The bridge has yielded, and will yield again. In the ruins of the aether a new King will stand, and at that King's hands the void will come for us all.
Another memory rises.
It is months after Ritry Goligh killed the Suns, and I am underground in a bunker Court, afraid every day. I feel it as the first of my brood-class disappears. We all feel it, our peer-group from the monastery, bound tightly through the bonds of childhood no matter where we are in the world.
The bloody boy is coming for us, and will kill us all.
But this is worse than death. I feel it on the bonds as my old brood-mate is destroyed in an erasure more complete than the Lag, so total it rubs him out completely, unwriting a past that now never happened, a role that one of us played that is now being un-played.
I try to cling to the frame of his memory as it dissipates from my mind, but it is wrenched away just as viciously as he killed that first girl, not just in the bonds or in my mind but from the aether too. My old brood-mate never now lived. He has been wholly undone and unwritten.
Who? I can't remember. There is just the gouge where something important had been.
Days later another disappears. This time I feel the bonds distend, opening outward into a void far from the cocooning light cast by the Suns, far from the light of all Souls and into the empty blackness at the fringes of the aether.
There I feel screaming. I glimpse a loss of self that is all-pervading. I hear a Soul blown a million miles wide with nothing inside, lost but cursed with consciousness. Into that nothing-space another one of my peers is pushed.
Then she too is gone. I remember only the faintest echo of what once might have been.
More follow. Those of us who knew the bloody boy in the monastery disappear one by one. Our trails are expunged, our contributions removed, every trace we left smoothed away.
We come together. We fall apart. We gather syringes in a bid to keep our immortal Souls within the sphere of the aether. This is the path the boy has prepared for us and herded us toward. We sob into each other's minds, groping to describe a terror not even the Suns knew how to teach.
The Suns' rule is plainly over. It is the dawn of a new age now, and in it we can only hope to hide. So we load the syringes and inject ourselves. Our brains flood with noise to disguise who we really are, and give us a place to hide.
Afterward there is chaos like an ocean in a vacuum, a billion droplets scouring and rushing in tsunamis of nonsense. My mind foams into gas and back to liquid, clashing and tossing and reforming, neutering myself at an unspoken command.
But is it enough, a voice asks me, as I chew the heads off toads and bite down on barnacle shells to survive. Is it enough?
I find the bricks, mortar and materials where I left them, buried in the depths of a bond mountain so dense even he won't see the dregs of me beneath it all. I brick myself in layer after layer, until I can't hear anything from the world, and surely he can't hear me.
Still I plead to god, whatever that creature is, to not abandon me. I want to exist. I want to have existed. I want to rejoin the aether when I die.
Please don't let him steal my immortal Soul.
I pull out with screams ringing in my ears. I'm in the cave and the terror has infected me too.
I too have looked into this bloody boy's eyes and seen the hate; I have seen him as the brood-King sweeping down across the aether to erase everyone I love, and I recognize the hatred that fuels him on. In this alone, I know him. It springs from the same empty rage that I felt all my life until I found my place in the War, that returned as a numb sense of unbelonging after the fighting was over, when I lived on a Skulk just waiting for the next tsunami to come and rub me away.
I have known this feeling all my life; that nothing I do means a thing, that my suffering and my happiness both are nothing and so the suffering and happiness of are nothing too.
The feeling encircles me in old madness, and I fear a return to this more than anything else. I have lost everyone already, all my friends, lovers, and family that gave my life meaning; all I have left is my own Soul.
But the stakes are too high to protect it any longer. I would rather lose myself forever than let the brood-King keep what he has taken; not Ray, Doe, Far, So, La or Ti, not Loralena or Art or Mem, not Carrolla or Don Zachary or Ven or Heclan or Ferrily or Tigrates or even Mr. Ruin. This is our world and our lives all mattered, and I cannot allow them to be eradicated so.
All life has meaning. All life is worth something, and this is where I draw the line, like a little voice speaking in my mind saying 'wrong, wrong, wrong.' Life matters, and there is nothing I will not do to fight for it.
I ascend from the caves and into the light, my hands carrying the cave creature behind us. I stand in the cloisters breathing the fresh salt air, looking out over the ocean and the tanker, out over the bonds in this cliff-top monastery stretching back millennia, out to the limits of my HUD's EMR Wall, and know what I am going to do.
Adapt, learn and conquer.
--.
M. TRAP
Holding the tablet in my hand in the jack-bay, looking at the digital clock tick down to the mindbomb that will kill the crew, the possibilities race through my head. Maybe this is why I am here. I could save them. I could change everything.
If this is even real. I don't know what it means. Am I hunting Solfeje or am I really back here and this is it, and right now the seconds are ticking down to the moment Ven and all my friends die?
The slate wipes clean on that last thought. It feels like I'm here, and if there's even the smallest chance that's true I have to do something right now.
I drop the tablet, kick out of the EMR tray and bolt out of the jack-bay door, ignoring Heclan as he calls after me.
"Ritry, what the hell are you doing?"
I'm doing something I've dreamed of for the last twenty-three years.
The corridors of this old subglacic blur around me like memory fading to magma, a passage I never took because I never knew what was coming. Exhilaration fills me up because I'm finally changing things, finally saving them all. I race up through the decks planning what I'll say and how I'll make the threat real.
I burst into the dizzy heights of the conning tower with T-minus fifty minutes to spare. The tower is what it always was; screens and readouts and an atmosphere of humming. tension. Crew-members stand at blinking stations circled around the metal walls with Ven in the middle at the periscope, her pale face now looking back at me with a quizzical expression.
I approach her and speak in the hushed tones the conning tower requires.
"Captain, may I speak with you please?"
"Not now, Mr. Goligh," she says. "I'm currently engaged."
I don't say, "I know," as that would be foolish in the extreme. I don't blurt out the threat we're facing, because in full view of all these others I'd have to explain how I know it, when the only good explanation is that I'm either incompetent or a spy.
"Please," I say instead, "it's important."
She looks at me. She looks to her lietenant and gives a sharp nod. "Two minutes. Follow me."
She strides down the narrow corridor to the captain's hutch and I follow, down past racks of weaponry and emergency exposure suits. In the small space that is her ready room she leans against her desk and crosses her arms. I'm briefly surprised that the walls and ceiling are not filled with little numbered lockers, but of course that was never a real thing.
"What is it, Ritry?" Ven asks.
I appreciate this, that she respects me enough to bring me back here. She knows I'm not a fool even though I act like it at times.
"I've got reason to believe this ship is about to be mindbombed," I say quietly. "In less than fifty minutes. We're moving into an ambush and everybody on board will die if you don't do something about it."
Ven's face changes, her curiosity becoming concern. "An ambush? What reason do you have to believe this?"
I press on, because if I have to r
ely on the reason I have to believe this, I've already lost her. "There's a proto-Rusk hydrate mine ahead of us that was hit hard by the Aleut, is that right?" I don't wait for confirmation; there's no way I should know even this much. "They've got several ships filled with the wounded and you're thinking about offering them an escort." Her eyes narrow and I plow on, the words spilling out in a flurry; information I gathered long after the mindbomb dropped and they were all dead. "I know our treaty with the proto-Rusk requires us to assist them, but we can't do it this time. The raid's just a cover to steal this ship and its information; the first blow in a counter-strike that'll see neo-Armorica driven out of the Arctic for good. I promise you, Ven, we need to bomb those ships or we need to turn around and run right now."
Ven's concern hardens to displeasure. "I'll ask you again, Ritry, how do you know any of this?"
"Scan the ships," I answer, because I've got no source she'll believe; not that I already lived through all this once and have regretted that survival every day since. "Scan them and you'll see there's an army out there, lowboats and dropships ready to ensnare us. The motherlode of intelligence they get from us will be enough to put us permanently behind in the War. Plus we'll all be dead. At least scan them, Ven, you'll see I'm right."
At that moment firm hands take hold of my arms from behind, locking me in place. I turn my head and see two burly security marines at my back. I didn't even hear them coming in. I was too preoccupied to notice Ven summon them through the panic button under her desk.
"Let this all be a mistake, Mr. Goligh," Ven says, a hint of agony creeping through her mounting anger. "Just another bad joke, or tell me now how you know this."
I open my mouth and put desperate words into it, a story that paints me as incompetent but at least not a spy.
"From a jack," I say. "I read it in the last round of captives."
Ven's cold anger wrinkles. "Captives? The last round was three weeks ago. Have you held onto this information for three weeks and told no one?"
I begin to feel her slipping away from me. She's disengaging more as a person every second and I need to do something. I glance up at the display behind her desk; forty-five minutes remain. From what I remember the trap was a pincer movement of proto-Rusk and Aleut nation ships, encircling us long before the mindbomb fell. They had every eventuality covered.
"I just put the pieces together now," I say. "If nothing else, do a radar scan of the icebergs and the mine, you'll see they're loaded with unexpected density. Those will be Dactyls and subglacics, shielded by the ice."
"Or medical supplies," Ven answers, the anger briefly surfacing. "Do you realize this is a drop we've had scheduled for months? I don't know who told you it was an Aleut raid, or an escort. We're here to pick up medicines for the entire neo-Armorican fleet, a mission classified to tower-crew only."
This completely throws me.
"What?" I blurt. It makes no sense, and doesn't sync with what I learned in the aftermath. There's no resupply scheduled for months. I shake my head. "That's not right. It's a proto-Rusk question of passage, it's a trap, that's what I know."
"What you know," Ven says slowly, like she's tasting the words. Then she draws the pistol at her waist and points it at my face. My eyes go wide. This is not how I envisaged this going. "What else do you know, Mr. Goligh?"
"Ven, it's me."
"No, it isn't. You're lying, Ritry. You're talking about things you shouldn't know and asking me to bomb a supply drop the War-effort badly needs. Why?"
"What? No, I'm trying to save us, trying to save you."
"What was the marine's name?" she asks, holding the pistol steady in my face. "The one you jacked three weeks ago who gave you this information, which you've only figured out now. Tell me her name."
I have no idea. I gave all this away a long time ago to the Lag. I could guess, but how many names are there in the world?
"I didn't memorize it. I didn't think anything of it at the time."
"So tell me what she looked like. Tell me what her ship was called. Tell me anything to corroborate your story."
I can't.
"Scan the ships," I say, pleading now. "Scan the hydrate mine. You'll see I'm right."
"I'll do nothing. Running those scans could be a signal. Doing anything you say could be a signal. What is your intent here, Soul Jacker?"
The address by my profession comes like a blow, like an insult. She's making the distance she needs to blow my brains out here and now, in the hutch, for gross espionage.
"I'm trying to save us."
"With three-week-old information you never mentioned, from a marine whose name you don't know, at a vital supply drop for the fleet? Either you're more incompetent than I ever dreamed possible, or you're a spy and this is an attempt to spoil a top-secret pickup."
She said it. Spy.
I was wrong, and I realize now how wrong I've been all along, all my life since she died. I always thought it was the compassion I brought out in her that caused her to fall for the ambush, but she was never that unprofessional. She put that face on for me but as captain she was hard all the way through. It wasn't compassion that led her to 'help' the proto-Rusk, but a secret neo-Armorican supply run that met with a proto-Rusk betrayal that none of us saw coming.
I was wrong about so much. My mind races with the story I could have told, something she might have believed, but what? I can think of nothing that would have helped. I can't tell her I've come from a Hollow Star in the depths of the aether, that I'm hunting a half-pulse marine named Solfeje in search of, what? I can't tell her that in my world she is dead and has been dead since this moment, which I've regretted ever since.
Twenty-three years of regret. No matter what I can't let that happen again.
I close my eyes and focus. This mind doesn't have the pathways; hasn't had them forced open by Mr. Ruin, by the godships, by overload, but I remember how and that'll have to do. Standing there with Ven's pistol to my head, I jack into the bonds.
Rushing through electrostatic then magma, I reach into Ven's mind and Lag away all her doubts. I draw on the unified strength of the crew below and reach wider, for seconds making all these people my hands.
Ritry Goligh's young mind creaks under the unaccustomed torrent I'm forcing through it, but there is time to feel that pain later. For now I make the security officers holding me let go and back away. I have an operator in the conning tower run the radar scans I need, and find the dense blocks I'm looking for; small stealth ships encircling us front and back, hiding behind the hydrate mine and icebergs.
They have corralled us already, and there is no going back.
I relinquish control of the crew, holding only onto Ven. I have her click another button on her desk to open a comm line with the tower, and through her throat I give the order.
"Ready every marine troop and lowboat," she says. "Ready every dry-ice bomb and missile in the arsenal. Send a coded message for support to the fleet asking for immediate, mass reinforcements. In thirty minutes we raise the EMR shield and attack that mine."
There's outrage, shock, defiance in her eyes as she realizes what I'm doing. I hate to see it but I hold her there still.
"Do it," I make her bark, "now!"
Reaching back into the conning tower, I give the first of her lieutenants a quick massage, enough to get her moving and sending orders out into the ship-wide system, which is enough to get the others moving too.
I'm suddenly exhausted.
I have Ven sit behind her desk and I slump across from her, feeling the urgency pass into the crew. Alerts sound. Feet stamp metal floors as they rush to War-stations. Before me Ven struggles against my stranglehold on her intent, and I know she will never forgive me for this.
"I'm sorry," I say. "I promise, I'm trying to keep you alive."
We sit and stare at each other. I feel the ties of love between us break and I weather it. To keep her alive, surely this is worth it. Why else have I been sent back?
"I'
ll go with them," I say, hoping to explain. "I'll fight too. You'll see."
She sits and judges me. She judges herself, feeling a fool for ever trusting me. She let me into her mind and into her bed, and now she's retreating further behind the layer of ice she's kept for so long. Now she hates me and she'll never trust another person this much again.
Nothing will be the same.
N. CHORD
Thirty minutes pass and by the end I'm panting, drained from holding her in place. Any uncertainty she might have felt is long gone, replaced by ice-cold conviction. Now she is planning how she will kill me, when she gets the chance.
She won't get it. The subglacic beneath us hums with the sound of marines stamping into their assault lowboats and readying weapons, with the clank and shuffle of missiles being loaded into bays.
This is the flagship of the neo-Armorican fleet; best-armed, best-equipped, best-prepared. Reinforcements will come soon to keep us safe. History will change.
I rise to my feet.
"Manage the battle," I tell Ven. She stares up at me, whiter than I ever remember. "You'll see soon enough that I've saved us. If you still want to kill me after that, if any of us survive, I won't fight it. I love you, I've always loved you, and I'm sorry I didn't do this better."
I stride out. I keep a loose rein on her even as I smooth my passage through the ship, descending ladderways to a lowboat assault bay where combat marines are standing ready, where I always truly belonged. I should never have let them make me a Soul Jacker. I push amongst them until Ferrily is at my side, in full battle gear and frowning.
"The fuck you doing here, Rit?"
I pull down a white subglacic HUD and combat armor from the wall-rack nearby and start bolting it on. "Leading you," I say.
She laughs. I flip the switch in her mind so that she believes it.
"Well all right then," she says, and hollers for the marines to hear, fifteen in this bay, the complement for one lowboat, and they shut up.
Soul Jacker Box Set Page 53