6Though I know what’s coming next, I can’t stop myself from watching as a beam of light suddenly bursts from the bottom point of the hub. Faint at first, then getting brighter and brighter . . .
My heart clenches, and it’s all I can do not to react outwardly when the station explodes, though the others ooh and ahh when thousands upon thousands of black rainbows appear within the light of Lia’s explosion.
Ghouls.
It was Lia’s true purpose—not to destroy the enemy so much as to reveal it. To show us the invisible foe that had destroyed the entire Tellurian Alliance in just three years and was coming for us. Her plan worked, and the official war began. If only she hadn’t had to sacrifice her life to do it.
I’ve seen this clip a million times: Lia going Nova, the station exploding, the Spectres revealed in the light. They show it on the news all the time, a constant reminder of the foe we’re fighting, lest we forget that the invisible enemy is still around us. At first, I’d have to leave the room anytime the clip came on. Now I just sit, watching in numb silence as my friend dies again for the thousandth time.
Tap, tap, tap.
“I love this clip. They don’t show it enough,” Djen says as the scene disappears, replaced by a newscaster’s face and a new caption.
“There’s this really good version of it on the net,” Jovan puts in. “Someone set it to music and added sound effects and everything.”
“Oh, yeah! I know the one you’re talking about. There’s this other really funny one too, where they run it in slo-mo while doing this voiceover parody . . .”
Tap tap tap tap.
Their voices drone on, heedless and careless and cruel, and my jaw clenches in spite of itself. Because after all this time, it’s not the clip that hurts me anymore—it’s what inevitably comes after it. As though Lia’s sacrifice is just some game for their amusement, a joke to be laughed at. If Michael were here, he’d go ballistic. He’d beat them to a pulp for daring to mock his Lia—and I’d cheer him on.
“. . . see if I can find this clip, Djen,” Jovan continues. “You’ll die laughing, it’s so funny!”
Tap tap tap taptaptap.
My heart squeezes so hard it could wring all the blood from my chest. More than anything, I want to say something, scream something, and yet I can’t. I’ve kept my connection to Lia and New Sol Station a tightly wrapped secret, wanting neither the celebrity nor the scrutiny that revelation would bring, and after all this time, despite all the provocation, I can’t quite bring myself to break my self-imposed silence. I start to gather up my stuff, that I might just leave—
Taptap—snap!
Though the noise is barely loud enough to hear over the chatter, I jump at the quiet crack. I look around for the source of the sound. Zane is sitting upright on the window seat, his back rigid and his lips pressed together in a thin line. In his white-knuckled hand is a tip-pad stylus, now broken in two, and in his eyes lies the wintery cold of the harshest frost.
I raise my eyebrows in surprise, strangely soothed by the realization that I’m not the only one in the room vacced out by the others’ offhand cruelty, but if Zane notices me watching, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he simply rises to his feet in one graceful gesture and tosses the two halves of his now-broken stylus onto the window seat in disgust. They hit the wood with a hollow ping, bouncing twice before falling off the seat to roll ignominiously across the floor before finally coming to a stop a few centimeters away from me. Without a word, he grabs his tip-pad, stalks over to the door, and silently leaves the room.
I stare at the doorway where he disappeared, then slowly bend over and retrieve the broken stylus. I eye the two halves, wondering if they can yet be mended.
“. . . and now, we interrupt your regular program to bring you a breaking news report. It has just been confirmed that the Spectres have perpetrated a massive coordinated attack on more than three hundred military and civilian sites throughout the Celestial Expanse.”
At the unexpected announcement, my mouth falls open. All the chatter in the room cuts off at once. Stylus forgotten, I dart my gaze to the wall. The images of Lia and New Sol have disappeared, replaced by the image of a burning factory, its black walls alight with flame.
The report continues. “Though we’re still awaiting further information, preliminary reports indicate that every facility hit was developing, manufacturing, or storing some type of anti-Spectre technology, including force fences, sniffers, aero-launchers, and light grenades. Losses are expected to fall within the billions of credits, and early reports have confirmed more than ten thousand casualties, with that number expected to rise. Though no perpetrators’ names have been released at this time, squatter involvement is strongly suspected.”
The newscaster’s mouth continues to move, but anything else they might be saying is lost in the uproar that ensues.
“Holy slag. Three hundred places at once?”
“Impossible! The Specs don’t even have any sort of communications network.”
“Maybe they’re psychic. That’s what the scientists say.”
“Yeah, but across hundreds of light-years?”
The others continue to debate, but I ignore them, my eyes fixed on the screen as the burning factory disappears, replaced by the Orbital Platform at Carella Station, its hatches battened down and security on full alert as it turns its defensive weapons on a ship full of Spectres. One moment, the officers are working frantically to repel the enemy ship; the next, their hands have stilled, their faces falling slack and their eyes going vacant, clearly under the influence of some invisible agent. Five minutes later, they drop the shields, de-ack their weapons, and welcome the enemy in.
I shudder as the caption identifies the agent: Sinesensu, a bioweapon engineered from bacteria found on some alien fungus for one purpose: mind control. Tasteless, odorless, and invisible, Sinesensu’s true insidiousness lies in is its ability to fool air quality sensors, allowing it to be slipped into ventilation systems without raising any alarms. Once in, it makes anyone who inhales it highly suggestible to spoken commands. How the enemy got it is anyone’s guess—the bioweapon was banned in a treaty between the Alliance and the Expanse some twenty years ago—but all it took was a few whiffs combined with an audio transmission requesting to dock, and the enemy waltzed right in.
Hand to my heart, I watch the replay, shivering as I imagine the gas seeping in without anyone the wiser, grateful when the footage ends and they show another target, a naval ship of the line. The name isn’t familiar, though the model is. It’s the same type of ship my Dad is posted on.
Dad.
A tendril of fear worms through my heart. I glance down at my chit, suddenly recalling the birthday message that never came, Gran’s links yesterday, and that last high-priority call I never answered . . .
Fear morphs into the beginnings of panic. I shake my head in disbelief. No. No, no, no. It can’t be, I’m jumping to conclusions. His message is just delayed, he lost track of the date, Gran’s only been calling to wish me a happy birthday. Excuse after excuse spools through my head, but my body isn’t listening. I take a step back, and then another, and another, and suddenly I’m out of the lounge and racing down the hall toward my room. Slamming the door behind me, I queue up my chit and return the call I should’ve answered yesterday. When I see the time to connect, my heart sinks.
Twenty-two minutes?
Though it’s only marginally longer than usual, a wave of despair washes over me. How can I possibly wait?
Unable to help myself, I pull up all the main news feeds in my room, pacing anxiously back and forth in front of my bed as I watch them spool out over three walls. Every station has picked up the story, and everywhere I look, I see scenes of death and destruction—burning warehouses, factories razed to the ground, gutted warships floating listlessly in space. A research lab hangs in a feed above my desk, its airlocks flung open to space and its former occupants floating in a macabre halo around the emptied station.
The feed moves on, more scenes of carnage, each more terrible than the last, flickering over my walls. Eyes wide, I stare at it all in silence, barely able to believe what I’m seeing. It’s the most coordinated, large-scale attack perpetrated by the enemy in the entire Spectre War—and unless I miss my guess, it’s only the beginning. Stunned beyond belief, all I can do is sink down into my chair and watch in paralyzed silence as world after world goes up in flames.
Minutes pass, inching by in one horror-filled second after the next. By the time Gran’s familiar image finally comes rising up over my palm, the panic has gone, and in its place is a lump of ice, brittle and hard. I don’t even have to ask; the look on her face says it all.
For a long moment, we simply stare at each other, her too afraid to speak and me too afraid to listen. Then finally, my voice emerges from my throat, like a stranger’s, distant and cold.
“It’s Dad, isn’t it?”
At my matter-of-fact question, Gran’s face crumples. “Oh, Teal. I’m so sorry.”
Dad. I repeat the word in my head, unable to quite comprehend. This is the news I’ve expected to hear my whole life—the news you can’t help but expect when the people you love spend their lives at war—but now that it has finally come, I can’t seem to react. It’s like I’m hearing the words through someone else’s ears, feeling the pain through someone else’s heart.
“How did he die?” I finally ask.
“His ship was part of a convoy distributing Spectre tech. They were in Malasa making a drop-off when they came under attack by squatters. They fought hard to defend the cargo ships, but . . .” She shakes her head. “I don’t know the particulars.”
“Does Michael know?”
“I’ve tried linking him a few times, but every time I call, I keep getting the same message: that he’s on active duty and currently off-com. I finally had to leave him a message telling him to call me back. I’m still waiting to hear from him.” She sighs. “In a way, I’m a bit relieved he hasn’t called back yet. He took Lia’s death so hard. And now his dad? It seems too cruel.”
Too cruel. Now something comes, oozing like bitter bile through my chest. Too cruel to tell Michael . . . but not me. Because in a hundred years, it would never have occurred to Gran to lie to me. To protect me the way she protects Michael, the way everyone has always protected Michael. My mind flashes back to another conversation from another day, another time.
“—honestly don’t know what to do. He’s just so angry all the time. I’ve seen Michael get upset before, but never like this. He really loved Lia. Now that she’s gone, I’m afraid of what he might do, Hallie, I really am.”
A long pause, then my mother’s voice: “And what about Teal? What about my baby girl?”
“Teal is . . . Teal. Obviously, she’s upset—Lia did come to the house a lot before she died—but I’m sure Teal will be fine. She’s so well adjusted, and after all, Lia was her brother’s friend, not hers. She’ll manage. Michael, on the other hand . . .”
Even now, that half-overheard conversation between Gran and Mom still haunts me.
After all, Lia was her brother’s friend, not hers.
Her brother’s friend. Of course. Why would she possibly feel bad about Lia’s passing? After all, she’s so well adjusted. Everyone knows that. Teal will be fine. Fine, fine, always fine!
No matter what.
“Teal?”
I force my eyes to focus, to look upon the holo before me instead of through it. Gran’s face is creased with worry, her gaze anxious but also . . . expectant. She’s waiting for me to tell her I’ll be okay. That I’ll go on, as I always have. For what would she do were I to break down? To let my tears flow across the light-years and admit that I’m not okay? That nothing’s fine, and never was fine, and never will be fine!
But I can’t. Because a universe where Teal is not fine is a universe she can’t comprehend. It’s a universe no one can comprehend, not even me. So I tell her exactly what she wants to hear. Just like I always do.
And with every word I say, I feel that much more alone.
Afterward, I draw my knees in and curl up into a ball in my chair. With Gran gone, the tears can finally come. They can . . . but they don’t. Grief burns deep down inside of me, searing like a white-hot ember forgotten amidst a pile of ashes, but even that can’t move me. The truth is, I haven’t shed a tear in more than two years. Not since the day I stood on the observation deck and watched Lia go Nova. Not that I haven’t wanted to since. There were so many times I wanted to weep—for Michael, for Lia, for myself—but it was as though Michael had laid claim to all grief over Lia’s death, took it all selfishly for himself and left none for anyone else. And after all these years of dry eyes, enforced by someone else’s prior claim, there’s nothing left to be dredged up no matter how hard I try.
I stare quietly out the window, only now noticing the soft patter whispering in my ear. The deluge eased sometime when I wasn’t looking, softened into a gentle shower that now trickles down the window in delicate tears of diamond and pearl. I let out a bitter snort. Even Iolanthe does so easily what I cannot.
I touch my fingertips to the glass, imagining the feel of the raindrops against my skin. Then, with nothing else to be done, I lay my cheek against the window, close my eyes, and let the planet weep for me, while all the while death and destruction flicker across the backs of my eyelids in a deadly dance that circles round and round and never ends.
I drift off to the sound of the falling rain . . .
. . . and I wake to screaming.