Ashfall Prophecy, page 6
“Have I not made that clear?” Zara asked. I waited for her to elaborate, and she rolled her eyes. “Look, I like Aela as much as you can like one of those wisps. I don’t want them to suffer. But this is all just a distraction. A delay so you don’t have to make any bigger decisions.”
“Like what?” I asked. “What, exactly, am I putting off to help our friend?”
Zara’s hand slipped into her fur and came back with a dagger, which she balanced precariously on her first two fingers. “Who to fight. Whose world to wreck. Yours, the Denzans’, maybe both. You know it’s coming, Syd. It’s okay if you want to take a vacation first. But that doesn’t change what’s coming.”
I shouldn’t have asked. Zara always brought me too close to the truth.
7
Tycius had spent the last few days locked inside the hibernation pod. The coffin-shaped capsule held his body in a gravimetric field, stabilizing him and augmenting his body’s own healing process. Honestly, I didn’t really understand how it worked. Although it sometimes felt like a lifetime, I’d only been off Earth for about six months. So much of the technology on the Eastwood and Denza was still beyond my understanding. I mean, I could hit buttons and make stuff work, but I couldn’t have explained the how or the why. It was all basically magic.
I’d been planning to hit the button that ended his hibernation, but he was already on his feet when I entered the med-bay. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, studying a blown-up scan of his brain on the vid-wall.
“Captain, you’re up,” I said. “I was just coming to take you out of the oven. You’re sure that brain of yours is fully baked?”
Like I said, I didn’t quite understand the technology.
Tycius swiped away his scan and turned to me with a tired smile. “I ran a self-diagnostic from the inside. I’m fine. Close enough, anyway.” He held up a hand. “And you can stow that Captain stuff. Ty is fine. Or Uncle.”
“But you are the captain,” I replied. Zara might have been ready to brush off my uncle’s role as merely symbolic, but I wasn’t. Because if my uncle wasn’t the captain of the Eastwood, that meant someone else had to be in charge.
Okay, why dance around it? That meant I had to be in charge. And I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.
“Captain of a stolen ISV, away without leave from the Serpo Institute,” Tycius said. “It’s my boyhood dream come true.”
“Really?”
“No,” Tycius replied. “Right, then. Bring me up to speed, Cadet.”
I clicked my heels together like I’d seen soldiers do in movies. “We’re a little more than three cycles removed from Ashfall, traveling at the maximum speed we can afford. We’ve kept all comms channels closed since Reno’s last transmission. Staying in the dark.”
“Good,” Tycius said. “Where are we heading? Did you map a route to the Ossho Collective?”
“We’re still trying to figure that out,” I replied. “Check it . . .”
I called up the Ossho Collective’s position on-screen and explained to my uncle the situation with Aela. I showed him the excruciating flight plan that I’d pulled from the Wayscope, then filled him in on the secret Vulpin outpost in Jeuna.
Tycius rubbed his chin as he studied the churning Torrent with the same disbelief I’d felt when Zara first told me. “Doesn’t say much for my fellow spies that we had no idea this place existed.”
“Yeah, well, no offense to the Denzan intelligence agency, but I think the Vulpin have you outfoxed.”
My uncle winced. “Don’t let Zara hear you use that term.” He paused for a moment of thought, then nodded to himself. “This sounds like a solid plan. Solid in the sense that it exists and it’s our only choice. You should refresh the Wayscope chart to bring us in closer to this Torrent, and then we’ll get underway.”
I breathed out through my nose and relaxed back against one of the med-bay cots. “I thought you might have reconsidered the trip during your hibernation. Like maybe you only agreed because you were concussed.”
Tycius shook his head. “No. In fact, I think the Ossho could be valuable allies for whatever happens next.”
I quickly picked up on his train of thought. “Aela was able to guide Hiram through the Origin without making him lose his mind. Maybe learning the truth doesn’t have to mean war.”
“The Ossho trapped on Ashfall, I think it was as disturbed as everyone else that had been stuck there,” my uncle said. “Maybe we don’t need to hide the truth . . .”
“We could just lightly edit it,” I said, straightening up. “All right. I’ll stick my head back out in the Vastness and get us a fresh course.”
“Hold on,” my uncle said. “Don’t you think we should talk about him?”
“Him who?”
“Marcius,” Ty said. “Your father.”
“What is there to talk about?” I asked. “He’s dead.”
My uncle’s mouth opened in a sad little O, but he didn’t say anything. I hadn’t meant for my words to come out so harshly. I guess I wasn’t prepared for the question. Outside of my nightmares, I’d gotten pretty good at compartmentalizing. There were real in-the-now problems spiraling out of our trip to Ashfall. I wasn’t going to expend my mental energy dwelling on the past when the future gave me enough to worry about.
“That’s it?” Tycius asked finally.
I shrugged and looked down at the floor. The tiles gleamed bright enough to sting my eyes.
“Fine, I’ll talk about him,” Tycius said. “Your father was a good man. He was brave, and he cared about humanity and making the galaxy a better place. When he left you, I know he didn’t think it would be forever.”
“He sent a message to Vanceval,” I said quietly. “But not to us.”
“That’s true,” Tycius replied. “You saw what happened in that temple. How it changed us. I don’t think your father and his crew were as lucky as we were. I doubt he was thinking clearly . . .”
I shook my head. “You wasted years of your life on Earth searching for me,” I said. “And here you are again, trying to clean up his messes. You don’t have to always defend him.”
Tycius closed the distance between us and touched my chin. “It wasn’t a waste, Syd. Not to me.”
Unconsciously, I found that I was squeezing my ring finger, right where my dad’s cosmological tether would’ve been. I took a deep breath and braced myself to talk about the shit I didn’t want to talk about.
“After my mom told me what I was, I used to dream about coming out here, into the Vastness. Following in his footsteps. I used to dream about him, literally. I still do. Whenever my mom and I were hiding in some shithole rental, I’d fantasize about my dad coming back for me. He’d save me from Earth and we’d go on a big adventure. And then you found me and it became real—he was alive; there was an adventure.” I rubbed my hands over my face. “Except he never wanted me to find him.”
“He never wanted anyone to find him,” Tycius said. “Every night while I was searching for you, I used to check on his cosmological tether. I’d go to sleep praying that his beacon would still be lit when I woke up.”
I snorted. “Yeah, thanks for that. I did the same thing when you gave that to me.”
“Turns out, while I was whispering for him to hold on, his worries were already at an end.” Ty’s jaw tightened. “I’m angry with him. I’m disappointed in the decisions he made. Try as I might, I don’t know if I’ll ever understand him. But I’m also grateful to him. Because without Marcius, I would not have gotten to know you.”
I nodded my head and looked away. I’d known my uncle was working up to a line like that, and I’d thought I could steel myself against the sentimental crap and brush it off, but my eyes still stung with tears. Somebody wanted me. I wasn’t abandoned.
Tycius squeezed my shoulder. “I know it’s been hard. But I hope you don’t regret leaving Earth. If I’d known I was pulling you out of your life there to chase a ghost . . .”
My uncle trailed off. “Hard” was an understatement. My quest to find my father had ended in heartbreak and death. On the way, I’d had an encounter with an extradimensional Etherazi who had made a pretty convincing case that I was destined to destroy Earth. I’d also been beaten up and kidnapped. I guess be careful what you wish for when it comes to childishly dreaming of spacefaring adventures.
And yet, even considering all that, I didn’t regret leaving the Earth behind. I missed my mom, but I didn’t miss our lifestyle, traveling the country like fugitives and hiding from a government conspiracy. I felt more at home here, on the Eastwood, than I ever had on Earth. Yeah, the fate of the galaxy weighed heavy on my shoulders, but oddly enough I didn’t mind. Maybe it was because my mom had raised me to feel constantly in danger, so I was used to it. In a weird way, it felt right. I’m not sure what that said about me, that I was almost glad to be at the center of all this chaos, like it belonged to me.
I’d hesitated too long, and my uncle was watching me close now. “I don’t regret it, Uncle,” I said. “Not at all.”
His face filled with relief. “Your dad would be proud of you, Syd. I know it.” He cleared his throat then and began to straighten the front of his uniform. “Right. Better get to work. How’s the rest of the crew doing?”
As I finished bringing my uncle up to speed, I lingered on what he’d said about my dad. Would he be proud of me? My dad had sacrificed everything to keep Ashfall’s secrets buried on the dead planet. He’d warned Vanceval of my existence and indirectly gotten a Vulpin assassin dispatched to Earth to get me. My dad had died with the belief that Tytons were once the scourge of the universe and that humanity couldn’t be given the chance to follow in their footsteps. In a way, I’d undone pretty much everything my dad had worked for.
My uncle was wrong. I didn’t think my dad would be proud of me.
I think he’d be afraid of me.
8
“Syd? Can I show you something?”
Melian stood in the doorway to my room, holding a tablet. I sat up from where I was sprawled on my bed, massaging my temples. I’d used the Wayscope earlier to map us out a new route to Unstable-J3 and the Torrent. I found a path that brought us close to the planet with only two wormholes to transit. It would take us about a month of flight time and only use half of our remaining sedatives, which was good, just in case the black market Zara was so confident in didn’t actually pan out. The residual headache from thrusting my consciousness out into the Vastness was starting to fade.
“What’s up?” I said.
“Um.” Melian hesitated a moment before sitting down in the bed next to me. I thought I saw a flare of color in her cheeks, our shoulders touching as she leaned in to show me what was on her tablet. “I should probably show this to the captain, but I didn’t want to get anyone in trouble . . .”
On-screen was a live schematic of the Eastwood. I recognized the Subspace Piercer that we’d soon use to punch a wormhole into the fabric of this galaxy, the ship’s thrusters, and then all the other parts of the ship that I couldn’t have labeled if my life depended on it. If I ever got back to the Serpo Institute, I should really sign up for an ISV maintenance and engineering course.
“I was going down the prep checklist for interdimensional jumps and noticed this,” Melian said, highlighting a jutting antenna that extended perpendicular from the Eastwood’s inner spoke.
“Ah yes,” I said. “Look at that.”
Melian eyed me. “It’s our communications relay.”
“Of course it is.”
“It’s aimed,” Melian said.
“Aimed at what?” I squinted at the schematic. “What does that mean?”
“We’re flying dark with comms down,” Melian patiently explained to my dumb ass. “That means the communications relay should be down. Literally. Like pinned against the hull of the ship. I thought maybe it was just an oversight—we could have depowered the relay without actually retracting the antenna and still be off the grid, but no. The maintenance logs show that the antenna was raised in the last twelve hours.”
I took the tablet from her as if that would help me catch on quicker. “You’re saying someone used the comms?”
“I can’t say that for sure,” Melian said. “There’s no record of an outgoing message in the system. If someone did send out a message, they could have scrubbed the logs but not realized they also had to reset the position of the comms relay.”
“Or this could just be a malfunction or an oversight,” I said. “Right?”
Melian half shrugged. “Sure. Maybe I’m just being paranoid. But I thought it was strange enough to bring up.”
Hopefully it was nothing, I thought. But what if it wasn’t? Who would want to sneak a message off the Eastwood? It wasn’t me, my uncle, or Melian. That kind of subterfuge didn’t really seem like H’Jossu’s style, and Batzian wasn’t enough of a rule breaker to try something like that. Aela had no reason to make contact with the outside universe. Maybe Zara had sent some kind of heads-up to her people on the Torrent to let them know we were coming—covert communications were definitely right up her alley—but I couldn’t see why she’d do it without telling me. That left only one person.
Hiram.
“For what it’s worth, we’re in unchartered deep space,” Melian continued. “If a message was sent, we’ll be long gone before anyone can trace it back to our location. Unless someone picks it up in the local star system. But we’re alone out here.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said.
After Melian left, I went down the hall to Hiram’s room. He’d been keeping to himself since the day we fled Ashfall. He hadn’t shown up on the bridge for any of our crew meetings and never came to any mealtimes. He was avoiding us. I heard him shuffling around the ship during off hours, when he’d go down to the galley to scavenge some leftovers. Otherwise, Hiram never left his room. To be perfectly honest, I was okay with that. I didn’t know how to handle Hiram or what to say to him. Even after he’d broken down in my arms following his mind-meld with Aela, I was still a little afraid of him. It was a relief to have him in hiding. One less problem to deal with.
Hiram didn’t answer when I knocked on his door, so I let myself in.
The stink almost knocked me back into the hall. Hiram’s room was a wreck. The smell of sweat, vomit, and something like burned bacon hung in the air. His bed was unmade, the sheets stained with sweat and crusted blood. There were discarded wads of bio-tape littered across the floor, all of them discolored a rusty brown. How many times had he changed the wrapping on that wound of his? And why was it still not healing?
At some point, Hiram had also properly trashed the place. He’d punched a hole in his mirror and torn up all the plants from their wall-gardens, scattering dirt and uprooted greenery everywhere. His shower was clogged—I didn’t want to know with what—and there was a puddle of standing water in there. I don’t know how Hiram had stayed cooped up in this grunge.
But he wasn’t there now.
“The hell is this . . . ?” I muttered to myself as I picked up a tool from Hiram’s desk.
A welding torch taken from engineering. Why did he have that?
I’d stumbled into Hiram’s fortress of depression. This room was a cry for help, and I felt a sudden surge of guilt at having left Hiram to his own devices for the last few days. On our very first meeting, I’d written Hiram off as a meathead. I guess I still thought of him that way—like he didn’t have feelings, or, if he did, they didn’t run that deep. The state of Hiram’s room made it look like he was drowning.
I moved with some urgency, quickly checking all the common areas but not finding Hiram in any of them. Only after I’d checked the kitchen did I realize that I was still holding the blowtorch I’d found in Hiram’s room. I headed to the engineering bay, but he wasn’t there either.
He was in the airlock.
I almost walked right by him. Probably would’ve if not for his BO. Hiram stood in the same airlock where H’Jossu and I had trapped him just a few days ago. His uniform was unbuttoned and hanging off one muscular shoulder, his hair greasy, pimples popping up from the skin on the back of his neck. He still favored his leg, a fresh roll of bio-tape tied around his wound. His back was to me. He had the airlock’s vid-screen tuned to the exterior cameras, and he was just staring out into the cold Vastness. The airlock’s interior door—the one H’Jossu and I had hidden behind—was still open, but Hiram leaned against the wall on the other side, right next to the release button, which would seal the room and jettison the contents into space.
You didn’t need to be a psychologist to know what he was thinking.
I cleared my throat and edged up behind him, close enough so that I’d be in the way of the ultonate doors if Hiram decided to trigger them.
“Uh, hey, buddy,” I said. “You’re up and about.”
The muscles across Hiram’s shoulders tensed. “Buddy. Are you my buddy, Syd?”
“Sure,” I replied with as much sincerity as I could fake. “You want to hang out or something?”
“You don’t even like me,” Hiram said quietly. “You don’t have to pretend.”
“I mean, I don’t dislike you,” I said. “Anyway, come on. Got some jump prep I could use your help with . . .”
That was a total lie. I didn’t need his help with anything. But I figured the best thing I could do in this situation would be to talk Hiram out of the airlock.
He snorted and finally turned to look at me. Hiram’s face was startlingly pale, the color accentuated by the dark circles under his eyes.
“What do you actually want . . . ?” Hiram trailed off, noticing the blowtorch I still held in my hand. “Oh. You went in my room.”
“I wanted to ask you if you’d tried sending a communication off the ship,” I said. I glanced down at the torch, turning the tool over in my hand. “But then I saw how you’ve been living, man. A real cry for help. And you’re apparently doing some welding?”
Hiram’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t send out any messages. We’re supposed to be running dark, aren’t we?”
