by Nick Webb
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
Near Earth
Telestine Command Ship
Bridge
He paced around the room. The communications channels from his captains blinked at him, beeping incessantly, and he snarled at them all to be quiet—though he did not answer the calls first. He could not. He could not think. He whirled and clenched his long-fingered hands.
Denver, then Tokyo, and now London. He had seized control of this world just in time for it to melt down. If only he’d acted sooner.
And now … her. It was her all along. From the beginning. Nhean had warned him, and he’d made a valiant effort to track her down, but he’d never quite believed she was really responsible for the disaster. For the nova that began their exodus.
And Walker’s change of heart shook him to his core. They were, indeed, more alike than not. If she was not acting on her plan, what did that mean? For the first time in nearly a century, he doubted himself.
“Sir?” One of his aides hovered behind him. “We’re intercepting a transmission to Walker’s ship from another ship near the sun. Would you like to see it?”
Tel’rabim turned, considering.
“Yes,” he said finally. “Bring it up.”
He did not have it in him to settle into a chair as he watched. He kept pacing. But there was a hitch in his step when he saw Nhean’s face. The man had been beaten badly, but he was still alive.
“It’s done,” the human said quietly. They talked more, about things Tel’rabim had trouble following. “And you? Have you changed your plan? Now, after all that has happened, will you really destroy Earth?”
Walker’s unmistakable voice came back, after a long pause. “I have the bomb placed. Deep where Tel’rabim can’t possibly get to it. I—good God, Nhean. I just can’t believe it’s over.”
Tel’rabim’s head tilted, and despite himself, he stepped closer to the screen.
“Get me the trajectory of that ship,” he told his aide.
“It’s heading into the sun, sir.” The aide sounded confused.
Indeed, the picture was beginning to break up and the sound was crackling.
What had they been doing? His heart began to beat faster. What was Walker playing at?
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
Near Sun
VSF Svalbard
Bridge
The comm channel beeped and crackled, and Nhean clutched the unit in his hands with what little remained of his strength. He was tired—he was so very tired. The effects of the extreme radiation were starting to overwhelm him.
He doubled over and vomited.
His hands were clenched around Parees’s wrist, now entirely still. The man’s chest had long since stopped rising and falling.
But he hadn’t been alone when he died, and he hadn’t seemed scared, either. He’d slipped away with his fingers clutching Nhean’s.
It wasn’t necessary to call the admiral, really. She’d know that they had succeeded when the sun failed to explode. Still, he wanted, of all things, to hear her voice again. He tried not to think about what that meant, and realized with a stab of dark humor that he didn’t really have to. It wasn’t going to matter for more than the next few minutes.
“Is it done?” she asked, as soon as she picked up.
“It’s done,” Nhean told her.
“Get out,” she advised him.
“Don’t think we can.” He shook his head. “We’re too far into the sun’s gravity well. She did something to the engines and we can’t pull out.” He paused, then offered the same comfort he’d given to Larsen: “It’s all right. The bomb is in orbit around the sun. Please come and collect it at your earliest convenience,” he added, in a voice that sounded like he was talking about an everyday business transaction.
There was a silence, and he imagined her staring at the comm unit.
“Larsen?” she asked finally.
Across the room, Larsen looked over.
“He’s here with me. We stopped her. Parees….” His throat ached. “Parees is dead, and after all that radiation, I may very well die before we hit the sun.” He grimaced. “Do you want to talk to Larsen?”
“If he’s there, tell him thank you—for everything.” A pause. “Did he tell you about the bomb?”
“Which bomb?”
“The bomb he dropped in the Marianas trench for me,” she said quietly.
Nhean felt a pit form in his stomach. No.
“The same kind that Ka’sagra was going to use on the sun. I told him it would kill the Telestines, but I didn’t tell him it would destroy Earth with it. I lied to him.”
Larsen stiffened. His eyes were wide and betrayed.
“Tell him—” She stopped. “Tell him I’m not going to use it. Whatever happens. I’m going to make an offer of peace to Tel’rabim. I won’t use the bomb. Here, look.” The picture shifted, and Nhean watched the screen as she typed in a kill command. “It’s gone. Disabled. It’s done. I’ll tell the girl, too, when—”
“You don’t know.” Nhean really hadn’t been thinking properly. He should have told them this from the start. “She’s … gone.”
He heard a sound, and Pike’s face was in the picture as well. “Gone?”
Nhean couldn’t hardly even speak. Only nod slowly. He stifled another dry heave and forced himself not to vomit. “She sacrificed herself to take out those other eleven ships. And Ka’sagra brought all of Telestine London down on top of her for it.”
Walker’s face was a picture. She was looking at him like … like she’d never looked at him before.
She was looking at him like he was a hero.
And he found that he rather liked it. “Right. I … are you sure there’s no time to turn the ship? Because—”
And then the signal was gone. The ship was beginning to creak from the intense radiation from the sun.
It was getting really hot.
“She was going to destroy Earth?” Larsen said finally.
“Yes. Long story.” Nhean looked over at him. “But she didn’t,” he pointed out.
“She didn’t,” Larsen agreed. He came to sit next to Nhean and leaned his head back against the console. The sun filled the viewscreen. They were speeding towards their deaths. But he need to distract himself—it simply wouldn’t do to spend his final moments panicking. “Do you think they’ll actually manage a peace treaty?”
Nhean looked around at the shattered machinery, the human and Telestine blood, the bodies. He thought of the stations, of the old videos he’d seen of the day the Telestines first arrived on Earth.
He thought of Dawn.
“Stranger things have happened,” was all he could say. “Much stranger things.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
Near Earth
Telestine Command Ship
Bridge
He stared at the dark screen for a long time. The aide knew better than to speak. No one else dared disturb him.
She had her own iridium bomb. It was in position. Right at the exact spot where she could have caused the most devastation. She’d had, in her hand, the power to destroy Earth. To destroy all of Telestine civilization with the press of a button.
And … she hadn’t used it. She’d thrown it away. She’d given up her own trusted soldiers and friends—her greatest assets—to chase down Ka’sagra when he couldn’t. She’d left the Dawning in London, and instead of taking down his mainframe to allow the Exile Fleet to defeat him, it had taken down Ka’sagra instead.
It. Her. What had the Dawning become?
He was trembling. They had been so close. So close, and Walker hadn’t ended this. She could have, for spite alone.
And she hadn’t. And now, Walker had given up that chance.
“Compose a message.” His voice didn’t sound like his own. “Tell Admiral Walker that I will open negotiations with her.”
“Sir.” The aide sounded confused, almost panicked. “What about the military council?”
�
�What’s the human term?” he asked pensively. “What would Walker say? Ah yes. Go tell them to fuck themselves.” The aide looked confused. “Tell them to come meet with me.” And I will tell them what I have seen today.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
Near Earth
EFS Santa Maria
Shuttle Bay
Pike found her in the shuttle bay airlock, still staring out into space.
“What’s going on?” He peered at her. “Tel’rabim is sending messages to open a channel. He wants to talk. He wants you to land, and talk—his fleet is standing down and the Funder fleet is on the line and ... anyway, I told Min I’d find you. Are you all right?”
She nodded silently. She was turning the comm unit over and over in her hands, and she felt his sudden tension. She answered the question before he could ask. “They did it,” she told him. “Dawn. Nhean. Parees.” She paused a long time before she said the next name. “Larsen. But they couldn’t turn the ship in time. I suppose we knew that was what was likely to happen.”
He was silent, and she looked over to see his face pale.
“Larsen’s an ass, you know.” In spite of himself, in spite of the circumstances, he grinned. “Asshole beats me over the head and sent me back.” He chuckled, and seeing she wasn’t laughing, he swore at himself under his breath. “Sorry, I just … I just wanted you to know … the extent of his sacrifice. He … he sent me back to you. For you.”
“I’m glad.” It was all she could say.
“No, it’s … good.” He looked down. “I’m glad … for what they did.” He shrugged with his injured arm. “They didn’t need me slowing them down. I’m just not quite sure what to do now. I didn’t plan on a peace treaty.” He looked at her curiously.
“I meant it.” She was telling the truth, she realized. “It’s crazy, but I meant it. By the way … lilies.”
“What?” He stared at her blankly.
She hesitated, and then she reached out to pull him close.
“I want lilies in the garden you’re going to make for me. At the cabin. And the … what’s the word? Barn?”
He laughed again, this time far less darkly, and wrapped his good arm around her as an explosion of cheering burst over the comms.
“Ma’am?” Min. “Ma’am, you’re not going to believe this, but the UN just contacted us.”
“Tell them to fuck off,” Pike muttered. “We’re busy.”
Oh God, Pike. Walker wasn’t sure what to feel: grief and loss combined with relief … “We are?”
“We’re gonna be.” That look in his eye again.
“Ma’am?” said Min.
“It never ends,” Walker moaned. She opened the comm. “The UN, Captain? There isn’t even a secretary general anymore.”
“Well, there’s at least one person answering calls, apparently,” Min told her. “Because they’ve just gotten one from Tel’rabim. It seems he wants to discuss an armistice—and allowing humans back to Earth.”
The cheers on the line reached a fever pitch and Walker winced at the noise.
“And we’ve got instructions to land some of our ships,” Min said. “They’re asking for humanitarian help for the disaster in London. Ma’am … I hate to ask, but do you think this is a trap?”
She hesitated. The use of the word humanitarian, referring to helping Telestines in dire need … just seemed….
Right.
“No,” she said finally. “No trap. I think this is the start of something new. Land the ship, Min, you have the conn. I’ll be there soon.”
That was all she got out before Pike pushed her up against the wall and kissed her, but she left the channel on as the ship began to descend. The cheers weren’t stopping, and despite the terrible weight in her chest, she couldn’t couldn’t help smiling as she kissed Pike back. Part of herself felt awful—guilty, really—for feeling so good in the midst of the loss. Delaney. Nhean. The girl.
Larsen.
But part of her knew that they’d want the survivors to celebrate. To be happy.
To feel.
And, oh God, he felt good.
She’d never, in the decades since her first, and last kiss, with Pike as a teenager, allowed herself to feel … anything, except the constant demand to free humanity from their prison. And now, it was different. She could feel. She was going back to Earth, with Pike.
And it felt wonderful.
“I never thought I’d hear cheers,” she admitted between kisses. “I kind of like this.”
“Kind of?” He sounded aggrieved.
“Not the kissing. I meant—”
“You meant you’re thinking about things that aren’t kissing,” he said succinctly. “And that just won’t do.”
“You horny bastard.” She grabbed his collar and pulled him in. “Come here.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
Earth
Telestine Paris
Tel’rabim descended from the shuttle’s ramp onto the landing pad.
Paris. Telestine Paris, of course. High in the air above the old, ruined, human Paris.
Though that would change. Into what, he couldn’t say. Suffice it to say … interesting times were coming.
“You’re back. And you weren’t even going to say hello?” a voice demanded.
A familiar voice.
He spun around, looking this way and that. Finally, his eyes fell on the control panel for the shuttle platform.
“Are you …?” He approached the console. Crowds of Telestines were thronging below, waiting to hear from him. His aides wondered what he was doing, walking towards an unmanned console.
The console’s speaker crackled. “Am I stuck inside the landing platform? Yes! Help me!”
His eyes grew wide and he stopped dead in his tracks.
It was her voice, all right.
She’d been laughing, but she stopped. Her tone changed. “It’s a joke, Mr. Rabim.”
“The Dawning?”
The console was now before him, and he could examine the readouts and displays. Nothing out of the ordinary.
“The one and only.”
“I mean you no harm,” he said mildly.
“Oh, so you’re not going to try to use me for world domination again? Nice.”
His eyes grew even wider, if that were possible.
It wasn’t possible. And yet here she was, speaking to him out of a random shuttle platform console when she should be dead.
Not entirely random. It was the platform he was landing at.
She was alive.
“You’ve become … far more than I had ever planned, my child,” he said, softly.
“You have no idea.”
“How did you—”
She interrupted. “Not important. And stop calling me … The Dawning. Call me Dawn, please. A dear friend gave me that name. I hated it, once, but now I rather like it. And, it’s fitting, no?”
“Fitting?”
Another laugh came out of the console. The crowds closest to the landing platform had quieted and looked up at him, wondering what was going on. “Yes, fitting. I’m rather awful with puns, but, it’s a new dawn, you see? A new dawn of peace for humans and Telestines. A new dawn for Earth. Interesting times are ahead for us all.”
He nodded. “I was just thinking that.”
“Ka’sagra wanted to transcend. Or ascend, or whatever she called it. And to tell you the truth, she wasn’t entirely misguided. She was just going about it all wrong. Walker too. She wanted humanity to transcend Earth, in a way. Again, she went about it all wrong.”
“Oh?”
The crowds were starting to murmur. Another shuttle had landed, and the new human UN secretary general stepped out. A third shuttle containing Admiral Walker was landing soon.
“Much to talk about, Mr. Rabim,” she said, her humor returning. “And we will. But first go negotiate a fair peace between my two peoples. Then we’ll talk.”
My two peoples. So. She’d finally accepted the truth. He was
wondering if she ever would. “You know, it’s funny,” he began, “As you said, Ka’sagra wanted our race to ascend. And in her way, Walker wanted humanity to ascend. And of the three, you’re the only one who managed it.”
She laughed. “Compliment accepted. Now go make peace. Go on. Get.”
The console powered down, then powered back on. “Dawn?” He asked. She was gone.
And yet, he knew, she was everywhere.
Earth’s new dawn indeed, he thought. Walker descended from her shuttle ramp and caught his eye. They exchanged an awkward nod. She’d experience terrible loss. So had he—his brood had lived in Tokyo.
Peace would be difficult.
But it would be worth it.
It had to be.
Epilogue
Earth, Lower Orbit
EFS Santa Maria
Admiral’s Quarters
Walker stripped off her uniform jacket with a groan and looked over at Pike sprawled out along her couch. Between the armistice talks and the all-night parties, she was already regretting her offer to have the two species be more intertwined. Interspecies cooperation had, within a matter of weeks, given rise to no less than five types of alcohol, which meant she was in for a serious headache when she woke up.
“How do you always escape those things faster than I do?”
“You have to be very quick,” Pike said, grinning. “I hear it also helps if you aren’t a famous admiral.”
“Maybe I should dye my hair.” She opened the closet, gave a despairing look at the rows of identical uniforms, and shut it. A tank top would do for now. “So what are you two up for tonight night now that we’re all hiding out?”