by Kelly Jensen
Elias looked away, his throat tight. He didn’t believe tears were a sign of weakness. He just wasn’t ready to let go. Not yet. Movement in the periphery of his vision caught his attention. Qek, shifting from foot to foot.
“Where are Fixer and Zander?” she asked.
Elias opened his mouth, then closed it. In the smooth tone she reserved for speaking to patients, Nessa quickly explained where the rest of their crew was.
Qek made no answer. Her eyes widened and her forehead smoothed, but she didn’t speak. Instead, she turned and walked back into the crater, disappearing around the bulk of the shuttle she’d been inspecting. A moment later, she reappeared, pushing a sonic vacuum mounted on a hover float toward the tunnel entrance. Her wide eyes were focused ahead of her, her blue face still devoid of wrinkles but for one crease high on her scalp.
“What are you doing?” Elias asked.
“I am not ready to give up on my friend.” Qek continued past him, guiding the bulky vacuum normally used for cleaning cargo holds, or on reverse cycle, scouring the outside of ship hulls.
“Cleaning the tunnel isn’t going to help us find Fix.”
“In this case, I think it might,” Qek said.
Nessa gasped. “Oh my God, I think I know what she’s going to do.”
“Won’t she just bring down more rock?” Todd asked.
“What the hell are you all going on about?” How could vacuuming a tunnel save Fix? Wasn’t as if they could suck all the dirt and rock away. Not even an industrial-strength dock vac could do that, and the one sitting atop the hover float was...Elias ran to Qek’s side. “You’re going to use the sonic setting? Do you think it will work? What about what Todd said? The tunnel isn’t very stable right now.”
“Based on the readings from the first quakes and the tremors afterward, I surmise the mountain is settling. I would suggest we construct some braces to hold up the ceiling closer to the rock fall, however.”
“Ship cradle!” Todd said. “The smaller shuttle is in a cradle.”
“That would be adequate to my needs. Would you fetch the cradle, Mr. Todd?”
Dayne pushed to her feet. “I’ll help!”
Elias jogged to Dayne’s side and Nessa caught up a second later. Together, the four of them lowered the shuttle onto temporary moorings and extracted the cradle, two separate constructions of plasmix and alloy formed into wide Vs. A field could be stretched between them to buoy a ship.
“How far apart can we extend these?”
“Depends on the weight you’re trying to lift,” Todd said.
Elias glanced back at the side of the crater, at the mountain brooding silently between them and the ravine. He shook his head. “This can’t work.”
Nessa elbowed him in the side. “Think positive, Captain.”
They floated the cradle arms into the tunnel behind Qek. They had to lower them almost to the ground to pass under a low bump in the ceiling, then narrow the spread of the arms to slide around the first bend. But by the time they got to the tumble of rock that had separated Elias from Fix, hope had begun to bubble in his chest. Fix would support this plan. He wouldn’t have even stopped to make Qek’s calculations. He’d have just started dragging equipment into the tunnel. No, he’d have scraped his hands raw first. Tried every tool his crystalline arm could make. He’d have kicked and screamed—much as Elias had felt like doing after he’d broken all his nails. But he wouldn’t have given up.
“I’m coming, little brother. So you better be there. You better not have given up on me.”
* * *
Awareness came back to Zed slowly. It wasn’t quite like waking up—more like his brain needed a reboot after whatever it was that the Guardians had done. He realized his eyes were open and he was staring at a starscape he’d thought never to see again.
He sat with his back to a wall he couldn’t see, his knees propped up in front of him. He couldn’t feel any pain in his chest anymore, but that might have been because the pain in his heart overpowered everything. He didn’t know if this was the room he’d once spent so much time in, meditating and putting himself back together—there was no real defining characteristic that allowed him to identify it, beyond the floors, walls and ceiling modified to show only space. When he’d first woken up here—after dying—he’d wondered if the feeling of being so small was supposed to be reassuring or frightening. He still hadn’t decided which it was for him.
A soft touch brushed his mind. Apologetic, maybe. What were they most sorry for? Making him do what he’d done? Stealing him away to wherever this was? Killing Flick?
Oh God.
Zed swallowed hard and pushed the softness away. No, they didn’t get to comfort him. Not ever again. As much as he’d compared them otherwise, they weren’t his nana.
“Zanderanatolius, you told us that you did not want to know.”
He remembered that conversation. It had come on the heels of discovering the barest hints about why the Guardians had brought him back from the dead. He was a symbol, they’d said, a representation of how all of the galaxy’s species were not so different. Their essences could coexist in one body. Underneath the explanation, there had been more—concepts that his brain could not translate. They had invited him to stay, to learn, to know...but all he’d wanted was to be with Flick. His heart.
“I didn’t. I don’t. I—” Zed pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes. It was a useless gesture—it wouldn’t stop the tears, and the Guardians could feel his grief anyway. “I have no interest in helping you anymore.”
“It had to be done.”
Zed didn’t disagree, but he didn’t want to admit that aloud, even if they could glean it from his thoughts. “You coerced me.”
“It had to be done.”
Zed closed his eyes and let his hands fall to his sides. He leaned his head back against the unseen wall. “Just...put me back.” Back on Paradise, back on the Chaos—he didn’t care which.
“No, Zanderanatolius. Open your eyes.”
He considered refusing, but he had a sense the Guardians could out-stubborn him. They could certainly outlast him. He didn’t even know if they needed food, water or anything an organic being required. Fuck, they could very well not be organic. He’d met creatures made of living crystal—anything was possible.
Letting out a breath, he lifted his head and opened his eyes, then squinted, surprised at the sudden flare where there had once been only blackness and starlight. It was almost worse than being in the pitch black—certainly not as calming as the spacescape.
“What—”
Another mind-to-mind brush cut off his words. “This is why it had to be done.”
Images poured through his mind, striking with a force that stole his breath. His head jerked back, knocking against the wall, but the influx didn’t stop. It was a flood, a glut, and for too long, Zed forgot how to ride the wave. It almost pulled him down and under—but then he could breathe again and make sense of what he was seeing.
Sort of.
Preston, alive. Her soldiers carrying out jobs, both good and bad. More soldiers being created. The process being perfected. And in the background, getting closer, looming larger, the stin.
The perspective changed.
He saw Ashushk Prime, with dark smudges of smoke polluting its beautiful purple skies, its delicate soap-bubble buildings broken, the gentle landscape devastated.
He saw the stin homeworld—at least, he assumed it was, from the blackened and torn insectoid bodies lining the rubble-strewn streets.
He saw pieces of crystal floating in space, shattered and unrecognizable. The resonance? Their buildings? He couldn’t tell, but he knew what it meant—they were gone.
And then...Alpha Station, torn apart, its lights extinguished, Earth burning below it.
“Is this...is this wha
t might have happened?”
“It is what would have happened.”
“But how do you—how can you be sure that—”
Time rewound. Zed carried out his orders. No more Preston, no more soldiers. The galaxy continued in peace, years of peace, happiness, working together. Years, decades, centuries, spun by so fast that Zed lost his grip on the concept of time. The images ceased to have meaning, but the underlying emotions of the Guardians came through.
Love, protection, care, guidance.
Zed felt the utter truth of the images they’d shown him—the first sequence was just as real as the second. If different choices had been made. Did this mean that the Guardians could traverse time as easily as space? How else could they know what the future would bring?
Vision came back, slowly. Immersed in the light surrounding him, Zed could see a figure. Unrecognizable, unidentifiable, but a figure nonetheless. He strained to see more, but it slipped further into the light. Still, he knew what he’d seen. Who.
A Guardian.
“Are you going to keep me, now that I know?” Zed asked, his voice as weary as his mind. “Or kill me?”
“We will do neither.” There was no mistaking the apology beneath the words. “We are sorry, Zanderanatolius. Go home with our gratitude. We will not contact you again.”
Something touched his arm, the right one, and the Guardian cuff opened. It fell off, clanking dully as it hit the invisible floor. Zed stared at it, but made no move to take it back.
“You made me,” he said, closing his eyes again. With the words, he sent gratitude—because despite everything, he would always be thankful for what the Guardians had done for him. “Now let me go.”
Even though he was prepared for reality to fade, he couldn’t prevent his brain from just...stopping. He didn’t even have time to worry about where the Guardians were sending him.
* * *
The floor kept rumbling. Felix had an idea he should be rolling away from the tremors, but moving required more thought and his brain kept shorting out between ideas and action. It was like being in one of those dreams where he could create masterpieces of invention—tools that performed multiple, tangentially related functions, yet made little sense after he woke.
A stronger rumble crept beneath his shoulders and hips. Felix imagined it was the ever-present hum of a ship moving through space. Of him flying away from the limited existence of this dark hole. The warmth beside him was Zed—not a pool of blood. His blood. The pain in his head was excess. He’d stayed up too late, had a beer too many—was allowed to drink again, to not hide from the trickery of his own mind. He’d outwitted everyone at the poker table—had stroked, sucked and fucked Zed until he screamed. Now he was tired.
God, he was so tired.
Tired of hurting and being hurt. Tired of running and chasing. Of trying to be everything to his everything. Of just being. Of being alone, separated from the only man who could make sense of his life.
The rumble beneath him, around him, had become constant. The darkness was complete. The weight of the entire mountain seemed to rest on his chest, restricting his breath. The burden of memory teased the corners of his mind—every creak of rock the crack of stin discipline, every hiss of stone their voices. The ragged breath and quiet whimpering must be him—fighting the demons clawing at him out of the all-encompassing blackness. If only he could move! He managed to lick his lips and the taste of bitter dust stung his tongue. He flexed his fingers and a shock of surprise moved through him as he felt them twitch. The floor buzzed and crawled and the dark began to sing.
His bracelet chimed.
Had it chimed before? Or had he dreamed that, imagined his wrist as some extension of a tool he’d never created?
The buzzing and chiming increased. Felix jerked a hand across his abdomen—what he guessed was his abdomen because he was all in one piece, right? Lying on a trembling floor, waiting for the roof to come down and bury him properly.
His head hurt...and his bracelet wouldn’t stop chiming.
He tapped it. “‘Lo?”
Was that his voice, all scratchy and dry?
“Fix?”
“Ness?”
“Oh thank God.” More quietly, “Qek, can you get a fix on the signal?”
Why did they want to put him on a signal?
Qek’s voice floated through the connection, muted by distance. “He is there.”
“I’m here,” Felix muttered, sure he’d slipped into another useless dream.
“We are good to continue on our present course,” Qek continued.
Felix touched an imaginary copilot’s console. He should check Qek’s heading. She always got it right, she was a goddamned ashushk. They were never wrong about the important stuff. But checking gave him the illusion of control and he’d never learn to pilot the Chaos through j-space if he didn’t follow everything Qek did.
Rock continued to tremble around him. Then a whoosh of air filled with dust and debris pushed past his head. Voices crawled over his ears and light stabbed his eyes. Felix squinted and blinked. Warm hands cupped his cheeks.
“Fix?” Nessa’s voice.
“Here.”
“How do you feel? Can you move your arms and legs? Any pain in your back or head?”
“How did you get here?” Felix asked.
“We blasted through the rock using a sonic vacuum on reverse cycle. Just like cleaning a ship hull.”
Felix blinked. “That’s...”
“Qek thought of it. We can’t brace this side of the tunnel, though, so we need to get you out of here.” Nessa turned back to wherever she’d come from. “Send the float through!”
“I might be able to walk.” In his dreams. “I can feel all of me, by the way. Just not sure I remember how to stand up.”
Nessa’s medical wallet beeped and murmured. “Not surprised. You took a nasty hit to the head and you’ve lost a lot of blood. I need to get you out of here before I examine you properly, though.”
“How’s Zed?” Zed had been worse off than him. A bleeding rag, pale and sprawled across the ground.
“He’s fine, Fix. We just need to get you out of here.”
Zed wasn’t fine. He could tell by the tremble in Nessa’s voice. A tremor more subtle than the movement of the rock around him, but so much more telling.
Elias pushed through the hole and pulled a hover float through after him. He kissed Felix’s forehead and muttered a stream of nonsense. A tear might have dropped onto Felix’s cheek. Then he and Nessa lifted Felix onto the float. Felix let his thoughts flit from abstract to the absurd. He didn’t think about Zed. They pushed him back through the hole and panic seized him for the long space of darkness until he reached the other side and saw Qek, her face too smooth, and a man whose name he couldn’t remember and the woman who’d kept pointing a rifle at him. A field flickered overhead, casting inverse shadows across the rocky ceiling of the tunnel. A docking cradle.
“Brilliant, Qek.”
“Thank you, Fixer.”
Felix extended a hand and Qek took it.
They pushed him along the tunnel, out of the field, through more darkness and into light. Traveling via float was pleasant, he decided. He could just lie here doing nothing. Grab hold of that nothing and use it like a blanket. Set his thoughts to nothing.
A murky pink sky stretched across the top of the crater. Dawn breaking over the plateau. Felix blinked against the faint odor of the planet’s atmosphere, the heaviness of the warm air outside the tunnels. A wave of sensation washed through him. Rude and invasive. When it got to his balls, Felix recognized it. A Guardian scan. They were checking to see if their demands had been met.
“Fuckers.”
Light flashed into the middle of the crater. Felix tensed, the tightening of his muscles
almost involuntary, and waited for them to scour the planet with whatever awful weapons they possessed. For the love of all the stars, this was it. His true end. Fuck, it had been a good life. Rotten in turns, but meaningful in a way. And he’d had Zed. Not for long, but at a time when he really needed him. He’d had Zed when Zed wanted him back. Loved him for all he was worth. Had felt loved completely in return.
“Oh my God!”
Felix opened his eyes, somewhat ashamed he’d squeezed them closed at the end. Except it wasn’t the end. The crater still existed and the sky overhead still churned through varying degrees of gray and pink. And Nessa was crouched next to a shimmering form on the ground. The glow faded, and the form became Zed. No longer a pale, bleeding corpse. A man flush with health.
“Holy fuck, Nessa. They took him, again, and you didn’t tell me!” Felix struggled to push up to an elbow, his head spinning through several revolutions before he was able to speak again. “Fucking Guardians.” If he could, he’d raise a fist to the sky. If his throat weren’t so dry, he’d yell a bit more.
Elias appeared at the side of the float. “It’s all good, man. He’s back and you’re back and the Guardians haven’t vaporized us.” Elias put his hand on Felix’s forehead and pushed down. “Now lie back and let Nessa look after you.”
“He’s alive, right?” Felix whispered.
In the beat of silence before Nessa’s reply, it seemed the entire galaxy drew in a breath and held it.
“He’s alive,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Felix turned the Guardian cuff over in his hands. It had been next to Zed on the floor of the crater when the Guardians dropped him back onto the planet. Was weird seeing it off Zed’s wrist. Zed was the only one who could open it, but he’d only done it once before abandoning the cuff to a shelf in their quarters aboard the Chaos.
Felix had prodded, poked, drilled, burned and etched it. Well, he’d tried. The prodding and poking had worked, but the temperature of the cuff had remained steady through the burning, and nothing scratched its surface. Nothing. He planned to try acid next. Zed had followed his experiments with a bemused expression that suited his handsome features. Zed should always look a little amused.