by Tammy Salyer
“How do…does…look?”
“How do you look? To be honest, terrible. But you’ll live.” That same mischievous grin.
Apparently morphone doesn’t block feelings of annoyance. I scowl, or think I do, it’s hard to tell when my face feels like a drenched, dripping sock, and try again: “My arm. How’s my arm look?”
“V says your wrist is sprained and you have an impacted fracture of the ulna, but you’ll be doing push-ups again in less than a month. We found a hydro cast in the Celestial’s medical supplies, and she’s going to fit it for you when you’re a little more awake.”
A subdued but no less disturbing jolt of apprehension slams through me. He sees my expression and says, “Don’t worry. We’re safe. There’s a lot to catch you up on. But let’s wait till the morphone wears off. You have enough in your system to knock out even Desto.” He steps up and brushes his hand along my unbruised cheek. “I’m sorry I woke you up. I just couldn’t wait to see you again, hear your voice. Go back to sleep now, okay?”
It isn’t hard to convince me.
* * *
Despite the brilliance that had been behind Quantum’s plan, I’ve never been happier to see one fail so abysmally.
Desto sits cross-legged on the Nebula’s galley floor, detailing everything that had happened between the fight at Bogotan’s landing field to when they’d picked me up in the e-pod, unconscious but apparently raving about being buried alive. His leans back, relaxing against Zeta’s chair and lightly rubbing her calves, which are draped over his shoulders. “It took us thirty-six hours from your transmission to reach you, but you were still out. Once we got you inside, Vitruzzi sedated you with something to counteract the morphone but keep you from totally losing your shit. You kept shouting ‘not the trunk, not the trunk, not in the trunk, Harald.’ I have no idea who Harald is, but you clearly didn’t like the guy much.”
He stops there, letting the pregnant pause pressure me into an explanation, but I’m not going along with it. As far as I’m concerned, I’d left my recollections about my father aboard the fleet cruiser. Some things should stay buried.
After a minute, he continues, “I’ve never seen anyone who’s spent so much of their life flying in dinky scout or attack ships so afraid of small spaces.”
“It’s different on a ship,” I start to explain, then stop. Those without phobias just can’t understand. That’s what makes them phobias; they have no rational explanation. I change the subject. “So you and V and Brady got to the Nebula okay. Did any ships follow you from Bogotan?”
“We had one attacker on our tail, but Zabriskie sent one of their own ships after it.”
“Zabriskie?” It had become clear to me that most of Bogotan’s people weren’t keen on being under Medina’s thumb, but I’m still surprised they’d get into any active engagement with her and those under her command. What if Quantum and I had failed and Medina discovered their complicity? She’d have done to them what she’d threatened to do to Keum Libre. Maybe the Bogotanites were tired of living with fear and compromised ethics. Sometimes taking a stand, even if it means dying, is better.
“Yeah. The Bogotan scout took care of Medina’s attack ship, and we were halfway to KL when you called.”
David, who’s been working behind the galley counter to try and make something more appetizing than nutrition bars and endurance gels, jumps in, “We thought our nav-system had failed when we got into range of your emergency alert. The sky wasn’t filled with debris from the Celestial like we expected. The cruiser was just sitting there, fully inop.”
“Powerless and dark and as cold as the grave,” Desto says.
“We thought you’d been tricked into sending that transmission to Karl, and we basically just floated there, waiting for Medina to send out a squadron to dust us.” David sticks a finger in the bowl he’s mixing things in, licks the yellowish substance from it, and wrinkles his nose. He comes around the counter and holds the bowl out. “Desto, could you taste this? What’s missing?”
Zeta grimaces. “Get that…whatever…away from the pregnant lady! You do not want me to get sick. It makes me crabby.”
“Get it away, quick!” Desto says, making melodramatic warding-off gestures, and Zeta play-punches his shoulder.
“Sorry.” He brings the bowl to me. “Help me out, Twig.”
“You know I love you, brother, but…”
“Gah! Bunch of cowards.” He retreats back behind the counter and slams the bowl down.
Desto picks up the thread. “We waited, ran some hull scans, but it seemed like no one was home, then found you floating nearby. After hanging back for a few hours, just waiting to get blown out of the sky, Brady made the call. We picked you up and got you on board. When it was clear you weren’t going to be able to tell us what happened for a bit, we decided to go exploring.
“Everything on the Celestial was offline. Power, engines, life support. We broke in through the secondary small-ship airlock and tried to minimize pressure loss to make it easier to figure out what had happened. Didn’t matter though; one of the aft engine rooms had a small leak from a minor explosion. The whole place was a ghost town.
“Most of us went in, and it took about three hours to reach the bridge. We found Quantum and Medina’s bodies, and every other crewmember we ran across was dead, too. Jeremy dialed in to the ship log and figured out what Quantum had tried to do—and he mucked the beast up pretty bad—but it never fully destructed. I guess fleet cruisers have enough stopgaps that it was able to shut down the sequence Quantum programmed to sabotage it. Unfortunately for the crew, not before the life support systems were totally blown.”
“So it’s salvageable?”
“Jeremy and Mason have been working their asses off to try and answer that question, but we think so. That kid Ryan has been pretty helpful, too.”
I repeat, I’ve never been happier in my life to see a plan fail so abysmally.
* * *
The most unexpected thing imaginable happens over the next six months: life goes on. Though the idea of “normal” is never going to mean anything again, unless you consider disorder and random surprises normal, the settlers of both Keum Libre’s colony and Bogotan’s pick up the pieces and resume.
I heal, as I so frequently spend time doing, and Karl and I return to being partners in short- and long-range salvage ops. Jono Zabriskie takes over leadership of Bogotan, setting up a representative council to oversee daily life and operations there, giving everyone a voice in their own future as well as a sense of stability. Keum Libre and Bogotan set up a system of trade and aid—just like Quantum had originally proposed, but not in the backward, old-school, subversive process he had attempted. Some Bogotanites move to KL; some Klers move there.
David meets and falls in love (finally, the guy had been like a monk during the last few years) with one of the transplants, a former major in the Stellar Corps, thus proving to David that not all officers are self-serving bottom-feeders—while simultaneously proving to me, though David will never admit it, that she can command him just like she’d formerly commanded the lower enlisted serving under her. I like her. And though nothing will ever diminish the bond of family between David and me, Olamina, or just Mina, soon becomes like a sister to me, and the two of them join most of the salvage trips Karl and I take.
As for the two of us, we continue to call KL home, completely content with our off-the-grid, seminomadic lifestyle. I’ve found that the vastness of the ocean just down the cliff from KL and even the trees and neotropical jungle surrounding the settlement still feel more unconfining and open than a city. And after everything, I can’t seem to get enough of open spaces.
More importantly, Vitruzzi has started to heal. Less than a month after we returned to KL, Zabriskie’s people made contact with another fleet cruiser. Unlike Medina, the man in charge had been both a civilian and pro-Admin—until the war. Whatever the cruiser’s crew and inhabitants had gone through, they’d reached the same conclusion
s as Bogotan and KL—either we all work together or we all die alone.
One of the crewmembers is a psychologist who specialized in combat-related disorders. She meets via satlink with Vitruzzi several times a week. I’m no brain debugger, but I think that whatever had triggered the reverse of Vitruzzi’s downward spiral has been helped by seeing the way things are improving between Bogotan and KL, and the weekly discovery and influx of survivors from all over the system who want nothing more than to find ways to put the worlds back together, peacefully and with minimum competition or struggle. It’s probably also helped that she and Brady have adopted two of the kids we’d picked up on Eruo Pium. Those kids may be scarred by all they’d been through, but if anyone can raise them, it’s someone with scars of their own, someone who can empathize. And Vitruzzi and Brady have plenty. Even Mason took in the little girl, Cassandra, and her brother, their quick attachment to each other a surprise to everyone.
Speaking of Mason, not everything has been roses and rainbows. Both he and Hoogs have moved on, deciding Bogotan suits them better. I miss them, but it hit me even harder when Venus and La Mer decided to relocate as well. It makes sense; La Mer’s technical savvy is put to much better use in their colony, which has more intricate engineering needs than ours. And of course Venus wouldn’t hear of being apart from him. Fortunately, we’ve seen them a few times since they departed, the constant traffic between the two colonies making it easy. As a bonus, Ryan has stayed, and no one can claim the kid isn’t damn near as adept in the mechanical and electronics arenas as La Mer. We’re lucky to have him.
* * *
I’m kicking back in the lounge area on the Andromeda after a two-week salvage op when David runs in.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
I give him the look I reserve for people who ask stupid questions. “Reading.”
“Yeah, but what’s that?”
“Uh, it’s a book, Bright Light.” It isn’t as easy as it sounds to make sense of a question that has such an obvious answer.
His expression shifts from curiosity to exasperation, as if I’m the one asking stupid questions. “I can see that, Aly. What I mean is, why are you reading a book made of paper? And where did you get it?”
Ah, now I see. “Venus brought a few boxes of them from Bogotan. She says they have a nostalgia library with at least a few thousand.” I hadn’t seen a book printed on paper since I was a kid and we’d visited the Tiptree Memorial and Archive Center. David, obviously, hasn’t seen once since then either. “I guess they have a thing for vintage. I’m kind of starting to see why.”
“Yeah? Why?”
I have to think about how to put it into words for a second before responding. “I don’t know. There’s something about the way it feels in my hands. The way I can flip the pages and create a little breeze. The smell of glue and wood pulp. It makes me think of…simpler times.” A little embarrassed at waxing poetic, I drop my eyes to the book, then glance back at him. The smirk I see on his face confirms my instinct to feel a little silly.
“Well, you better keep them locked up,” he says through the smirk. “Some of these heathens may be inclined to use them as fuel.”
“Noted. So, mind if I…?” I wave the book at him, annoyed.
“Yeah, but you may want to come to the med center. Zeta’s about to pop.”
Three hours later, David, Karl, Brady, and I stand outside Zeta’s room. Vitruzzi comes out, tells us she’s sleeping, everyone’s happy and healthy, and to come back later. She looks more like the old Vitruzzi than ever. I don’t know if it’s because of that, or because of my gladness that Desto and Zeta and their new kid are all doing well, or because of some other unexpected, even unimagined, relief that we’ve somehow made it through the worst of everything, still whole, still human, but I suddenly wrap my arms around her and hug her like I’ve never hugged anyone but my brother. Almost surprisingly, she returns it, and we stand that way for a while.
The door opens and Desto comes out. V and I let go of each other, and I look at the bundled-up little girl in his arms.
“She’s as beautiful as her mama,” I tell him.
“Aly,” he says.
I look into his face and see the tears streaming from his eyes. Tears of such rejoicing happiness, so unexpected from such a lifelong warrior, it’s almost hard to look at him. “What?” I manage, feeling my own eyes start to swim.
“That’s her name. We’re going to call her Aly.”
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thanks for reading! If you’ve enjoyed this story, please consider leaving a review, short or long, on your book website of choice. Positive word-of-mouth sharing hugely impacts an author’s success, and my gratitude for your kindness will linger long past memories of this simple tale. Thank you!
Tammy is an inveterate verbarian, spending most of her days surrounded by the written word, both hers and others’. As an ex-paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division, her stories are often as gritty as a grunt’s pile of three-week-old field gear. Her military science fiction novel Contract of Defiance is the first book in the Spectras Arise Trilogy and debuted to acclaim in spring 2012. Contract of Betrayal is the second in the trilogy, and the final book, Contract of War, completes it. Wickedly uncomfortable in singular boxes, she also writes in other genres in the speculative fiction range, including horror, cross genre, and thrillers. When not hunched like a Morlock over her writing desk, Tammy runs and bikes silly miles in the playground of Southern California and spends an inappropriate amount of time watching Henry Rollins videos on YouTube.
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ALSO BY TAMMY
Novels
Contract of Defiance, Spectras Arise Trilogy, Book 1
Contract of Betrayal, Spectras Arise Trilogy, Book 2
Contract of War, Spectras Arise Trilogy, Book 3
Conviction: A Spectras Arise Novella
Short Story Collection
On Hearts and Scorpions: Four Twisted Tales of Love and Lust
Short Stories
Artificial Fate
Creepers
No Suede Soles in Hell