Down Among the Dead

by K. B. Wagers

  “It can’t be. They’re all dead.” I tried to keep the heat out of my voice but fisted my hands with the effort. “You’re wasting your time digging at this.”

  “Ma’am, I know what I saw—”

  “You’re chasing ghosts, Alba. Let it be.” I didn’t wait to see if she made another attempt at a reply, but turned on my heel and headed for the shower.

  Chasing ghosts, you’re funny.

  I glared at Hao on my way by but didn’t give him the satisfaction of a response.

  The Shen didn’t have any reason to lie about this. To hide surveillance footage like buried treasure.

  Unless they do have a reason, that unidentified voice whispered in my head. Unless they want you off-balance.

  The question there was why? What could they possibly be hiding from me?

  11

  I prowled the base the next day like a captive tiger, snarling and snapping at anyone who came near me. Distracted by the barest sliver of hope as well as the fear that being wrong would bring grief crashing right back down on me. I did the only thing I could.

  I attempted to goad Aiz into a fight, but he just raised an eyebrow at me, then laughed and refused to rise to the bait, much like his sister had the night before in the face of my anger.

  “No fighting today, Hail.” He shook his head and went back to the book he was reading. “Sort your head out and then come see me.”

  “Might be a while.”

  “I can wait.” His laughter followed me from the room and I glared at Hao’s ghost, smirking at me by the doorway.

  He held his hands up. Don’t get mad at me, little sister, you know I’d fight with you if I weren’t dead.

  “That is not a comfort.”

  Hao chuckled. You want comfort, go see Mia. I’m just here to remind you.

  “Of what, my failures?” I asked, but Hao’s ghost vanished rather than answering.

  “Majesty, where are you?”

  “For Shiva’s sake, not now, Fasé!” I muttered a curse and rubbed my hand over my face, letting my feet carry me through the base to Mia’s room.

  She smiled at me as I came in but didn’t move away from the console in the far corner. Kag and two other Shen I didn’t recognize were clustered around it, all of them studying the schematics hanging in the air.

  I didn’t join them, even though I knew I’d have been welcomed. I was still too restless to focus on anything, so I wandered to the corner where Mia’s chessboard was set up.

  I hadn’t played the Earth game in years until we arrived on Sparkos, but Chaturanga was its predecessor and Gy, Hao’s old partner, had loved to play chess. He’d taught me the rules shortly after I’d boarded Hao’s ship.

  I wondered who Mia played with. It didn’t look like the board was just for show. The stone pieces were old, worn by handling, and the board was scuffed in places.

  I picked up the queen, listening with half an ear as Mia spoke quietly with the other Shen before they left us alone in the room.

  “I missed you this morning,” she said, crossing over to stand next to me.

  “You wouldn’t have if I’d shown up.” I rolled the queen between my palms. “I wasn’t in the best of moods last night or this morning. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right, Hail. I know this is hard on you.” She smiled. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “You know the worst thing about hope?” I asked, tipping over a knight with the queen.

  “What is that?”

  “It’s so fucking hard to kill.” I held the queen up for a moment before I set her back on the board. “All you need is this little spark and it flares back to life again.”

  “That’s a good thing, I would think.”

  “It’s not. It’s a distraction.” One I couldn’t afford, and I shoved it all into the back of my mind where I hoped it would die from neglect before it could bother me again. “How much longer are we going to hang around here?”

  “Hail.” Mia laughed as she picked up the knight and set it back in its spot. “You’re not even remotely ready for the fight ahead. There’s still so much I need to teach you.”

  “I know. I just—”

  I am tired of all these ghosts.

  “Who do you play with?”

  “Aiz occasionally,” she said, taking the conversation change in stride. “Vais is nearly to the point where she can beat me. Several others play when they pass through. Do you know how?”

  “Sort of, I played with Hao’s old partner on his ship when I was on his crew.” I touched a finger to a pawn. “Gy was very good.”

  “Would you like to play?”

  I pulled my hand back, surprised by the sudden ache and the tears gathering in my eyes. I shook my head, hoping the movement would hide them from Mia. “No. I—you’re busy. I’ll go.”

  “Sit.” Mia caught me by the wrist, and though her smile was gentle there was no mistaking the command in her voice.

  I sat. Mia didn’t let me go but reached back and pulled the other chair around so she could sit without the table between us.

  “What were you looking at?”

  “Farian weapons. They were on the ship we stole, but I cannot—we have not been able to get them to work.”

  “If only you knew someone who knew a little something about guns.”

  Mia laughed. “I forget sometimes. Even though that period of your life has so much to do with who you are now. I can send you the files, if you wish. The ship itself is not available.”

  “Afraid I’ll steal it and run off?”

  Her amusement slipped away. “A little. Though I think you wouldn’t leave your people behind.”

  It was hard to know right now just what I would do, but on that she was probably correct.

  “You asked me earlier how Aiz could heal with such limitless grace. The answer is one of the fundamental differences between us and the Farians.” She changed the subject, turning my hand over so it was facing palm up. “Everything in the universe is moving. From the expansion of the universe itself down to the subatomic particles that make us all what we are. You humans figured out some of the most basic rules of the universe so quickly. It was amazing. But you missed this—how to harness the energy around you.” She held up her free hand with a smile before I could protest.

  “I’m not talking about the basic, rudimentary forms. I’m talking about this.” She closed her free hand and opened it again, a blue ball of light gathering in the center. “You were focused on the energy outside you.

  “By contrast, the Farians were, and are, told they can only use the energy that comes from within. That it is finite. It sets a limit on what a person can expend.” She closed her hand around my wrist, the ball vanishing into my skin, and I felt my restlessness ease. “It is much the same as what humans are capable of doing to themselves when there is a need. You all have a limit, yes? Sometimes you can push yourselves past it, given the right circumstances, but too far and it will kill you.”

  “So it’s not that the Farians can’t use the energy outside themselves, but that they won’t?”

  “Precisely.” Mia smiled. “The Farians throttle themselves. Their dogma teaches that they can only use the energy inside them, so they are drained by the smallest tasks, limited in what they can accomplish. We pull energy from the world around us. It means the whole universe is at our fingertips.

  “Fasé did it when she brought your Ekam back from the dead. She didn’t realize what she was doing, of course. It was instinct, an overriding of her conditioning in a moment of panic.”

  “It wasn’t panic,” I murmured, remembering Fasé’s words about saving Emmory because of Zin. “It was love. Zin felt Emmory die, because they were bonded. Fasé told me that when Zin cried out, it forced her to act,” I continued at Mia’s curious look.

  “Ah. That would make sense.” Mia nodded and rubbed at the skin of my wrist for a moment before releasing me. “What happened, though, was that Fasé used most of her own energy before
she tapped into the world around her. It was, not to be too blunt, lucky that she didn’t kill herself or anyone else in the process.”

  “How long does it take for Farians to come back after they’ve been killed?”

  Mia blinked, surprised by the question. “I am not sure. The Farians handle that differently from us. For Shen it is more random. You’d have to ask Aiz for a more detailed explanation.”

  “So there’s no way to know when Fasé is coming back. No way to rescue her?”

  “I’ll be honest, it was not something we’ve considered. Fasé’s faction may have held some of the same aims as us, but we were not allies.”

  It was my turn to be shocked. “You’re just going to leave her with the Pedalion?”

  “We are fighting a war of our own, Hail.” Mia lifted her chin. “My people would not condone risking their lives to save a Farian. Besides, her people will be in a better position to rescue her, should it be necessary.”

  “I see.” It was a painful reminder that whatever kindness and respect these Shen showed me, it didn’t extend to my people.

  What? Did you think they had your best interests at heart? Cire’s voice was sharp in my head, like a splinter of glass.

  “So,” I said, pushing the thoughts and Cire’s words to the back of my mind with all the other things I didn’t want to think about. “Tell me about these weapons the Farians created.”

  “You said the future you showed me was different from the one Sybil saw?” I asked Mia a week and a half later as we sat in her room playing chess.

  Things had settled somewhat. I was digging into the problem of the Farian weapons, delighted to have something to occupy my time. Though the Farian on the schematics themselves was making comprehension difficult. Alba hadn’t said anything more about the misdated image, and some of my restlessness had dissipated thanks to my fight with Aiz the day before.

  The Shen had won a major victory that morning, in part because of battle strategies I’d suggested, at a small moon several thousand light-years away. It was the farthest they’d ever encroached on Farian territory, and the mood was now one of anticipation.

  I’d been thinking about the future all morning, and now the questions were itching at the back of my throat to get free.

  “It is connected in many ways. As I told you, I don’t know if she didn’t speak of it in the original telling or if the Pedalion censored it because of what it showed of the Shen.” Mia smiled and lifted a shoulder as she toyed with her queen on the chessboard. “I even had a chance to ask Sybil about it directly during the negotiations. She was surprised, to say the least.”

  “They told us about the future, even if she didn’t show us. Fasé was—” I choked back the grief that the thought of the Farian dragged out of my chest. I looked away from her and back down at the chessboard.

  Mia and I had played a handful of times since our first conversation at the board, with every single game running into a dead draw despite my lack of practice.

  This game looked to be headed in a similar direction as our previous matches. I had more pieces left than she did. Mia had an interesting habit of throwing all of hers into the fray, sacrificing more than half of them in her latest set of moves. But the pieces she had were currently boxing in my king, and I was going to be hard-pressed to keep him out of harm’s way even with my superior numbers.

  “We do not see these beings in the same light as the Pedalion and the majority of Farians do,” she replied, releasing her queen without lifting the piece and instead moving her remaining bishop across the board, stealing my pawn and plucking it from the board. “They are oppressors. Holding the Farians down with their ridiculous prohibitions on this.” She turned her hand palm up and wiggled her fingers with a smile. “As though it is their right to control something that the universe has provided.”

  “We all fight, we all die.” I countered. “That’s not a good thing for most of us.”

  “We surrender, we will die.” Mia lifted a shoulder.

  “So we’re fucked no matter what I choose?”

  “It’s not a paradox, Hail. It just looks like one.”

  “Explain it to me, then. Because from where I’m sitting it sounds like this fight between the Farians and the Shen is what’s leading us to ruin.”

  You said the opposite to Gita, the unknown ghost laughed bitterly in my ear. Get your stories straight.

  Her surprised laugh bounced around us, distracting me from the ghost’s rebuke. “This is why we need you, Hail. Someone with a clear eye to look at these eons of enmity and tell us we’re all being fools.”

  “You don’t think you’re being fools,” I replied, trying to ignore the warmth in my chest that had bloomed with her laugh.

  “Of course I don’t. I’ve been locked in this struggle my whole life. I know I’m biased about the outcome.” She paused and stared at the board for a long moment. “I am… less attached, should we say, to the outcome than my brother is. Humans are meant to die.” Looking up at me, she smiled softly. “Aiz would say that is my mother speaking, but I am part human, am I not? We are not meant to live forever.”

  There was a strange longing in her voice, and I looked down at the board, trying to collect my thoughts. The idea of Mia dying was astonishingly painful, like a knife to the lung, and the last thing I wanted to do was let that show on my face.

  Whatever this fascination I had with her was, it was ultimately foolish. I didn’t need to care for anyone else at this point.

  Too late on that front. Why are you lying to yourself? Hao’s ghost asked from the corner, and I shot him a look.

  “What happened to your mother?”

  “She grew old as humans do.” Mia wiped at a tear that slipped free. “But she was loved and surrounded by love at the end. All of us could hope for such a death, right?”

  None of my family had gotten that kind of peaceful end, and I doubted I would be any different. “I don’t blame Aiz for his concern,” I found myself saying, and cleared my throat. “It is hard to lose a sibling.”

  “I cannot imagine the pain. It was—” Mia paused, and I looked up as she continued. “Awful to watch. Especially hard to see you grieve for them.”

  “You saw?”

  She nodded, a sad smile on her face. “I saw everything that happened, Hail.”

  “You knew they were all going to die.” A sick feeling in my gut exploded to life only to be chased down and savaged by my fury. “All of you. Shen. Farians. It doesn’t matter. You all saw this coming and did nothing to stop it. Did you see what was going to happen on Earth, too?”

  “Yes.”

  I pressed my fingers between my eyes, all too aware of the sudden throbbing of my pulse in my head. They’d all known and none of them had cared.

  “I am sorry.” There were tears in Mia’s eyes. Rain over storm clouds. She reached a hand out. “Hail, I know—”

  “No,” I snapped. “You don’t know. None of you know what it feels like to be told so fucking calmly that you just stood by and watched my people die. That you did nothing.” I reached out and tipped my king over. The clatter as it hit the board was loud in the silence.

  “We couldn’t interfere.”

  “Cowshit. All your preaching about my choices? You chose not to interfere. You chose not to help. You chose not to tell me. I could have saved them!” I got to my feet, pretending I didn’t see her tears as I headed for the door.

  Told you that you shouldn’t trust them, Hao said.

  I didn’t see anyone on my way back to our rooms alone, which was probably a good thing. Fury was choking me, making it hard to breathe. Hao strode at my side, his face impassive.

  “I’d rather be dead with you than keep doing this,” I whispered.

  He didn’t reply, just shook his head and vanished.

  Our rooms were empty. I closed the door and drove my fist into the wall next to it with all the force I could muster. The shock echoed up my arm, pain as bright as stars following after, an
d blood streaked over the gray surface. But I’d had nearly three months of fighting, three months of breathing through and surviving the kind of pain that would put most people on the floor.

  I punched again, felt the remaining bones in my hand snap. Punched a third time and a fourth until my blood was dripping from my ruined hand.

  Jiejie, stop. There were tears in Dailun’s silvered eyes. Or maybe they were my own. It was so hard to tell. Sobs tore at my throat as I dropped to my knees and my tears mixed with my blood, spattering to the floor.

  “Why should I?” It was a useless question. I knew what he would say as surely as I knew he was a ghost, and it didn’t matter. I deserved all this pain and more for failing them. I deserved it for not listening to my gut and for trying too hard to be an empress when I should have just stayed a gunrunner.

  The vision Fasé showed me of the world as it would be had I just cut Zin’s throat and been done with it raced through my brain. Selfish of me, to wish I could die a drunk while the universe fell to ruin around me. Everyone would still be dead, but I wouldn’t have known them. I wouldn’t be mourning for them even now.

  “Majesty, stop this.” Fasé’s voice was panicked in my head, overriding everything else spinning around inside me.

  “I can’t. I’m sorry.” I gasped the apology into the stillness, but there was no answer. There was no point in begging forgiveness from a ghost.

  I cradled my shattered hand to my chest as I dragged in one breath and then another. In my lessons with Mia I’d healed myself plenty of times, but always with energy she’d given me.

  Still it seemed easy, the sensation of water flowing through me and into my broken bones. The strange itch as they knit themselves back together. My breath caught, trapped in my chest as my vision blurred.

  Then the blackness slammed into me.

  12

  I jerked awake, energy zinging through me like sticking my hand to the path of a Hessian 45 stun gun.

  “That was fucking shit decision making, Hail,” Aiz declared, his face hovering above mine.