Their Fractured Light: A Starbound Novel

by Amie Kaufman

  We stand there in the shadow of the maintenance elevator, shrinking back against it as we stare at the immense thing sprawled before us. We’ve emerged at a level that once must have been a couple of floors above the courtyard, rubble stretching down from us in a steep slope. Even fearless Jubilee makes no move to descend, and when I glance back at my companions, I can see two sets of wide, glittering eyes scanning the wreck.

  It’s with monumental effort that I swallow, trying to clear my dry throat and break the silence that has stretched the past hour as we traveled underground to reach this place unseen. “We should keep moving.”

  I study the ground between us and the Daedalus, trying to pick out the smoothest course over the ruined terrain. The ground swims for a moment, moving before my eyes, and I try to blink away the tiredness, squeezing them shut. When I open them, it’s still moving, because it’s not the ground at all.

  There are husks everywhere. Like insects pouring from a nest, they clamber over the broken landscape, thick between us and the gashes in the ship’s side that will let us inside the Daedalus. My knees nearly give as a wave of nausea pushes its way up my throat—if I thought fear was losing its hold on me, I was wrong.

  My mind jumps to the shield Gideon built, tucked inside Flynn’s vest. It might protect us from becoming one of them, but it won’t protect us from being ripped apart. Not once they see us. Did Gideon and Tarver emerge from beneath the ground in the hours since I left him, to find this same sight before them?

  “How the hell are we going to do this?” Jubilee murmurs, echoing my thoughts.

  “We need a diversion.” Flynn’s voice is heavy, as exhausted and heartsick as I feel, at the sight of this impossible task. “I could—”

  “No.” Her voice is a slamming door, cutting off the idea before it’s born.

  But the truth is, neither she nor I has a better idea, or any other idea. We’ll be swarmed before we make it a quarter of the way to the wreck.

  I watch, my throat dry, heart pounding so hard I can feel it in my temples, as a fresh wave of husks crest the top of a broken building to our left, starting the climb down the other side into the newly created valley below. They’re led by a blond woman, hair caught back in a ponytail, balancing herself with one hand as she grasps something black and rectangular in the other.

  Then I look again. She’s not moving properly. Or rather, she is moving properly, not in the loose-limbed shuffle of the husks. She’s scrambling down, and others are cresting the hill behind her, sliding down through the debris on her tail.

  Oh my God.

  Recognition hits me in the gut, familiarity sliding into focus in one breathtaking instant.

  It’s Mae.

  Gideon’s friend is at the head of the group, and as I make a strangled, wordless sound, batting one hand against Jubilee to draw her attention, Mae lifts her hand and fires a Taser at the nearest husk. It drops like a stone.

  “Who the hell is that?” Jubilee whispers, going perfectly still.

  But before I can answer, a new group crests the ridge, and Flynn’s gasping. “Sanjana’s here!”

  The scientist’s dead cybernetic hand is bound across her chest in a tight sling, and she’s using her good hand to fire her Taser. All around her are bedraggled figures in LaRoux Industries uniforms, merging with Mae’s crowd—they’re forcing back the husks, dropping them one by one.

  “Damn, Flynn, that’s Mori.” Jubilee’s animated now, and the same energy—the same hope—is surging through me. From the other side of the valley come Mori and at least twenty-five of her black-clad ex-soldiers, scrambling over the ruins to take on the husks. It’s like the first ray of light shining into a darkened prison cell—the hope I thought was gone infuses me, straightening my back and lifting my head as Mori drops a black-eyed husk in the remnants of a business suit. Taser at the ready once more, she lifts her head to scan the remains of LaRoux Headquarters, eyes on the horizon.

  “She’s looking for us.” The words burst out in the instant I realize it, and I’m scrambling forward. “They know we’re here—they’re clearing us a path. Let’s go.”

  We plunge forward together, debris giving way under our feet as we half run, half fall toward the rapidly clearing courtyard below. Mori bellows a command in a voice worthy of a battleground, and the soldiers surge toward us. Up close I can see some hold palm pads in one hand, some have them strapped to their belts, and others have the square shape of them pressing through their clothes—Sanjana’s taught them how to rig shields. Enough to keep their minds safe, as long as their batteries last.

  “We’ll hold them as long as we can, Captain,” Mori calls as we hit level ground.

  “How the hell did you get here?” Jubilee swallows up the distance between her and her former corporal in a few long strides.

  “Dr. Rao told us where you were headed when we picked her up,” Mori replies, turning to take in the fight underway further up the courtyard. She stands at the ready, Gleidel raised, and lifts her voice to shout over the laser shrieks of the guns, the guttural buzzing of the Tasers. The husks are moving more quickly now, perhaps as Lilac’s whisper turns its attention to the source of the disturbance. “Rao’s got a bunch of LRI’s people with her—most of them are pretty damn horrified to learn what their boss has been up to.” Mori pauses, catching her breath. “And the blonde up there was watching networks, trying to get a handle on where the Knave ended up. She found us, once she found him. She’s got a bunch of hackers I don’t think ever saw daylight before, and the Corinth Against Tyranny conspiracy crowd, and those guys are pissed.” Mori shakes her head, but she’s grinning—despite the wreckage around us, some part of her is enjoying this. “Guess they finally found somebody who really is out to get them.”

  But as Jubilee’s opening her mouth to reply, a new wave of husks appear to our right and to our left, shuffling into view with a grim determination, yanking us back to reality. There must be hundreds of them. The brief hope that had taken root in my chest flickers, then dies. There’s no way Mori and her crew can hold this back.

  “Go, they’re in there,” Mori barks. “We’ll buy you as much time as we can. Good hunting.”

  Jubilee grasps for her hand, clasping it in both of hers for an instant before Mori lets go and turns back to the fight.

  From a distance, our entry point into the Daedalus looks like a crack only barely wide enough for someone to slip through, but the scale of this thing defies understanding—the gash in its side is wide enough for us to run through without needing to duck. We have to climb past several layers crushed into unrecognizability before we find an area clear enough to move through, as the sounds of the battle fade behind us. Then it’s quiet, and we’re in our own, silent world once more.

  The gash opens up onto a maintenance deck, sparsely furnished. The metal grid of the floor is tilted at a steep angle, forcing us to brace our feet in the corners and cling to the window frames lining the wall as we inch our way inside.

  The ship is so vast that under normal circumstances, we’d have no hope of finding Lilac and the rift inside it—but even the husks wouldn’t have been able to move the massive rift far inside, over this kind of terrain. They have to be close.

  My nose, half-numb from the stench of burning chemicals, pricks as we locate a staircase leading down further into the wreck and a new odor assaults me. I choke, reeling back a step and running into Flynn, who grunts and grabs onto a railing to keep from slipping.

  “What is that?” I mutter, lifting the edge of my T-shirt to cover my nose.

  Flynn just stares at me, equally baffled—but Jubilee shakes her head, her eyes grim. “Blood,” she says shortly.

  It’s only then that I see a heap of dark something at the foot of the staircase above; it’s only then that I see a flash of pink, and realize it’s a high-heeled shoe, and that the heap is a pile of bodies. Visions of the colorful passengers dancing in the ballroom loom up in my mind’s eye, and I have to clamp my lips together
to keep from retching.

  A hand, I don’t know whose, wraps around my wrist, drawing me down the stairs and away from the bodies. I try to breathe through my mouth, and keep moving.

  The staircase leads to a lush carpeted hall I do recognize from when I arrived with Gideon. The carpet muffles our footsteps, making the silence complete. The husks are mostly outside the wreck, held there by Mori, Mae, Sanjana, and their allies, but we stumble across them here and there inside. Each time we pull back, duck for cover. Lilac must know we’re inside the ship somewhere, but if we can avoid a husk seeing us and reporting back, we’ll still have some element of surprise. The way they’re moving, in concentric, tightening circles, we’re pretty sure the rift is below us somewhere. But it’s not until a light blooms in the darkness, so faint I feel my eyes must be playing tricks on me, that I know our guess was right.

  The light flickers, unsteady, but it shines blue against a tangle of metal protruding through the wall. In a heartbeat I’m back inside LRI Headquarters, watching the rift spring to life in front of my eyes.

  “We’re close,” I breathe, touching the arm of the person nearest me—Flynn, it turns out—and gesturing toward the light. “This way.” We can only hope our friends outside can hold off Lilac’s army a little longer.

  The hall leads around a corner and into what would’ve once been a beautiful foyer, the light growing stronger. We’re forced to scramble to keep our feet on the once-polished marble floor, using the giant jagged cracks in its surface to find purchase as we make our way across to the half-collapsed archway at the opposite end. We pull ourselves up against it, and in the faint blue glow emanating from the space beyond, I pause to scan the features of my companions.

  No one’s thought of a way to save Lilac. Jubilee’s face looks ashen, even more so in the blue light.

  She doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes, fixing her gaze on the wall behind me, where the real wood paneling has buckled and splintered in a line running from floor to ceiling. “He’ll never forgive me,” she whispers, pressing the palm of her hand flat against her leg, as if willing herself to reach for her weapon, and being unable to.

  Flynn shifts, boots sliding on the sharply angled floor until he can reach her side. “Maybe not,” he replies, surprising me—I’d have expected one of his impassioned speeches, not this, just a few words in a soft voice. “But he’ll be alive. He’ll be sane. And so will the rest of humanity. You know what Lilac would want us to do.”

  Jubilee’s eyes are wet, a realization that strikes me anew with shock. I didn’t know people like her ever cried. “But it’s Lilac, Flynn. How can I…She’s my friend.”

  “I know.” Flynn’s voice is hoarse. “I wish I could tell you.…I don’t know what the right thing is. Only that we didn’t come this far alone, and you’re not alone now. We do this together.” He takes her hand between both of his, pulling it away from the holster and raising it to his lips.

  Part of me feels like I ought to look away, let them share this moment privately, but I can’t—her eyes, as they flick over to meet his, hold such trust that it makes my heart ache. With pain, with gladness that Flynn found her despite the barriers between them, with an envy so deep my vision blurs. My mind flashes with the last vision I had of Gideon, dozing in the nest of blankets in the arcade, one arm still stretched out across the space where I had lain. How is it that a trodaire and the leader of the Fianna can trust each other so completely, while Gideon and I…They’ve overcome the walls formed by a generation of hatred and violence, and I can’t reach past the walls in my own heart.

  The three of us stand in silence, absorbing the full weight of what we’re about to do. Then, wordlessly, we slip through the ruined doors.

  The archway opens up onto the ballroom. Though I was here only a few short days ago, before the Daedalus fell, I almost can’t recognize the room—only the chandelier, lying in a heap of shattered glass and electrical wiring in the corner, sparks my memory. The shining floor is dull and shattered, caved downward, pit-like, as though sinking under the weight of the massive ring of metal nestled in its heart.

  The rift itself dominates the cavernous ballroom, almost as though the machinery has grown to accommodate the room around it—blue light cascades off every twisted surface, reflected a million times over in the shards of the mirrors that once lined the far walls. The dais where Lilac and Tarver stood at Roderick LaRoux’s side is smashed, scattered in pieces across the pit before us. Overhead, the vast windowed ceiling that once looked out into space is gone, leaving a jagged, empty hole that shows nothing but the dull reddish blackness of the Corinthian night sky.

  The voice we’d heard continues, one long stream of syllables that only resolve into words as we draw closer, taking cover behind a fallen pillar.

  “…thought a picnic might be nice, like we used to have, like your mother used to love. Just you and me, my darling girl…Nothing has to change. Nothing ever has to change now.”

  My eyes pick out a dark silhouette to the left of the rift, and as the light from the rift rises and falls again, I make out his features: Roderick LaRoux. He’s huddled on the floor, still clad in the grimy, torn, sweat-stained eveningwear he sported the night of the gala. For a confused moment it seems as though he’s speaking to the rift itself, until a second figure emerges from behind it.

  Lilac, too, is still wearing what she wore the night the Daedalus crashed. But where her father’s clothes are filthy, hers are as spotless as if she’d only just gotten ready for the gala. Her black dress falls in sleek folds, moving like silk as she passes her father without giving him a second glance. Not a hair is out of place; a single ringlet falls, styled just so, across her neck.

  “Of course, Daddy,” she murmurs, her voice echoing strangely, as though coming from more than one place. “After we help everyone else.”

  “Of course,” he repeats. “Of course, of course…rifts…make everywhere safe. Never lose anyone again.” His mumbling continues, subsiding once more, and over my flare of hatred and disgust comes something so surprising it steals my breath for a moment, makes me sag down against the pillar.

  Pity.

  There’s a soft click beside me as Jubilee takes the safety off the gun. My heart’s pounding, my stomach sick, and I can hear her breath shaking. I don’t know Tarver or Lilac, not really. I hated them both, because they were part of LaRoux, attached to the thing I wanted to hurt most in the entire universe…but I hated them from a distance, the way you hate the rain or the traffic. I never really hated them. Not the reality of them. In the brief moments on the Daedalus before everything shattered, I actually found myself liking them; Tarver’s quiet humor, Lilac’s quick wit. Their devotion to each other.

  But now we have to destroy them both.

  “Daddy,” comes Lilac’s voice suddenly, cutting through the unintelligible monologue coming from the floor. “We have guests. You sneaky thing.”

  My heart seizes, my eyes meeting Jubilee’s, then Flynn’s, where we’re concealed behind the column. I’m about to lift my head and look over the column and try for a distraction to give Jubilee the time she needs, when a third voice drags me to a halt.

  “I wasn’t trying to hide,” comes a voice from the opposite side of the room. When I peek over the edge of the column, I see Tarver picking his way down into the sunken ballroom, boots sending trickles of dust and debris raining down below. Mori’s words come back to me. They’re in there. She didn’t just mean Lilac and her father. Tarver’s voice is low, almost conversational. “I’m not smart enough for that.”

  “Just a big, dumb soldier?” Lilac speaks the words like they have significance, and I can see her smile from here.

  Tarver flinches, skidding to a halt in the bottom of the ruined ballroom.

  My eyes scan the darkness beyond them, hope and fear sending my blood into a panic as it rushes past my ears—but I see no sign of Gideon anywhere. Maybe they’ve given up their plan to shut down the rift. Maybe…I hold my breath.
>
  “Why are you here?” Lilac asks, turning to face him and smoothing a fold in her dress, a movement so human, so habitual, that it makes me shiver to see it combined with the look on her face. No human hates like that.

  “You don’t know?” Tarver’s brows lift. “You can’t just scan my thoughts, see my every plan?”

  “Not with that nasty little trinket in your pocket,” she replies, as if she’s commenting on a fashion faux pas. “But I know you, and I don’t imagine you came alone without a plan. I don’t think you left all your friends outside.” Lilac’s eyes sweep the shadows, and for an instant she grimaces, but it seems she can’t quite find Gideon either—or us. “They’re not doing very well out there, by the way. The numbers are against them.”

  Tarver’s jaw squares, and he visibly forces himself to relax it, pushing his shoulders back.

  Lilac laughs, soft. “I can see how hard you’re trying. I’m sure you think you’re going to somehow ‘save’ me at the last minute.”

  “Not you,” Tarver murmurs. “Lilac.”

  But she continues like he hasn’t spoken, like she fails to acknowledge any difference between what she is now and who she was before. “It’s not going to work, though—and you know why? I’ll tell you the secret, if you like.” She steps closer to him, halting a few steps away, just out of arm’s reach.

  Tarver says nothing, staring into her face. He’s armed, I can see the weapon in its holster, but his hand is nowhere near it.

  “You can’t save me,” Lilac says, leaning in as though sharing some deep, profound secret in a stage whisper, “because I’m already dead.”

  Tarver’s fingers curl at his sides, tightening into fists. The light from the rift throws his features into sharp relief, outlining in shadow the lines of muscle as he clenches his jaw. Lilac just laughs, the same, sweet, silvery laugh I recognize from HV celebrity shows and press conferences, and pats his cheek.

  She turns away, and that’s what makes Tarver move again. The step he takes after her is halting, jerky, but his voice is quick. “Wait. I know you’re in there. Lilac, listen to me. I know you can hear me. Keep fighting—hold on.”