Being Ace, page 21
I hurled the pad at the captain’s back with all my might, and the noise in my head crescendoed, until the whole world resonated with:
BE WARNED.
BE WARNED.
BE WARNED.
Furious, Argo whirled to glare at me. “Cadet Vela!” he snapped. “Take this troublemaker to the brig!”
I turned to see Brenna, staring, horrified. But she never got the chance to obey or defy. An ear-splitting screech split the air, a horrible grind-crunch of crushed metal—and something crashed through the ceiling, slamming Captain Argo to the floor. He lay pinned to the deck in a puddle of blood, impaled by a giant fang.
“Cadet Vela …” the captain murmured, his voice an awful rattle. “Maintain …”
Whatever his dying words would have been, they were drowned out, lost in panicked cries and the sound of a station ripped apart by those terrible, too-big-to-believe jaws.
“Orion!” Leo yelled, and then he was there, handing me something: my project. “Thought you might have missed this. Brenna, we have to go! I know his codes; I’m giving the abandon-ship order!”
“But Captain said—”
“Now!”
We ran. The rest blurred. My vision glitched and distorted and finally dissolved completely, leaving me sinking into blank, merciful static.
I wake up sweaty, gasping, and relieved the nightmare is over—for five precious seconds. Until I remember where I am.
Escape pod. Endless black bog-void. And Brenna’s soft snoring.
One arm flung over her eyes and the other around me, mouth hanging open, drool forming at the corner. I watch her flat chest rise and fall, the curl of hair resting on her peach-fuzzy lip, swaying to and fro with her breathing.
She is so completely beautiful. My pounding heart aches.
I’m still shaking, drenched in sweat; I don’t want to risk actually waking her, facing questions I don’t know how to answer. So I carefully ease myself free, muscles cramped from the tight space. Quietly as possible, I open the door to the tiny bridge—and stop dead.
Leo’s up, too. Must have been for a while; his suit’s still on, but his binder rests on the floor. Good, it’s been too long.
“Hey.” He drags his forearm across his face, wiping away tears that won’t fall in space.
“Hey.”
It’s more a sad noise than a word. I settle in beside him, close but not touching. He won’t close the distance fully without invitation, not until I make the first move. I love that about him. I love so many things about him.
“It wasn’t your fault your father didn’t listen,” I say. I’ve never had a problem with silence, but now, I can’t stand it. It’s too loud in my head. “Or that Brenna won’t listen. I know that’s what you’re feeling.”
“I’m fine.” Leo sighs, slurring a little, like his tongue is as numb as his heart. “Don’t worry about it.”
“You’re not fine. And I am worried.”
“Orion,” he says, so gently, in that tone that tells me I’ve missed something, some social grace or secret code that “normal” people have. That I’m being me again, and he loves me for it, even if he’s more tired than he’s ever been. “I can’t talk about this yet. Not in a way that makes sense, and isn’t just … I don’t know, a scream. And screaming would be bad. I don’t regret what I did, I know abandoning ship was the right call, but—”
BREEEEET! BREEEET! BREEEEET!
Leo and I almost jump out of our skin. My ears feel impaled by ice picks, but I still hear Brenna yelp, a thump and curse as she jerks awake and hits a bulkhead. She scrambles out here, still mussed, wiping that drool from her mouth, wild-eyed and panting.
“Oxygen,” she gasps. “Oxygen leak! Only thing that’d set that alert off! Where is it, where is it?”
She rushes to the pilot’s console, fingers flying like that’s what they were made for, like mine do when I’m so wrapped in a project that nothing else exists.
“Starboard aft hull breach,” she reports, in the clipped, professional tone she uses—used—on duty, reporting to the captain. “Must’ve caught some debris in the wreck. Can’t patch it from inside, but it’s an easy exterior fix. Just let me …”
I can’t move, blood frozen in panic. It got us. I thought we escaped, but the monster is back. Fenris Stellaris got us still. Brenna lurches away from the display and punches the bulkhead, which opens to reveal several full-face helmets, designed to go with our emergency suits.
“You’re not going out there,” Leo protests, pushing me aside—gently—and moving toward her. He slaps the console on his way, and the alarm ceases. My ears still throb. “Get away from that, let me!”
“Are you insane?” she snaps. “I’m the one with the training. You haven’t even taken craft repair module one!”
“We’re arguing credentials now? You just said it’s an easy fix!”
“For someone who knows what they’re doing!”
“You’re right,” Leo says, while I try to unscramble my brain. “I don’t have your training, or promise, or potential, or future ahead of me. Or even my parents, anymore. You’re the one with the life, Brenna! So just let me do this.”
“What?” Brenna stares at him like he’s grown several extra heads. “You’re—you think my life has more value or some shit?”
Leo shrugs, eyes at half-mast and head tilted in that languid, too-cool way that by now I know not to trust. “If the exo-helmet fits …”
“No! Fuck that! Stop acting like you’re expendable!” Brenna cries. Her voice rises in pitch, cracks, and this time she can’t blame it on long hours of talking. “I’m not letting you kill yourself just to prove a point—which is shitty, anyway!”
“Guys,” I say at last. The alarm might be silent, but my head’s still ringing, ringing, death closer every second.
“Maybe this is how I balance things out.” Leo sounds so reason-able, like he’s talking about paying her back for lunch. “Maybe this is what I’m meant to do, why I’m still here.”
“Maybe I don’t want you to die!” Brenna’s eyes are wet, brimming with unshed tears—not in space, and not since Valhalla died in fangs and fire. “Did you ever think of that?”
“I think of a lot of things. Like—”
“Clearly not! God, how can you …”
I tune out, the buzzing in my head overpowering their words like a flash flood. This feels like a new nightmare I’ll have for years to come: them fighting while the world ends around us. I’m paralyzed, no words, nothing happening to avert catastrophe.
I have to fix this. I have to fix us.
I surge forward, grabbing one of the helmets and jamming it on, vacuum seals automatically shielding me from the rest of the universe, muffling Leo and Brenna until the audio feed engages. I hear their sharp, terrified voices but not the words, no words exist except Go. Now. Go!
I go. I lunge for the airlock and both their heads whip around, faces twin expressions of absolute horror.
“Orion! No!”
I don’t know who screams it. Probably both.
The airlock door slams shut and locks. They both rush up to the window, pound on it, yell more things I can’t hear.
“It’s okay,” I say, patching my audio into the escape pod’s comms. “Don’t worry. I can fix this.”
Leo rushes away, and I know he’s scrambling to reply. Brenna stays, hand pressed against the window, desperate, panic-wide eyes locked with mine. Neither of us blinks, and the pair of us hold on to that precious, brief, endless moment in time, the crystal-frozen space of a breath, before her terror resolves itself into the steel that makes up my armor, protecting me like no suit ever could.
She nods and speaks without words. Go get ’em.
I nod back. I love you.
Then I break the moment and our gaze. I have a job to do.
It’s quiet in space. The quietest place there is. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been drawn there. But now, I’d do anything to escape the oppressive, crushing silence.
“Deep breaths, Ori,” Brenna says, right in my ear. “You got a full suit of oxygen reserves. All kinds of time. Just one foot in front of the other. Leak should be only about sixteen feet ahead. See it?”
I’m standing on the outside of our little tin-can pod, magnetized boots heavy. The only light comes from my suit’s headlamp, so small in the complete nothingness around me. Void. Black. Dizzying. Human brains weren’t meant to comprehend such complete emptiness.
“Nuh-uh.” I can’t talk, only step. Tongue made of lead. Feet, too. Feels like walking in a bog here. “Not yet.” There. That’s words. Difficult, terrified, but words.
“You got this.” It’s Leo now, calm and soothing, a lot more convincingly cool than he’s been this whole disaster. Maybe because he’s doing it for me. He knows he and Brenna are the only thing keeping me from—
Wait. I back up my light.
“I see it.”
The hull fracture is a long, thin slice, like a cat’s scratch. We were lucky. Anything even a little bigger, or on a more vulnerable spot …
“Good,” Brenna says. “Now hold your gauntlet scanner level with the leak and keep it steady—that’s your hand, put it up like a high five. It should detect the damage and enter auto-patch mode.”
I obey, and the tip of my suit’s index finger lights up red, blinking at me like a cursor awaiting input. When I point at the edge of the leak, its light turns orange, and it starts to solder. Solder …? It looks hot, like the hull breach is melting, then knitting together.
“It’s working,” I say. “You were right, this is easy. So far.”
“You’re doing great,” Brenna says. “Just keep breathing, nice and slow. We’ll have you back inside in a minute.” Her voice is steady, but too tight, too stretched. She’s probably done the best job of holding her shit together, better than me or Leo, but everyone has a breaking point. I feel both of ours coming on fast, a panic attack like the edge of a cliff.
“Leo?” I keep my hands and breath as steady as possible. At least my suit gloves stabilize some of the shakes. I have to fix this. I have to fix us. “Tell Brenna what you told me, before.”
“What, that she was the daughter my father always wanted?” He huffs, a non-laugh. “Pretty sure she knows that.”
“That’s not fair!” She cries out like she’s stepped on something sharp.
“No, Leo,” I cut in. “What you said about how we’re in a situation, and it’s not forever, and you worship—”
“Well, it’s true!” He’s not talking to me. Or listening. “Every chance he got, all the great Captain Argo ever talked about was Cadet Lokabrenna and how great she is, and what a fuck-up I am for being a weird loser artist instead of another you, and how me and Orion are gonna ruin your future.”
“That’s … awful.” Brenna’s voice is shaking hard. “But he was wrong. About this in particular, he was wrong. You think I’m perfect? I ignored my orders, deserted my post, and took a shit on my duty and honor as a—”
“As a freaking cadet in training,” Leo snaps. “You don’t have a duty yet. Not to him, anyway. But to us? And us to you, yeah, I’d call that—”
“I don’t regret saving you! Or not tossing Orion in a cage! But I do regret leaving Captain Argo behind, and everyone else on the Valhalla! Don’t you get that? Shit, don’t you feel that at all?”
Leo doesn’t answer. My hand remains steady, and the breach is almost sealed. The one in the hull, at least. The one between us will be harder.
“How about we just agree we’re all traumatized as fuck,” Brenna says, voice thick. “And try not to break down, or break each other’s hearts anymore, until it’s safe to do so?”
“Safe to break each other’s hearts?” At least Leo’s got his mellow, chill tone back, and it doesn’t sound faked. It’s a mildly good sign.
“Safe to feel things.”
“I think I’m done out here,” I say as my fingertip lights up green. Brenna was right, it was an easy fix, even for someone who isn’t sure how to take zir helmet off once zie’s inside. We’re still in the void, but I’ve bought us a little more time.
But then I stop, mid-step. Hold my breath. All at once, I’m struck, hit with knowledge like the debris from an explosion against our hull. Something is coming.
“Wait.” My voice sounds thin and faraway. “Just wait.”
Above the drumbeat pulse in my head, I hear it: howls.
Faint. Eerie. Just on the edge of hearing, but clearer than ever before. This isn’t sound patched into my helmet either, but full, living voices from above, below, inside, everywhere. And with every second, every heartbeat, getting closer.
“What the hell?” I hear Leo and Brenna say at the same time. Are they hearing this, too?
No. They’re seeing this.
Lights appear in the void. Like stars but closer, moving, multiplying, swirling around us as the howls grow louder, like a hurricane in dark woods filled with bright, wild eyes. The howling of wolves, of angry winds, grows until it’s almost a physical force, a deafening tidal wave crashing over me.
Fenris Stellaris is here. And if it wants to finish the job, there is nothing in this or any universe that can stop it.
The realization rips through me all at once, a tidal wave that leaves me lost and helpless. I was never going to have revenge. This was never going to go differently; it’s too big, it’s so unbelievably far beyond me. And I can’t move. I can barely breathe.
But maybe I can still save them. I can’t let them die like the Valhalla, not when I could have at least tried. That, more than fear, even more than anger, kicks me into taking a breath.
“My datapad!” I yell. “Patch it into the comms!”
“Orion, get back inside,” Brenna orders, voice grim. “Now. Don’t make me pull rank on you.”
“You can’t. I dropped out, remember?” My voice doesn’t shake anymore, and I don’t move. “And I’ve been preparing for this my whole life. I have to do this. And you have to help me.”
“Help you die?”
“You have to listen to me.” My head and intention clears with every word. “The way nobody else but you two ever have.”
“The way my father didn’t.” It’s Leo this time. His voice is soft, sad—and resentful. He’s going to carry that for a long, long time. “If he had …”
“I thought you wanted to kill this thing, Orion,” Brenna says, and I can see the frightened way she folds her arms, curling defensively into herself.
“I did!” I tell them—but now, I’m not sure if it’s true. I’m not sure it ever was.
It’s not pure hatred I feel; it can’t be. I know the song too well, it’s linked to something too deep inside me, so solid that I don’t know what’s real anymore. I’m lost within myself the way we’re lost in this void. I’d been so sure, so focused in my anger, secure in the safety of revenge—letting go of that is terrifying. Without my anger, where am I? What do I have left?
I actually think I know. I still have Leo, and Brenna, and myself, and it doesn’t matter what we’ve lost as long as I can hold on to that.
“My head was all messed up before,” I conclude, voice stronger all the time. “But I know what’s important now—saving us! And I think I still can! Patch my algorithm into the pod’s comms, now!”
I don’t know if they listen. The gale is deafening, light-storm flashing, spinning, swirling around us, everything noise and chaos—
Then it resolves. My algorithm reaches its gorgeous understanding. The noise becomes music, the screech once again a song. And the singer appears.
Before us, floating in the void but so, so solid, looms an enormous black wolf.
Its eyes are a pair of bright, swirling galaxies, vortexes radiating power and bathing me and the lifeboat in gold. The rest of it is made of … not stars, but light, faint patterns and shifting shadows, outlines curving and graceful, like lines drawn between constellations.
I feel a rush of not fury but joy, because here it is, the soundtrack that’s played for my whole life. I don’t know if it’s the song that’s changed, or me, because once again, it’s so beautiful—but this is a live show instead of a recording, and up close, it’s so much more. Too vast and alien to comprehend. Like the void, it’s too much for my tiny human brain. And just when I’ve processed that much …
ORION ASTER.
The wolf’s voice is deep, resonant, booming, a thunderclap I can hear plain as day and not just with my ears; it rumbles from inside my head and shakes my bones.
And it knows my name. It knows my name.
I AM NOT HERE TO DESTROY YOU.
“You’re not?” I whisper. Somehow, I know it can hear me just fine. Like how I can still hear the dying screams. This is a monster, I remind myself, as my heart hammers against my ribcage like a terrified animal fighting to escape. A world destroyer. If I’m bound to be prey, I can at least spend my last moments getting a sliver of understanding. It owes me that much. “What makes us different?”
I HAVE BEEN LISTENING.
“It’s really you?” Brenna asks, her awed, tinny voice so small compared to the wolf’s thunder. “F-Fenris? Fenris Stellaris?”
SO YOU NAMED ME. CLOSEST MEANING, IN YOUR SMALL WORDS: CRYPTID. SUN-EATER. FENRIR.
My brain grinds to a halt. The words rattle around, but don’t stick. I hear Brenna—Lokabrenna—gasp, and I know she’s in the same shock.
Brenna’s old stories slam back into my head, everything she said about monsters, how they’re made and not born, about self-fulfilling prophecies. It fits too well. This isn’t a magical creature; this is an alien entity taking a form and a name we’re familiar with. A name that’s been on my mind this whole time.
But does it matter? No. Not right now.
“So—what do you want?” I ask, brain spinning. I don’t even know what to ask. It’s a true alien first contact, on top of everything else. “Why are you here?”
YOUR HUMAN, METAL CITY, the wolf rumbles. ITS HARSH SONG TRAPPED ME IN A DARK, SILENT PLACE. SINKING. DROWNING.
