Static Ruin Read online

  A bright blaze beyond the viewport catches my eye—green-white light pouring through cracks in the Antler’s hull. Reactor meltdown.

  “Waren, get us into worm-space now!”

  I strike out at the ship again and snap the constructor’s heavy steel limbs, breaking the crushed wreck away. Too late. The reactor detonates, blinding light, blast of plasma slamming the Rua aside as we hit the wormhole. The Antler folds away, but the blossoming explosion follows us into the impossible space behind the walls of the universe.

  I’m flung forward and to the side, clutching a handhold over Pale’s seat as the Rua jags hard. We’re out of control within the wormhole, slamming into the edge of infinity, one side of the ship shorn away to reveal the inky black non-space beyond, ready to swallow us whole. This is my judgment. No empire can judge me, no man. My sins are too great. I kill at a planetary level, galactic sin. Only the void can judge me.

  Ocho’s body drifts toward the ragged gash in the hull—the cost of my punishment. No; she’s all I have left. I let go of the handhold and push off the wall with my foot. I grab Ocho around the belly and hold an arm out to stop myself floating out into nothingness.

  We shunt out the other side of worm-space like a punch to the gut. Rush of bile in my throat, which I swallow bitter; better than it painting the inside of my helmet. Unfamiliar stars streak past the opening every time the ship spins, dead in the void. Cold creeps across my visor in crystalline pattern, the Rua’s life support systems useless against such extensive damage.

  Marius’s skin turns blue and Pale grips his arm desperately. There’s nothing we can do.

  Teo stares at me; even with the rebreather over his mouth and nose I can tell he’s smiling. His eyes are bright, filled with monstrous love, and I know he’s seeing me as Cilla. You never really loved her, you just thought you did. As Pale shakes his arm, some inexplicable thing behind Teo’s eyes goes out.

  “He’s gone, Pale; I’m sorry.” I pull myself over to the boy and turn his helmet to face me, away from the corpse; he’s already seen too many. He fights me at first, then holds his hands out as tears coat his eyes, cohesion holding the liquid to the surface in zero-g. I hug him with one arm—still holding Ocho in the other—while his tiny body is wracked by sobs.

  When he’s calmed down I hold Ocho’s body against the glass of my helmet. The threat of tears burns my eyes, but I force them back. I want to cry, not just because she’s dead again, but because I see every one of her deaths extending back to my childhood and that first time she was killed. If I hadn’t been so sad and stubborn, hadn’t held her corpse close for a week, I might never have found out she cloned herself. Might never have waited until the swelling bulge in her stomach made me cut her open and find the egg growing inside her putrescent guts.

  It hurts so fucking much. I don’t know how many times I can lose you. I put her in the insulated pocket on the side of my voidsuit, to protect her egg from the cold.

  “Waren?”

  No response. I don’t know if the ship’s comms are damaged, or if Waren is gone. The cockpit could have been torn away when we hit the wormhole, along with the starboard side of the ship. I won’t know until we’re rescued. If we’re rescued.

  I key the secondary emergency beacon on the panel beside the air lock and it blinks a steady green. All that’s left for us is to wait. For rescue or death.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I start awake, body jerking in fear as I reach for a bed, the floor, Ocho, a tether, anything. Then I remember where we are. Adrift in the void. My suit’s life support flashes a warning on my HUD—oxygen reserves low.

  Blue-white light emanates steadily from the panel by the air lock and I push toward it for a better look. Docking procedure initiated. So that’s what woke me.

  Pale is still asleep, hugging Teo’s arm. I feel sorry for the boy. Apparently he found the father he wanted in Teo. I shake Pale by the shoulder and his eyes snap open.

  “Someone’s here,” I say, and the stern set of his child’s mouth tells me he knows exactly what I mean: Be ready for anything.

  The light over the air lock starts spinning and my heart rate spikes. I try and calm my breathing to match the cycle of the light’s spin. Inhale two full rotations, exhale two full rotations. Anyone could be on the other side of that door. Emperor’s Guard, pirates, slavers, or scavengers who’d happily kill us for salvage rights. I don’t want to kill again, don’t make me kill you. The panel pings green and the door aperture opens silently.

  A solitary figure stands in the opening, slender even in their voidsuit. A dim pink and green light shines through the visor of their helmet—chromatophores glowing beneath the skin of their cheeks.

  “Hello, Mars,” Squid says, and all the tears I held back come flooding out.

  * * *

  Squid stores the wreck of the Rua in the Nova’s expansive hold, half-filled with scrapped ships and decommissioned weapons. It still smells faintly of compressed humanity—all those prisoners we freed and took to Aylett Station.

  Pale walks beside me solemn when I carry Teo’s body to the medbay of the Nova. I stow the corpse in one of the refrigerated drawers and wait for Pale to say his silent goodbyes. Standing in that room, all I can see is Trix, dead on the slab while Mookie screams at me. Not like I didn’t deserve it, but it still hurt.

  I find a scalpel and cut Ocho’s belly open. With finger and thumb I reach into the incision and pull the egg free, slick with blood and gore. I clean it and stow it in the hood of my cloak. Hurry up and hatch, jerkface; I’m lost without you.

  I get Waren’s core from the Rua’s ruined cockpit, viewport shattered in jagged lightning bolts, gaping wound in the armored hull on the starboard side. I hang the core from my belt and stalk through the rest of the ship, retrieving my clothes and a few other bits and pieces from my living quarters. When Pale has done the same, I let Squid crush the ship—the three of us watching as the vessel is reduced to a dark steel cube.

  “You look like you could do with a coffee,” Squid says. They don’t wait for a reply, they just put an arm around my waist and pull me away.

  Treading the familiar corridors, something inside me aches. This place feels almost like home. It isn’t, and it never will be again, but for a time it was. I just didn’t realize it until now.

  I leave Squid and Pale for a minute to stop in at the cockpit and install Waren’s core into the AI rack. The light blinks green as he starts to interface, but I won’t know if he’s fine until the process is complete.

  When I reach the mess hall the smell of ersatz coffee fills the space, and already Pale is asleep with his head resting on the table. I drop down into the seat beside him, and Squid hands me a freshly made cup. I drink deep, ignoring the slight burn on the tip of my tongue. Coffee tastes so much better when someone else makes it for you. Even I know that.

  “I owe you, Squid.”

  They blow on their steaming cup and shrug. “I’ll keep the scrap and we’ll call it even.”

  “My life isn’t that cheap,” I say, and they laugh. “How did you find us?”

  Squid’s eyes flick up toward the ceiling. “For all their apparent animosity, Einri and Waren kept a link after we parted ways.”

  “Don’t believe them, Mars,” Waren says, my first indication that he survived the wreck. Hearing his voice, I can’t help smiling. “I’d rather die than reach out to this boring calculator of an AI.” After a beat he says, “But thank you, Squid.”

  “You alright, Waren?” I ask.

  “Green across the board.”

  “We would have been here sooner,” Squid says, “but tracking a ship that intersected realspace at random isn’t an exact science. Einri figured it out in the end.”

  “Thank you, Einri,” I say, assuming the other AI is listening in.

  “Of course, ma’am.” That same modulated electronic voice. Genderless, ageless.

  “You didn’t have to do this,” I tell Squid.

  “Of cours
e I did,” they say softly.

  If I hadn’t already cried myself dry, that would have done it. I reach across the table and hold Squid’s hand. It’s all I can manage.

  “Who was the old man?” they ask.

  “My father.”

  “Oh,” Squid says. “Did you get the answers you wanted?”

  “I don’t even know, Squid.”

  “What happened? Tell me everything.”

  Squid listens intently while I tell them about Sanderak, Azken, Hurtt, Mallory, the clone, and my faked death. Partway through, Pale wakes, just to sit on my lap and fall back asleep, his bony butt digging into the meat of my thighs.

  By the time I’m done with the story, Sanderak looms before the Nova, planet growing incrementally larger as Einri takes us in.

  Sommer is easy to find, marked out by a huge patch of burnt trees from the Guard’s orbital bombardment. As we drop closer I see fresh green leaves sprouting at the ends of blackened branches, bright patches of color amongst all that ash.

  The town’s hangar doors open and Einri lands the Nova slowly. There’s no one around, no welcoming party, the whole place empty but for Dehner’s corvette—cherry red, with thin white stripes running down the side.

  With Teo in a body bag, I heft the corpse onto my shoulder and carry him out of the Nova. Daddy’s home, everyone. Even at dead weight, he’s not that heavy, a wrinkled bag of skin and bones around a damaged mind. I wonder how much longer he would have lasted if I’d never found him, if I hadn’t brought death to find him. I never want to get like that—thoughts scattered, life half-forgotten, the other half cut up and mixed together haphazard.

  Squid joins me at the air lock. “Let me come with you.”

  “Sorry, Squid. These people worship my father; no telling how they’ll react. Just wait here with Pale. I’ll find you when I’m done.”

  Squid tries to argue, but I leave them behind and carry Teo away from the Nova, footsteps echoing in the empty hangar. Waren remembers the layout of the subterranean town better than I do, so I let him guide me through the maze of tunnels shining bright with patches of afternoon sun.

  Sweat beads across my brow and down my back by the time I reach Teo’s sanctuary. There must be a hundred people crammed inside, sitting along the simple pews or standing in the back of the room, listening quietly as the hologram waxes philosophic about some bullshit. The avatar looks beatific, which only makes it worse.

  People move aside as I carry the large black bag down the central aisle, the smell of his slowly rotting body mixing with the rich soil of the exposed earth walls. Every eye in the place follows me to the altar. Even Teo’s hologram stops at the commotion and seems to watch me.

  Neer stands from his seat in the front row, arms wide in greeting, but I throw him backward where he tumbles in the dirt.

  “My daughter,” Teo’s hologram says.

  “Don’t fucking call me that.”

  I drop the body bag on the steps leading up to the podium, unzip it, and peel it open, revealing Teo’s face. Unshaven, with spit and blood dried around his mouth, his skin oddly blue.

  “You’re listening to a dead man.”

  People crowd close to see; some gasp, others cry at the sight. The hologram stares quietly, as though stunned to silence by its true nature.

  Dehner is up, brushing the dirt from his ornate robes. “Now listen, everyone—please listen.”

  “Didn’t you wonder why you only saw Marius here, in this fucking chapel?” I say, yelling over the growing din. “He’s been gone for years, but Dehner couldn’t let you know that, he needed to keep you in line. You believed it because you wanted something to believe in, but you don’t need either of these men.”

  “She killed Marius!” Neer shrieks.

  I reach a hand out and grab him gently by the throat, not enough to maim him, but enough to shut him up.

  “I tried to bring him back on Dehner’s orders. But I didn’t do it for him; I did it for you.”

  Dehner tries to speak, wet choking sound garbled in the back of his throat.

  “I don’t know why you all loved this piece of shit,” I say loud, “but he’s dead now, and we’re all free of him.”

  People press in tight, faces angry even where they’re wet with tears. I step back, but they aren’t coming for me. They shove me aside and round on Dehner, pushing and punching him until he falls to the ground. The clamor is deafening, all those voices yelling and crying. Some residents file out, pale with shock, others congregate around Teo’s corpse, taking the rings from his hands and tearing strips from his clothing as though they were holy artifacts.

  When they tire of kicking Dehner, the last of the folk slowly leave. Neer lies cowering, knees up to protect his torso, arms held to block his face.

  “Get up.”

  He peers at me from behind balled fists but doesn’t move. I grab him under the arm and haul him to his feet. He stands quiet, staring first at Teo’s hologram then at his corpse.

  Dehner crouches over the body, reciting something under his breath. I reach out and smash the walls of the sanctum with my mind. I feel empty as I start to tear the place down. Not sad, not elated, just empty.

  Dehner screams and tries to drag Teo free, but I walk out of the place and bring down the roof, sharp crack of trees splitting as they tumble into the sinkhole. Neer abandons Teo, runs, and dives past me, barely escaping the landslide.

  “What have you done?” he cries.

  “I buried my father and freed them all. I freed you too, Dehner; you should thank me.”

  I leave him, a sound like sobbing fading to silence as I walk away.

  His house guard don’t stop me when I enter the Governor’s Residence. Either they already heard about Teo’s death, or they just know better than to get in my way.

  I break open the door to Cilla’s room, crushing a row of flowers when the slab of translucent glass falls inside. I approach the hermetically sealed box and press my hand to the surface. I push out gently and the cage shatters, showering the auto-icon in shards of glass.

  I pick her up, holding my breath at first, before I realize there’s no smell; she weighs as little as Pale. I walk out of the room, out of the residence, carrying her in my arms. Waren leads me back to the statue—Cilla pregnant, born out of trees—and I carry her body through the dome’s entry and into the forest.

  Footsteps behind me. I stop and turn, expecting guards or angry faces. Instead they’re solemn. Hundreds of them—women and children mostly, a few men, perhaps all of Sommer’s men except Neer. I spot Dima in the crowd and she nods, that simple movement pushing me forward.

  I walk until my feet are sore, breath loud in my ear, accompanied by the raspy hiss of footsteps on packed flakes of ash. The constant chirp of insects surrounds me, and barren branches clatter with a passing breeze. A small green sapling curls free from the blanket of ash—the first new life since the fire, eucalypt seed pods opened by the flames.

  This is the place.

  I put Cilla down a few meters from the sapling, and within seconds all sounds of the forest stop.

  There’s a quiet scrape of feet approaching. A woman appears at my side with a shovel, its head scuffed and scarred from years of use. I push it through the ash until it touches the soil beneath. I rest my foot on the step and lean my weight onto it, dry earth giving way to metal. I toss the dirt aside and keep digging.

  Mind blank as I dig. Burial meditation. Funeral trance.

  I didn’t stay to bury Sera. I should have. But I made sure they performed the Hunritch rite correctly; I’ve seen the video.

  The grave only needs to be shallow—just deep enough for the body to rest beneath the surface. The sun is low when I’m done, light bursting through the trees and shadows long. Sweat seeps from every part of me, sour chemical edge to the smell. Dima offers me a bottle of water and I drink.

  I lower Cilla into the grave and lay her gently against the earth. My face on her body, peaceful in this final rest. An
other one of me dead.

  “I wish I’d gotten to know you, Cilla,” I say quiet. “Thank you for being good to Sera. I know your short time together meant a lot to her.”

  She needs something for her journey. Normally she’d need a weapon to get safely wherever it is she’s meant to be going, but she’s a space witch, the first of us; she is the weapon. She needs something from her family, and I’m all she has. I put Ocho’s egg in my pocket, then remove my cloak and drape it over Cilla’s body. A gift from Sera to me, from me to you.

  One of the women steps forward carrying a branch laden with dried leaves. She rests it on the body and says a few words too quiet for me to hear. She steps back. Another woman comes forward, then another.

  Night falls before they’ve finished laying the branches, twilight receding until no light is left but the stars impossibly high overhead.

  Cilla’s burial mound is three feet high when they’re all done. With everyone gathered and waiting, Dima passes me a small steel tube lighter. I ignite it and press the blue flame to the kindling. The fire takes quickly, hiss and crackle of licking flames, pop of seed pods opening. The clean smell of eucalypt smoke wafts into the air carrying bright cinders, and colossus silkmoths flit between the trees.

  Slowly the people peel away, one and two at a time, until I spot Squid and Pale through the flames. They come around to join me; Squid rests their head on my shoulder and puts an arm around my waist. The three of us watch until the fire dies, embers glowing orange and red, then fading to gray.

  EPILOGUE

  I take my last walk through the Nova, slowly wandering past the ghosts of other times, moments I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life. For good and ill.

  I pull Waren’s core out of the rack and head quickly back to the open air lock, as though I can outrace memory.