The Stars Now Unclaimed

by Drew Williams

  The remaining Pax raised their rifles. “I love you both,” I whispered, staring down their barrels, staring at my own end. “Now get to that dock and leave me here.”

  “No.” Esa’s rejection didn’t just come over the comms; it was a physical thing, a battering ram that she slammed into the back of the Pax soldiers of my firing squad. They went flying out over the drop into the reactor room, and then it was Esa and Javi standing there, in the light of the open doorway.

  They’d been on their way. The whole time we were arguing about whether they should come for me, they’d already been doing it. That was the gunfire I had heard. They’d been ignoring me from the start.

  I think I even managed a smile before darkness curled into my vision, insistent this time, and I slumped over into unconsciousness.

  CHAPTER 16

  I don’t remember much of anything about the trip back through the dreadnaught. The others assured me that it was absolutely hellish, and that they were all very brave. According to them I was conscious for parts of it—at one point I even managed to fire my weapon, though the one fact everyone seemed to agree on is that I didn’t hit anything—so you’d think that I really would remember, but I just don’t.

  I do remember forcing Marus to help me into the cockpit as we returned to Sanctum. I remember looking out and watching as the final operating dreadnaught was picked apart by the twin cannons remaining; the Pax had finally brought down Alpha gun. I remember the way the flames spiraled out from the breaches in the giant ship’s hull, following the path of the oxygen sucked out into the void; I remember the hazy purple afterimage, once the reactor went critical and the ship tore itself apart.

  Why they’d stayed to fight, after the math shifted and they knew they couldn’t break through Sanctum’s shields, I have no idea. Maybe the Pax were just that stupid. Or maybe they just hated us that much.

  It didn’t matter now. The battle was won. We’d still have to mop up the Pax remaining on the damaged dreadnaughts, and that would be bloody, awful work, but it was the bloody awful work of another day. They weren’t going anywhere, just floating through the system, their engines damaged, building their barricades and preparing their defenses for when we tried to take the ships.

  An atmosphere of paranoia and oppression was standard practice on any Pax vessel—knowing their enemy was coming for them must have made things intolerably worse, especially once they started to burn through their supply of on-hand narcotics. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that at least some of them had torn each other apart by the time we came on board to finish the job.

  I don’t remember descending into Sanctum; I don’t remember joining the ranks of other injured soldiers filling the medical facility there. The next thing I did remember was lying in a hospital bed, wired up to all sorts of machines that were either doing the work some of my organs weren’t currently capable of doing, or reinforcing the nanotech in my own bloodstream.

  I have a synthetic liver now, pieces of synthetic intestine grafted onto my own, and a synthetic kidney, to join the other synthetic kidney I already had from a bad scrap fifty years ago. When I could finally talk I asked the Preacher if that made her like me any more, now that I was a little closer to being a synthetic life form than an organic one. She said no, that no matter how many organs I replaced I’d never be comparable to a Barious, but that I’d done all right, all things considered. For a bag of badly perforated meat.

  Criat came by at some point, and said the council wanted to hang a medal on me. I told him where he could stuff his medal; he said that I wouldn’t be able to do that even if I was hale and hearty, because as old as he was he was still a mean old bastard and tougher than me. Apparently they’d hung medals on everyone else: Criat, Sahluk, Marus, even Esa, so she’d have that to lord over her new peers at the university. Javier, too, who’d apparently been reinstated to his old position. Apparently, to overcome a charge of treason, you just have to save all of Sanctum from destruction. Good to know.

  They counted the Preacher into their medal-handing-out ceremony as well. Apparently, they’d invited her to join the Justified, and she’d accepted, on the terms that she’d get to join Acheron’s research initiative, a posting that her past made her eminently qualified for. That way, she’d get the answers about the pulse she was seeking—at least, those we could give her—and she’d get to keep an eye on Esa. Or so she thought.

  Esa came by to see me after a while, to tell me that they’d offered her the same choice they offered all of the children the agents like me brought in: to study at the university and join the ranks of the Justified, or be sent back to the wider universe, never able to return. Most of the other children didn’t know the full extent of what we’d done, of course, or how to reach Sanctum, so the risk was minimal—Esa was a special case. I was impressed they’d even offered her the option.

  Apparently, she’d proposed a third choice. That’s how she put it to me, anyway; Marus visited later and phrased it more along the lines of “she turned them down flat.” She suggested that, since she was more powerful already than any of the other students they had (not precisely true, but comparing the different gifts of differing students wasn’t necessarily a one-to-one comparison, so I let it lie) and since, unlike some of them, she’d grown up in a significantly more rough and tumble existence—and also since she’d, you know, saved Sanctum and all of its inhabitants—she be allowed to join the Justified, but not forced to join the university specifically.

  I didn’t learn exactly what she meant by that until I was finally well enough to move around on my own, and I went to visit Scheherazade.

  By all reports, Schaz had been driving everyone, up to and including John Henry, absolutely crazy during my convalescence: trying to get information on me, trying to get information on Esa, threatening to hack Sanctum databanks—which she absolutely was not capable of doing—in order to get information on us both. That state of affairs wasn’t exactly helped by the fact that it took her days to come down off the programming spike MelWill had given her; not even Javier could calm her down.

  I went to see her mostly so she’d stop panicking the deck crews, but also because, well, Schaz was my friend. For long stretches of my life, she’d been my only friend, the only voice I had to talk to. I missed her too.

  I noticed something was strange as soon as I walked—well, limped—up her ramp.

  “Someone’s moved my shit around,” I said to Schaz, frowning. It was true in the armory, and it was true in the living area as well.

  “Well . . . yes,” Schaz admitted.

  “You let someone come in here and touch our stuff? I’m surprised at you, Scheherazade.”

  “Take a seat; you look terrible.”

  “Thanks. Thanks for that.” All the same, I made my way to the cockpit, and sat down. “I’m glad you finally got your old voice back, by the way.” Out of habit, I started a diagnostic on her systems—it would be too much like JackDoes to have fixed her voice, only to have messed with some other trait in her databanks.

  “I know! I’m so happy!”

  “She does sound better.” Esa dropped into the navigator’s chair beside me. “More like herself.”

  “I’m worried that our relationship will always be colored by that awful, awful voice I had when we met,” Schaz told her. “We’re going to be working together for hopefully a long time now, and—”

  “It’s already forgotten, Schaz,” Esa told her. “You sound like you were always supposed to.”

  I was frowning, at both Esa and the interior of Scheherazade. “Wait,” I said. “Is it the drugs, or did one of you just say something important?”

  “Did I not mention that to you earlier?” Esa batted her eyelashes at me.

  “Stop that. Mention what?”

  “I told Acheron—and the council—that I wanted to join the Justified, but I didn’t feel like I would do the most good at the university. I mean, when the time comes for—whatever, to stop the pulse, to, you know,
all of that stuff—of course I’ll help. But that could be in a century or more. In the meantime? I feel like I can do a great deal more good than just sitting around in a school.”

  “Yes. We covered this. What does that—”

  “Specifically, I asked Acheron to ask the council to ask Criat to assign me to you. I’m your new partner.” She grinned at me.

  I just stared back; it didn’t make her grin falter one bit as she shrugged and said, “Well, your ‘trainee,’ anyway. I already know how to shoot the guns on Schaz, though, so I figure I’ve got a head start on ditching the ‘trainee’ part. All you have to do now is teach me how to fly her, and I can be your partner for real. We’re gonna have so much fun!”

  I stared at her for a beat, then closed my eyes, sinking back in my chair. She thought she was so clever, dropping this news on me while I was still convalescing. Time to remind her that I was sharper than she thought.

  “So Criat says you’re ready for that, huh?” I asked, keeping my voice mild.

  “He does,” she said, sounding suspicious—she knew I was up to something, but not quite what. “I mean, I have to stay here for more ‘orientation,’ whatever that means, but that’s only another month or two, and you’ll still be convalescing through all that anyway. I can take university courses while we’re in hyperspace; Schaz has already loaded up on textbooks and whatnot.”

  “Well, that works out, then. I’ve been thinking about retiring anyway,” I said. “Maybe it’s time—”

  “Don’t! Don’t you dare!”

  “What? I thought you were all grown up, ready to join the workforce?”

  “I mean—I am, but—”

  “Esa?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m joking.” I smiled, slowly, without opening my eyes.

  She huffed. “I’d hit you right now, but I’m afraid I’d pop your stitches. Your many, many stitches.”

  “Why?” I asked her.

  “Why would I hit you?”

  “Why ask Criat to join me? If you wanted to be an agent—even if you wanted to focus on finding other kids like you, the work I do—there are dozens of others you could learn from, train with. Most of them are easier to get along with, too. Why me?”

  She sighed, and I could hear her rolling her eyes, because I’d spent that much time with teenagers. “I love you too, Jane,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I told her. “I know.”

  Together, my new partner and I sat in the cockpit, and stared up at the spread of the stars in the sky above Sanctum. She was right, of course: there was more still to do. Not just clearing out the Pax who remained in their craft, though that would take some doing, but also making sure they hadn’t transmitted our location to anyone else; finding where, exactly, they’d acquired their armory; learning how, exactly, they’d found out Esa’s location.

  And past the Pax specifically, there was the work: gifted children to pull from rad-soaked worlds, an entire galaxy still reeling from the pulse even a hundred years later, threats to Sanctum—threats to the Justified—that we wouldn’t be able to see coming, but that we’d have to be able to meet anyway.

  And beyond all of that: the return of the pulse. It was still out there. Waiting.

  But for now, I sat in the cockpit, with my new “trainee”—I’d never had one of those before; Criat hadn’t thought I’d had the personality for it, and until now, I’d agreed with him—and we watched the skies above Sanctum, for the moment, at peace.

  The ring of debris flashed in the reflected light of the suns, a ribbon of winking silver wending across the night sky. The black holes pulled at the edges of the horizon. Between them, and past them, were all the unclaimed stars, all the worlds thrown into chaos by the pulse, made into new frontiers, new conflicts, new missions. And down among those were all the children we’d have to find, to bring back to Sanctum, to save.

  If even just a few of them turned out like Esa, I thought we’d do all right.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Man, this acknowledgments business is hard work, huh? Like, way harder than the actual writing of the novel you just read—that happened pretty easily; it’s all the work that goes in after that requires, just, a whole lot of help. (Also, hey, there’s my first acknowledgment: to you, the reader who made it all the way to the end! Thank you! Consider this the fanfare that you should be hearing in your head right about now, something with trumpets and drumrolls.)

  So I guess the easiest thing to do is start at the beginning, with Robert and Nancy Williams, without whom this book wouldn’t exist, and not just because I wouldn’t exist, but because they nurtured and shared a love of storytelling all throughout my childhood, and never thought twice about exposing me to all sorts of stuff that probably warped my young mind into the strange shape that gave rise to the novel you just read. In the same vein, endless thanks to the various far-flung members of the Williams and Barnacastle clans, with special thanks reserved for Daniel and Janna Barnacastle: to Daniel for keeping me sane, and to Janna for doing the same for him.

  After that—still moving chronologically—I have to thank Paul and Dianne Seitz, for hiring a sixteen-year-old kid off the street even though he had no references, holes in his jeans, and all the social graces of a deeply introverted teenager (otherwise known as exactly the social graces of some kind of member of the lizard family, like a salamander or an alligator). Thanks, too, to all my coworkers at the Little Professor over the years, who, whether they knew it or not, probably found their way into my writing in one way or another, because writers are inveterate thieves, helping themselves to jokes or moments or silverware in equal measure.

  Now we get into the meat of the thing: the people who knowingly and with presumably malice aforethought aided and abetted this book coming into being, none more so than Chris Kepner of the Kepner Agency, who took a chance on a blind query from an unpublished, unconnected writer whose initial correspondence probably reeked right through the computer screen of equal parts desperation and deep-seated confusion. I couldn’t have asked for a better guide through the jungles of this industry, Chris, so from the bottom of my heart: thank you.

  Of course, thanking Chris takes us directly to Devi Pillai—six-gunned editor extraordinaire—and her indefatigable assistant, Rachel Bass (hey, Rachel? Can you make sure “indefatigable” means what I think it means?), without whom you would be holding a much lesser novel in your hands today, one poorly structured and full of run-on sentences and just in general kind of a misery. The same goes for everyone else at Tor who in one way or another shaped this novel and helped prepare it as best they could for the cruel vicissitudes of the wilds, whether that was by copy editing, designing an awesome cover, or just making sure that Devi and Rachel had the resources they needed to turn a clunker into a beast.

  All of the preceding paragraph holds true as well for Anne Perry and her team at Simon & Schuster UK, but in a more restrained, dignified manner, because they’re mostly British (or adopted Brits, like Anne) and strong emotion makes them uncomfortable in an almost existential sense.

  Now, I’m sure there are plenty of people I’ve forgotten, because I’m a terrible, self-centered person (holy shit, I really am a writer) so if you’re reading this and you were hoping I was going to thank you: you definitely deserve it, so thank you. Thank you so much.

  Oh, one more, so intuitive that it barely needs to be said (and since it’s right there in the dedication), but: thank you, Sara. You were the first person who read this, or anything else I’d written in the past ten years, and in the decade I’ve known you you’ve been a constant source of inspiration, resolve, and grace. So thank you.

  All right, that’s it, book’s done: put it back on the shelf (or power down whatever device you were using) and turn the metaphorical lights off on your way out—this world will still be here if you ever decide to come back, just waiting for you to crack the spine again. Because that’s the thing about books, right? They’re not just books: they’re doorways, doorwa
ys and mirrors at the same time, doors that open onto new worlds, mirrors that reflect who we are in ways we never would have imagined otherwise.

  So one last thank-you: to all the artists and writers who ever opened a doorway for me. Thank you.

  —Drew Williams

  November 9, 2017

  About the author

  Drew Williams was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, in the southern United States of America. He is a bookseller at the Little Professor Book Center in Homewood, Alabama.

  The Stars Now Unclaimed is his first novel

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2018

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © Drew Williams, 2018

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

  The right of Drew Williams to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

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  London WC1X 8HB

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  www.simonandschuster.com.au

  www.simonandschuster.co.in

  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Hardback ISBN: 978-1-4711-7111-6

  Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4711-7112-3

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-4711-7113-0

  Audio ISBN: 978-1-4711-7838-2

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.