Starbreaker

by Amanda Bouchet

  “Less, I imagine, than what endless war would have eliminated.” His cold, unfeeling response was a slap in the face after my outburst.

  I gaped in shock. “Do you actually believe you’re the good guy in all this?”

  “I don’t really care anymore, Quintessa, because when I’m done, I’ll have wiped forty years from existence and can start again—thanks to you and your blood.”

  I stared at him. He’d just said a bunch of words, but I didn’t understand. Confusion and sudden terror choked off my breath. My heartbeat sped up, battering wildly in my chest.

  “You’re bluffing,” Jax growled. “No one can do that.”

  Sanaa took a sharp step forward to stand next to Shade. “What do you need from us, sir?”

  I shot her an angry look on instinct. She was still playing her role, standing tall and straight, seemingly unaffected by anything the Overseer said, no matter how awful or preposterous. Sanaa’s ability to adapt and carry on, no matter what, kick-started mine and got my brain back online. She was a force of nature, and right then, she reminded me of lava hardened into strong black rock and polished smooth by the trials she and my father had been through to try to contain this lunatic. The time would come when she would heat and crack and fucking explode all over. I couldn’t wait. The Overseer had no idea what was coming for him in the form of Sanaa Mwende.

  Or Tess Bailey.

  My fingers curled around the flash blast in my hand. I found the detonator switch and rubbed my thumb across the corrugated knob as my gaze whisked over Jax and Merrick. Wrath. Shock. Revulsion. Dread. The same storm crashed inside me. I needed to understand what the Overseer had planned.

  Shade kept quiet at the forefront with me and Sanaa, probably thinking his Bridgebane act was up but not quite certain. Not speaking just condemned him further. His disgust came through the mask. No one could hide that kind of visceral reaction. Behind me, Ahern didn’t say a word. Shiori murmured a soft prayer, her lilting whisper a reminder of times and places worth fighting for. I swallowed.

  “I don’t need anything at this time, Lieutenant,” the Overseer answered. “Quintessa’s already given me all the answers.”

  “What are you talking about?” I’d never given this man anything. Not affection. Not trust. Not an inch of me or anything else.

  “You see…” The Overseer flipped a switch on his console and lit up a monitor. He swung the screen our way. Explosions popped and burst all over the place. Phaser fire sped across the screen. Unarmed ships and cruisers disintegrated, picked off by blinding flashes as they tried to flee. My eyes widened. There was a war zone somewhere in the galaxy.

  Shock stabbed me in the gut. I nearly doubled over. There was no sound on the monitor, just a savage visual bombardment. One whole side of a huge spacedock blew apart, the damage catastrophic. Great Powers, where is that?

  “Is this happening?” Horror flooded me like a toxin that froze my limbs and stopped my heart. “Right now?”

  “The enhanced soldiers I created before you stopped my production had one purpose: to find the rebel hideout. This wasn’t their original function, of course, but I revised it as new facts came to light. I began to understand several years ago that the rebel base wasn’t simply hidden, it was elsewhere, in another dimension—and one not just anyone can get into. You had to be special—or have someone special near you.”

  Sickness crashed through me in a wave.

  The Overseer switched on another monitor. I recognized the shapes on the screen, those connected structures. There was Spacedock 1. That was the Fold going up in flames.

  I took a step forward, my heart shattering like the wall that blew outward from the center of the rebel stronghold. Bodies floated like tiny stars in the darkness, lit up by flames and swirling through the void.

  “You monster!” Tears blurred my eyes. The Fold wasn’t just a home for rebel soldiers. There were thousands of families. Whole communities. Gone.

  “Then you found the wormhole in Sector 14. The Black Widow isn’t a black hole after all, is it? And it didn’t take you anywhere you knew. It took you where you needed to go. Your ship-fixing lover’s basement was filled with several interesting things, including your DNA. He was one of your best hunters, Nathaniel”—the Overseer’s questioning gaze settled on Shade—“or so I’m told by the people who are still looking for him on my orders. Yours, apparently, were canceled. Care to explain?”

  I gripped the flash blast so hard it dug into bone. “I ditched him,” I snarled before Shade could talk. “I hate him almost as much as I hate you.”

  The Overseer shrugged. “This…pocket in space where you’ve all been hiding. It isn’t a here or a now. It’s a phenomenon the faithful have been whispering about for years. It’s why I’ve indulged them—to learn more. They call it the home of the Second Children. The Mornavail.”

  My body could barely keep up with my frantic heartbeat, my blood pumping too fast through my veins. Light-headed, I said hoarsely, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The Mornavail must have come from there, but then they spread out and integrated into our version of humanity. They forgot who they were and where they came from. Except their differences remained, no matter how diluted. One:”—he ticked off a finger—“their incorruptible blood, preventing them from succumbing to any of our diseases. And two:”—another finger—“their ability to slide into an alternate time and place within the fabric of the universe.”

  The Overseer flicked on another monitor. There was Loralie Harris—covered in blood and soot and being dragged half-conscious onto a Dark Watch warship.

  “The rebel leader is a pure blood. I had others, but you stole them—driving me to this.” He indicated the death and ruination coming across the monitors. I shuddered, so heartsick my stomach heaved.

  “Not too long ago, one of my patrol ships stumbled through a gravitational warp in Sector 17 and found what you’ve been hiding all these years. How rebels can disappear so completely. Only the enhanced soldiers survived, though. Two came back to report while a small unit hovered on the edge of the hideaway, following it. It moved, but they were able to keep up. Like a living thing, it tried to shake them. It couldn’t. I’m emptying it now, as you can see.”

  Oh, I saw. The destruction of something irreplaceable and unique. Something I cherished. Explosions and murder. People I didn’t know. Friends. Comrades. So many dead. I thanked the Powers the Unholy Stench was at the Mooncamps and not anywhere near this.

  I couldn’t watch anymore and looked at the Overseer through a haze of burning hate. This man took. He took with no conscience. “Why? What do you want from this?”

  “I want to start over, and thanks to you, I can. With a few tweaks, I can have everything I have now and the love of the people. I’ll be a god to them when I’m finished. And Caitrin will love me. She’ll see me settle the war peacefully and worship me like everyone else. I’ll have her. Our children.” His disdain scraped over me like a rash. “Not whatever you are.”

  My brain short-circuited again. “The war’s over. Mom’s dead. You’re insane, and she would hate this!”

  The Overseer’s smile didn’t need to stretch wide for his triumph to be huge in it. A little upward tug to his lips was all it took to terrify me into believing he truly had a plan. “She’ll never know. It’ll all be different.”

  “How? You killed Mom. You can’t get her back now.”

  “I’ve been doing experiments. And do you know what I’ve learned, thanks to you mostly?”

  I shook my head, the ache inside me so raw and heavy I knew the weight of it would pin me to this man’s atrocities forever.

  “If I jump into the Black Widow at warp speed with Loralie Harris’s blood in my veins, thinking not only about wanting to end up in what I believe you call the Fold, but when, I can arrive where I want, at the time I want, and create a
new future from there.”

  Wait. When? Was that something he’d discovered on his own? Was that even possible? We never lost time in the Fold. But I’d also never entered it via the Black Widow while thinking about a date forty years ago.

  “And your army of super soldiers can go through with you,” I said, sickened and devastated. They were the only invaders who could survive the Fold. No wonder he’d been trying to churn them out in a hurry. He’d put the final pieces together and was ready. For this.

  “Precisely. I quell unrest in the galaxy through firm but…less destructive means and rise again less military dictator and more benevolent savior. Caitrin will be pleased.”

  He talked about Mom as though she were alive. Or would be again. “You’ll still be you. Mom will see that, and she’ll hate you just as much as the first time.”

  “She didn’t always hate me. We were happy until whoever spawned you corrupted her and turned her against me.”

  Did he really believe that? Did he suspect Bridgebane? He didn’t act like it. Not really. He’d barely looked at his friend and general in minutes. He was too gleefully destroying me.

  I wanted to tell him this whole thing was impossible, but I couldn’t. The Fold was a mystery. It had taken him years and liters of my blood, but he’d figured it out, or at least the potential of it. A potential that a twisted, selfish mind could think up.

  “I’ll never exist.” So many people would never exist.

  Others might live, though.

  “No.” The Overseer clicked off the monitors again. “And she’ll love me like she said she did.”

  “She didn’t.” Fury shook my voice. “She didn’t then, and she won’t. You bought her. She sold herself for peace.”

  “That’s the delightful thing about a do-over, girl. You can change how everything looks.”

  Abruptly, he turned to our fake General Bridgebane. “So quiet, Nathaniel? Afraid I’ll notice that’s not your voice? I’m assuming it’s the bounty-hunter boyfriend beneath the mask. But Lieutenant Mwende”—he shook his head—“I’m very disappointed in you. You had the potential to accompany me on this groundbreaking journey, with the help of an injection or two.”

  All thought stopped, all fear and questions and dread. I acted. Reacted. I pressed the detonator switch, jumped in front of Shade, and hurled the flash blast at the Overseer’s head. “Catch!”

  He automatically lifted his hands. When someone throws something at you and yells Catch, you do.

  The flash blast went off in the Overseer’s face. I closed my eyes at the last second and hoped my head shielded Shade from the blinding flare of light. The percussion part hit, and I gasped as my heart slammed back against my spine and stopped. I couldn’t draw a breath. No air! Can’t see!

  I stood still and waited for my lungs to recover. The shock to my body wouldn’t last, and I had to be ready first. The Dark Watch used flash blasts to keep people back, usually in prisons where mob situations cropped up, throwing them from a distance to avoid the detonation effects themselves. We’d only been ten feet from the center of the blast. The Overseer and his super soldiers absorbed the worst of it, but my body still felt hollowed-out and crushed.

  I dragged in a breath and opened my eyes. My lids hadn’t shielded me entirely. A spotted landscape swam before me, but at least it wasn’t total temporary blindness.

  The Overseer stumbled, groping sightlessly for his console. He gripped it for balance. “Kill them!” he gasped out, his lungs still crippled by the blast.

  Enhanced soldiers charged forward. The residual punch of the weapon hardly slowed them down. Their attack was swift and terrifying, and I reeled back from the onslaught.

  “Sanaa! Merrick!” We had super soldiers, too, and they were better. Free will and pure blood. Fuck those goons. We’d beat them, even with the odds against us.

  I spun and propelled Shade toward Jax, Shiori, and Ahern while Merrick and Sanaa sprang into action. Shiori stood still, blind already. Ahern had her hands up for protection and swayed a little. Shade’s eyes watered, but they were open. He blinked and squinted. Had the blue eye lenses protected him?

  “Tess?” He reached for me, missing by a few inches.

  I stuck Shiori’s hand in Jax’s and Ahern’s in Shade’s. The fake cuffs were gone. They must have popped them open after the blast.

  “Go!” I pointed Shade toward the living quarters. “There’s an escape cruiser off the Overseer’s bedroom. There’s an air lock. Bring them!”

  “I’m not leaving you!” He reached for me with his free hand.

  “I’ll be there!” I cried, breaking his hold. “Just bring them!”

  He hesitated. Whatever he saw in my face convinced him. “Don’t let me down, Tess Bailey.”

  I nodded, leaned forward, and kissed him. The electric connection between us zapped my lungs into working again. Shade’s eyes met mine. Then he wheeled around, gathered his blind flock, and herded them toward the living quarters.

  I turned in time to see Sanaa use a downed goon as a vault as she kicked two others into oblivion. She landed on her feet and attacked the next one.

  Merrick grappled with two soldiers. They both dodged bullets. Sanaa threw a knife. Blood spurted. Merrick cracked a neck, and the sound snapped me into action. I sprang toward the Overseer, darting between Dark Watch soldiers.

  Someone grabbed the back of my jacket, yanking me to a stop so hard my arms ripped back in their sockets. I shouted. Merrick seized the soldier by the neck and threw her into the window panel. A shot went off. I ducked. Merrick grunted but hardly moved, a hole in the meaty flesh of his shoulder. His lips pulled back in a snarl. His eyes lit with such boiling hatred that I almost pitied anyone in his path as he lunged forward.

  Merrick ducked, spun, kicked—kept fighting as though he didn’t even feel the second bullet that hit him. His blood splattered across my forehead. I jerked back, blinking.

  Sanaa threw another knife and followed it with rapid bullets. Three goons fell, and my ears rang with the sound of gunshots. She moved so fast I hardly saw her. She and Merrick got back to back and fought together.

  I saw a clear path to the Overseer and sprinted, ramming into him. We both toppled over. His eyes moved wildly in an effort to see me. He started to flail and hit, and I kneeled on his arms, straddling him.

  “It’ll never work,” I growled, gripping him by the throat and forcing his head back at a hard angle.

  “Why’s that?” He laughed in my face, the bastard. I squeezed harder.

  “Because you’ll be an old man, and she’ll be fourteen. She’ll look at you and be disgusted.”

  “I’m working on that. Pure Mornavail blood is astoundingly regenerative. Experiments are going well. You can be a test subject.”

  “Never!”

  He wrestled an arm free and jabbed me in the thigh with something. I looked down and saw him finish emptying a syringe into me. Pain flared out from the quick injection.

  “What is that?” Alarm tore through me. A burn hit my veins from whatever he’d dumped through the needle.

  He smiled—wicked. “The final injection.”

  Horror crashed over me. “The one that reboots people?”

  “It was meant for Merrick Maddox, but you’re the one who jumped on me. I’m not sure what it’ll do to someone who hasn’t had the previous enhancements.” His eyes focused again, the pupils returning to almost normal. “I guess you’re still my guinea pig.”

  Snarling, I lifted the Overseer’s head by the neck and slammed his skull against the floor. His mouth slackened and his eyes lost focus. I started choking him. “I’ll float myself before I ever let you control me.” The dark vow settled into me as I gripped his neck harder than I’d ever gripped anything.

  His mouth opened, gasping for air. He couldn’t breathe. I wouldn’t let him.

 
The lift doors opened. I glanced over my shoulder. Goons poured out, a deluge of Dark Watch. They started firing.

  I threw myself to the side, taking cover behind the large console. Wheezing and choking down air, the Overseer rolled in the other direction.

  Merrick lifted a huge table and threw it at the incoming soldiers. Sanaa grabbed me and carried me under her arm as she dodged bullets. Merrick spun and followed.

  I screamed. I wasn’t done! Was there an antidote?

  We barreled into the living quarters. Sanaa swung around and closed the doors. She blew the lock with a punch that went halfway through the wall, but I doubted even that would stop super soldiers.

  She tossed me to my feet. I landed running, and we crossed rooms that hadn’t changed in decades. Despite the overall drabness, I could see Mom’s touch everywhere, making plain things special. That was my mother. Subversive. A survivor. She’d walked the same bridge as my father.

  We reached the master bedroom. Shade stood at the door to the air lock, tense, armed, and looking ready to come back for me. His eyes widened, relief flaring in them. “Come on!” He waved us toward the tunnel.

  “You got it open.” I pushed him ahead of me and followed him down the accordion-like passageway. It was a long one, twenty-five feet maybe. I’d thought I’d need my lock magic, but someone had guessed the password.

  “It wasn’t hard. ‘Caitrin’ was the code. The man’s obsessed. The others are already on board. Jax is powering up the ship. It turned on to ‘Caitrin’ also.”

  I shuddered. My poor mother.

  Shouts reached us from somewhere in the living quarters. Goons were catching up to us. We raced onto the escape cruiser. It wasn’t the one I remembered, although it was similar and could probably house a dozen people. We entered through an antechamber stocked with weapons, several of which I recognized.

  “Jax!” Shade hollered into the main body of the ship. “They’re on!”