Supernova

by C. Gockel

  “Yep,” said Solomon.

  “I will let everyone know. Thank you for this valuable piece of intel. May I please go to sleep now?”

  “Technically, you are asleep, but no you may not go,” Solomon said. “There is more you need to see.”

  “Couldn’t Shissh and Carl Sagan see it for me?” Volka implored.

  “No,” Solomon hissed.

  A tiger’s chuff rumbled through the dream. “Why not?” And then Shissh popped into existence on the bridge, sitting just in front of Alaric, tail swiping the deck. Above her head a familiar bewhiskered snout appeared, and then Carl’s face emerged, his body, and last, his tail at full fluff. Standing between Shissh’s ears, he proceeded to do a little dance. Glaring up at Carl, the Bengal tiger growled. None of the humans on the bridge noticed they were there.

  “Because they aren’t here,” Solomon hissed. “They are a dream. Carl, Shissh, what are you doing?”

  Shissh halted her growl.

  Carl stopped dancing and scratched an ear. “Wondering why you aren’t simply telling us and letting us tell her. This seems …” He glanced about the bridge.

  Shissh narrowed her eyes at Solomon. “Needlessly complicated.”

  “A mother doesn’t have to explain everything she does to her children!” Solomon declared. “Go play outside.”

  “Aww … Mom!” Shissh whined.

  Solomon sniffed. Shissh and Carl dropped their heads and began to float off the deck. Their forms became spectral, and they floated through the hull. A moment later, tiger and werfle were visible in the void. Drifting away from the ship, they expanded like overly filled balloons and clasped their throats dramatically in ways that were not anatomically possible.

  Solomon sighed. “That is not how death in space happens.”

  Carl’s and Shissh’s apparitions exploded with audible pops, also not possible in space, nor were the snickers that echoed in the bridge afterward.

  “They’re fine,” Solomon sniffed.

  “I know,” Volka said. The snickers faded, and she was left with Solomon and Alaric’s worry and anger.

  Volka was gone from his mind. Alaric exhaled. He glanced around the bridge. No one seemed to have noticed his momentary distraction. Solomon butted his head against his cheek, and Alaric gave the werfle a reassuring scratch, although he wasn’t sure if it was the werfle that needed reassuring, or him. A chime sounded next to Alaric’s chair. “Captain, incoming Q-comm transmission for you.”

  Rising quickly, almost dislodging the werfle, Alaric said, “I’ll take it in my office.”

  He didn’t run, but only just. He exited the bridge and entered a short narrow hallway.

  A tech was lying on the floor, elbows deep in a panel. The man almost rose, but Alaric waved a hand. “As you were,” he said, already stepping over him.

  “Yes, Captain,” he heard the man say.

  He reached a door that slid open at his approach and stepped into a room that looked very much like a hotel room, though the walls were metal, not wood or stone as they would be on Luddeccea. There was no window, just a wide flat view screen. The space almost looked Galactican, but the floor was carpeted and featured a Luddeccean dove. The quilt on the bed was Luddeccean green. There was also a heavy writing desk against the far wall that no Galactican hotel would have. Seating himself there, he unlatched a lock and rolled back the desk’s surface to reveal a holo globe. He tapped its side, and light spilled upward.

  “Alexis,” he almost said, but then was glad he didn’t.

  He found himself facing the lieutenant in charge of her security instead. Alaric sat impatiently through a rundown of security upgrades implemented so that the affair with Ran would never happen again. Alaric felt a muscle in his jaw jump. He’d already read about the changes. He wanted to speak to his wife. “I’ll connect you to Mrs. Darmadi momentarily,” the lieutenant said at last. The holo dimmed.

  Alaric leaned back in his chair, feeling oddly out of place. The room was much larger than his quarters had been on the Merkabah. This wasn’t his cabin, just a stateroom off the bridge that he liked to use for sleep and as a personal office for convenience. His quarters were a few decks down, much larger, and designed for entertaining. God help him when he had to entertain … If he had Alexis, it would be one thing, but …

  She appeared at that thought, and muscles in his shoulders unwound. She looked well. Her long hair was half upswept, and the rest coiled down past her shoulders. Her features were composed, but she was adept at faking composure. She scowled at him, and he held his breath. Tilting her head, she reached forward. “Can you see me?”

  She wasn’t scowling at him; she was scowling at the camera.

  “Yes,” Alaric replied. “I see you.”

  “I can’t see you.” Her lips twisted wryly. “I don’t get proof of life?”

  Alaric smiled at the dry humor. She sounded well.

  “I’m not the one who almost was kidnapped,” Alaric replied.

  Stiffening, she frowned, and this time, he got the feeling the expression was for him. “Not even close to almost. Ran never laid a hand on me.”

  “I heard,” Alaric said, lips twisting in a grim smile. He wasn’t sorry Ran was dead. He did wonder what had happened to the man. Ran had fought beside Alaric both as a first officer, and then later as captain of another Net-Drive ship. Ran had protected Archbishop Sato when The One had attacked New Prime. What had changed? His jaw got hard. Nothing. Ran had always believed Luddeccean culture and will were superior to Republican technology and numbers. Ran had shown signs of resenting collaborating with the Republic, even against the Dark.

  His wife released a breath and spoke in a rush. “He wasn’t Infected, Alaric, none of them were. They had a doctor with them in the van. The doctor had the Dark in a syringe and had been told it was a truth serum that would enable them to know state secrets. I’m not even sure he knew it was the Dark they carried with them.”

  Alaric had known that already. He was glad she knew. She deserved to know exactly what she—they—were fighting against.

  Alexis continued, “Not knowing if any of my other guards were part of the sabotage, I called headquarters for backup. They came immediately, to my immense relief.” She stood straighter and frowned. “They were able to subdue the other van occupants, and they brought a werfle with them.”

  “So, it was the werfle that interrogated them so thoroughly,” Alaric murmured.

  “Oh, yes,” Alexis replied.

  Solomon purred on Alaric’s shoulder and kneaded his claws.

  “I hear it is quite painless.” Alexis said, “I’m not sure I care about their pain, but I’ve read frequently that the stress of torture makes it unreliable.”

  Alaric wasn’t sure if he cared about the painless aspect of the werfle interrogation, either. Ran and the men working with him had tried to hurt his wife, probably not just to extract everything she knew from her mind, but also to use as a pawn against him. The fact that Ran deemed women the weaker sex in ways emotional and mental as well as physical made it just that much worse. Alaric had once thought of Ran as just sycophantic enough to be annoying. This revealed something more of Ran’s character—he was a bully. Was that what all sycophants were underneath? Had Ran been a bully while he’d served under Alaric? Had Alaric been less immune to the man’s sycophancy than he’d admitted to himself and so missed it? He shook his head. It was done. “What happened to the Weere Guard protecting you?” he asked.

  Alexis frowned. “The body of one of them was found just outside of No Weere. The one who became ill is still in critical condition, but I have been told he will survive. They were able to identify the toxin in time. He was hit by a dart and mistook it for an insect bite. They tried to kill Merta, too.”

  “That I had not heard,” Alaric said, tapping a hand on his desk. Ran didn’t like weere, so of course he wouldn’t have qualms with a female weere civilian being murdered to “spare Luddeccea from corruption of the Republic.” M
aybe that hatred of weere should also have been the clue the man was a bully?

  Massaging a temple, Alexis continued in a matter-of-fact tone. “The one thing you can say for Merta is that she is punctual. She tried taking an earlier bus to make it in time despite the rain. It got stuck on one of the mud roads near the weere settlement. The bus she normally takes took a slightly alternate route, and a woman who matches her description got off and was murdered in an alley just beyond the bus stop.”

  “Joel?” Alaric asked. His uncle had been much more productive since he got his new weere assistant. He remembered Silas saying something about Volka recommending him.

  Alexis rolled her eyes. “He and Silas are both fine. He never left the house.”

  Alaric’s eyebrows rose at her tone. “Joel spent the night?” Alaric asked before he realized just why a male weere assistant might have spent the night at his uncle’s house, and how this conversation could incriminate his uncle.

  Alexis touched her chest. “Oh, you know how it is … I’m so shattered by my previous adventure with the Dark that I cannot feel comfortable unless I am in the vicinity of a few weere to sniff it out. I suspected Merta was going to be late, despite her best efforts, based on the weather forecast, you know. I asked Joel to spend the night, but promptly forgot I had the next morning. Mommy brain and all.”

  Alexis had not forgotten who was listening in. Alaric’s lips turned up. Solomon purred so loudly on his shoulder that it was almost painful. Alexis cocked her head. “Is that Solomon I hear?”

  “Solomon is also happy to see you,” Alaric said.

  Alexis sighed. “I miss him.”

  If it was possible, Solomon’s purr increased in volume. One of Alaric’s eyebrows rose. Alexis hadn’t said she missed him. Alaric said, “Solomon returns the sentiment, I’m sure.”

  Alexis smiled, but then her smile dropped. “Alaric, if I had thought for an instant that there was no escape, if I hadn’t felt confident in Guard backup arriving, I would never have gone with Ran. Nor would I have abandoned our children. I would have taken their lives and mine too before I gave the Dark anything.”

  “I know,” Alaric said. And he was glad.

  “I know,” from Alaric’s lips to Alexis sounded an awful lot like “I love you,” to Volka.

  “That is what you needed to know,” Solomon said. The scene faded to darkness. She felt Solomon’s consciousness slide away from hers—and Alaric didn’t take Solomon’s place. Maybe because he was content now that he’d seen Alexis was well.

  And maybe Volka could finally go to sleep. At that thought, her eyes bolted open. She stared at the dark ceiling. Sometime during the shared dream, Carl had crawled up onto the bed just beside her pillow. He was curled up in a ball, sound asleep, snoring softly.

  Like she should be doing, but her stomach bubbled, and she felt a familiar tightness at the back of her throat.

  Putting a hand over her mouth, she rolled out of bed. Her foot got tangled in the bedding, and she banged one knee on the floor. Fighting to hold her stomach, she pressed a hand over her mouth, and struggled to rise and disentangle herself one handed. And then the knot of sheets vanished from her ankle, and a hand wrapped around her upper arm, lifted her gently, and turned her to the door of her room. Carl continued to snore.

  Breaking away from Sixty, she ran down the hall to the bathroom she shared with the other humans in this apartment. She barely made it in time.

  When she lifted her head from the toilet, Sixty was already there, a glass of water in his hand.

  With shaky hands, she put it to her lips, took a sip, and whispered, “Thank you.”

  “I heard you call out,” he said.

  “I called out?” Her ears sagged. “I am afraid of what I said.”

  The bathroom was dark, even for weere eyes, and she couldn’t read his expression. “You called out to Alaric to tell you what was wrong.” He said it in his General voice. There was no inflection. She suspected if she could see his face, there would be no emotion to read.

  Volka set the glass down and leaned on the edge of the toilet. She should think about their relationship—she should be trying to mend it—but she was actually thinking about what she’d just learned. She had no energy left to apologize.

  Settling down cross-legged beside her, 6T9 said, “Come here,” and without asking, pulled her into his lap, cradling her against his chest. She found herself crying, silently, unsure of why.

  “What was wrong, Volka?” he asked softly.

  So many things were wrong.

  “Besides the fact I can’t control my telepathy?” she asked.

  For a moment, she only heard the slight hum that he had instead of a heartbeat. She noted a power cord running from behind his back, trailing on the white tile like a long silver snake. He’d been very drained yesterday, she remembered he’d said something about dangerously low power levels when he went to bed.

  It might have been her imagination, but she thought his grip tightened. “I presume Darmadi had a message for you, one that pertains to our mission.”

  “Solomon did,” Volka said.

  His fingers relaxed, and she told him what had happened. She started from the beginning, not leaving out that it had been Alaric’s mind she’d been in first, that it was his worry that had put her there—if that drove him away, better it be now. Sixty didn’t seem to get angry, though she couldn’t read his mind, his expression, or his scent. At the end, he was quiet for a long while, and then he said, “I don’t suppose when this is all over, Alaric could be convinced to take up a nice, steady, non-dangerous teaching position at the seminary?”

  Volka gaped up at his shadow, almost smiled, and then he added, “Maybe if I incentivize this career change with threats of death and dismemberment?” Her ears flicked as she tried to read his tone. Another joke … a dark joke that the Sixty she’d first fell in love with never would have told.

  Sixty’s body sagged, he sighed, and laid the side of his head on top of hers. “I’m kidding. Mostly.”

  Volka exhaled. Neither of them was who they once were. But she smelled like vomit, and he was holding her in his lap. She knew from experience that the bathroom tile was cold and hard. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  She thought he shrugged.

  “Can you tell Noa and James everything, so I don’t have to repeat the story?” she asked.

  “Done,” Sixty said, just like that.

  Volka’s stomach began to twist again, and she wasn’t sure if it was pharmaceutical side effects. “Sixty … The counselor ship the Odessians shot down … the Dark could have been aboard, but the counselor and his staff might not have known. It could have been part of someone’s luggage, in a shampoo bottle. It could have been an accident.”

  “Yes,” he said softly. “It could have been.”

  “Everyone aboard the ship died,” Volka whispered.

  He’d been rubbing her back, but his hand stopped.

  “Even if we succeed in blowing up the shipyard, we will still have to spend the rest of our lives eradicating it … and … and looking over our shoulders,” she choked. “And in our drinking water.”

  “Finding System Zero and the shipyard is still important,” Sixty said. “Destroying it will greatly diminish its ability to spread.”

  “Or at least hold it in check,” Volka said. “It’s in the Republic now.”

  “Yes,” Sixty said. His hand resumed rubbing circles on her back. “You should get some sleep. Today is a big day.”

  “You think it might attack the shipment Jerome and Stratos are on,” Volka said.

  “Yes.”

  “And I need to be ready for it,” she added numbly.

  “Yes.”

  Volka stared at the toilet. “I’m going to throw up again.”

  6T9 guided Volka down the hallway, hand on her shoulder. He could feel the delicate bone, muscles, and sinew beneath his fingers. His system performed an automatic query and returned the name of the bone—the sca
pula. The ridge he felt was the spine of the scapula, and the protruding edge was the acromion. That query cascaded into another and produced a memory. Volka only had the equivalent of a sixth-grade education, but she’d learned anatomy from her former employer, a Luddeccean painter. She’d once described that little bit of bone and its delicate protrusion whimsically as the “leftover bit of wing from when humans were more angelic than they are now.”

  He traced it with his finger. He could break it with that finger. It wasn’t whimsical. It was a reminder of how fragile she was. He wished he’d killed Darmadi just so the man would let her sleep. There had been no reported attacks on transport vessels, and Bethlem—where Jerome and Stratos would be arriving soon, and where the Skimmer team hoped to pick them up—was the perfect target: a distant, poorly defended research facility that received large food shipments on a regular, publicly-known schedule.

  Volka halted at her door and looked up at him with glowing eyes. “Would you use your hypnosis on me again?”

  He put a hand under one of her wolfish ears. No plastic surgery could compare to them—the softness of the velvet, the warmth, or the feel of the muscles that made them so expressive. He wondered what they did during sex.

  Just prior to meeting Volka, 6T9 had been planning to blow an inheritance at an exclusive and luxurious adult resort. He’d planned to spend lots of money with lots of people with little inhibitions or clothes. The resort would have been warm, bright, and there would have been lots of alcohol—not that he could get drunk, but he enjoyed the flavors and the colors.

  The Odessian Local Guard quarters were spartan. It was autumn. The days here were warm, but the night temperatures were sliding ever downward, and yet they hadn’t turned on the heat. He could feel his power draining with each faux breath. Odessa didn’t have a lot of alcohol or chocolate, probably due to a combination of weere physiology and religious philosophy. Volka was inhibited by a tragic biological monogamy.