Ghostwalk is coming. He’ll be at your door soon.”
“Probably has news,” I said. “We should huddle up one last time and maybe go see Chao-Xyll.” Though I didn’t say it, both Bea and Nadim knew.
We were running out of time.