"Beta Ceti," she whispered. She couldn't help but shudder.
She had flown here before.
Over ten years ago.
And she had found evil.
She winced. The images flashed before her. She had been only an eighteen-year-old private, a pipsqueak, the smallest soldier in her platoon, four foot ten and ninety-five pounds and always so terrified. They had come here, seeking a moon named Corpus, following a distress signal.
We crashed, she remembered, wincing. I sabotaged the ship. We fell. We burned. They made me do it.
She was trembling now. Tears flowed down her cheeks. She could still remember screaming as the Miyari, their warship, had crashed onto the dark moon. How the infantry company had plunged into the mines to seek hope. How the terrors had awoken. How the monsters had risen.
"So many died," Lailani whispered. "Because of me. And Elvis, I killed him with my own hands, and . . ."
The terror was too great. She was panting. Her hands were shaking too badly to grip the controls.
Epimetheus was there at once, licking her cheeks, nuzzling her, making soothing sounds. She held him until she calmed.
"I'll do this, Epi," she whispered. "You believe in me, right?"
He licked her face.
"What would I do without you, Epi?"
He answered by nuzzling her neck. He was a mighty Doberman, heavier and stronger than her, and he could fight when necessary. But he was also her sweet therapy dog and best friend.
She kept flying. Beta Ceti grew larger, a massive orange star. Lailani kept a safe distance from its crackling, searing radiation. She kept flying. She was far from home now, a hundred light-years away, deep in the darkness. Even with the best warp engines, Earth was weeks away.
She saw it now. It rose ahead, half in shadow—the gas giant Indrani, a great red blob in space, larger than Jupiter.
And orbiting it—there.
Lailani shuddered.
A small dark moon.
"Corpus," she whispered. The azure mine. The place where she had found hell.
The images flashed before her. The giant centipedes in the tunnels, scurrying forth, descending from the ceilings. The human prisoners, glued to the ceiling, bellies bloated and filled with honey, and the scum sucking on them. The hybrids in the alien lab, twisted humans with the bodies of centipedes. Her friends dying. Beast. Sergeant Singh. Corporal Diaz. So many others, the people she loved—the scum cutting them, their blood spilling, their—
She took a deep breath. She held her dog close.
"I'll make this right," she whispered. "I can't save them all. But I can save one life."
She entered orbit around Indrani. The gas giant swirled, filling the viewport. It looked like a planet of blood, thousands of times the size of Earth. The radiation baked the Ryujin's shields. Corpus hovered ahead, so small by comparison. Last Lailani heard, the mines had reopened, and the extraction of azoth crystals had resumed. Even with all the death, the terror, the monsters, and the nuclear waste still clinging to that moon—Earth needed its azoth. In many ways, Corpus was the most valuable world in human civilization.
Azoth crystals—the only known substance that could bend spacetime, refracting it like a normal crystal refracts light. There was an azoth crystal inside the Ryujin's engine, letting them fly at warp speed. There were azoth crystals inside wormhole generators too.
And there were tiny azoth crystals inside her hourglass.
Lailani pulled out the ancient artifact. It was small enough to balance on one palm. She had fought monsters and tamed dragons to retrieve it from the jungles of Mahatek, and it was a thing of beauty. Inside she could see them: countless grains of lavender sand. Sand made from azoth crystals. Sand that, when spilled through this hourglass, could bend time. Could send her back. Could save her friend.
"I don't remember exactly where the Miyari was ten years ago," she said. "It had just entered the storming sky of Indrani when I ki—" She swallowed. "When Elvis died."
She let the controls rest, let the Ryujin orbit the gas giant. To one side spread the stars. To the other—the roiling red-and-orange surface of Indrani, an immense world of endless storm.
"Ten years ago, at this place, I lost my soul," she whispered. "I will reclaim it."
She turned back toward the hold. "HOBBS?"
The robot could barely squeeze into the cockpit. Epimetheus had to jump into Lailani's lap—and the damn dog outweighed her—and HOBBS took the second seat. But Lailani wanted to be in the cockpit for this. To see it happen.
"Are you ready, mistress?" HOBBS said.
Her throat tightened.
No, she thought. No, I'm not ready to go back. To see myself as a confused teenager, possessed by the scum. To see so many of my comrades dead. To see me strangling Marco, nearly killing him. To see my claws reach toward Elvis. To see the scum all around us, the horrible monsters from the darkness—the monsters that live within me. To see the nightmares that have haunted me for a decade. No, HOBBS, I'm not ready. But I'll do this nonetheless.
She nodded. "Let's rock and/or roll." She handed him the hourglass.
HOBBS took the artifact from her. He tilted his head. "Mistress? Rock and—"
"Let's do this," she said. "I'm ready."
HOBBS nodded. "I must spill out just the right number of sand grains. One grain off, and we will fail. Thankfully, Dr. Schroder fixed me well and calibrated my gears. My hands are steady. I will perform the necessary calculations, mistress, adjusting to the gravitational pulls from Indrani, Beta Ceti, and Corpus, both in the present moment and according to their positions ten Earth years ago. This is a very accurate science."
His eyes dimmed, and for long moments, mechanical sounds rose from inside his processors. Lailani gazed at his chest, thinking of how a human heart beat there, powering the machine. How hearts beat inside all the robots she had saved. The scar on her chest ached, and she placed a hand there, remembering how Schroder had almost carved out her own heart.
As HOBBS was busy calculating, Lailani reviewed herself again. Black spacesuit, sneaky and silent—check. Weapons—check. Jet pack—she grabbed it from a shelf and slipped it over her shoulders. Check. Helmet—she placed it on her head. Check. Her lucky cross—hanging around her neck, inside her suit. Check.
She glanced at her reflection in HOBBS's polished chest. A space ninja indeed. She almost looked tough. Thankfully, nobody knew how terrified she truly was. Well, nobody but Epimetheus. Her Doberman curled up against her. He always knew.
HOBBS's eyes brightened. "I am ready, mistress."
Lailani's heart thumped. It was all too real. Her throat felt so tight. Her belly felt so empty, so cold. She could barely speak.
"Do you need to be outside, or—"
"I can open a portal from here, mistress, directly ahead of the Ryujin."
She nodded. "Do it," she whispered.
HOBBS had no true mouth, only a thin opening for his voice box, but somehow she could swear he was smiling.
"It is time to rock and/or roll," he said.
The robot hit a button and turned a few gears, activating the hourglass, opening the bottleneck between the two bulbs. Next he tilted the hourglass. Gently. Slowly. A handful of grains spilled out—shimmering, lavender, glowing bright. Azoth crystals, each no larger than a grain of sand. As they fell through the hourglass, they ignited, burned up, and faded. HOBBS tilted the hourglass back and shut the bottleneck.
For a long moment—silence. Shadows.
"Did it work?" Lailani whispered. "Did—"
Light caught the corner of her eye. She looked at the front viewport, and she saw it. Her eyes dampened.
A portal was opening ahead, glowing blue, a ring of shimmering crystals.
A portal back in time.
She tightened her lips and guided the Ryujin forward. The starship was small—just small enough.
"Rock and/or roll," she whispered, eyes moist, and flew the Ryujin through the portal.
Light shimmered.
And reality unfurled around her.
The stars bloomed, bursting into beams. Her consciousness flowed outward, seeing all. The Ryujin cascaded down a tunnel of twisting space. Stars, nebulae, galaxies—all danced around her, expanding, contracting, a great dance of space and time.
She huddled under a sheet of tarp, weak with disease, clinging to her mother. Her mother, only a youth, sang to her softly.
How many miles to Babylon?
Three score and ten.
Can I get there by candlelight?
Yes, and back again.
If your heels are nimble and light,
You may get there by candlelight.
And her heels were nimble. Her heels were light. She ran. She ran as the men chased her, laughing, reaching for her dress, lust in their eyes. She ran and huddled by the train tracks, a hungry orphan, knees skinned, so hungry. Her heels were nimble. Her heels were light. She crawled over the landfill with a hundred other orphans, covered in filth, waiting for the garbage trucks. As the great machines spilled their precious cargo, she rummaged, fought a boy, found an old rotten fruit.
She huddled by the train track at night with thousands of other souls, trembling, and she had no candlelight.
Her heels were nimble. Her heels were light when she ran across the desert, when hell rained upon Fort Djemila. She fought the scum, and their pods lit the darkness like a thousand candle flames.
Her heels were nimble. Her heels were light when she raced through the tunnels of Corpus, when the monsters rose in darkness, when she had no candles, no light, no hope. When her friends died. When all was death, and the monsters grabbed her, sniffed her, recognized her as their own.
She wept.
She was eighteen, her head shaved, the monster inside her. The darkness that had driven her to cut her wrists. To sabotage her ship. To kill. Kill. Kill!
Kill them all.
The centipedes laughed inside her. The centipedes nested in her belly.
Kill! Kill! Eat them! Slice them open! Lay your eggs inside them!
"No," she whispered, clutching her temples. "No. No. I'm not her. I'm not that girl. I'm twenty-eight. I'm me. I'm me." She wept. "Serenity."
Serenity.
She took a deep breath.
Serenity.
I'm me.
My heels are nimble. My heels are light.
"I'm me," she whispered, tears on her cheeks. "I can get there by candlelight. There and back again."
She breathed deeply. She opened her eyes, not realizing she had closed them. And she gazed upon the stars.
She was back in the Ryujin. Epimetheus was on her lap. HOBBS sat at her side. They floated through space. The red gas giant swirled to their right, and Corpus floated ahead, a dark moon.
They were back where they had begun.
As far as Lailani could tell, they had not moved a meter. And the portal was gone.
"Did it work?" she whispered. "Are we . . . back in time? Ten years ago?"
HOBBS stared at her silently. In his eyes she saw the answer: I don't know.
Epimetheus whined.
Lights blazed overhead, drenching the cockpit. A burst of exhaust blasted across the Ryujin, nearly blinding them. Their ship shook. Lailani gasped.
A warship blazed overhead, missing them by mere meters, then charged forward toward Indrani.
Lailani stared, unable to breathe.
It was an Olympia-class warship, emblazoned with the golden phoenix of the Human Defense Force, large enough to carry an infantry company. It looked like it had just flown through hell. It was battered, dented, cracked, barely flying. It didn't look like it had merely seen battle. It looked like it had crashed and risen again, spilling bolts and spewing smoke.
Tears filled Lailani's eyes.
She trembled.
She knew that warship. She had served on it. She had sabotaged it. She had lived through hell within its halls.
She was on that ship—right now, her younger self.
"The Miyari," she whispered. "We're back."
* * * * *
We're back.
Lailani took a shuddering breath.
We're back in time.
The Miyari flew ahead, growing smaller and smaller, soon only a speck against the roiling storms of Indrani, a gas giant that could dwarf Jupiter.
"That's it." Lailani couldn't hide the tremble from her voice. "That's my old spaceship. Where I was a teenager. Where I am a teenager." She had to blink away tears. "I'm in there right now. The old me."
"We do not have long, mistress," said HOBBS, sitting beside her. "Every moment that we remain here, ten years away from our normal time, we increase the chance of creating paradoxes. We must hurry."
She nodded. "Let's go."
She shoved down the throttle, and she followed the Miyari.
HOBBS leaned forward in his seat. The lenses on his eyes dilated. "Where is the ship going, mistress?"
"Into the storm," Lailani whispered. "Into the hellfire. To fight the Scum King."
She flew faster. She remembered that day so long ago. The Miyari was battered, barely able to fly, nearly all its crew dead. They were too damaged to detect the pursuing Ryujin. Only a handful of Lailani's friends were still aboard, the people she loved most in the world.
"Kemi is there," she realized. "My dear friend Kemi is still alive here. Maybe I can save her too, I—"
"Mistress, the danger of creating a paradox would be too great," HOBBS said. "Kemi was a part of your life after this day. Your friend Benny, whom you call Elvis, was not. Perhaps you can save him. Bring back Kemi, and you'd be preventing her from appearing during the past decade of your life."
Lailani nodded. "The whole destroying the arm of the Milky Way galaxy stuff."
"Yes, mistress. I would caution against it."
Ahead, the Miyari reached the gas giant and dipped into the red storm. The dilapidated starship vanished from view. Lailani shoved down the throttle, picked up speed, and cringed as the Ryujin dived into Indrani's atmosphere.
She might as well have flown into Hell itself.
The storm grabbed them. There was no solid surface to Indrani. There was only this massive ball of gasses in space, containing more mass than Jupiter and Saturn combined. Winds rattled the hull. Red dust buffeted the windshield. The storm roared. Funnels swirled left and right, deep crimson fringed with furious gold. Lightning flashed, and deep below roiled a sea of red-and-orange gas, swirling, rumbling, belching up fire. The storm was deafening, all-consuming, threatening to crush the Ryujin. From behind in the hold rose the terrified cries of the robots—porcelain dolls and burlesque dancers and mechanical dinosaurs.
The situation was so absurd that Lailani laughed.
"I'm not sure we can handle this storm, mistress!" HOBBS said. "It's crushing us! And—mistress? Why are you laughing?"
She kept flying, navigating around funnels and blasts of flaming gasses. Lightning blazed all around. She could just see the Miyari ahead, sinking deeper into the storm. She followed.
"I'm flying inside a gas giant," she said, "a hundred light-years from Earth, ten years in the past, I'm talking to a robot with a human heart, and behind me a bunch of Victorian dolls and go-go dancers are screaming." She laughed again, so hard she shook. "This isn't rock and roll. It's goddamn calliope music."
HOBBS tilted his head. "Calliope. A musical pipe instrument, similar to an organ, popular in nineteenth-century circuses. Mistress, you are not suggesting that we travel back to the nineteenth century and—"
"Jokes, Hobster. Jokes. I—"
A roar pierced the storm.
Lailani's heart nearly stopped in her chest.
Ahead she saw it, coiling through the fury.
"My God," she whispered, eyes stinging. "It's him." She trembled, and her voice dropped to a whisper. "The Scum King."
She had seen him so many times in her dreams. She had heard his voice, whispering to her. She had felt his tongue, lic
king her. She had felt his fury, filling her with rage and hatred. The creature that had coiled inside her, tormenting her, pulling her strings. He had died ten years ago. They had killed him, the lord of the Corpus hive. Yet here he was, still alive, filling the storm with his malice.
He was a massive beast, larger than the Miyari, all black, hardened skin and spikes and claws the size of men. A great insect, flying in the storm, a demon, a spawn of evil. He was cruelty taken form. And with his massive tail, he whipped the Miyari, knocking the warship into a tailspin.
Lailani remembered. She had been on the Miyari when that tail had lashed them. She was on the Miyari.
"It's only moments away. Fuck! I'm going to kill Elvis in only a few moments—right as the Miyari is battling the demon. We have to hurry!"
She shoved the throttle down. The Ryujin roared through the storm, whipping around the clouds and funnels, racing toward the Miyari. The warship was trying to fight back, but its power died. It listed. Of course. Lailani herself had sabotaged it, shutting off the power, obeying the Scum King's voice in her mind. The alien gripped the warship, twisting its hull, biting into the steel.
Soon, she remembered, Marco would manage to restore power to the ship, to blast its cannons, to kill the alien.
But not before I kill Elvis.
She bared her teeth.
But that won't happen now.
She charged forward. Ahead of her, the Scum King clawed at the Miyari, tossing it through the storm, cracking its hull. The Ryujin too was being battered, its hull bending under the fury of the red storm. Bits of the hull tore free. Alarms blared. Lailani ignored them and flew faster. She placed a hand against the framed photograph, the one showing her with her arm around Elvis.
"I'm coming for you, buddy," she whispered. "This ends now. A decade of guilt and terror—it ends."
She roared forth until she was only a kilometer away from the Scum King. The alien loomed ahead, wreathed in lightning, roaring. The storm raged around him, and the red lights reflected on his horns and fangs. The Miyari was stuck in his claws, struggling to break free on backup power, its cannons dead.
Earth Honor (Earthrise Book 8) Page 23