Ashfall Prophecy, page 28
Three Months Later
The Moon
30
The next time I saw Marie Reno, she was feeding the birds. She cupped a pile of seeds in her palm and tried to coax a sparrow forward, but the little bird was too skittish, and so Reno just tossed the seeds into the dirt and smiled as the little sparrow and all his friends went to town. Reno looked much older now. Her face was lined and her hair had grayed and she walked with a cane. She tilted her head back and let the sun hit her face, and when she lowered her gaze, her eyes landed right on me.
I took an involuntary step back.
“She can’t see you,” Rafe said. “Not unless you want her to.”
“I’m good,” I replied.
It looked like Reno had a small cabin surrounded by miles of pristine forest. But what she really had was a cell augmented by Denzan holographic technology. Reno’s prison was a peaceful illusion.
“I don’t blame you,” Rafe said. “I tried to visit with her once. I watched her for a while beforehand. She seemed at peace. But as soon as she saw my face . . . ?”
He trailed off. “She wasn’t happy to see you,” I said.
“That’s an understatement,” Rafe said with a snort. “You seen enough?”
I nodded. “I’m glad she’s in there. And I’m glad moon prison seems pretty chill. Can’t believe the Denzans were able to build this place in only a couple months.”
“The Luna facility? Syd, it’s been here for more than a decade,” Rafe replied. “Only a few of us knew about it before now. Reno isn’t the first human to lose her head. When our people become dangerous, we needed a humane place to store them.”
“One of your solutions,” I said.
He smirked, then coughed into his shoulder. “I’m an equal opportunity schemer, Syd. You should know that by now.”
The former pizza maker led me by other cells, most of them unoccupied, but some tuned to peaceful holographic realities. Irena Markov, Luca Sapienza, Hiro Takagi’s father—they were stored here, too. As we passed them by, my eyes lingered on Markov, whose face and arms were covered with horrible scars from the wounds Zara had inflicted upon her. In her cell, she sat on a beach, sunning herself, not worried about anyone staring at her markings.
I was surprised when Rafe reached out to steady himself on my shoulder. He’d been trying to hide it, but I still heard the rattle in his lungs when he spoke. His knees were shaky as we walked, the vigor gone from his strut.
The prison facility was buried beneath the surface of Earth’s moon, hidden from human sensors by Denzan stealth technology. We were close enough to the toxic planet to strip a human of their extraordinary abilities, but far enough that they wouldn’t waste away and die. I’d felt flu-like since getting here, my first time this close to Earth in almost a year. I couldn’t imagine how bad the symptoms were for Rafe.
“Are you sure you should be here?” I asked. “This close to Earth?”
Rafe squeezed my shoulder with a fraction of his old strength. “I wouldn’t miss this for anything, Syd. I’ve dreamed of this moment. I’m glad this place could be used for something other than storing the worst of our kind. And I’m even gladder that you are here to see the exodus begin.”
“I heard you asked personally for the Eastwood,” I replied.
“Well, of course,” Rafe said. He led me into the elevator that would carry us back to the Luna facility’s main level, where my shuttle was docked. “I think your friend Senator Formachus would’ve sent you regardless. I hear she’s quite fond of you.”
“I don’t know about all that,” I replied, feeling the back of my neck get warm.
Forma had kept her promise and gotten our crew restored to the Eastwood, with my uncle named the captain for real. And all we had to do was keep reporting back to her.
Only Batzian had chosen not to return. I hadn’t seen him since that day at the Senate and didn’t think Melian and he were on speaking terms. As far as I knew, Batzian was still with the Merciful Rampart. Even after the experience with Aela, the group hadn’t changed their minds about humanity, especially not after word of Arkell being crushed by Reno spread around Primclef. If anything, their membership had swelled.
Even so, the senators sympathetic to the Merciful Rampart had joined Forma and voted to allow humanity to colonize Illaria. It was a process that would take years. The Serpo Institute was supervising both the initial building of a colony on Illaria and the first contact with the greater population of Earth.
“I hope you understand how crucial your role will be here, Syd,” Rafe continued as the elevator rose. “The time to keep you hidden from the people of Earth is over. You’re a bridge between our two species. I can’t tell you how envious I am of what you get to do. Returning home, to our planet, to lead our people into the future.”
“Yeah, about that,” I replied. “I’m not sure I’m ready to lead anyone anywhere.”
Rafe grinned at me. “My boy, of course you are. You’ve been leading since you came up the gravity well.”
The elevator opened up, and we stepped into the docking bay. Shuttles were always coming and going from the Luna base, Denzans using the port as a way station to ferry supplies. There were a handful of Denzans taking a break to stare up through the domed glass ceiling above. Rafe and I joined them.
Earth. I’d gone so far, seen so much, and still the sight of my home planet took my breath away. A blue orb partly enveloped by shadow.
A dozen ISVs floated in a neat line between Luna and Earth. The Eastwood was among them. The ships had started arriving a few days ago, making no effort to hide themselves from humanity. It had been agreed upon that the best way to approach the Earthers was to make ourselves known and then let them come to us. We didn’t want them to feel threatened. Let them get used to the fact of alien life at their own pace. Let them approach us peacefully before we made the offer to evacuate them from their poisonous planet.
Of course, the Consulate was monitoring humanity’s response. It was wall-to-wall news coverage. Some fear, for sure. But mostly, as my mom told me in our last call, there was curiosity and amazement. She’d seemed honestly surprised that the Earthers hadn’t immediately tried to nuke us.
“Maybe we can change,” she said to me. “But I’m not holding my breath.”
It still wasn’t clear what was going to happen with my mom. Forma dodged the topic whenever I brought it up. She was allowed back to the Consulate only for her weekly calls with me. Otherwise, she wasn’t welcome among the Denzans. Rafe had agreed that only a certain amount of humans would emigrate from Earth to Illaria every year, and he’d also agreed that the Consulate would be able to deny relocation to anyone they viewed as a threat to galactic society. I figured that meant my mom. I wasn’t even sure she wanted to leave Earth. That was another conversation we were avoiding.
I half expected her to end up in a cell on Luna, so just the fact that she was free felt like a victory. We could figure out the rest later.
“Never thought I’d get to enjoy this view again,” Rafe said. “I wish Hiram were here to see it.”
“He’d probably just talk shit,” I replied. “Ruin it for everyone.”
“True,” Rafe said with a chuckle.
Hiram was still officially part of the Eastwood’s crew, but he had begged off the mission to Earth, instead choosing to join an infrastructure team that was setting up the first encampments on Illaria. He threatened me with a beating if I told anyone this, but the planet frightened him. After the damage done to his leg by that sludge-covered bullet, he didn’t want to chance getting too close to his ancestral home world. I think a part of him also worried that, if he saw Earth in person, he, like his mom, might not be able to resist the planet’s pull.
“He sent me a message today,” Rafe continued. Since the Senate, I’d noticed a change in the way that Rafe talked about his grandson. There was pride in his voice now. “Things are going smoothly on Illaria. And he said a friend of yours showed up to watch.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What friend?”
“The Aela Collective,” Rafe said. “It’s hanging in Illaria’s atmosphere. Observing.”
This was probably selfish of me, but I was still smarting a bit that Aela had dipped out after everything that went down at the Senate without so much as a good-bye. Aela had been inside my brain. They probably knew me better than anyone else in the universe. I’d thought we were friends. But was Aela even Aela anymore? They had absorbed all the other wisps that Reno had captured and fled Denza. I’d kind of expected them to return to the Ossho Collective like we talked about, but Aela didn’t go in that direction. Apparently, their aimless travels through the galaxy had eventually brought them to Illaria.
I wondered if Aela had gone to Illaria because they figured out what I did. That it might not be Earth I was prophesied to destroy, but humanity’s second home world. Had they gone there to watch?
I shook those thoughts away. I’d proven that Goldy’s prophecies weren’t set in stone when I’d left him trapped aboard the Cavern. Sure—he’d gotten free anyway. But I hadn’t been the one to save his life. Score one for choosing your own fate.
Rafe walked me back to the shuttle, where Zara was waiting. She sat on the roof of our spacecraft, legs crossed, staring out at the Earth. There were surgeons on Denza that could’ve fixed Zara’s ear, but she’d chose to leave it as a tattered nub atop her head. She wore the injury like a badge of honor. Before we left Primclef, during a visit to Keyhole Cove, I swore I saw some young Vulpin who had purposefully chopped off the tip of an ear. Everyone knew who Zara den Jetten was and what she’d done in the Senate. No one talked about her father the whoremaster anymore.
“Ah, there’s one other thing I wanted to talk to you about,” Rafe said.
By now, I knew Rafe well enough to know that this one last thing was really the only thing he was interested in talking about. “What is it?”
“My people finished doing their sweep of Ashfall,” he said. “Your original report mentioned a cache of antihuman weapons in the sniper tower. My team reported that it was empty. Any idea what might have happened to those?”
I raised my eyebrows. An armory’s worth of antihuman weaponry had disappeared into thin air. That couldn’t be good. Tensions between Denzans and humanity had eased in the last three months, but the galaxy was still a very dangerous place.
“No idea, Rafe,” I said. “Honestly. I hope you find them. We don’t want that stuff getting out.”
It wasn’t until me and Zara were on the way back to the Eastwood that I realized I did have an idea. Something that had been in the back of my mind for months now that I’d never gotten a satisfactory answer to.
“Zara,” I said, “back on the Torrent, you traded Ezziah den One-Left a vial of that sludge.”
“Half a vial,” Zara corrected me.
“And something else,” I said. “Something you said had nothing to do with the Eastwood.”
“Yeah,” Zara replied.
“What was it?”
She reclined in her seat, twitching her good ear in amusement. “Come on, Syd. You already know. Considering how the old chef made sure to ask the question in front of me, he’s probably figured it out, too.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Shit, Zara. I don’t know how I feel about Ezziah having an arsenal of antihuman weaponry.”
She shrugged in response. “You don’t have to feel anything about it. Already done and dusted.” I shot Zara a flat look, and she sighed, flashing her fangs. “Look, the humans have their strength. The Denzans have their Wayscopes and wormholes. But what did we Vulpin have, huh? Now things are a bit more even.”
“It’s not a competition, Zara.”
“Of course it is,” Zara replied. She flicked the flap of skin where her ear used to be. “You think everyone holding hands and getting along will last forever? We’ve got to be ready, Syd.”
I wanted to roll my eyes and fluff Zara off. I wanted to believe that fighting and bloodshed didn’t have to be inevitable. We’d saved a lot of lives back at the Senate compared to what might have happened if Reno had been allowed to drive everyone as mad as her. It didn’t have to always be brute force that prevailed. Not everywhere had to work like Earth or even Stonelea.
But I’d seen my future. I knew there was more violence to come.
“I wish you’d told me,” I said, leaning back and crossing my arms. “We didn’t even get anything good out of that deal except captured.”
Zara smirked. “Seemed like a fair trade at the time.”
Back on the Eastwood, things were more crowded than they had been in a while. The Serpo Institute allowed us all to remain cadets, but the Eastwood was still supposed to be a training vessel. There were some open slots to be filled now that Aela and Batzian were off the ship and Hiram was taking some time away. That meant we had three new cadets, plus a new first officer, chief engineer, and lead proctor to replace the staff that had gone crazy, gotten stabbed, or been crushed. I’m not sure it’s a job I would’ve signed up for. Surprisingly, there were a ton of applicants.
I hadn’t really gotten to know the newcomers. They were on the Eastwood. But they weren’t really den Eastwood. Not yet, anyway.
Zara and I passed by the seminar room, where H’Jossu was in the middle of an impromptu lecture on Earth culture, the newbies all seated in a semicircle around him. My Panalax pal had recovered from the injuries he suffered during the Senate blowup, although the spine that originally came with his body was pretty much shot. That meant growing a new carapace of mold across his back to support him, almost like a spongy white turtle shell. Essentially, he was bigger than ever.
“On Earth, ‘’Sup, bro’ can be used as a greeting,” H’Jossu told our crewmates. “But it can also be used as a combat challenge, especially between young males, when repeated over and over again—‘’Sup, bro. ’Sup, bro.’ Do you hear the difference?”
All but one of the new cadets hurriedly scribbled down notes. The third was too busy waving at me. I wasn’t sure exactly what sort of string had been pulled or by who, but Jamdora was now aboard the Eastwood. He’d traded the black-and-red Merciful Rampart garb for one of our uniforms, and he was constantly, unbearably chill and nice, never talking about how humanity was the scourge of the galaxy or bombarding us with Rampart propaganda. He avoided the topic of his mother, but I heard that despite the stunt at the Senate, the Denzan government was extremely interested in her technology.
“That one’s a spy, you know,” Zara said, her eyes narrowed at Jamdora.
“I think they could all be spies,” I replied.
Zara pinched my arm approvingly. “There’s the Chambers paranoia I love and respect.”
As we continued along the corridor, we bumped into Melian coming out of the med-bay. She held a vial of small white pills that I recognized immediately.
“Did he have another episode?” I asked.
Melian nodded, touching my shoulder for a moment. “Right after you left. He tried to work through it, but . . .”
I took the pills from her. “Thanks, Mel. I’ll go check on the captain.”
When I entered, Ty’s room was dark, like it was supposed to be after he had one of his episodes, but he was sitting up in bed staring down at his tablet’s screen, which completely defeated the purpose of resting somewhere peaceful. His left eye was half-lidded and twitching like it always was these days—he still hadn’t regained full sight out of it, and the doctors in Primclef worried his vision might continue to degrade. Ever since the encounter with Goldy, my uncle had been prone to headaches, disorientation, and fainting spells. Obviously, we kept all of that out of the reports we filed to the Serpo Institute, although with all the new crew on board it probably wouldn’t be long until rumors of my uncle’s infirmities reached the higher-ups.
“Six more messages today,” he said as soon as I entered. “All of them asking the same thing. It’s unbelievable.”
I went to his bedside and took the tablet away from him. “You’re supposed to be resting.”
“I’m fine, Syd. Just a little headache. Melian overreacted.” He said all that but didn’t fight me on taking his screen away. In the near darkness, the metal bindings that covered his arm from fingertips to elbow shone dully.
“Take your pills,” I said, holding them out. “And I told you before, stop reading those messages.”
“They’re calling me Tycius the Merciless now,” he said, throwing back the pills with a sip of water. “Can you believe that?”
I shook my head. “Tell me you’ve at least stopped responding.”
“I have to respond, Syd,” Ty said. “These Denzans all know what it felt like—what it felt like to kill a man. They think what I did was brave. They need to know that it haunts me. That I wish I’d had another choice. That I see his face every time I close my eyes.”
I’d long given up on trying to convince my uncle to forgive himself. Hiro Takagi was a total psychopath, and he probably would’ve murdered us both and taken his time doing it. But those details didn’t make it any easier on Tycius. He had broken the biggest taboo in Denzan society. Considering the circumstances and knowing how valuable he was—how valuable I was—the institute and the Senate had given him a pass. But I saw the looks they gave him before we left Primclef. They were afraid of him. It was like Tycius belonged to a different species of Denzan now. The ones who had come before. The ones capable of wiping out the Tytons.
And, in a way, that was my fault.
“Won’t be long now until we get to go down to Earth,” I said, trying to change the subject. “Diner food awaits, right? I’m going to need a ton of pancakes and bacon to make up for losing my strength. And you’ll get to be Bogey again.”
Ty’s smile was shaky in the dark. The pills he took for his migraines worked quickly, and he was already dozing off.
“Yes,” he said. “It will be nice to be someone else.”
After my uncle dozed off, I wandered up to the Eastwood’s observation deck. My mind was troubled. It always was, these days. The Origin was public knowledge now, and yet we’d avoided any real bloodshed between humans and Denzans. We were on the verge of uplifting humanity, offering the masses an opportunity to relocate to a new world—one where they could start from scratch and hopefully not repeat the mistakes of the past. It should’ve been a hopeful time.
