“Leave us,” Mahtim boomed at the attendants.
Startled, some rose from their seats. Others remained sitting, eyes wide.
“But Sir,” one complained, “if the Vark return, we won’t be here to—”
“I said leave us,” he snapped again.
In silence, the attendants shuffled out of the pod using the far door. In their absence, the room felt even colder.
“What of the pilots?” Mahtim turned his ire on Kira.
“Any moment now, Sir,” she answered. “They docked moments after Lightbringer. They’re coming through the airlock now.”
Her voice sounded smaller than usual.
She’s afraid of him, I knew.
“Go fetch them.” Mahtim stared hard at Kira. “I don’t want them talking to anyone on the ship. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Sir.” She spun and left the room.
In the deep silence remaining, Mahtim and I stood a few meters apart. He looked me up and down, inspecting me, and I did the same to him. I sensed his emotion barely controlled, the thoughts racing through his mind. I knew how to read most humans, but something about him confounded me.
This mission means something different to him than the rest of us, I knew.
I had questions, so many questions.
I knew the best way to get answers was to let him talk.
“Who told you to proceed with the attack against Grave B-7?” He stiffened to his full height.
“I did,” I answered.
“You defied a direct order from Commander Strope?”
“Strope never ordered me to stop.”
“You knew our attack protocol.” His face tightened. “We sent you the plans. If you’d followed them—”
“We’d all be dead,” I insisted. “They’d have hit us with our warships still docked. It would’ve been a slaughter.”
I saw the argument in his eyes. He reminded me of Maliah, his disgust with me all too palpable. He just stood there, quaking with words unsaid.
He wants to say something.
Why does he hesitate?
The door opened behind me. Kira entered the room ahead of two Hermes pilots. In robes pale and sweeping, the pair looked as if they’d been worshipping Sufi, not piloting warships in pursuit of Strigoi.
The male pilot entered first. He pulled back his white hood, and I recognized him from Strope’s barracks deep within the mountain.
Young. So young.
The woman entered behind him. She looked rigid in her robes, and she wore her fearsome soldier’s mask. She was the one who’d spoken over the com.
‘Status of the Vark?’ Kira had asked her.
‘Destroyed,’ the girl had claimed.
When she pulled her hood back and removed her white mask, I felt a shiver run through my body.
Mina, the Calipha’s daughter, stood before me.
“Mina…” I said her name.
She didn’t smile. She couldn’t ever smile. But she looked at me with the kind of respect she’d never shown me on Hermes.
“Lightbringer.” She nodded. “So it’s done? B-7 is destroyed?”
“It’s a white dwarf now,” I said. “No Vark remain.”
Mina looked past me and glared at Mahtim. She liked him even less than Strope did.
“Then it’s all worthwhile,” she said.
I looked at Mahtim. Dark thoughts moved in his mind. I wanted to face him down and pull the truth out of him, but Mina’s presence distracted me.
I had more questions than ever.
“How?” Kira asked the two pilots. “How did you catch the Vark? There must’ve been thirty ships…and only seven of you.”
“Pardon,” interrupted the male pilot, “but it was all Lady Mina. I’ve never seen anything like it. She did things…I don’t know…the Calipha must’ve made her train with pilot-sims since birth.”
Mina shook her head. “Mother never made me train a day in my life. I did it on my own time. Strope helped me.”
I looked Mina over. Even through her robes, I recognized the absence of a belly.
“Your child?” I asked.
She swallowed hard. She’d expected my question.
“Zephayus…” she said. “I asked him to…remove it. He did it without question. Mother…she’ll never know. She’ll be dead by the time we return—if we return.”
I considered her sacrifice.
I realized her coldness toward me hadn’t ever been real.
She hated her mother. She’d sacrificed her child to be part of the war. She’d risked everything just to fight.
…and if she hadn’t—
“Where’s Strope?” I asked. “Did he survive?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but her first syllable froze on her tongue. I followed her eyes and settled upon Mahtim, who’d retreated into the shadows in the pod’s far end.
He lifted something heavy from the floor and marched back to us.
I saw the darkness in his eyes.
I heard his ragged breath.
And I felt the skin crawl on the back of my neck.
“Captain,” Kira said to him, “isn’t that the hypo-rifle we’re saving for the—”
“Silence,” he hissed.
I took one step toward him, and then froze.
With a grunt, he leveled the massive weapon at me. The hypo-rifle was different than I’d expected.
Black casing.
Dark tubing.
It’s almost a Strigoi weapon.
“You shouldn’t have done it, Lightbringer.” He sneered.
The others remained frozen. They didn’t understand.
“It was you,” I said. “You sent the signal to B-7 Black. You led them here. You’re infected. You—”
He pointed the weapon at my head. A man as narrow as him shouldn’t have been able to lift such a thing.
But he’s not all human.
Damnit, Cal. How didn’t you see this?
“Zephayus should’ve killed you when he had the chance.” A rotten grin corrupted his face. “It won’t matter. Grave DD-9 Ebon knows we’re coming. And there’ll be no Hermes left.”
I couldn’t listen any longer.
I closed my eyes.
I felt my nano-light nodes begin to separate from my body.
I wasn’t afraid. Once I swept beneath his skin and cured the Strigoi virus infesting him, he’d be a broken man, I knew.
But when he pulled the weapon’s trigger, something went wrong.
A deadly light encapsulated me.
My body died.
And I collapsed into an abyss I’d never imagined.
The weapon.
It’s not for the Strigoi.
It’s for me.
The Dead Know All
“This will be the last time you dream of me.”
In a cold, dark place, I shivered. My bones hurt, and my skin crackled when I moved. I clutched my shoulders and felt my naked self.
When I opened my eyes, I saw nothing.
“Where are you?” I called to him. “Why can’t I see anything? Am I dead?”
I expected to hear his footsteps. His breath. A soft rustling as he approached.
But I heard only his voice, far away as a wave breaking on a distant shore.
“Think, Cal,” he said. “If you were dead, you wouldn’t be here with me. You wouldn’t dream. There’s no afterlife for little blue hologram girls.”
I blinked, and even though my eyes saw nothing beyond the inky black, my mind awakened.
He’s right.
I’m a machine, not human.
I’m not dead.
I hugged my knees and hoped for warmth.
“Why will this be my final dream of you?”
His voice sounded terribly far away.
“Because. When you wake, you’re going to do something you should’ve done many hundreds of years ago. You’re going to—”
“…plug in,” I said. “Turn off my inhibitors. Learn everyth
ing. And cut off the part of me that wants to dream…to be human.”
“That’s my girl.” He sounded affectionate. “You know this wouldn’t have happened if you’d have let yourself be what you were meant to be. If you’d plugged yourself into the Ring’s console and let all knowledge flood you, you’d have seen this betrayal coming. You’d have seen it…and much more.”
I let out my life’s most profound sigh.
He’s right again.
I’ve been trying too hard.
“It’s too late.” I lamented. “My foolishness has cost me everything.”
“No.”
“No?”
“Think about it, Cal. If it were too late, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
I peeled myself from the cold black floor and stood naked in the lightless abyss. It wasn’t just a dream I moved within. Whatever weapon Mahtim had used had propelled me to the very bottom of my consciousness. My human body had been destroyed. Even my light-nodes had been immobilized, shut down into a strange form of hypo-sleep.
“The weapon…it’s meant to work on machines. Like the Strigoi. But also on me. I’m a machine, too.” I walked aimlessly through the dark.
“You should’ve killed him,” said Joff. I could almost feel his disappointment.
“I know. It was Mina. I felt bad for her. And her baby. I was…distracted.”
I walked for a long while, reaching nothing, going nowhere. I wanted to find the source of Joff’s voice, but I came to understand he was everywhere…and everything.
“I should’ve turned off my learning inhibitors after you died,” I said. “Imagine the weapon I’d be. I probably could’ve invented a weapon strong enough to wipe out the Strigoi in a single stroke. Instead of a Coffin Engine, a Lightbringer Engine.”
“No.” His voice surrounded me, gentle yet all-knowing.
“Are you going to correct everything I say?” I countered.
“No,” he said again, but with a soft laugh. “You needed to be human for a long while. You needed to care, and to understand compassion, mercy, and love.”
I thought on his words.
And I agreed.
“You’re right. I’d have lashed out,” I admitted. “I’d have destroyed everything just to end the Strigoi. My limited understanding of emotion…it would’ve been just enough to create a monster of me.”
He didn’t say anything.
But I felt his approval.
“If we’re standing here talking about the end of my humanity, we’re also saying goodbye, aren’t we?” I stopped walking.
“We said it long ago,” he answered. “You’ve resurrected me inside yourself. I’m not really Joff. You know this.”
He’s right.
I remade him in my mind.
Still haven’t told him why.
“I had my reasons.” I clutched myself to stave off the shivers. “I stored my memories of you in my light-nodes. The idea was to one day…after all this ended…to make a body for you. A real, human body just like mine. We would’ve lived together. Had children together. Outlasted all other things.”
“It would’ve been false,” he said.
Another shiver wormed through my body. The dark space surrounding me felt colder than before.
“I know,” I admitted. “I’ve always known. To remake you from memory alone…it would’ve been wrong. Selfish of me. The idea of us living forever…two machines in human skin…it feels too much like our enemy.”
“Like them,” he said.
I wandered deeper into the invisible night. I tried to imagine the darkness ending, as if the walls of my consciousness would eventually close in and imprison me. But I reached no end, no walls, and no meaning. Whether the dark place was a dream or partly real, I couldn’t grasp.
I reined in my shivers.
I embraced the cold.
And I made many decisions in my too-human mind.
“I will love you,” I said, “but I will forget you.”
“Yes.” Joff sounded calm.
“If I escape this place, wherever I am, I will consume all knowledge. And I will use it to defeat the Strigoi.”
“Good.”
“Some part of me will remain human. If only because I’ve tried to be one for so long. But the rest of me will become the weapon humanity needs. Not out of love, no. They’ll never love me. But because the alternative is—”
“…the death of everything,” he said.
“The death of everything,” I repeated.
I walked.
And I walked.
For a thousand years in the darkness of my mind, I wandered.
At the end, Joff was no more.
New Religion
“Callista?” he said. “Callista, can you hear me?”
“Joff?” My tongue sloshed in my mouth.
No.
He’s gone.
Waking to my forty-ninth body hurt as much as all the ones before it.
The crushing waves inside my skull drowned out all except two faraway voices.
My muscles’ spasms tore away all memory of how to talk, stand, or move more than a fingertip.
And the feeling of every nerve firing burned away my other senses.
I tried to scream, but managed only a sickly groan. My body wanted to collapse into a seizure, but lacked the strength to do much more than quiver.
I managed only one thought—kill me.
And only three cobbled-together words— “Sedatives. More sedatives.”
I never felt the needles’ sting, only the sweet sensation of falling back into the dark in which I’d grown so comfortable.
Days later, I awoke again.
My pain was gone.
I sat up in a bed I didn’t know. Cold blue light infiltrated a long, narrow room. I looked at my hands, pristine and pink, and I remembered someone had inserted me into a new body.
But who?
And when?
And why?
I sat up and swung my feet over the bed’s side. The metal floor felt smooth and frigid beneath my toes. I tugged at a lock of blue hair dangling against my cheek. The sensation of touch startled me.
I’d been away so long, I’d forgotten what feeling felt like.
“She’s awake,” said someone in the room. With blurry eyes, I gazed toward the sound.
Two people.
A man and a woman.
White robes.
Instinctively, I reached to cover myself up with my hands, but found I wore a robe the same as theirs.
Some small part of me remembered Strope.
He’s not here, I knew.
He’d have left me naked.
“Lightbringer?” the man queried. He hadn’t expected me to awaken.
“Yes.” I accepted the name. “I have questions. I’m sure you can guess what they are.”
He nodded. The woman came up behind him. Both were young, and both looked panicked.
“Well?” I feigned strength, when in fact every part of me felt like jelly.
“Right...of course,” the young man stammered. “You’re aboard Ring One. Well…I should say…one of only two Rings remaining. You’ve been put into a new body. We found it aboard your ship. It took us a while to figure out how to insert you, but once we did, it was a simple thing.”
“Thank you.” I rubbed my head. I didn’t feel like standing, not yet. What I really wanted was to eat, and yet I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep food down.
“There’s more, I’m sure,” I said. “Don’t be afraid. Tell me everything.”
Nervous, the pair looked at each other.
“You were dead,” said the woman. “Well…at least…your body was dead. And for a while, you were stuck in hypo-stasis. It’s like hypo-sleep, but for non-living entities.”
Non-living entities? I thought with a smirk.
These two must be scientists.
“You freed me,” I said.
“No, not exactly,” said the girl. She looked mo
re nervous than her counterpart, clutching her datapad against her chest. “The effect…it wore off. It needs a special hypo-chamber to maintain, which Mahtim didn’t use.”
Mahtim. I frowned.
“Yes, well…” The young man read my face. “He’s dead now.”
“Dead?”
“Yes,” said the girl. “The Calipha’s daughter killed him.”
In modest surprise, I raised an eyebrow. It took effort, considering my new body. Somehow my memory of thousands of previous eyebrow-raises helped.
“You need to tell me who’s alive and who’s dead.” I stared hard at them. “Also where we’re at and where we’re going.”
Unsure of themselves, they looked at each other yet again.
“Maybe—” began the young man.
“Commander Strope should tell you.” the girl cut in. “He’ll want to know you’re awake.”
He’s alive.
I felt something resembling a smile warming my lips. Though it just as quickly departed.
“Take me to him,” I said to the girl.
“Pardon, but won’t you want to—”
“I’m fine. Take me to him now.”
I stood, white robes dangling. After a moment, we began walking through Ring One’s corridors. My eyes learned to see again, my bare feet finding new balance among the slow, spinning pods. I expected everything to look different, for each person to have grown old during my long, slow sleep.
But everything was familiar. I recognized many people, several of whom whispered my name as I passed their workstations.
“How long?” I asked as we moved through a storage pod. I didn’t know where they meant to take me.
“Pardon?” said the young man.
“She wants to know how long she’s been away,” said the woman.
“Oh. Right.” He stopped at the pod’s far door. “It’s been sixteen days. Sixteen…since you died.”
Only sixteen?
I closed my eyes. My time in the darkness had felt like a thousand years. It’d been so real to me. I’d assumed I’d wake to meet the great-great-great grandchildren of people I’d only barely known.
Whatever Mahtim shot me with…it worked.
We wandered halfway into another pod. Private bunks lined the walls, each of them with bedding, a crate of personal supplies, and a small console.
“Here,” said the young woman. “This one can be yours.”
Eaters of the Light Page 15