Dusk

by Ashanti Luke

  Even through the explosion, Cyrus heard his own scream. And then the shockwave took him off his feet as a gust of hot wind washed over him. Six’s body was consumed in flame and he was thrown back into the cargo bay as the glimmer ship lifted off its side and rolled out of the bay. Cyrus hit the ground and slid as Six, holding his spear in his hand, flipped through the air as if he was in free fall again. Six hit the ground, his limbs flopping uncontrollably as his smoking body slid to a halt in a twisted, awkward position. An Echelon soldier hit the ground a few meters from Six with a Valois in his hand. The soldier rolled and then stopped face down. He lifted his head and the Squib, but before he could activate it, a volley of alternating gunshots knocked his body left, and then right, and finally back to the ground in a shower of blood.

  Cyrus was already up and running to Six as the Squib clattered harmlessly on the metal floor. Six coughed and dark smoke issued from his mouth and nostrils as Cyrus approached. When Cyrus got to him, it seemed as if Six was smiling, but it was hard to tell because much of his upper lip had been burned away.

  Six coughed again and tried to speak, but his voice was gravelly and came out with a wheeze. “Works better… with… Spellcaster,” he breathed, and the tears came before Cyrus could stop them. Cyrus sobbed and held Six toward tightly, his flesh smoldering under burned away holes in the Comptex. And then Six grabbed Cyrus’s shoulder and pulled himself upward. One of Six’s legs twisted awkwardly beneath him, but his grip, even in the last throes of death, was Herculean. Cyrus could smell bile and hydrocarbon fumes equally mixed in Six’s breath as he wheezed again, “A real… king… needs… an edged… weapon.” He pulled his other arm around, but could only set the spear to rest on Cyrus’s leg before his body finally released its last gram of strength.

  Cyrus held Six in his arms, weeping as footsteps approached from behind. He could feel what must have been their hands on his shoulders, but it was hard to feel anything except the void that had been left inside him. Everyone had been hinting at it since the escape. Tanner, the other scientists, the Apostates, Six, Paeryl, even Winberg—they all wanted something from Cyrus, and deep down, he knew it was always something he had wanted others to want from him. It was what he had wanted from his wife, but she didn’t know how to give it. It was what Kalem refused to give, and what had driven him to madness. And even though Cyrus had traveled across the ether for hundreds of light years in search of it, it all seemed worthless as the feeble heaves of Six’s body, in desperate refusal to go easily, finally ceased in Cyrus’s arms.

  And then one of the hands on him became firmer, and the earwig shattered his miserable solitude, “We ain’t out of this hound pit yet.”

  thirty-one

  • • • • •

  —Dada, after we all get to Asha, do you think we’ll ever come back to Earth?

  —It’s hard to imagine what would have to happen to make us come back.

  —Do you think we’ll mess up Asha as bad as we messed up here?

  —Well, that’s part of the point of why we’re going in the first place. Why do you think I make you erase your deck essays and just start over sometimes?

  —Because you’re a homework despot?

  —Despot? Who teaches you these words?

  —You do, Dada.

  —Fair enough. But no, it’s not because I’m a megalomaniac. It’s because sometimes the best way to correct your mistakes is to just wipe the slate clean and start all over again.

  —So Asha is like a way for us to start over again?

  —Yeah, kind of.

  —Are you going to miss us Dada?

  —Terribly.

  —Uncle Xander says you’re the best in the world at what you do, and that’s why you have to go. I can understand that, but I feel kinda selfish.

  —Why selfish Dari?

  —Because I think you are the best at what you do to, but I don’t want to share you with the rest of the world. Forgive my mouth, but I don’t give a damn what the rest of the world wants from you—I want what I want.

  —I understand that Dari, but whether I’m here, there, or in the world to come, you, and you alone, will always have that from me. No matter what I choose to, or not to, give to anyone else. Above all else, you remember that there is nothing in this world or the next that means more to me than you do. Not the Unified Department of Science, not my job, not even Uncle Xander or your mother. Maybe, I shouldn’t be telling you that, but you are smart enough to see it already.

  —If that’s true, then why are you leaving me for them? For the damn Uni? For this Asha place?

  —Believe me Dari, it’s not for them. One day, probably not today, probably not tomorrow, but one day, you will understand that sometimes, even though he cares more about someone else than even himself, a man has to do what he knows he has to do, because if he’s not right with himself, he can never be right with anyone else. And I would do anything, even leave you, if staying means I can’t be what I said I would in your eyes.

  —So you’re leaving for my own good? That’s houndshit.

  —Dari, I understand you’re angry. I’m angry too. But we will see each other again, and by then, I’m sure, in your own way, you’ll understand what I mean.

  —What if I don’t?

  —Dari, you are too much like me not too. Maybe I need to leave so you can figure out how to not make my mistakes.

  —Maybe you’re running away.

  —You could be right. But if I am, it’s not you I’m running from. And there isn’t a force in this world that can keep us apart for long.

  —Well, if the world does take you away from me, one way or the other I will find a way to make it pay, and pay a lot.

  —Look around you Dari. The world has already paid for its sins. The question is whether or not each of us has paid our due. Maybe my leaving is a form of penance.

  —For what?

  —Wrath, maybe. Maybe pride. Maybe for what I’ve done to your mother.

  —So I have to pay for your sins too?

  —Sometimes that’s the deal Dari. I don’t like it, but regardless of what creed you subscribe to, sins have to be paid for, whether it be the father or the son. Honestly, if I leave, maybe our collected debt won’t be so great.

  —What if I mess up and increase the debt.

  —Then I will go wherever I need to go to set the books straight.

  —Even if it means coming back here?

  —If it’s within my power, yes.

  —You know if it did happen, it wouldn’t be on purpose right, Dada? I may not care about the rest of the world, but I would never hurt you because of something I wanted, even if you did it to me.

  —You know, maybe you are a better man than me.

  —I love you Dada, more than anything.

  —I love you too Dari—more than you know.

  • • • • •

  Tears still filled Cyrus’s eyes as he stepped into the bridge. This ship was designed, probably like most of the other ships in the Ashan fleet, to reach interstellar speeds quickly and without a slingshot. It could reach fold speed, the speed at which its quantum drives could squeeze it below Planck’s length for the infinitesimal fraction of a second it took the ship and all its contents to forget that they were beholden to the laws of the universe reserved for any object larger than an atom. It was a magnificent piece of technology, spawned by miraculous breakthroughs in astro and quantum physics, and yet all of it would be useless if the five fighters, coursing toward them from the darkening dome of sky, were allowed to have their way.

  “Does this thing have enough power to engage the main drive in the atmosphere?” Cyrus asked, his nerves steeling even as the tears dried on his face. He noticed he was still carrying Six’s bloodstained spear and that one of the heads had broken off in the explosion.

  “It would create a vacuum because it’s so hot,” Jang reported, “but it would be possible.”

  “They have armed their missiles!” Uzziah bellowed, uns
uccessful at keeping his composure.

  “The grav-suppressors here are more efficient than ours, no?” Cyrus asked.

  “They make the Paracelsus look like a cutty sark,” Jang reported, managing to stay calmer than Uzziah.

  “Then burn the main, full power, now!”

  As Paeryl stood with Cyndyl, Toobah, and the few Apostates that had stayed behind, he watched the troubled ascent of the Chariot through scanning goggles. Once the cargo doors had finally closed, it had pulled up toward the atmosphere only to confront another, larger formation of Echelon attack fighters. But then suddenly, there was a bright flash, and a bizarre still filled the air. There was a resounding clap, and the Chariot was gone. Two of the fighters that had rushed toward them spun erratically as Paeryl’s eyes adjusted. The two ships plummeted for a moment before regaining their composure, but the other three fighters that had stood in the path of the Chariot were no longer visible. And then, from behind them, came a breeze the likes of which neither Asha, nor Paeryl was accustomed to. It moved the hairs on the back of his neck and the graying hairs on his head, and it wavered his clothing as it rushed up toward the sky like children behind a procession. Paeryl smiled, knowing the breeze was not the only thing Cyrus had left behind, and the wind was not the only thing he was taking with him. He reached over, took his wife’s hand, and they walked further into wastes that had been most hospitable to them until now, to find a place where they could bask in the rays of their beloved Set, unmolested by the Archons that cowered from the light, to await anyone who could leave enough of themselves behind to embrace new life that only the light could provide.

  The orange light of the Ashan sky gave way to a starscape in a flicker, and before the louvers had come down fully, the stars on the edges of Cyrus’s vision stretched out like the spindles of an aster. The stars before them seemed to bloat and swell, their light burning brighter and brighter until they felt as if they would bore holes into Cyrus’s very consciousness. Even after the louver had closed, and he had retired from the bridge, the stars still seemed to be burning in front of him, their intensity overwhelming his mind’s eye until it seemed his entire existence was full of light. Doree and Fenrir were already sending the others to facilitate the implementation of the suncasters in the living quarters. They had already set up two in the infirmary, and Toutopolus, Torvald, and Davidson worked with the automated medical unit to administer aid to the men, women, and children that had been wounded in the final battle. Loli made preparations in the crematorium to allow each of those who had passed in their final endeavor the chance to properly return what they had borrowed from the universe. Cyrus walked over, and before he could open his mouth to say something he did not know how to say, Loli embraced him.

  “I’m sorry,” was all he could manage before emotion built a swell in the corners of his own eyes.

  “Don’t be sorry for him. This is what he wanted from the time he came here—to be given a chance to live up to his drawing and still win,” even though they had come out between sobs, her words were strangely soothing.

  Cyrus pulled her closer, accepting the warmth of her body. “I meant for me and you.” She did not reply. She only held him until she felt like she could finish what she needed to do, which was not long enough for either of them. Six had gotten what he wanted, had saved the entire sortie, but if there was victory in his death at all, at least for now, he was the only one with license to feel it.

  But that was how it was, wasn’t it? Cyrus had come to Asha and had sacrificed dearly, because he could no longer live in a world that had forgotten how to. It did hurt, it chafed to the bone, but probably not that day, probably not tomorrow, but at some point, he would feel differently, because that was what sacrifice meant. It meant not being afraid yesterday of what you might lose today, because a man who is true to himself, true to those around him, could not lose what was most important today, so long as he set the world right for tomorrow. So at Six’s cremation Cyrus would not weep, he would not feel sorrow, because these Apostates had lain meekly in the wastes of a planet long forgotten by its original inhabitants, and thanks to Six, and the sacrifices of all those on this ship, and all those who did not make it, the meek were now free to claim their inheritance.

  Table of Contents

  prologue

  one

  two

  three

  four

  five

  six

  seven

  eight

  nine

  ten

  eleven

  twelve

  thirteen

  fourteen

  nineteen

  twenty

  twenty-one

  twenty-two

  twenty-three