She unclipped her helmet from her belt, then dragged Nate away from the plasma cannon. She caught a yelp of surprise from him as she did, the cannon swinging towards the roof, big chunks of ceramicrete and plating blasting aside. Grace slammed her helmet on his head, sliding the docking ring closed, then turned towards Harlow. Harlow was pointing the maser at the hole in the bulkhead door but looking at Grace with an expression of huge surprise, an expression that got larger as she ran towards him and dove into a tackle. They tumbled together into the lab as the emergency decompression alarms sounded. The door to Amedea’s chamber shut in the blink of an eye, sealing her safe and sound inside. The door leading from the lab to the barracks started to seal, then jammed. Grace looked behind her, seeing an Ezeroc drone in the breach, its body in the way. There was a crunching sound as the chitin of its exoskeleton cracked, but it held long enough for another drone to get beside it. Then another, and they pushed the door open.
The air was getting thin, its fingers dragging at them. The Ezeroc wanted her, but they’d be denied the pleasure. She wanted to give a grim smile here at the end, but found she wanted to live even more. Grace wanted to live, because she was in love, and had something to live for.
She felt a hand at her back, Harlow dragging her. Towards the emergency shuttle. She wanted to say no, no, we don’t know where it goes, but there wasn’t enough air to make words. The Ezeroc were coming for them, scrambling to get through the breach. There was a silent flare of plasma as Nate — brave, beautiful, stupid Nate — fought them from inside the barracks. Alone, just him and a plasma cannon, against a horde that wanted him dead and her alive.
Why wasn’t he running? It’s why she’d given him the helmet. Couldn’t he see? He had to get to the elevator while the insects were distracted with her. It was so cold. She couldn’t think. The lights of the lab were still on, but she was for all intents and purposes in outer space. The hard black had invaded. It was all around her, and she was out of time.
One of the Ezeroc made it into the lab, claws scrabbling at the deck as it came towards her. Grace watched it come as the iris of the emergency shuttle passed her view. Harlow let her go, making a dash for the door controls. His face was a red-purple, his eyes bulging, mouth working for air. But there was no air. There was only the hard black. His hand hit the shuttle’s door controls, and the iris slid shut as the Ezeroc made it to them. It sliced through the leading claw, severing it, and then blessed, cool air hissed in around them.
Over the noise of air rushing in, Grace could feel the thump against the deck as plasma fire slammed into the station elsewhere. Nate. He’s still alive.
An automated voice announced SHUTTLE LAUNCHING BRACE BRACE BRACE SHUTTLE LAUNCHING, and then the chamber around them shook as the shuttle cleared the side of Station Echo 9. There was a brief feeling of weightlessness, and then—
The universe, laid bare. Every piece of her, shining with light. Her hair, floating in gossamer strands. She could feel everything. She was everything.
They jumped.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“EL, I NEED you!” Nate screamed into the comm. The plasma cannon was heavy, so very, very heavy. He’d torn it from the mounts, backing up to the station’s outer hull. Grace — his Grace, his love, the person who he was supposed to be together with — had gone through a closing bulkhead door. She’d given him her helmet. She’d somehow known what was coming, guessed at the bug’s plans and thrown down her life for his.
That’s not the way it was supposed to work.
So it didn’t matter that the cannon was heavy. He took most of the weight in his metal hand, leaning back against his metal leg. Metal, stronger than flesh, good enough to hold for now, as the cannon bucked and fired. Ezeroc died in piles, charring, steaming husks, glowing with the heat as plasma hit them. They ignored him, clawing and scrabbling to get at Grace. To catch her, to do whatever it was that they wanted.
They had set this whole thing up. Those fuckers.
“On it, Cap,” said El, her voice calm and clear over the comm. The station shook around him, the cry of metal transferred but muffled through his boots. “I have you on the bottom level of the station. Tyche has disembarked from station dock and is coming to your location. We’ll be making an exit for you.”
Making an exit. Sweet Christ.
“Tyche to the captain,” she said again. “I’ve lost Grace’s transponder … no, wait. The shuttle jumped. Tracking it.”
The cannon continued to fire, until it didn’t, the charge depleted. It spat the glowing coal of the battery to the decking, cooling fast in the hard black of space. He dropped the cannon, drawing his blaster and sword. The Ezeroc paused in their attempts to breach the door, turning to face him. Insect eyes locked on to him, one tiny human against their horde. They’d need more food, more materials if they were going to build up for another attempt at finding Grace. Wherever she’d gone.
He’d find her. Nate would find her if it was the last thing he ever did. He raised his sword. “Come on, then,” he hissed.
They charged.
Turns out, his last stand heroics were unnecessary. The side of Station Echo 9 blew inwards in a shower of metal, ceramicrete, and kinetic PDC rounds. The Tyche fired with precision, a cautious guardian to her captain. Her bright lights shone in through the breaches, brief licks of red laser light marking targets as the lifter moved around the circumference of the disc, hunting those who would do her crew harm. The PDCs hit something in the station’s substructure, and the grav went offline. His suit clicked on the magnetic locks of his boots, anchoring him to the decking. The space around Nate filled with flying particulate, pieces of insect and metal and tungsten round.
The noise would have been terrible. It would have been glorious. Nate had to satisfy himself with the muted transference through the station’s frame, the death of fifty, a hundred insects an obituary to the horrors of Station Echo 9. He watched as the Tyche’s lights moved away, around the disc, carving chunks out of the Ezeroc hive room, destroying it. Obliterating it. He felt no satisfaction. What he felt was desperation.
My Grace. Where have they taken you?
• • •
He’d left Amedea strapped to the chair. Getting her on to the Tyche had been tricky but not impossible; a temporary plastic airlock, a tiny bubble that held air against the hard black, had let Nate space walk in and collect her. Once she was safe and secure in the Tyche, he’d kept her chained up.
Picking over the wreckage of Station Echo 9 had taken a little more doing. The power was down, the righteous vengeance of the Tyche having cored the station’s batteries, torn away its solar collectors, and caused it to jettison its reactor to explode at a safe distance. The interior of Echo 9 was black and cold and empty. Pulling out data slivers from machines took time.
But he needed to take the time. He wanted to race after Grace, but he needed a cure. Nate needed to prepare for whatever was out there. Nate wasn’t gentle about it, cutting through pieces of computer machinery with a particle saw, grabbing the raw memory crystals out for transfer to the Tyche. He’d give them to Hope and see what she could do with them once they were underway.
He wasn’t sure how things had come out this way. Where a small wrong turn had set his feet on a path that left the love of his life out in the hard black somewhere with him alive and still breathing on this station. El had taken a look at his face, some quip frozen on her lips, and she’d donned a suit to help him gather information from the station. They’d worked side by side in the cold of space.
When Hope had woken up — a sleep he couldn’t begrudge his Engineer, for all she’d been through — she had started work right away on the Endless trail left in space from the shuttle’s jump. Tracking the negative space bow wave was possible. Tricky, prone to error. It needed careful work. It was good she was rested. If Nate was any judge, he knew she wouldn’t sleep again until her job was done. Hope loved Grace. They all did.
Just in different ways. In different amounts.
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Kohl had woken up long enough to swear about his legs. There had been fear there, but he’d put a lid on it when Nate had told him what had happened to Grace. He’d nodded, big head heavy, then said let’s go get our girl. Let’s go get our Gracie.
There was no one there to call him an asshole.
Nate could see it on Kohl’s face: he was down and out in the only fight that mattered. That he’d been, what, sleeping while their crewmate was captured. Like walking even mattered. Kohl could use a gun without legs. And he’d get his chance soon.
After they’d grabbed all the memory slivers they could find, Nate ordered the Tyche away. Took his ship out into the hard black to look on Station Echo 9. Then he’d fired a single torpedo into the heart of the station, and watched it burn.
• • •
“I have one, maybe two pieces of good news,” said Hope, the hollows under her eyes speaking of a person in dire need of more sleep. She was rubbing a stim against her gums, the sickly fluid — Nate had used ‘em plenty of times before — coating her teeth. “There’s one piece of bad news.”
“What’s the bad?”
“We’re out of stims. Last one.” She quirked a smile at him. “I’ll need to stay up the old-fashioned way.”
“Coffee,” said El. “No problem. We can double-shot it. Hell, quad shots all around.”
“The good news?” said Nate. His voice sounded hollow. His chest felt heavy and empty at the same time. The ready room seemed so empty with that one, crucial person missing.
“I know what the cure for Amedea is.” Hope rubbed her face, almost scrubbing at it, trying to snap herself awake. “Oh, right. And I think I know where Grace is. I … I’m so tired. I think I’ve made a mistake.”
“Grace first,” said Nate.
“She’s out there,” said Hope. She spun up a holo, stars spreading out around them in the ready room. “Here, right, is the edge of human space.” There was a glowing approximate-location sphere shown on the holo, Sol its beating heart at the center. “We’re here.” Station Echo 9’s location was blinking outside the edge of human space. “And out here,” and she zoomed the stars way out, “is where Grace’s jump signature went.” A blinking marker showed a new location. It was out among the stars that humans had never charted. Farther out by far than Station Echo 9.
It was Ezeroc space. The heart of their empire.
“Okay,” said Nate. “Okay. Hope? I need you to … I know I’ve asked a lot of all of you.” He wanted to sit down himself, take five, maybe cry a little. Pull yourself together, Chevell. “Hope?”
“Cap.” Her eyes were tired, but bright. Fierce.
“I need you to do something for me. It’ll be the most important thing you’ve ever done. It will change the universe.”
“No pressure,” she said.
“No pressure,” he agreed. “Because you’re up for it. I know you are. It’s why you’re here.” He looked at El, and back to Hope. He thought of Kohl in the sickbay. “It’s why we’re all here. Call it destiny. Call it luck, but we’re here. To save the universe.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE SOUND OF the Endless Drive spooling down was like the last sigh of a dying man. The inside of the shuttle was warm, uncomfortable, stuffy. Like it needed an airing out, wind from under a clear cool sky to blow through it. There was no clear sky. There was only the hard black.
Grace pressed her face against the shuttle’s forward viewport. Harlow was at her shoulder. The man was terrified/fear/fear/run/panic/terror/run/go/flee and, she had to admit, he was on to something there. Because they had jumped out into space filled with the dead, the lost, entombed in the cold vacuum where the stars lived.
The planet itself was large and brown. It sat like a dull marble, sucking in all the hope around it. Nothing green grew on that surface. There was no water, no ice. No promising haze against the skyline. A dead rock, full of sand and bones. She knew it was the Ezeroc homeworld. It was the footprint they left: everything eaten. Nothing left alive, just insects as far as the eye could see. Insects that could sleep for a hundred or a thousand years in self-induced stasis, waiting for something to eat. And here was their shuttle, with two tasty morsels onboard.
Human starships orbited the planet. Great hulks of carriers, destroyers, and small vessels that would have been fighters before they’d been holed, their single pilots screaming a last gasp before their air ran out. Here, at the end of the longest jump Grace had ever had, were the remains of a broken human fleet.
Before her mind looked at the alien starships, she noticed an odd detail about the human starships. These were not mighty Republic ships. Oh, there might have been one or two more familiar designs amidst all the wreckage. Accidental toys left out by a vengeful god. No, these starships carried the burnished gold falcon’s crest of House Fergelic, mighty birds with wings spread wide, mouths open in a war cry. Almost all the starships she could see were from the Old Empire. The Old Empire that Nate had served like a loyal hound before it had fallen. The common wisdom had said it fell because of the Intelligencers, and that was true. But this new … let’s call it a data point, anything else is too terrible … data point showed that there might have been a motivating factor in that monstrous betrayal. The fall of the human race, the subjugation of it by those who could read and control minds, might have been motivated by fear. Of an enemy you couldn’t win against.
We came with words and gifts and weapons, and none of them worked.
Her eyes flitted from hulk to hulk, debris strewn throughout space. She’d seen the side of the Gladiator, the destroyer sent to Absalom Delta, cored by a rock tossed by aliens who could move mountains into space. Some of these ships had been crushed, torn, or rent by rocks. But many of them showed evidence of human weapons. Beam weapon burns across the metal skin of a destroyer over there. Torpedo impacts, the carbon edges of a hole blistered and bubbled, on another. A small fighter drifted close to their shuttle — don’t think about how close the Endless Jump took you to hitting that, you’ve got enough to worry about — and she could see the pockmarks of kinetic PDC fire across the hull.
These ships had turned on each other.
They can read minds, you see. They know what you’re going to do before you do. And they can control minds.
The planet under them turned, unconcerned with her fear. A great crater came into view, a hole the size of a continent, cracks broke out like spider lines in broken glass. They’d dropped a crust buster on the homeworld, at least one, and … what?
We came with weapons.
The planet continued to turn, another hole coming into view. This one was deeper, evidence of multiple impact strikes from crust-busters, one after the other, the rain of fury from human hands onto an alien menace. It made you wonder what you’d do, when faced with an enemy who didn’t need air to breathe, that didn’t care if an individual drone died, as long as the hive survived. How did you beat an enemy like that? With a sword? A planet? Nukes? What would it take?
None of them worked.
Throughout the long line of human ingenuity, there had been no other foe like this. And they weren’t alone. Her eyes strayed to the other floating hulks in space. Alien designs — she couldn’t tell which part was fore or aft on some of them. It wasn’t obvious how many of them moved, no clear signs of propulsion ports. Some had spindles that might have been weapons. Others had pods that might have been engine nacelles. Some looked to be made of glass rather than metal. All were dark, empty, drifting, dead. Hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of alien ships. All come to wage a final war on an alien threat that used their bodies as fuel. An alien threat that let them come so their food would be delivered right to their doorstep.
The ships were like a cloud of scum orbiting this world. They were beyond counting. It didn’t matter that one on one Grace could use a sword and some fancy moves to cut Ezeroc into component parts. They didn’t care. There were plenty more where that one came from. And if they ran out, they could use y
our own team against you, warping their minds. Turning their hearts against their comrades. And against all of this, there was one — exactly one — sword that had been made that stopped the powers of the mind. Nate’s sword, on a tiny starship. A starship with a mighty heart and a mighty crew, but just four souls — because Grace wasn’t there anymore — against this. One sword. One ship. Four souls.
“We’re fucked,” said Grace.
• • •
Harlow hadn’t responded to her pep talk. He hadn’t done much of anything except check his maser, over and over. Turning the weapon in his hands, then looking out the viewport, then looking at the weapon again. Finally, he said, “I don’t think I’ve got enough spare batteries.”
She laughed. “Harlow. No. There are not enough spare batteries in the universe for this.”
He hefted the weapon. “I’d offer to, you know.” He gestured with the business end at his head. “But it’s a slow, horrible way to die. Not like a blaster, a bright gout of flame, a moment of pain, and then everything gone. We’d have to boil alive from the inside. It’d be bad.”
“It might not be worse than what’s to come,” said Grace. What’s to come hadn’t yet been defined, but the hissing, clawing static of Ezeroc speech had grown louder, more insistent as the aliens talked among themselves across space. There would be a Queen down there somewhere, a huge insect, ancient and cunning, that was pulling the strings. There would be smaller hives, younger Queens. They’d be trying to work out what to do.
“Might not be,” said Harlow, “but, I guess it boils down to a couple of options. You die instantly. You die slower, bleeding out. You die painfully as your brain is eaten by insects. Or, I use the maser, and we die a little faster, but in a lot of pain. I could, I don’t know, attach it here.” He pointed to the front viewport at the nose of the shuttle. “We’d be unable to get away. Just turn it on, and let the microwaves boil us until we’re done.”
“I don’t want to die,” said Grace.
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