by JA Huss
"Fatherhood," he says. "It suits you. Really, it does. It comes easy. Not like me." He stops and I figure we're both thinking about his attempts at parenting.
I laugh a little to myself.
"What's funny?"
"Ya weren't that bad. I mean, we lived, right?"
"Is that the standard for a successful clutch? Survival?"
My brows twist at his question. "For avians? Uh, yeah, pretty much. Why? Yer human these days or something?"
"I just wonder, after hearing some of Junco's stories, if it's not a bit extreme."
"I don't get it. Her life was far worse than mine, so you were a better father than Subjack was, that's for sure."
"Was I? I could've saved you a lot of injuries, pain, and trouble if I wanted to."
"Yeah, and I'd have ended up as stupid and weak as ninety-five percent of the population of Earth, Lucan. Stop. We live the way we live for a reason. I'm not unhappy, I'm not scarred. I'm fine. Ashur's fine. Rikan's fine. We're all fine."
He takes another drink. "But tell me, wouldn't you rather have a quiet life with Junco and that AI child down there? Than fighting all the time?"
"What's this about?"
He eyes me for a few seconds and then turns away. "You could change your wishes, you know." He turns back. "And then it won't matter if she's been dissipated. Will it?"
"It's too late now, Lucan."
"Yes, but if we win." He stops again and stares into me. "If we win, Raubtier."
I look down the beach at HOUSE and watch her squeal and clap and jump. Arel is there now, helping them build, as well as several more avians from the ship, all with random tools, real honest-to-God avian tools, that move the wet sand around at HOUSE's direction.
"If we win, you could change."
"Maybe. But not is not the time to think about that shit. It's a nice day, this playing and relaxing. But Junco's still gone, the Pillar is still struggling to assemble, and the Halo is not in place. We've got about five days until they reach the Oort Cloud Gate and then we're pretty much fucked. So no more talk about wishes. Fuck the wishes, Lucan. They don't matter because none of us will be here if we can't figure out something fast. And even with that fucking Halo, our chances are slim. There's no way we can take them, none. We need a miracle if ya ask me, and from what I've seen, Caleb's boss is not interested this time."
He takes a long swig of his beer and sits quietly, watching the scene play out down by the water for a few minutes before adding anything to the conversation. "All true. But you're missing something these days, Tier, and it's got me worried."
"Yeah? What am I missing, Lucan?"
"Faith."
Annun walks into the cabana and interrupts our conversation. "Where's the food? That little monster wants some food." He smiles as he says it and I can't help myself, I crack one too. She is a little monster, that's for sure. I point to the cool pack. "In there."
He reaches in, pulls a sandwich out, takes a bite and chews.
I wait for it.
"It's good."
I can only laugh. They do grow on you, those disgusting little concoctions. Maybe it's the oat bread?
He takes a handful of sandwiches and some drink bags and heads back to the water. Lili is there now, and Ryse is barking out directions to the various warriors who are busy erecting a second story on the castle.
Lucan gets up abruptly and walks back towards the boardwalk near the buildings. "Walk with me, Tier," he calls over his shoulder.
I get up and follow him across the sand.
He stops at the cement path that winds its way around the edge of the atoll beach and waits for me to catch up. "Amelia is asking for me and Rikan is there as well, so—"
I sigh. "So yer going back to be with them, then?" I didn't mean for it to come out jaded, but it does.
"Yes," he says simply, and then puts both hands on my shoulders and stares into my eyes. "But I want you to know, Tier, that you were not the decoy, do you understand? You are not the decoy. In thousands of years of life, you were my one true choice and regardless of what Gib's genetic charts say, you are my one true son."
It almost stops my heart, this revelation. He's never said these words to me before.
"And no matter what happens, I love you and have enjoyed every moment of your upbringing. I wish I'd paid closer attention and kept you home more, to be honest. I missed a lot, I think."
I have no words for this, I just frown and try to hold myself together.
"And if we win—when—when we win, I want you to have the same opportunity. Just think about it. I know it's not how you imagined your life, but just think about it."
He drops his hands and I nod out a yes to his request. "I'll think about it."
He smiles and turns to leave instead of disappearing outright. "Will you be back?" I call out before he can make his exit.
"I will be back, Raubtier," he says. "But I will be back in chains."
And then he's gone.
I stand there, the warm tropical wind whipping past my face—half watching the warriors build a sand castle with Junco's HOUSE, half listening to her excited squeals—as I play his last words in my head, over and over again.
He's put it all on me.
Because right now I outrank every being on this planet. And even though at every formal introduction I've ever made—be it with Subjack, or Caleb, or the other alien leaders in the Polar Friendly—I've always declared that my words are Lucan's words, it's never felt real until now.
I am Lucan's one true son.
Chapter Six
I sit in the cabana alone for several hours, just watching the line of sand castles appear along the shore. HOUSE's castle was declared complete a while ago and they've since moved on to the other congregations of avian warriors who have found their way down to the Sargassum resort.
If Ashur sees them all down here fucking off he's gonna piss his pants.
HOUSE gave up and came back to the cabana about twenty minutes ago, stretching out on the sand floor and babbling about her castle, her sunburn, and her missing flipflop for a few minutes before passing out from exhaustion. Her body is sprawled out haphazardly, half on a large multi-colored beach towel and half off.
I'm on my seventeenth beer.
Junco's Pillar hasn't even grown a picometer for more than two hours. Arel pops in every now and then to update me with the bad news. We're off the timeline now. No hope, as far as he can tell.
Hopeless, in fact, was the word he used.
I close my eyes and just sit there, silent and still.
And that faith Lucan was harping on at me about? Well, fuck faith. It's got a whole lot to do with nothing, I figure.
Annun wanders in shuffling around for a beer in the cool sack that has long since lost its coldness. And its beer.
"They're gone," I declare from the shadows.
He turns abruptly and laughs. "Shit, dude! You scared me!" He watches me take a slow drink off the last of the warm beer and then shifts his weight with apprehension.
I know my eyes are glowing because I can see the shadows.
And I know they're not green because HOUSE's face is lit up red. It isn't from sunburn.
"You all right, Tier?"
I take another swallow of beer. "No, not really."
He takes a seat in the canvas chair to my left and eases himself back, kicking out his legs a little, like he's just relaxing with a friend.
"I had a heart-to-heart with Junco once. Did you know that? Back when we were in Fledge together."
My eyes drift back down to HOUSE's sleeping body. It's so fucking unfair that Junco can be so close and yet so far at the same time. It's so fucking unfair.
"Yeah," he continues. "We were both up in the Church the night of the Sixth Fight. Lucan let the 039 give us a party to celebrate and we went over there."
It's such a struggle to even exist at the moment.
"She played piano for us that night. It was beautiful, ya know?" He looks ov
er to me and I can tell he's a little drunk as well. "I'd been watching her fight all those weeks and I'd already formed an opinion of her. In my mind she was like a fucking rabid dog or something." He stops to laugh. "I mean, she was crazy in the Third Fight. I saw her in the maze at one point, wielding that SEAR knife like some kind of ancient avian from the myths and I thought to myself, damn, that bitch is out of her mind scary!"
I smile at this, because she really is. I would not want to fight her and Ashur is damn lucky she didn't chop his head off when he attacked her back in Vegas.
"Anyway," Annun continues, slurring the word a bit. "We both ended up in the church that night and we got to talking about what it means to be a warrior. And she told me something that haunts me."
He stops and leans over with his head in his hands and my interests picks up. "Well, what'd she say?"
He looks up and his eyes are more bloodshot than I remember them being a second ago. "She said she likes who she is and what she can do. And she'd never choose to be anything else."
"Huh," is the only response I can manage to that thoroughly depressing nugget of news.
"And I've thought about that talk we had endlessly, it seems, since she was taken and all this shit's been going down. Because I don't think she meant it."
I toss my empty bottle into the pile and it clinks against the others. I check HOUSE to see if that woke her, but she's breathing heavy and deep with sleep. "And what makes you so sure that wasn't what she meant, Annun?" I drag my gaze over to him and watch him squirm again.
"Because she carried this little card around with her in Fledge. A prayer card from the church. I never did get a real good look at the one she had, she kept it tucked in her pants. But I saw the front of it once, so I went looking for that card in the Fledge Church after Inanna took her and you came home. And I found it."
He stops and lets the seconds drag on, forcing me to participate in the conversation. "What'd it say?"
His smile is weak when he begins to explain. "It was about destiny, about meeting destiny on your own terms, actually, and not just accepting it. So that was a message that was important to her, right? And that's why she carried the card. So when I think about what she said in that church that night, maybe it was just a little bit of her insanity coming out, and not the real her. Because if she believes she's the captain of her soul, then she can't be blindly sailing the winds of destiny too."
I close my eyes and hope.
"She gets lost sometimes, I think. And scared, ya know? And she does and says things that contradict her true self. So that's what I thought this whole dissipation thing was about at first, right? That she's lost in there right now, and she just needs a little help to find her way back. Like maybe she's more scared of what's waiting back here than she is up there, and she just needs someone to tell her it's OK. That's she's doing fine."
I grunt at this.
"But then I talked to HOUSE today and she also told me something."
Now this I want to hear, so I actually sit up in my chair. "What'd she say?"
He draws in a breath between his teeth and I can tell this is bad. I want to choke the life out of him right now but I force myself to be calm. "Go on, Annun. Just say it."
He shrugs. "Well, I was looking up at the sky and she caught me, thinking I was wondering about Junco, maybe. I wasn't, I was thinking about—"
"Just get on with it, Annun." I growl it this time and he nods.
"OK, yeah. She said, She's not scared. I asked her who and all that, trying to figure out what she's talking about, and she just said it again. She said, Junco's not scared. She has a little bit of peace."
I grunt again. "Well, as Junco would say, that's fucking awesome."
Annun sighs at me. "Shit, dude, you're so clueless sometimes, ya know that? She's not scared, right? Which means she planned this. And HOUSE says she's at peace, which to me means she got to her end and couldn't take it any more. So the only thing to do when you get that far down the road, Tier, is just accept shit. And that, my dense superior officer, is exactly the right place for you to enter the picture."
"How do ya figure, Annun?"
"Because when you're ready to quit like that, you're really just begging for someone to come along and take charge, right? You just want to give it over to someone else." He shrugs and gets to his feet. "That's how I see it anyway. I watched her in Fledge. I saw her out there with you in Deliverance. And I figure I knew her better than anyone at that point in time. Maybe we didn't talk much, but I watched her very carefully. And I was her pick, ya know. I was her pick."
"I know, Annun. And that's why yer on my team right now."
"Yeah, well." He sucks in another breath. "This is your right place and your right time, Captain. All you gotta do is show up for the fucking party. Be the goddamned hero for once. Save Junco from herself because she's tired, Tier. She's had enough, she's been lied to, manipulated, scarred, mutated, cloned, killed, and tortured. And if I were her, I'd figure dissipation felt pretty motherfucking wonderful too. Better than any offer she's gotten here so far. Damned peaceful. She's definitely not coming back on her own. And maybe Sera's in there and maybe she's not, but you've got a direct link to Junco sleeping on the sand down there and all you've done today is drink beer. And maybe it's not my place to say it, but everyone else has been talking about it all day long, so fuck it—you can kick my ass if you want. Your kid's sick, Tier. Her nose is running, her head's all sweaty, and she's breathing like she needs a fucking respirator."
I sit up straight and ask my vision screen for an ethanol antagonist. It rushes into my blood stream and the lethargic drunk feeling is gone in an instant. "What?" I kneel down and pick her up and she whines in protest as I hold her to my chest. He's right, she's hot. "Shit, Annun. Why didn't ya say something earlier?"
"I have no experience with human kids, for fuck's sake, and you're the one taking care of her, not me. Everyone here but you can see she's not an AI, Tier. She's something else, so ya know… maybe you should try and figure that out and get your ass back to work before we all get blown to bits by the fucking Angels."
I wipe the sweat off her forehead and lean into her ear. "HOUSE?"
"Hmmm?" She squirms in my arms and swats my hand off her face.
"Ya OK, darlin'?"
"I'm tired," she mumbles, then turns into my chest and goes back to sleep.
I stand up and hold her tight. "She's tired."
"Yeah," Annun says. "Like I said. She's tired. Just save her from herself, dude. She just wants to rest."
Chapter Seven
The fires down below burn well into the night. Not out of any kind of celebration, but just as a way to stave off the darkness and impending doom, I think. I'm still not sure if Ashur gave the go-ahead for all these warriors to be here on the beach, but I figure they're none of my business anymore, so what the fuck do I care if they're not following orders?
I don't care.
They're just making the most out of the time we have left.
HOUSE is inside still asleep on the couch where I put her down more than two hours ago. I put in a call to Layla but she's not even on ship right now. So I found a medi-kit in the bathroom and gave her some medicine to cool her off and the last time I checked, it was working and this makes me feel a little less like a total piece of worthless shit.
I want to get drunk again very badly, but I let my metabolism clean up my blood and live with the consequences of my new reality. My head is hanging over the edge of the terrace in a sort of solitary pity party when Caleb ports in next to me.
I know he's there but I don't bother looking up.
"You're moping?" he asks.
"Yup," I reply, my forehead resting on my hands. "I'm fucking moping."
He walks behind me and takes a seat on the patio chair.
"Join me, Tier. I have a question for you."
My senses perk up at this, but I don't get too excited. It's Caleb, after all.
"What question?
You wanna know why I'm keeping a baby Junco clone, too?"
"Is the rumor true, then?"
This makes me turn. "What?" I study him for a few seconds. He looks way too much like Gideon for my comfort level. He's got the same sandy blond hair, blue eyes, and all-around perfect guy persona going for him.
"Do you have a clone here? I've been told you paraded her around the beach this afternoon, is it true?"
How is this possible? That he, of all people, is not aware? How could this possibly be the best-kept secret in the Solar System? "Yeah, it's true," I say and then walk over and take the seat across from him because this is just way too interesting.
"We're not quite sure what to make of that, to be honest. Everyone thinks you've gone insane."
"I've never been accused of being sane, Caleb. You know me better than that."
"True," he says, averting his eyes to the door. I look as well, hoping like hell that HOUSE doesn't come out while we're talking.
I turn back. "Is that why you came? To assess my sanity?"
"No, I've come with a message, I said. We have an offer, if you're interested."
"Yeah? What's that, then?"
He studies me for a long time and I simply sit still under his gaze and study him back.
If someone asked me to describe how I am related to Caleb, I'd be at a loss for words. We are twins, but not. We are brothers, but not. We are friends, but not. We are the sanctioned sons of very powerful beings and have unimaginable abilities, but have no real clearance to wield it. Yet. Although he's always been sanctioned, I was only promoted to this position today.
"He is not happy with Lucan. Not at all. He allowed the summoning gift under conditions, Tier. Conditions that there would be no more. And then you two decided to allow Isten, of all people, to twine her mind. What the hell were you thinking?"
I raise my eyebrows and make to answer but he waves me off.
"Never mind, it was rhetorical. But then Inanna marked her with the Archer morph. But that mark is Lucan's, you are aware, correct?"