Ascension: A Tangled Axon Novel

by Jacqueline Koyanagi

  Sadness and rage twisted her features, tightened her muscles. Tears welled in her eyes. The one person I needed to hate was the only one who understood my sorrow. How many times had she gone looking for her sister, only to lose her again? How many realities had she breached to find a version of my sister she believed could repair her family, make it whole? My chest ached for all the grief Birke was holding back; I could see it in her posture, her controlled movements. We’d lost my sister. Our sister.

  “The Tangled Axon let Nova choose what to become,” I finally said, unconsciously touching my chest where the lightning—or whatever it was—first pierced my body. I felt bereft of all those other souls that had touched mine, like hanging onto the edge of a dream.

  Birke hurried from containment unit to containment unit, searching for Nova, though neither her sister nor mine were there. The only sounds were her heeled footfalls and the Tangled Axon’s calmed engine. Even the enforcers remained quiet, watching denial propel Birke back and forth, as if checking each chamber one last time would pull Nova out of the aether. Eventually, she slumped down and leaned against the charred metal. She rubbed her face, as if that’s where grief lived and she could be scrubbed clean of its presence if she just tried hard enough.

  Pity tugged me forward. I let go of Tev’s hands and motioned for the crew to stay where they were, then walked to Birke and sat down next to her. A cramped muscle throbbed along my back, reminding me of the disease I still had to deal with.

  Birke didn’t look at me, but didn’t tell me to leave, either. “Everywhere I go, she dies.”

  I leaned my head against the unit and looked up at the hangar’s strange aurora-ceiling. Like Dr. Shrike’s eyes. “My parents died at Adul. Now my sister is gone too.”

  Birke’s breath caught. I didn’t look at her. I hated crying in front of people; maybe she did, too. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Tev and the others talking to Marre, who disentangled herself from the Tangled Axon’s plasma. Her engines slowly powered the rest of the way down. Hitching, quiet sobs shook Birke’s shoulders.

  “We need you to exonerate us of the massacre,” I said. “Come clean about passing guide work and illusions as medicine. We have the recording.”

  She huffed sardonically, then rubbed her nose. “Guess I’m done on your side of the breach.”

  I shrugged, thinking about the Transliminal mods on Spin, and the ecstatic transformation I’d experienced there. “Maybe not. People forgive pretty easily when you have something they want.”

  “Not after Adul.”

  Anger flared, but I suppressed it.

  “Go home,” I said. “Find something to live for instead of chasing death.”

  “I can’t. I have to find her.”

  “Your sister is gone, Birke.”

  “My name is Alana. Not Birke. I use a pseudonym—”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “I have to find her.”

  I turned to her and looked into my own eyes. The same ones I’d had since childhood, staring back at me as if from a mirror. Eyes that had watched her Nova wither and die from my own disease, and then lost her again in countless otherworlds. I wondered how long it would take before she’d tunnel through reality again and look for Nova elsewhere. Nothing I could say now would teach her how to let someone go.

  “Contact the authorities from my side,” I said, then stood and extended a hand to her. My skin crawled when she took it and I helped her up. No matter what we’d shared, this was still the woman who’d destroyed one of our planets and killed my mother and father. I couldn’t touch her without feeling violated.

  “Tell them we’re innocent,” I continued. “Tell them what you did, or we will.”

  “I’ll transmit my report within the hour.”

  “You know we have proof.”

  “I’ll do it, don’t worry. I have nothing left over there.”

  I lingered a moment longer, taking in the face that would plague me for years to come, when just something would trigger flashbacks of Adul or my sister’s ascension. I gave myself that moment to memorize her, then turned around and didn’t look back.

  Tev and the Tangled Axon were waiting. And beyond that, the sky.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The space Adul once occupied had been designated a no-fly zone. A vast field of beacons glowed inside a ring of buoys—tokens of communal mourning deposited by mining ships, transports, medical shuttles, private vessels, industrial shippers, and even a few othersiders.

  By the time we arrived, Ovie and I had taken the mangled shell of the dead Transliminal tracking device to engineering, where we modified it to add to the memorial. We ripped out the copper nest at its center, leaving only a hull of magnetic mirroring inside. We installed one of our own beacons—a light that erupted from an opening at the top of the device, flickering like candles.

  When we finished crafting our tribute to Adul, Ovie wiped his hands and stood. His bones shifted; muscle stretched. Fur sprouted from his skin. Claws clipped the floor where once heavy bootfalls echoed through engineering. Bright, ice-blue eyes stared up at me from a fierce, intelligent face. Wolf-Ovie shook himself off and trotted down the corridor to fetch his captain, leaving a pile of grease-stained clothes behind. No longer trailed by shadows of his true self, he was a canine in earnest when he willed it so. Ovie wasn’t a man who was like a wolf, but a wolf who had tried to be a man in a world that wanted him to choose between one or the other.

  But he didn’t have to, now. The Tangled Axon had transformed us all, bringing our true selves to the surface.

  I collected his clothes, folded them, and placed them in the nook at the back of engineering next to his box of pliers and rings. Atop the box was the smaller metal container in which we often kept small supplies like rivets, but Ovie’s unmistakable handwriting was scrawled across it in silver marker:

  Alana.

  I picked up the box, opened it, poured its contents into my hand. A chain of linked metal rings pooled in my palm. Small purple niobium rings dotted a chain of aluminum, just long enough to fall at the bottom of my neck when I clasped it on.

  My fingertips grazed the metal at my throat, cool to the touch. Joy unfurled in my chest. Nova would have loved it. She always said purple was my best color, and that I never wore enough of it. Grief shuddered through me as I realized she may have been the one to tell Ovie which color to use. She wasn’t exactly shy about giving her opinion. Her ghost lingered everywhere, even between the rings of this necklace.

  No, not ghost. I laughed through a few tears and gripped the chain, steadying myself. Nova was where she’d always longed to be. She wasn’t dead, just . . . elsewhere. I had to believe it. In a reality where Ovie could be both a man and a wolf, where a woman could become a ship, where a person could experience every possible life across an infinite number of realities . . . it had to be possible for my sister to have moved to a higher plane, and for her to live on without flesh to bind her. I felt her in every breath, sensed her in every piece of metal I touched, saw her in all that black, silent creation outside in the Big Quiet. She was everything, as she’d always wanted. Maybe she’d been right about her place in the universe.

  Maybe all of us were right, always. We chose who we were to become.

  The necklace felt at home against my skin. I wiped my tears and stood, running a thumb over Ovie’s handwriting. I may have lost my sister, but she hadn’t left me alone. I had gained a family who valued me, trusted me, cherished me as one of their own. A crew who collected broken folks scattered throughout the system and called them sister, brother. People who not only chased their dreams, but became them.

  In return for our devotion, Marre and the Tangled Axon lifted all our brilliance to the surface and let us be who we really believed we were. Out here, we lived in the flush and ecstasy of being exactly where we were meant to be, unafraid to open the door to our souls to reveal our highest truths.

  There is no greater love than that.

&nbs
p; “Launch,” Tev said, hand pressed to the glass.

  Everyone but Marre stood on the observation deck, watching as the Axon dropped our modified device into the field of beacons. Just one more firefly glittering in the black, a small thing by which to remember a species we’d barely begun to understand.

  More than that, it was my memorial for my parents, for Nova. For all those who had lost something precious in the massacre. It wasn’t enough. Nothing would be.

  But it was beautiful. All that metal and coil fashioned into a shimmering reliquary in the dark.

  We watched as the device became lost in the cloud of lights that grew day by day. In a matter of months, there would be so much glowing debris that the Nulan government would have to quarantine the area to prevent it from drifting and becoming a flying hazard.

  Our silent crew stood in silent awe, remembering Adul and the beings she’d cradled in her atmosphere, wondering just how much we’d really lost. What thoughts and dreams the Adulans had that we couldn’t translate. What their unique perspective had taught them about our collective place in the universe. We’d never know.

  “I’ve got to get to Gira,” Slip said, fingers idly running through the fur on Ovie’s back. With her own name cleared, she’d gotten the Giran medical board to hear her out and ultimately reinstate her. In exchange, she offered to head a research and development team working on a cure for Mel’s. “With your permission, Captain, we talked about taking the shuttle.”

  Tev flinched. “Do you really have to go all the way to Gira?”

  “Just for a month here and there. I need to work with them on protocol and get the ball rolling.”

  “Maybe we could use the time to take some shore leave,” Tev said.

  “Tev.” Slip raised her eyebrows, then turned to me and touched my arm. “Go. Be with your aunt.”

  Thank goodness for Slip’s sensitivity.

  Tev rubbed her forehead. “Both shuttles are low on fuel—”

  I touched Tev’s arm. “Please.”

  She looked at me, ready to argue, but I stared right back at her without relenting, pleading with her with my eyes. “Slip will be fine. She’ll be back to us in no time, and she’s doing important work. Please. I have to see Lai.”

  “I know, I want you to see her.” Tev exhaled and rubbed a hand over her face, cocking her hip. “Okay, fine. Just bring my medic back to me in one piece, Slip.”

  Slip patted her arm. “You’ll figure out the ladies eventually.”

  Tev swatted at her, then laughed and kissed her, sending her on her way. The whole thing was still so strange to me, seeing the woman I love kissing someone else, but I forced myself not to look away. This was part of Tev’s reality. She loved Slip, and that was enough for me to want to accept their love as part of my life.

  What I felt when their lips met surprised me: it wasn’t jealousy, but warmth. Joy.

  Happiness begets happiness.

  As my brain struggled to process what was still so new to me, my heart took the helm, and I found it wasn’t so strange after all. Eventually, my brain would catch up with my heart. Ultimately, there’s nothing to understand—love just is, in whatever form it takes. Like people.

  Slip left Tev standing on the observation deck in a field of stars. I went to her and touched my forehead to hers, imagining all that starlight collecting in her cells, powering that fierce heart I’d fallen in love with so easily. “You look beautiful,” I said. “You belong out here.”

  She pulled back a little and her eyes moved to my neck. Fingertips brushed the metal they found there, then traced a line to the hollow of my throat. “Ovie gave you a necklace, huh? He must think you’re one of us now.”

  I smiled playfully. “Am I?”

  “I don’t know, love.” She took a step closer, her lips brushing mine. “Think you can handle working on a living ship?”

  “About as well as you can handle a stowaway.”

  “Then welcome aboard, surgeon.”

  I kissed her, finding her body with my hands just as she found mine. A riot of happiness fluttered inside me, almost too much to endure. We barely had any money and little more than a thin thread of hope to cling to, but it didn’t matter. Nova’s veil was tucked in my back pocket, insurance against Birke changing her mind. And somehow, with Tev wrapped around me like a balm, that was more than enough.

  I explored her beautiful mouth, tracing my tongue along her lip, wanting to taste every part of her in slow-motion and savor all I’d found in her. But she then kissed her way across my jaw, my neck, my shoulder, lips trailing with the barest hint of pressure, breath traveling my skin, fracturing my self-control. Every nerve ending burst into flame. Her hands slipped beneath my shirt and pulled me close, palms heating me until I melted against her. As she slid them up and over, peeling my clothes away, I looked at her with bare love, unafraid.

  She took my face into her hands and looked back. I felt in the deepest part of me that she could see me. She saw who I really was.

  Every version of me, scattered across infinite star systems, birthed infinite others with each choice—each moment of love or hate or splendor split into every subsequent possibility, fathomable and unfathomable alike. And it was in this reality, with this version of me, that I had found the Tangled Axon and the people who lived inside her. It was here that I had unsheathed my heart and found Tev, found Marre, found my sister, found a family.

  Found myself.

  The people I loved were stitched together inside the Axon, all of us unraveling at the edges under the friction of a changing world. But we would be okay; we grabbed each other’s loose ends, trimmed them, and tied them off, tucked them under. Together, we buffed our lives to a blinding brilliance and suffused the Tangled Axon with a will of her own. Together, we were incandescent.

  We were alive.

  Heliodoran dust kicked up in small tornadoes as the Tangled Axon landed.

  Memories flooded in like past lives. Another version of me had stowed away here, a lifetime ago, on a then-unfamiliar Gartik transport. It was a version of me I barely recognized. A version of me who had yet to know what it means to fly, to break apart and mend, to fall in love, to wipe the grease from her hands and touch the face of God.

  Sadness crested inside me, like a wave. My parents would never know this changed version of me. It would be a long time before every fleeting thought of them didn’t suffocate me in loss.

  Sparks rained down as Tev and I disembarked, the Axon’s plasma discharges stinging the yard’s dissipator rods above us. Ovie curled up in the mouth of the cargo bay, tail tucked around his body, ears perked forward while he watched us.

  Lai shielded her eyes, jogging out to meet us in one of the cheap suits she wore to work at the call center, hair still falling in long locs down her back. Our ship’s song electrified the entire block, reverberating off the side of a nearby building and echoing back. In it, I heard Marre’s voice. The faint scent of honey surrounded us in wisps.

  When Lai saw who we were, she slowed, stopped. Dropped her hand. Disbelief shook her voice.

  “Alana?”

  I stopped a few steps away, smiling, while Tev lingered a few paces behind to give us space.

  My heart swelled. “Auntie Lai.”

  For a heartbeat, we only stared. Her face looked worn by weeks of anxiety and fear.

  “Thank goodness,” she breathed, collecting me in her trembling arms. There was so much I wanted to say, so many things I wanted to thank her for, but I couldn’t find the words. I just held her, choking on my gratitude, vowing to make everything up to her by showing her the stars.

  “I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again,” she said against my hair. Words spilled out of her in sobs. “I heard about Birke’s confession, but they wouldn’t tell me where you were—”

  “I’m okay,” I assured her. “Everything’s okay. I’ll tell you the whole story, but I want you to meet someone.”

  As Lai reluctantly let me go, patting my cheek a
few times and wiping the tears from her face, Tev joined us. She extended a hand to my aunt, resting the other at the small of my back.

  “Tev Helix, captain of the Tangled Axon.” They shook hands while my aunt gave me a knowing look, all too pleased to see her niece with a beautiful Wooleran starship captain. “Seems I caught a sky surgeon in my cargo hold somewhere along the way. Funny how that happens.”

  “She’s a beautiful Gartik,” Lai said. “There’s a fire in her.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “You have no idea.”

  “So, Ms. Lai.” Tev raised her eyebrow, smiling. “I understand you’re looking for a job.”

  The End

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to my editor, Paula Guran, for her insightful suggestions that turned this novel into the book it wanted to be. Thank you to the rest of the team at Masque Books for their work on Ascension at various stages, including Sean Wallace, Sherin Nicole, Natalie Luhrs, and Neil Clarke. Special thanks goes to Sherin for lending her likeness to Alana on the cover—you’re the spitting image of my favorite sky surgeon—and to Scott Grimando for his beautiful artwork.

  Thank you to my fantastic agent, Rachel Kory, for believing in the crew of the Tangled Axon when she plucked the manuscript out of the slush pile, and for the guidance that helped this book shine. To those who read early drafts of Ascension and offered their feedback, I give my heartfelt thanks: Dan Koyanagi, Christina Simon, Shveta Thakrar, Ty Barbary, Pia Van Ravestein, Stephanie Gunn, and Ash Autumn. Your comments were invaluable.

  Thank you to my friends and family who lifted me up along the way with their kindness and faith in me, in particular Laura Vasilion, Emily Joy Walker, and of course, my wonderful mother and brother.

  Lastly, I must thank three people whose influence on this book can’t be overstated. Christina Simon has been my enthusiastic cheerleader for almost two decades, providing light and encouragement when I couldn’t see the path ahead. You are Family and you are in my heart, always. My partner Dan Koyanagi has never failed to believe in me, or to create a space in which I can babble my way through plotting. I love you and wouldn’t be the person I am without your support. And finally, my partner Dani Higgins has kept me motivated with hir unwavering love and dedication. Sie lit my entire world on fire when sie came into my life, and in turn, ignited my writing. Calling you “muse” would never suffice; you are so much more than that. You are my firebird, my Companion. I love you beyond measure. The three of you are my found family, and you have transformed my life. I love you, I love you, I love you.