by F. T. Lukens
Liam cleared his throat. He unwound his arm from Ren’s shoulders and picked up a stray shell. He shook off the clinging sand. “I’ve been trying to reach you for weeks. I thought… well…” He furrowed his brow, and his throat bobbed. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. I guess I was wrong.”
Ren grimaced. “I was… incapacitated.” He squinted against the bright sun and noticed how it had stalled on the horizon. “I was injured.”
“Understatement. Was it her? That other one?”
“Yes. You warned me about her. I should’ve known.”
Liam shrugged. “I wasn’t sure. This power thing is still new. I’m learning the nuances. But your dreams always seemed… off… when she was near you.”
“She was influencing me. I didn’t know. I didn’t know she could do that.”
Liam nodded. “I don’t know the depths of what I am capable of. Do you?”
That was a sobering question. “No. I don’t. And I don’t know if I want to.” Ren met Liam’s gaze. “Do you know where you are? Are they still monitoring you?”
Liam’s mouth twitched into a smile. “I don’t know where I am. And no, they can’t monitor me. They never could.” He sighed; his gaze dropped to his hands where he played with the shell. “When I woke up here, I was scared. I was scared they would kill me if I wasn’t useful. They heavily implied it. So, I did what they told me to. I went into people’s dreams and drew out information and fed it to the guys that brought me food. I thought they would know if I lied or if I couldn’t reach the people they wanted. But after being here a while, I’ve realized, they can’t follow me here.” He swept his hand toward the lake. “If those weeds knew how to dream-walk, then they wouldn’t need me. They’re not going to kill me. They don’t know if what I tell them is true or not. I keep it vague and give them kernels of truth, but never the whole.” He squinted, his green eyes narrowing against the suspended setting sun. “I don’t know who they are, but I know I’m not helping them anymore.” He threw the shell into the lake. It skipped once, twice, three times, but instead of plunging into the water, it kept bobbing across the surface, disappearing into the infinite.
Ren swallowed. “It’s the Phoenix Corps. I saw your name in their files.”
Liam’s eyebrows ticked up. “Do you know where I am?”
“No.” Ren shook his head. “I didn’t get a chance to find out. But I won’t stop looking. I promise.”
Liam smiled fully. “I have to go.” Liam stood and wiped the sand from his pants. “You’re going to wake up soon.”
Ren hopped to his feet. The lake wavered. The sky thinned. The trees flicked out of existence one by one. Sand disappeared from his fingers. “I’ll see you again?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
They hugged, and Ren squeezed Liam tightly. “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too, big brother.” Liam pulled away. And it was his turn to hold Ren at arm’s length and look him over. “Promise me, Ren. If you have a chance to run away, to be safe, to live a life. Take it. Don’t put yourself in danger for me.”
“I can’t promise that.”
Liam shook his head. “It was worth a try.” He punched Ren in the arm before walking away. “Don’t be a weed,” he called over his shoulder. His body slowly became transparent.
“Take care,” Ren called back.
Liam waved, and the dream fizzled out.
4
Ren startled to wakefulness. Sprawled on the deck near the nav system, he lifted his head. The crew stood around him. They stared at him with varying degrees of concern or, in Darby’s case, open wonder. They seemed unharmed, which filled Ren with relief.
“Did I do it?”
Ollie’s dark eyebrows drew together. “Are you okay?”
“You passed out.” Penelope knelt by his side and took his hand in hers. She pushed two fingers against his wrist, where Ren’s pulse thudded hard under the thin skin. “It’s a disturbing trend.”
Eyes squinted, Darby peered at him as if he was a bug under glass. Rowan pushed her back. “Give him room and a minute. Are you okay, Ren?”
Ren opened his mouth, then shut it. He wasn’t sure, but that wasn’t what he was worried about. “Did I do it? Did I transport us?”
“Yeah,” Lucas rubbed a hand through his hair, knocking his goggles askew. “You did it. But uh… when I said to shoot for Bara, I meant the general vicinity.”
Pushing up onto his elbows, Ren squirmed away from Penelope. Ollie grabbed his arm, helped Ren to his feet, and held him steady. His head spun. Pushing the heel of his palm to his forehead, he looked through the vid screen. But he could see nothing but a blanket of black. “How badly did I mess up? I didn’t hurt the ship, did I?”
Lucas laughed nervously. “Of course not. You didn’t hurt the ship. I don’t think you are capable of damaging it. You’re like best friends.”
“Then what did—”
“You put us on the planet!” Darby’s eyes were wide. Her fists clenched at her sides. “Your terrifying science-magic transported us and now we’re on a planet, you freak!”
Ren winced. “Oh.”
“How is that possible?” She waved her arms. “You shouldn’t be able to do that. No one should be able to do that. How did you bend physics? How did we jump in time and space? Why are the rest of you not freaking out?”
Rowan crossed her arms. Lucas shrugged. Penelope pursed her lips.
Ollie chuckled, the sound low and deep. “You get used to it.”
“You get used to it?” Darby’s voice went shrill.
“I put us in a forest?”
“If that’s a cluster of green things, then yes. That’s where you put us.” Lucas patted Ren’s shoulder. “Good job.”
“On Bara?”
“Yeah.”
Ren’s gaze flitted back to the screen.
“It’s the planet’s night time,” Rowan said by way of explanation. “It doesn’t help that there is a canopy of green things above us that’s blocking out the light. We had to open the aft airlock to sneak a peek while you were passed out. Not only did you drop us on the planet, you made sure we are well hidden.”
Ren rubbed his hands over his face. “I guess that’s good.”
“It’s amazing, considering our hopeful expectations were that we wouldn’t blow up.” Lucas grinned. Penelope smacked him in the arm.
“Why don’t we have a bite to eat and rest. And we’ll figure out our next move once it’s morning on this planet. Whenever that might be.”
The group agreed with Penelope, and, with Ollie lending a shoulder, Ren followed the crew to the common room.
_
“I talked to my brother,” Ren said, when only he, Ollie, and Rowan were left in the common room. Rowan stopped drying a dish, and Ollie looked up from the box of broken tech. He handed Ren a burned-out part to an air-recycling system.
“When?” Rowan asked. She placed the dish on a stack. It clinked against the others with more force than she’d been using.
“When I was asleep. He came to me in a dream.”
She nodded. “Did he tell you anything?”
Ren turned the tech over in his hands, frowning at the blackened wires and broken relays. He prodded it with his star and realized the energy to fix it wouldn’t be worth it.
“He doesn’t know where he is, but I saw his name when I looked through the files on Phoebus. There was a list of people like me. My name was there, which is how I found Asher’s location. There was also a death certificate.” Ren’s voice dropped on the last part. He ghosted his hand over his wound. Pain and fire danced along the edges of his senses, the report of the shot echoed in his ears, and the memory of metal on his tongue filled his mouth.
“I guess you didn’t get a look at your brother’s location?” Ollie took the part from Ren’s lax grip and swi
tched it for a salvageable one.
Ren shook his head; the memories fell away. “No. I didn’t. But the Corps has him. That I know for certain.”
Rowan rinsed out a cup. “He wasn’t on Crei with Vos. He wasn’t on Erden at your village or the refugee location.”
“Vos never had him.”
“The Corps could have him stashed anywhere.” Ollie dug around in the box. “They were on Erden. They were on Crei. They’re here on Bara. Who knows what other planets they’ve set up on? Or what they’re doing here.”
“We’ll ask Asher that question when we get him back.” Rowan finished with the dishes and dropped the towel on the counter near the sink. She leaned back against it, facing them, her elbows behind her. “I’m sure he’s been doing his own reconnaissance, that selfless cog.”
Ren’s vision went blue as he repaired the mobile comm system Ollie handed him. His stomach twisted at the mention of Asher’s self-sacrifice. “I’m sure he has.”
“Liam could be in Perilous Space.” Ollie shrugged. “Isn’t that where they took that general?”
Rowan scoffed. “They wouldn’t put a child in Perilous Space.”
“He’s sixteen now. Not so much a child anymore. And they would if they thought he was a danger to them,” Ren said, frowning at the thought. It’s what they had threatened him with after all. Ren had perceived their threats to ship him off to prison as having to do with Ren’s potential for misconduct because of his technopathic ability. It was the technopaths they had gone to war with so long ago. Now, Ren knew they thought all star hosts had equal potential for uprising and treason.
Perilous Space made startling sense. Ferret out the star hosts living on the planets and shuttle them off to a place where they would be isolated and, in theory, wouldn’t be able to start trouble. Abiathar was already there, and he was dangerous around other star hosts since he could coerce them to do things against their will. Unless… he’d been subdued.
Liam wasn’t subdued because the Corps needed him to gather intelligence.
“He has to be there.”
Rowan pushed off from the sink. “You thought he was on Erden, and he wasn’t. Then you thought he was on Crei, and he wasn’t. I don’t think we’re going to risk going to Perilous Space to find out he’s not there either.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to,” Ren said. He drew his eyebrows together. “Not there.”
“We’ll find Ash first. And then we’ll decide what we’re doing from there. Ren, we can’t fight every battle. We’re not equipped to save the cluster.”
Ren half-smiled. “I know.”
“Good. And even if we could, is it really our place? What obligation do we hold to these people?”
Ren shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Neither do I. I only know how to take care of my family, and that’s what I’m going to do. Idiot dusters included.” She rubbed a hand over his head. “I miss ruffling your hair.”
Ren ducked his head and blushed. He accepted another piece of tech from Ollie and focused on the circuits and the mechanisms as Rowan left the common area.
Rowan was right. The Star Stream and her crew were not equipped to save the cluster. Stars, they were barely equipped to save themselves. But he was. He was power and light, and he would fight until Asher was safe, he would fight until his brother was safe, and he wouldn’t stop until Vos and the Phoenix Corps couldn’t tear any more families apart, couldn’t use the people of the cluster and the planets for their own gain ever again.
_
When the sun came up after a few hours, the light barely filtered through the thick foliage that surrounded them. Ren thought he’d dropped the ship in the middle of a forest. He was wrong. These weren’t the trees he was used to on Erden: tall, thin evergreens filled with needles, and deciduous trees with leaves that would turn bright red and gold in the autumn. These weren’t the smooth laurels of the refugee camp where his family had fled.
These trees were clumped together, breaking out of the ground, then twisting toward the light, tangling with the canopy overhead. Thick, green vines wrapped and climbed the trees and hung, webbing them together, while large spiky fronds sieved the light between their spindles. Roots bubbled up from the ground in intricate networks, and moss clung to every surface of rock and bark. The canopy spread above, a barrier between them and the sky. In the spaces where light reached the ground, dense vegetation grew, filled with thorns and leaves bigger than a full-grown human. Wild birds called to each other with shrill voices and fluttered with vibrant plumage from perch to perch. Small animals scampered in the brush.
Ren stood at the open airlock. Sweat prickled at the back of his neck and rolled over his skin. The humidity was an oppressive blanket and it settled in his lungs with every breath. He craned his neck to look up. “We’re not flying out of here.”
Rowan stood at his shoulder. “No, we’re not.” She flinched away when a loud caw echoed close by. “This is too much nature.”
“What is this place?” Lucas asked, standing on his toes, peering out over Rowan’s shoulder. “And what is that?”
Ren shifted his gaze to where Lucas pointed to find the largest snake he’d ever seen. He yelped as it slithered close to the ship with its the smooth scales shining brown and black. Ren jumped back. He slammed the door, eyes blazing blue, arms tucked close to his chest.
Rowan raised an eyebrow. “I’ve seen one of those in a drift zoo. It’s a snake. Right?”
“I don’t like snakes.” Ren shuddered. “And that thing was big enough to eat us.”
“They eat humans? Unreal.” Lucas adjusted his goggles. “So, no wandering around without a buddy then. Not that I would. Too much… fresh air and dirt and danger.”
Ren rolled his eyes. “We need to find the Phoenix Corps base where Asher is being held. I doubt it’s around here though.”
“Use the sensors. See if you can pick up a settlement.” Lucas leaned on the bulkhead. “You know what Corps tech feels like, right?”
Ren nodded. “Yeah, I do.”
“But even if we’re close, I don’t know about traversing this...” she waved her hand.
“Jungle,” Ren said.
“Jungle.” Rowan pursed her lips. “It’s thick and there are things out there.”
Lucas snorted. “Never thought I’d see my captain afraid of a little dust.”
Tugging on her braid, Rowan narrowed her eyes. “Oh, really? You think I’m afraid?”
Lucas held up his hands. “I think everyone should have a healthy fear of planets. Seriously. Who likes dust and dirt and… fauna.”
“You know you’re coming with us now, right?” Lucas sputtered out a protest, but Rowan raised her hand. “Save it. We’ve determined we don’t need a pilot, but we will need someone proficient with maps.”
Lucas wilted. “You’re not joking.”
“No.”
“Aw, stars.”
Ren snickered. Lucas punched Ren in the shoulder, and Ren stumbled into the wall. He leaned on it heavily and rubbed the sore spot.
“If we’re done acting like children,” Rowan said, glaring, “we need to prepare. Ren, use the sensors and see what you can find. Lucas, get ready.”
Grumbling, Lucas headed for the bridge. Rowan patted Ren on the shoulder. “Are you going to be able to hike through a jungle? You’re still weak.”
“I’m better. I can do it.”
Rowan sighed. “I’m not going to argue.”
She read in his expression that he was not going to be left behind. He was going to rectify his mistakes. He was going to find Asher even if it took hiking through a thousand jungles and encountering a thousand snakes.
“Find him.” She headed for the stairs. “Find him, then we’ll plan.”
Ren left the cargo bay and ended up in the common room. He slumped onto the couch, clo
sed his eyes, and relaxed into the worn cushions. Maybe after everything was over Ren could convince Rowan to get a new couch.
Ren tapped into the comms. “Lucas, watch the vid screen. I’ll put what I find on there.”
Lucas responded with a mutter of acquiescence.
Flooding into the ship’s sensors, using them to boost his power, Ren reached out in a circle from the ship and gradually expanded the perimeter. He didn’t have to travel far until he was overwhelmed with feedback from tech. A cluster of ships, a comm tower, and a docking platform were nearby, they were merely… up. Beyond the canopy, almost directly above them. It was promising, but not what he was looking for.
Brows knit together, Ren pushed out farther until he encountered more signatures. A small town, maybe? Not Phoenix Corps—Ren didn’t recognize the tech.
He didn’t know how much farther he could go, but he ballooned outward, ignoring the transports that flew from the ground to the spaceport and the kitchen appliances that whirred on the edge of his consciousness and the messages that hovered in the air. Frowning, he scanned and spread and there! A ping of a Corps weapon! Ren pulled his circle in, then focused on that direction, and shot out in a line. Corps tech flooded him. Weapons and generators and forcefields bled into him. Communications buzzed beneath his eyes, and vehicles hummed in his chest, and data pads tickled over his skin.
Ren threw the information on the vid screen of the bridge and listened over the comm to the rest of the crew’s reactions.
“I’ve got it, Ren,” Lucas said. “You can pull back.”
Ren snapped into his body like a rubber band and tipped sideways onto the couch.
“That is cogging weird,” Darby said from her perch on the table. “Your eyes glow and your face goes totally blank.” She waved a hand in front of her nose. “Like you’re not there at all.”
“You’re calmer now,” Ren said.
Darby waved her hand. “I needed my moment of escalation, but I’m good now. I think. I’m more curious. If I had punched you, would you have felt it?”