Left or right, Cat thought to herself, peering at the knobs. Either way, she wanted to go to the max. She wanted to be wherever the important shit was. The Callite in her wanted to turn them all the way to the left, knowing that would take her to the top, but these weren’t Callites. They shared more genetic code with Humans, who loved all things right and clockwise. She turned the knobs that way, all four of them, then waved each of her plucked ID cards in front of the scanner, not sure which was the highest-ranked.
To the max, Cat thought, smiling as the lift rumbled into motion.
••••
Cole felt powerless as the wounded Bern craft plummeted toward the surface of Lok. Group two’s suicidal dash for the rift, spurred by a fear for Mortimor’s life, had drawn copious amounts of fire from the Bern fleet still in hyperspace. He knew Arthur was in the cockpit doing his best to manage the crippled ship, but as they passed through the rift and screamed down through Lok’s atmosphere, the pilot in Cole wanted to be up there in the cockpit doing something with the controls, even if that something proved futile.
Around him, the ship’s cargo bay had become a physical manifestation of his internal chaos. A wide mix of aliens screamed and shouted as the ship bucked and shivered. Fear had each of them resorting back to their old, primal tongues. Gear was scattered everywhere and still rumbling about. What remained of a once-noble resistance force was now jumbled, confused, and frightened as it fell out of the rift toward the sucking gravity of the planet below.
Cole stayed wedged between one of the storage lockers and a bulkhead as he held Mortimor, whose body had grown perfectly still. Gone was the fierce and calm bravery he’d seen the man possess during the past days. That vitality had been replaced by the sagging slowness of a man with half his life drained away.
Penny helped Cole hold him in place, the three of them braced together for impact. They were no longer able to do any first aid as the Bern craft rocked from side to side, the screaming of disturbed air audible through the hull. Every now and then, the sight of Penny’s severed arm caught Cole’s attention—the trailing wires and dripping fluids adding to the surreal nature of his environment.
A loud wail emanated from the cockpit, the shrill call of a collision warning perhaps. The yelling and shouting from the passengers grew in noise and pitch, matching the changing Bern alarm. As it grew in frequency and duration, Cole marveled at the psychological similarities Humans and the Bern must share. The clatter of the warning siren eerily mimicked the sound a Human engineer would choose to signal impending doom—
••••
Doctor Ryke made his way to Parsona’s cargo bay as soon as the ship leveled off and the Gs relented to a level the grav panels could compensate for. They were still moving at quite a clip, heading back around Lok to the small ruin of a village where the whole mess had begun. The mess he had created.
“If only I’d gotten married,” he said aloud as he helped Scottie to his feet. His two old friends had remained seated on the deck by the rear bulkhead, pinned by Parsona’s acceleration.
“If only you’d done what?” Scottie asked.
“Nothing.”
“I thought she knew how to fly herself,” Ryn said. “You sure it’s safe to stand?” The large Callite accepted the help up, but with the wary stance of a man distrusting gravity.
“It should be fine.”
“What in the hell just happened?” Scottie asked.
“Mortimor’s ship just came through the rift from hyperspace and went down. It looks like our missile plan is off.”
“But the crews we sent out to get that fleet—” Scottie said.
“Toast,” said Ryke, nodding. He pulled on his beard. “Now help me with that console we were gonna use for the missiles. We’ve got other things that need doing with it.”
“We’re gonna leave them to die?” Ryn asked.
“Afraid so, but now it’s up to us to slam shut my damned door forever. Let’s just hope the end of the many massacres to come will get its start right here.”
44 · Revelations
“You can go crazy reading into prophecies, you know.”
Molly stopped struggling with her restraints and looked up. Byrne had turned in his seat to peer back at her, a wide smile on his face. Beyond him, she could see through the cockpit that the pilot had brought them into formation with a cluster of warships. The surface of Lok hung below, impossibly far away.
“Is this the time of fulfillment?” Byrne asked. He frowned at Molly. “Or did we narrowly miss that just a few weeks ago? Are you the one? Is Cole? Does it matter?”
Molly felt herself flush at the mention of Cole’s name. She bit her lip and looked down at her lap to see the Wadi’s tongue spiraling out of her pocket. She adjusted her elbow to keep the animal covered and felt a wall of resistance building, a shield of silence to keep from giving Byrne whatever satisfaction he was looking for.
“Don’t want to talk, huh?” Byrne wiggled around in his seat even further to gaze at her. In Molly’s peripheral, the armless maneuver made him look like an angry snake poising for a strike.
“How about you, my silvery friend? You’ve gone awfully quiet all of a sudden.”
Walter sniffed. “I don’t trusst you,” he hissed softly.
“And why not?” Byrne asked. “Because I don’t reek of lies? There’s two reasons for that, my pirate friend. My builders left out such glands when they made me, and I never once lied to you.”
The cracks in Molly’s new wall spread out in a spiderweb of curiosity.
“Then where’ss my gold?” Walter asked.
“Many jumps from here, I’m afraid. But we’ll take you to it once this galaxy is secured. A few months, at the most.” Byrne looked past their jump seats to the cargo bay beyond. The other guards could be heard working on the ship, securing items and putting away cargo. They had been at it since the small craft pulled away from the massive orb-shaped ship above. “As soon as your . . . rooms are ready, I’ll let you make yourself comfortable while the invasion progresses.” Byrne nodded to Molly. “You, however, might want to stay up here and see it for yourself.”
Molly turned away and looked back toward the cargo bay. She thought about what she could do if not for the restraints. Perhaps dash back, jam the door behind her, take her chances with the guards in the bay. Maybe she could find an escape pod and risk that they wouldn’t blast her out of the sky. She wondered if the pilot or any of the other guards were like Byrne, or if they were flesh and blood like her. She twisted her wrists against her restraints while she ran through the slim options, hating them all.
“There’s nothing you’d like to discuss? Strange, because your boyfriend was so chatty in hyperspace.” Byrne nodded to the pilot, who leaned forward and adjusted something on the dash. “Perhaps you’d like to listen to some radio?”
The pilot dialed up the volume, filling the cockpit with a crackling static, and then a voice: “Mayday, mayday, mayday. Group two is going down. We have Mortimor, but we are going down—”
Byrne dipped his head and the pilot flicked the volume off.
“It was a horrible crash,” Byrne said.
The fractures in her wall widened.
“I’d be surprised if anyone survived it.”
The cracks spread all the way around Molly’s shell until they met on the other side.
“Just in case, though, I’ve dispatched a ship to finish them off and another to wipe out your friends attempting to close my rift.”
Molly fought to contain the anger welling up. Shouts and screams were bubbling within, ready to explode through the fissures. She kept her eyes on her lap. She could feel her Wadi vibrating against her thigh, almost as if it were absorbing and containing her rage.
“If only Lucin were here to see how you’d failed him.”
The words stunned Molly. Rather than provide that final spark, sending her anger bursting through her wall of silence, they somehow defused it all, draping her with confusion. She felt her urge to scream deflate, even as the shell that had been holding it back crumbled all around her.
“Lucin was a traitor,” she said, the words lingering as a whisper. She pressed her chin down against her sternum and fought back the urge to cry.
“That he was,” Byrne said. He leaned down to the side, his head looming in Molly’s blurred vision. “He was a traitor to his own people.”
Molly shook her head. “He was one of you,” she hissed.
“Was,” Byrne said. “He was one of us. And if he’d been stronger, this would’ve been his prophecy to fulfill. But they sent flesh and blood to do a machine’s job.”
Molly peered up at Byrne. His mouth was spread out in a rapturous smile. He continued:
“The pathetic irony, of course, is that my superiors never wanted to trust machines like me in command positions. The hubris of meat-filled skulls makes them think the things they make can’t replace them. But the weakness is in the fleshy heart, not the robotic mind.”
The mention of Lucin’s heart brought back horrible memories: Images of Cole’s bullets tearing through Lucin’s back. Rich, dark blood pooling up through the wounds. Earlier memories, like of him in the principal’s office weeks before, preparing to give her the news of Parsona’s discovery—
“A machine never falls in love with the enemy,” Byrne said. “We never lose sight of our objectives, of what needs to be done. Emotion can’t get in the way.”
“Lucin was the enemy,” Molly said. Again, it was almost a whisper to herself. She forgot where she was, forgot about Walter to the other side of her, forgot about the noises from the cargo bay, forgot about the Wadi frozen in the folds of her pocket. All she could think about was Lucin, and Byrne’s confusing talk.
“We’re pretty sure he turned his back on us sometime during the Dire War, maybe even at Eckers. Something happened to make him never file another report with us. He retreated to the Human Academy, hiding from his superiors, shirking his duties—”
Molly shook her head. “He was working for you.”
“Not me. I was sent here to replace him. Lucin failed us all. And if what you said weeks ago is true, you did us a favor by killing him.”
“No.” Molly crushed her teeth together and pinned her chin to her chest. She pulled against her restraints, not because she thought it would snap them, but because her muscles needed something to do, some way to burn.
“He was working for you to the last,” she said through clenched teeth. “He was trying to steal my ship. He said he was going to use it to end all wars. He was trying to wipe us out, just like you are now.”
She repeated the words in her mind, silently, to herself. She had to remind herself that Lucin was a traitor. She needed him to be a traitor. Otherwise, what had she done?
Byrne laughed. “The only war Lucin was working to end was the one between the Humans and Drenards,” he said.
Molly shook her head.
“Oh, yes. We know exactly what he was trying to do. Our agents in your Navy, the ones keeping the flames of war stoked high, had no end of trouble dealing with the waves of tolerant cadets he sent their way, all of them spouting a desire to cease hostilities one day, to find some kind of peace.”
“You’re wrong,” Molly whimpered.
“Am I?” Byrne bent even lower in the corner of her vision. “Or are you just trying to justify what you did?”
He sat back up in his seat. Molly couldn’t help it: she turned to follow his movement.
“Is it better for you to remember him as a traitor, rightly slaughtered, than as a hero to your people wrongly killed?” Byrne smiled, his face blurred in the coating of tears Molly could neither blink away, nor wipe with her bound hands.
“Maybe that was your true role in all of this,” Byrne mused aloud. “How delicious if your great contribution to our victory was to have murdered our biggest threat and your sole ally!”
The tears flowed freely as Molly’s head drooped toward her lap. In the muffled distance, past the thrumming pulse in her ears, she could hear Byrne and the pilot laughing. She could hear Walter hissing in confused annoyance to her side. She licked the salty wetness out of the corners of her mouth and felt more tears course down her cheeks. She could see and feel them splatter on her thighs. Molly tried blinking the blurriness away. She tried to focus on what was real and true, on what was false and a lie.
Why had the discovery of Lucin’s betrayal back at the Academy stunned her in a way Byrne’s words now could not? Why did finding out he was a Bern make her reel, while discovering he may have been a traitor to them seem to resonate?
It was because he had loved her.
She knew that. The hugs and solace, the advice and long talks, the risks he took to help her achieve a life worth living, the sacrifices he had made to win her admission to his school—none of it made sense if he was her enemy, but it all made perfect sense if he was working against them.
It explained why he had no family other than Molly and his wife. She even understood why he would need to keep it a secret, why he couldn’t tell her about the ship, about her mom, about the hyperdrive, about anything. He wasn’t being sinister—Lucin had been afraid.
More tears fell, and Molly ground her teeth in frustration. Byrne and the pilot were talking, but she couldn’t bother to listen. Walter hissed something to her, but his words were a poison to avoid swallowing. She cried to herself, chewing on horrible truths, grinding her teeth together, losing her awareness of all that was going on around her, unaware even of her hungry Wadi, who was crying as well, grinding her own lizard teeth, and chewing her way through Molly’s restraints.