Paolo put his hands on both their shoulders, leaning his chin on Phoebe’s head. “We thought we lost you.”
“Liam!”
There was Mina, racing down the steps of the ship, pushing her black bangs out of her eyes, holding up the beacon with the other hand. Liam was still holding his, and when he pressed it now, Mina’s blinked instantaneously, no longer any distance between them. As Mina neared, Liam bounced on his feet, and finally, finally, she slammed into him and hugged him and lifted him momentarily off the ground. Her hair had that smell he remembered since Mars, sweet and supposedly like Earth coconuts. Her cheek was wet against his.
She pushed him back and held him at arm’s length. “Jerk!” She hugged him again, laughing.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he croaked, tears in his eyes.
“No thanks to you,” Mina said. “Trying to get rid of us so you could have this alternate alien universe business all to yourself.”
“That’s not what—”
“Duh, I’m kidding.” She ruffled his hair.
“Where are Mom and Dad?”
“Inside. They’re still recovering from stasis, so moving a little slow. Want to go see them?”
Liam nodded but eyed the Styrlax ship. “How did you get here?”
“After I saw you on the Scorpius—you still have to explain that, by the way . . .” Mina lowered her voice conspiratorially and explained how they had chased down Phoebe’s parents and agreed to work together. “We got clear of the supernova and that rifting you were talking about, and waited until we saw those weird ships show up, and then we followed them back to the doorway.” She rubbed her head and glanced toward the portal in the distance. “It was weird going through that thing. Time got all messed up. . . . I think I saw myself as an old lady? Is that possible?”
“Pretty much anything is possible with the portal,” said Liam. “So it’s safe, with the Telphons?”
“It’s not exactly chummy, but we have sort of a truce, to find you guys and I guess now to figure out what this is.” She motioned to their surroundings.
“It’s called Dark Star. It’s what blew up our sun and Centauri A.”
Min frowned. “Wow, okay . . .” She tugged his arm. “Come see Mom and Dad.”
Liam let himself be pulled, let a grin slip across his face, but he also caught Phoebe’s eye; she was in her own quiet conversation with her parents. What were they talking about? How was she feeling? They’d both wanted this for so long, and yet now that they were reunited with their families, Liam couldn’t help but feel like they were on opposite sides of a chasm.
He stumbled on the stairs.
“Dude, be careful,” said Mina. “It would be pretty silly if you traveled through a time portal to an alternate universe and then cracked your head open tripping up a staircase.”
“Sorry.” Liam bounded up the remaining steps and into the sleek insides of the craft. A sphere of orange crystal floated in the center of the main room, surrounded by a circular railing that held dozens of control panels. Liam paused when he saw Barro and Tarra standing on the far side of the crystal, along with nine other Telphons. They gazed at him, bristled faces and human-looking eyes, and Liam felt a surge of emotion: Was it fear, or anger, or both? It was all he could do to avert his eyes and follow Mina around the crystal and into the cockpit area.
Mom and Dad were sitting in two of the chairs there, and when Liam appeared, their eyes lit up. Mom pushed herself to her feet, a hand on the chair for support.
“Honey,” she said.
“Mom.” Liam threw himself against her, felt her breathing. In the glimpse before he’d hugged her, he’d noticed the pinkish burn marks still on her face from the accident on Mars, and now he could feel her trembling slightly, maybe aftereffects of the decades in stasis. She rubbed his back like she used to, and had it been a matter of days, or a matter of decades, since that morning on Mars, on the balcony before they’d left their apartment forever? Somehow it felt like both.
Liam pulled away and Dad put a hand on his shoulder. He was using a metal crutch under one arm. Liam hugged him, felt his bristly chin against his head.
“You guys are doing all right?” said Liam. Mom, Dad, Mina, here they all were, together.
Mom shrugged, wincing as she did. “Mostly? We both have some lingering nerve damage, and we’re on a pretty rigorous treatment of antiradiation meds. But yes. Thanks to you, my darling boy, here we are.” She rubbed his back again.
“You saved us,” said Dad, looking at Liam with pride, tears in his eyes.
“Well . . .” Liam felt his face reddening. “I—”
“You saved us all,” said Mom. “Humanity might be lost if it wasn’t for you.”
“Not bad, little brother,” said Mina.
“I, um, got pretty lucky, a lot of times,” said Liam. He found himself shaking. For as real and dangerous as it had all felt in the moment, it was like he was acknowledging some extra level of it now . . . some additional amount of fear that he’d kept locked tightly inside, finally spilling loose. His breath hitched and he sobbed.
Mom put her arms around him again. “You were so very brave.”
Liam thought that, through all that had happened, he’d never felt brave, not really. Just terrified, and panicked, and worried. “If it wasn’t for Phoebe, I never would have made it.”
Mom pulled away, and Liam thought he saw a shadow cross her face, but just then another voice spoke up:
“I calculate that I played some small part in all of this.”
“JEFF!” Liam ducked past his parents and saw JEFF’s panda head lying on one of the seats. “Oh man, what happened?”
“I have been upgraded to travel size. HA HA HA.”
“Nice one.”
“Liam,” said Mom. “Phoebe and her parents . . . this is all very complicated.”
“Phoebe’s not our enemy,” Liam said quickly. His nerves flared, the spinny feeling returning, so familiar now, he wasn’t sure whether it was fear or frustration or something else. “She risked her life to save me, to save everyone on the starliners. And her parents must have come around too if they’re here with you, right? Mina said you have a truce.”
“We do,” said Dad, his face hardening. “But I don’t think we can be so sure of their intentions. The things they’ve done . . . They almost killed you and your mother and me on Mars.”
“Phoebe said they weren’t trying to blow up the lab.”
“They may not have been,” said Dad. He crossed his arms, not quite looking at Liam as he spoke. “But when your mom and I uncovered evidence of their plans to steal the data and confronted them, they set the reactors to malfunction. Maybe they were hoping it would just be a distraction to allow them to escape . . .”
“But it killed Marco, and Mara and Idris,” said Mom, “and the Telphons murdered tens of thousands of people when they attacked the Scorpius—”
“And we murdered almost their entire species,” said Liam.
“Not murder,” said Mom. “We didn’t know—”
“They said you ordered the Phase One launch.” Liam’s heart raced as the words came out. He turned to Dad. “That you gave the order. That you knew there might be life there, and you did it anyway.”
He watched his father’s face, and when Dad’s brow scrunched and his eyes shifted away for a moment, the knot in Liam’s stomach tightened. “There was some data,” said Dad, “that indicated the potential for complex life-forms, but it was inconclusive. A couple team members thought we should do more studies, gather more information, but . . . you have to understand the time pressure we were under. We knew that Aaru would need at least a century to recover from the Phase One impact, in order to be ready for us to implement Phase Two upon our arrival. The whole colonization plan was on such a tight timeline. We just—”
“We didn’t have a choice,” said Mom, her eyes steely and wet. “We couldn’t risk it, Liam. All of humanity, the future of our species . . . it was ou
r only chance—you know that. We couldn’t travel halfway across the galaxy only to be wiped out by some virus or microbial life-form.”
“It wasn’t some virus,” said Liam. “There was an entire race of people.”
“But we couldn’t have—”
“I’ve been there,” Liam interrupted.
“Where?” said Dad. “You mean . . . Aaru?”
“Telos. That’s what they called it. They had houses and streets and playgrounds. Phoebe had a little brother. We destroyed it all. And then we were going to build a new home on their ashes.”
“Yes, we’ve heard their side of it,” said Dad.
“So you can understand—”
“What we understand,” said Mom, “is that there is a difference between making a mistake in a desperate moment and intentionally seeking out an entire race of people to exterminate, as they did. We were trying to survive. What’s their motive? Vengeance? They could have come to us. Told us who they were, what had happened.”
“Would we have listened?” said Liam. “Or would we have finished the job, so that there was no delay with the Phase Two time line.”
“Okay. I—” Mom began, then looked away. “Look, we could go back and forth about this, but the reality is we’ll never know, will we? What’s done is done.”
Footsteps sounded and Tarra appeared in the cockpit. “Everyone’s gathering.”
Dad nodded, not quite meeting her gaze. “We’ll make our way down. Please just give us a couple minutes.”
Tarra ducked out without a reply.
“Liam,” said Dad, “that’s the Artemis out there, isn’t it? The prototype starliner? How did they get here? What is this place?”
Liam explained about the Artemis and the doorway, and what he knew about Dark Star.
“This thing created our universe?” Mina interrupted.
“And a bunch of others,” said Liam.
“So, like, we’re just bugs in a petri dish?” said Mina.
“I don’t know.” Liam had been imagining their universe more as an aquarium, on a shelf next to other aquariums, like in their science lab back on Mars. He explained how it hadn’t been Barrie’s fault, or his crew’s, that their sun had blown up, and he told them about the chronologist, and described his journey through space and time as best he could. Mom’s and Dad’s eyes met a couple times while he was talking, and Liam could sense their apprehension at everything he was saying.
“That is a lot to sort through,” said Dad. “But you think Captain Barrie is all right?”
“I think so?” said Liam. “He’s been trying to figure out exactly why this place is blowing up stars, and whether or not it’s a bigger threat. And they’re still repairing the Artemis. . . .”
“But . . .” Mom finished for him. “Is there something else?”
“It’s just, some of the things he’s said are odd. When I first met him, on Mars—”
“He was on Mars?”
“No, not exactly, it was a time-travel thing; I was using the watch I told you about. He called himself part of the Drove, made it sound like he was an enemy, sort of. He invited me to come here, and said it was safe, that I could bring you guys, that we didn’t have to die back there on Mars. Except then, here, he says that he didn’t want to send a message to the rest of the fleet because this place is too dangerous.” Liam shook his head. “I’m not sure his officers totally trust him, either.”
“He’s probably been under incredible stress,” Dad reasoned, “with his entire crew trapped here, and with the knowledge of what this station has done, even if he was powerless to stop it.”
“Maybe.” Liam thought of Barrie emerging from that strange cylinder down in the hangar. “But I think he might know more about Dark Star than he’s told us.”
“Well, we’ll keep a careful eye on him. Speaking of which, we should go down there.”
“And you’re okay?” said Mom, taking Liam by the shoulders. “These things that have happened to you, with time . . .”
“I’m fine, Mom.” Yet saying those words also caused a chill, and Liam wondered if he was.
They all stood there, in thought, for a moment. Liam had said those things about Barrie, and yet he also knew more about this place than he had shared. He could just imagine their worried reaction if he tried to explain about Iris. . . .
Dad put his free arm around Mom and they began to hobble out of the cockpit.
Mina slid out of their way and watched them go. “All of this is so nuts,” she said quietly.
“Yeah . . . Here.” Liam pulled the beacon necklace over his head and handed it back to her. “I was only supposed to have this for the day. You can give it to Arlo. You said you’d pummel me if— What?”
Mina wiped tears from her eyes. “Arlo died at Delphi.”
“Oh no,” said Liam. “I’m sorry.” He hugged her, and she hugged him back tighter than she ever had, and cried against his shoulder in deep, hitching sobs. He’d never heard her like this before. “It’s okay,” he said, his own eyes welling up.
Mina shook her head against him. “It’s not.” She pulled away. “These Telphons . . . I know we’re working together, but they killed him, and so many others. And we still need their planet. How exactly is this going to work?”
Liam hadn’t really thought that far ahead. Or maybe he had. “We’ll probably have to find another place to go,” he said. “Telos—I mean, Aaru—was their home.”
Mina pulled away, her face darkening. “But you heard Mom and Dad: What we did was an accident. What they did was murder. If you think we’re just going to give them Aaru-5 and risk dying in the cold of space while we try to find another home—”
“But then they’ll be in the same danger.”
“Well, there are eleven billion of us and like ten of them, so . . .”
“Two hundred and forty, actually. Most of them are on another ship near Telos.”
“You mean Aaru. Either way, same difference.”
“But—”
“Can we not talk about this now?” said Mina. “I know you’ve been having all kinds of adventures, and you have your crush on Phoebe—”
“I—”
“But my actual boyfriend died like two days ago, and I’ve nearly been killed five times, too. Do you know what it’s like, having your stasis pod shot out into space and wondering if you’ll ever be found?”
“No.” Except Liam thought that actually, he knew quite a bit about such a feeling, but he couldn’t say it because suddenly he was just a little brother again. He hadn’t expected Mina to be saying any of these things, or that finally reuniting with his family would make everything feel more complicated. Was Phoebe feeling this way, too?
“Come on.” Mina started out of the cockpit. “We don’t want to miss the big confrontation.”
“May I come along?” JEFF asked.
“Sure.” Liam scooped up JEFF’s head. It was heavier than he’d expected, but he got it under one arm, resting on his hip. “You will definitely want to see this place.”
“My sensors are picking up an incredible amount of information encoded as energy in the air, indicative of a quite advanced AI.”
“Yeah. Wait until you meet her.”
“Her?” said Mina.
Liam glanced at her and for a moment actually wished she wasn’t around. He would have loved to tell JEFF all about Iris and see what he thought. Funny that the family member he felt most comfortable sharing with right now was a bot. “Sorry. I meant it.”
Liam fell into step behind Mina. They exited the Styrlax ship and caught up with Mom and Dad as they made their way into Dark Star, to the control room.
Barrie stood in the center of the room, with the universe bubbles drifting in a ring around him. Liam, Mina, and their parents joined Jordy and Kyla and ten other officers from the Artemis. Phoebe and her parents, Barro, Tarra, and the nine other members of the Telphon team stood together in their own separate group. The two factions were maybe ten meters
apart, far enough that when they spoke quietly to one another, their words were indistinct. All of them were intermittently gazing from the captain and the maps to the wide view of the nebula and the shadowy arms of Dark Star. The chronologist stood off on his own, behind Barrie. His back was half turned to them, and he gazed out at the empty nebula.
“So,” said Barrie. “Here you all are.” He put his hands out into one of the bubbles as it drifted by and then threw them up and outward, enlarging the map overhead. “This is our universe,” he said, pointing to the brightest, closest bubble. “As you can see, Dark Star is connected to it by this portal”—he indicated a blinking dot—“which it can move in space-time in order to gather fuel from stars like our sun. Our universe is one of three that Dark Star categorizes as ‘active,’ and it is the newest, or youngest one.” Barrie explained how the Artemis had arrived here, how their presence had seemed to awaken Dark Star, and how so far, they had been unable to stop it from refueling itself. “My team has been investigating the portal mechanism, in an effort to try to gain control of it, but so far Dark Star’s technology remains indecipherable to us.”
“And you don’t know why it’s refueling?” Liam’s mom asked. “What its true aim is?”
“No.”
“Dark Star is running some sort of computational process called Operation Forty-Eight,” said the chronologist, still peering out into the nebula. “That process is nearly ninety-five percent complete.”
Barrie turned to him, brow furrowed. “Where did you learn about this?”
“In the Dark Star logs,” said the chronologist, waving a hand absently toward the control spheres over by the platform.
“Captain,” said Liam’s dad. “Pardon me, but I’m a little confused. Why didn’t you get a message back to us as soon as you arrived? You must know that you and your crew have been presumed dead for decades.”
Barrie ran a hand through his hair. “I know. You have to understand how fast all this has happened for us.” He recounted their last two weeks, powering up the station, discovering the sun had been targeted, his worry about what dangers this place might still pose.
“Of course,” said Dad, “but we at least could have known you were alive. . . .”
The Shores Beyond Time Page 16