by Rachel Bach
It wasn’t nearly as dramatic as it had been in the dream when I’d watched the blackness sweep over my skin in the reflection of Ren’s eyes. This was just a twitch, like watching the last bit of water slowly seep into paper. Only this wasn’t paper and water. It was my arm and an unknown black substance, and before my brain could even finish processing that, I was running up the stairs as fast as my legs could go.
Considering all the running I’d been doing, I shouldn’t have been able to go faster than a jog, but fear gave me wings. I shot into the lounge like a bullet, vaulting over the kitchen counter and throwing myself at the sink. My hands were shaking so badly it took me two tries to get the faucet going. Once I had the water pouring, I shoved both my hands under the stream, willing the black to wash away.
It didn’t. The blast of hot water made the pins and needles ten times worse, but the stain didn’t budge. Heart pounding faster than ever, I knocked a soap pad off the sink’s edge with my elbow and began scrubbing my hands like I was trying to flay off my skin. But no matter how hard I washed, the black stayed put.
I was now closer to true panic than I’d been in years. I had no idea what this shit was, but after my dream, the animal part of my brain was absolutely convinced it would kill me if I let it. I was still scrubbing frantically when I heard a voice behind me.
“What are you doing?”
It’s a sign of how upset I was that I didn’t whirl around. Instead, I jumped with a yelp, banging my head sharply on the cabinet over the sink. I cursed and grabbed my smarting forehead, which of course got soap all over my hair, but at least the pain knocked a little sense into me. I took a deep breath and snatched my hands down, grabbing the kitchen towel off the sink as I went. My sopping wet hands soaked the thin cloth through at once, but that didn’t matter. I wrapped the towel around my stained hands like a muffler before looking over my shoulder at the cook, who was standing in the door to the kitchen.
I was so far gone, I didn’t remember not to look straight at him until it was way too late. I got a good dose of revulsion for my trouble, but I was so upset already that the nausea actually had a hard time getting through. I wasn’t even angry at the cook for sneaking up on me. I just wanted him to go away, and not for the usual reasons. Something deep inside me was screaming that I shouldn’t let anyone get close to the thing on my hands. I had to make him leave.
“Nothing to see here,” I said, turning back to the sink. “I’m just washing up.”
I heard the cook sigh. “Devi, what’s going on?”
My whole body cringed. Something about hearing him say my name that way, like he actually cared, twisted me up like a spring. “Nothing,” I snapped. “Cool your jets. I’ll be out of your kitchen in a minute.”
I’d tried to be sharp, controlled, but my voice sounded panicked even to me. That would never do. Black stuff aside, the cook already wanted me off the ship, and acting like a terrified nut job was just giving him more ammunition. I had to get a grip, so I slammed my eyes shut and focused on being still … being calm …
I was still working on it when I felt the cook right beside me.
My eyes popped open, but before I could react, I felt something soft brush my forehead. The cook had gotten a clean towel out of one of the cabinets and was using it to wipe the suds from my hair. He didn’t say anything while he worked, and I didn’t either. I couldn’t. I was spellbound by the gentle pressure of his strokes and the warmth of the hand he’d placed on the crown of my head to keep me still.
I usually hate it when people try to take care of me, especially men. I hate the sense of obligation it creates, the imbalance of power, but I didn’t hate this. For some reason I had this deep certainty that the cook wanted nothing except to make me feel better. The feeling was as intense and inexplicable as my need to drink with him last night, and I had about as much chance of fighting it now as I’d had then.
Also, not that I would ever admit it, but it was kind of nice to have someone touch me. After the panic over my hands and running myself half dead, my body was desperate for comfort, and though I knew it was the absolute wrong thing to do, I started to relax. With every stroke of his fingers, my terrified need to get away faded, and as the fear retreated, so did the pins and needles crawling over my hands. By the time the cook finished wiping the last of the suds away, the tingling feeling was gone completely, and I was so relieved I slumped sideways into his chest before I could think the better of it.
The cook went still as my weight landed. For a long moment, we stood, frozen, and then the hand on top of my head slid down to grip my shoulder as the cook pulled me into him.
I’m pretty strong even without my suit, but it didn’t matter. The cook moved me like I was a doll, crushing me against his chest so fast I gasped. My hands were still tangled in the towel I was clutching against my stomach, but even if I had dared risk showing him the black stuff, I don’t think I could have pushed him away. Worse, I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
I’ve never been a nostalgic person—I prefer looking forward—but as the cook folded his body around me, I was overwhelmed by an intense pang of loss. Even though I couldn’t remember touching the cook other than during the madness last night, I knew, knew I’d been in his arms before, and it had been good. Something worth fighting to keep, but I couldn’t remember. Not that not remembering was anything new for me, but this was bigger. It was like the small pit of missing time I’d grown accustomed to stepping around had suddenly opened into a yawning chasm, and I was teetering on the edge. I was still trying not to fall in when the cook stepped back.
I didn’t dare look up at him. The horrible feeling of forgetting was bad enough. If I had to deal with the nausea too, something might break. Instead, I focused on the wet spot on his shirt where my head had rested. But even though I wasn’t looking, I knew he was getting ready to speak, and from the tension in his body, I knew it was going to be big.
I almost did raise my head then, because for a crazy moment, I had the feeling that whatever the cook was about to tell me would explain everything. But he didn’t say a word. He just stood there, his hands gripping my shoulders tighter and tighter. And then, without warning, he let go, practically shoved me away, and walked out of the kitchen without a word.
I looked up just in time to see him vanish around the corner, too shocked even to be angry. I’d thrown my hand up without thinking, like I could stop him, make him tell me whatever it was he kept himself from saying. But when my fingers came into view, I got another shock, because my hand was clean.
They both were. My skin was bright red from all the scrubbing, but there was no sign of black. The pins and needles were gone as well, leaving my hands feeling normal, like the whole terrifying experience had never happened. I was still staring down at them when I saw a little glowing bug drift up through the floor by the kitchen door.
It bobbed there for a second, twitching its cloud of feelers at me. I stared back, and then, because I had to say it or I would explode, I whispered, “What is going on?”
The bug jumped at my voice and scuttled away, vanishing back through the floor in a flurry of tiny kicking legs, leaving me alone in the kitchen.
After that, I decided it was time to go see Hyrek.
This was a very big deal for me. I have a deep-running distrust of doctors. But between the hallucinations, the black gunk on my hands, and the fact that I was clearly missing way more memories than my bump on Falcon 34 accounted for, even I could no longer deny that something was seriously wrong.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance. True to his word, Caldswell had taken us through a series of short hyperspace jumps followed by a long stopover at Sevalis Station Seven, an enormous dual-gate station in orbit above a planet so built-up you could barely see the ground. But station docks followed the same rules as planetary layovers, which meant Rashid and I were on duty from the moment the Fool latched in.
Honestly, I was relieved work kept me from going straight to the doctor. A
dmitting to yourself that you’re not well is nothing compared to a doctor officially pronouncing you bonkers. After all, a bad mental evaluation could ruin my chances with the Devastators forever. I knew I’d have to face the music eventually, but for now, I was more than happy to procrastinate. Especially since I was procrastinating in such an interesting place.
Sevalis Station Seven was the biggest space station I’d ever seen, and it was packed floor to rafters with birds. I’d never even realized so many creatures could live in one space, but just as Mabel said, the aeons seemed perfectly happy living packed in together. They came in every sort, too: big, beautiful males like the ones Basil and I had had our run-in with on Ample, rust-colored females who stayed together like their lives depended on it, even aeon chicks. The latter moved through the station in huge groups of peeping yellow puffballs shepherded by sharp-looking gray females, and they were probably the cutest things I’d ever seen. If it wouldn’t have caused an international incident, I would have grabbed one and hugged it.
But interesting as the packed station was, the planet below was even crazier. I’d thought Wuxia was dense, but the Terran core world was nothing compared to what the aeons had built here. Every bit of land on the planet had been taken over by huge cities. They’d even built out into the oceans, creating huge floating complexes that bobbed on the tides. It was so overbuilt, I thought for sure this must be one of the aeon core worlds, but when I asked Basil about it, he’d laughed in my face and told me this was just a fishing colony.
“A fishing colony?” I cried, staring down at the cities that were so large and vertical they acted like mountain ranges, creating rain shadows behind them as they turned back the clouds. “How is that a fishing colony?”
“This is nothing,” Basil replied. “I mean, you can still see the water in places, and the icecaps haven’t been utilized at all. The colonies closer to the Seval are much bigger.”
I didn’t see how that was possible, but the captain agreed with Basil.
“Aeons like to nest in piles,” he said drolly, leaning back in his chair. “Ample was open because they needed the space to farm. Most other aeon colony worlds are like this.”
I shook my head in wonder. I simply could not fathom living like this when there was a whole universe out there to expand to. I was about to ask Caldswell how much longer he was planning on docking when I heard the bridge door open.
I glanced back through my camera, expecting to see Rashid. But it wasn’t my fellow security officer. It was Ren.
The cook was right behind her, but I ignored him. Actually, I’d been ignoring him since his stunt last night, but even if I hadn’t, Ren would have won. The captain’s daughter never came to the bridge. She was here now, though, walking with more purpose than I’d ever seen in her as she strode down the steps to whisper something in her father’s ear.
Caldswell’s face had gone suspiciously blank when his daughter entered the room. That didn’t change as she talked, but I could see his fingers tightening on the worn arms of his chair. Whatever she had to say didn’t take long, and the moment she was done, Caldswell burst into action.
“Basil,” he ordered, swinging his chair around to the console in front of him. “Get me the gate commander, emergency channel. Then call over to the dock office and tell them I want immediate takeoff clearance.”
Basil stared at the captain for a second, which was a second too long for Caldswell. “Now!” the captain snapped.
The aeon jumped and grabbed his headset, whistling into it frantically. But the captain wasn’t done. “Nova,” he said, hitting the com. “Have these coordinates ready for the gate when it patches in for the jump: 34H-3848-A998-22K7-8801.”
Nova wasn’t even on the bridge. Last I’d checked, she’d been meditating in our room. But when the captain finished reciting the string of coordinates, all Nova said over the com was, “Yes, captain.”
By this point, I’d already started for the door, signaling Rashid to meet me in the cargo bay. You never went anywhere good when your captain changed course this quickly, and I wanted us ready to roll out. The cook and Ren were already gone, thank the king, so we didn’t have to worry about noncombatants. I was messaging Mabel to seal up engineering when Caldswell called my name.
“I want you and Rashid to scramble,” he said, looking at me over his shoulder. “This won’t be a long jump.”
“Way ahead of you, sir,” I replied.
Caldswell actually grinned at me. “That’s my Morris.”
I wasn’t above giving him a superior smile as I jogged out into the hall, passing a running Nova on the way.
I have no idea what massive handful of strings the captain pulled, but despite the posted four-hour line for the gate, we jumped ten minutes later.
I spent them in the lounge, prowling back and forth in front of the windows like a caged animal. Rashid waited with me, fully loaded out just as I’d ordered, but as soon as he’d secured the jump, Caldswell had inexplicably left the bridge and gone downstairs. I had no idea why the captain would terrify his crew and then go down to his room, but I could hear the building freakout in Basil’s voice over the com, so I sent Rashid up to the bridge to keep order. It was a cruel thing to do to my fellow security officer, but other than the times he’d snapped at the captain about Ren, Rashid was calm as a placid lake, and if anyone needed placid right now, it was Basil.
Tactically, I should have waited in the cargo bay, but I wanted to see myself what we were in for, so I stayed in the lounge by the windows. It wasn’t like I was going to go crashing out the door the moment we left hyperspace anyway, and besides, I still had no idea what all this was about. I couldn’t begin to think what Ren could tell her father that would precipitate this kind of scramble, but as the minutes ticked by, my feeling of impending doom got worse and worse. It was like that moment when you step on a rotten board. You haven’t started falling yet, but you know it’s coming, just as you know there’s nothing you can do to stop it. All you can do is brace.
I was braced so hard my muscles ached. I stalked back and forth in front of the lounge windows, glaring at the blank gray-purple wall of hyperspace outside as I waited to see just how hard this fall would hit me. I was working on wearing a rut in the floor when the cook walked into the lounge.
As always, he entered silently, his footsteps like shadows. I kept my eyes off him out of habit, though I would have loved to glare at him when I said, “Why are you here? Get back downstairs.”
“The captain is watching his daughter,” he replied. “He ordered me to come and work instead.”
I didn’t believe that for a second. The cook hadn’t even glanced at the kitchen. Instead, he walked to the cargo bay stairs and leaned on the door like he wanted to be first in line to get out when we landed.
I couldn’t argue with a direct order from the captain, though, so I decided to ignore him. I put my back to the cook and stared out the window, double- and triple-checking my equipment. But hard as I tried to focus on not looking, I kept catching glimpses of him through my rear camera. I was this close to ordering him out anyway when the jump flash rolled over the ship, signaling our exit from hyperspace.
I was glued to the window the second the jump finished, my suit checking in with the Fool’s computer to look up where we were. Unity was the answer that came back, another overpopulated aeon colony world much like the one we’d just left. There was even a picture of a built-up planet so covered in city I couldn’t see the oceans.
But something wasn’t right. Even though my suit was insisting there should be a colony stuffed with birds right in front of us, I didn’t see anything out the window, not a planet or a moon or a gate station, not even any other ships. All I saw through the lounge windows was a bunch of floating rocks and dust glittering in the light of the system’s sun.
“Did the jump team mess up the coordinates?” I asked over the com. “This isn’t a planet.” It looked more like an asteroid belt.
My only ans
wer was dead silence. And then, very quietly, Basil replied. “There’s no mistake. This is Unity.”
“This is nothing,” I protested.
“You’re both right,” Nova said. “These are Unity’s coordinates, but there’s nothing here. The jump gate, the traffic control, the moon, the planet—they’re all gone. I can’t even get a signal.”
Her voice became higher pitched with every word, and cold began to sink into my bones. It was a dark day when Nova panicked.
“It can’t be gone,” I said in my most authoritative voice. “Planets don’t just—”
The ship lurched under my feet, cutting me off. My stabilizer took the bump nicely, but I braced on the window anyway, craning my neck in an attempt to see what had hit us. With so many rocks around, that should have been an easy call, but I hadn’t heard anything hit the hull. I hadn’t felt a crash either. It was more like we’d bumped into something. I was about to ask Basil what that could be when the aeon’s voice whistled over the com.
“Oh, what now?”
The words were barely out before the channel collapsed into static. At the same time, my cameras began to short out, the picture obscured behind a rain of thin white lines that crackled as they fell. I shook my head hard, smacking my helmet on the side that held my receiver, but that didn’t clear the interference, which was so bad now I couldn’t even see my diagnostic screen to figure out what was wrong.
I ripped my helmet off with a curse and turned it over, running my finger over the neuronet feeds just to make double sure the problem wasn’t on my end. It was only by chance that I glanced back up at the window. When I did, what I saw hit me so hard I dropped my helmet on the floor.