Mind you, they did try…but once again, they didn’t break me.
I broke myself. Painfully.
~Ia
The first wave of vomiting swept through the crew roughly an hour later, while they were still trying to out-crawl the ion storm. The first one on the bridge to succumb, naturally, was the first one to have eaten. Lieutenant Commander Chen cast up the contents of his stomach on his workstation console. Thankfully, the keys were sealed against all manner of spills, but the sound and the mess were disturbing.
Ia quickly transferred the engineering controls back to her own station, adding them to the gunnery controls. Excusing himself, Chen rose and wobbled out of the bridge, heading for the cleaning supplies. They heard him retching again just beyond the door, before he managed to slap the controls, shutting the panel.
Shinowa let out a soft whistle. “That was unpleasant.”
“Please,” Vizzini muttered. “I’m trying not to think about the sound or the smell…and I don’t feel so good myself.”
Ia’s right secondary screen lit up. She opened the commlink to the whole bridge. “Lieutenant Harper, I was just about to call you. Commander Chen just cast up his stomach all over my bridge.”
“Uhhh…sorry, Captain. I don’t know how, but…” He sounded horrible. “Captain, I think some sort of contaminant got into the cadre galley. I’ve just sent five crewmembers to the infirmary, and I need to report in, myself. I’m taking samples of food, drink, and water down there for…uhhh, god…”
“Get everything examined, Lieutenant,” she said. Then had to wait as he retched. She thumbed down the volume while she waited, then dialed it back up again. “Report to the infirmary with samples of everything, Lieutenant Harper. Make sure the unaffected members of your crew suit up before they assist, to ensure nothing is cross-contaminated.” Ending the connection, she addressed her bridge crew. “Lieutenant Abbendris, wake up the first watch officers and have them report to the bridge on the double. Make absolutely sure they have eaten and drunk nothing in the last three hours before you permit them to come onto this bridge.”
“Aye, sir.” The other woman bent to her task…and flinched as Vizzini groaned and struggled out of his restraints.
He managed to lurch halfway to the bridge door before retching right next to Ia. Nose wrinkling, she struggled not to breathe too deeply. She hadn’t consumed anything beyond the bottled water available to the bridge crew in the last few hours, but the smell was enough to make her feel nauseated, too.
Thumbing open the ship intercom, Ia announced, “Attention all hands, this is the Captain. Attention. We are experiencing some sort of shipwide illness. It looks like it’s going to get at least half of the officers. Either this is biological, or it’s sabotage. I am therefore or—”
“Holy shakk!” Shinowa swore. “Captain! Ships emerging from FTL to our af…er, bow—behind us! Three…five…oh, holy ancestors—Captain, they’re Salik vessels! Twelve vessels, Captain!”
“Shakk,” Bruer swore. “We can’t run with the front half of our warp panels powerless, and we can’t fight back against that many. And if they board us, they’ll eat us! They’ve given us a goddamn Kobayashi Maru, on top of everything else!”
“The Kobayashi Maru scenario should be illegal in these tests,” someone else muttered.
“Not to mention clichéd,” one of the other cadets agreed.
Ia jabbed her controls, bypassing T’siel’s communications station. Fingers stuttering as fast as she could go, she linked into the ship’s broadcast relays, and into all seven drones. Two final taps opened up a recording unit, and the broadband broadcast command. Her words echoed through space as well as through the ship, since the ship’s internal comm systems were still active at her station.
“This is Captain Ia of the TUPSF Vasco da Gama with a Quarantine Extreme warning. I transmit this in the broadband lightspeed; I transmit this on rotating hyperrelays. By the rules of Sentientarian Spacefaring Aid, this vessel is sealed under the rules of Quarantine Extreme. All ships, do not attempt contact with the TUPSF Vasco da Gama. All ships, do not attempt to load any water from the ice rings of the fifth planet in star system Ceti Ceti Delta 175 until further notice.
“We are under biological attack from an unknown contaminant traced to the hydrosupplies we collected from the ice rings of the fifth planet at Ceti Ceti Delta 175. This biological agent is jumping species. I repeat, it is jumping species. Any attempt to contact the atmosphere, fuel, or life-forms aboard the TUPSF Vasco da Gama will risk your own biological contamination. This is a Quarantine Extreme warning.”
Ending the recording and the external broadcast, she patched it into a loop, letting the ship’s automated systems repeat her message. Turning to the ship’s internal comms, she addressed the crew.
“Attention, all hands, this is the Captain. We have twelve Salik warships within three million kilometers of our position. We have one shot at getting out of this mess. Listen closely to the following orders: If you are sick, I want you to vomit on whatever nonvital surfaces are within range of the interior pickups. Do not hit anything sensitive,” Ia stated dryly, “but the floor and the furniture are all fair game. I want evidence that we are sick, and I want it all over this ship. Infirmary, grab a list of everyone who hasn’t eaten anything in the last six hours, and dispense oral emetics for the unaffected crew to carry at all times; bounce it on the triple time. Lifesupport, get ready to screw up the numbers three and four fish tanks in Bay 1, and kill at least a dozen hens. Do your best to make them all look like a bacterial or viral death, not a physical one, and send some of the fish and hens to the infirmary for examination.”
“Captain, we’re getting pingback from the Salik vessels,” Lieutenant T’siel told her, craning his neck to look past the edge of his monitor banks.
“I repeat, this is Captain Ia,” Ia stated, finishing her instructions to her own ship. “If you are sick, retch it up for the shipboard cameras. Infirmary, dispense emetics to the off-duty crew, and get some up to the bridge. Lifesupport, make it look like whatever we’ve got is hitting the other species on board. These are your orders for now; more will be coming shortly.” Cutting off the interior comms, Ia lifted her chin at T’siel. “Put them through on audio, Lieutenant, and make it bridgewide incoming, but only my headset outgoing.”
“Hhewman vessel Vasco da Gammma,” the bridge comms relayed. “Your desssception will not save hyew. We outnumber you. Open hhyour airlocksss or be destroyed.”
“This is Captain Ia of the Vasco da Gama to the Salik vessels. This is not a deception. We have dead V’Dan gamehens and dead Solarican carp on board. Whatever is in our water, it is jumping interplanetary species and killing the lesser life-forms. We are under Quarantine Extreme. Any attempt to board this…You know what?” she asked, switching tone and topic abruptly. “I would love to see you board this ship. I would love to open my airlocks to all of you, just to see if this whatever-it-is affects your biology, too.
“Unfortunately, by the conventions of Sentientarian Spacefaring Aid, I am obligated to warn you that my ship is under Quarantine Extreme. Of course, by those same rules of Quarantine Extreme, you are permitted to transfer a maximum of two duly informed medical personnel to this vessel, with the understanding that they will also potentially be at risk for lethal interspecies contamination,” Ia stated. “You think this is a bluff? Well, I’m calling that bluff. If you wish to board this ship, you will select two duly informed medical personnel and transport them, and only them, in a boarding pod to our midships sunward airlock at the end of this ion storm.”
“And hhavve hhyew kill them? Or try to essscape while we wait for the pod to connnehhct?” The sibilant reply came from whoever was broadcasting on behalf of the twelve alien ships.
“Captain, they’re altering course, heading our way,” Shinowa warned her.
Bruer breathed hard, groaned, and unstrapped his restraints, lurching out of his seat. Unlike Vizzini, he made it to the door. They could hear him casting the contents of his stomach on the corridor floor outside, before the panel slid shut again.
“By the rules of Sentientarian Spacefaring Aid, any medical personnel who volunteer to go to the aid of other starships are to be considered inviolate and unattackable, so long as they conduct themselves in a manner befitting sentientarian aid, and do not engage in any acts of injury, damage, terrorism, espionage, or warfare. By my word of honor as a Captain of the Terran Space Force, I and my crew will abide by these rules of conduct so long as your observers abide by them.
“If you choose to send them,” Ia bartered, “your two volunteers will be treated as noncombatants for as long as they remain neutral and render nothing but observation and sentientarian aid. Furthermore, I will personally guarantee that, if this illness is discerned as curable for your species and they are given quarantine clearance, they will be returned to either your vessels, to Sallha, or to one of its outlying colonies unharmed, whichever is nearest, in strict accordance with the conventions of the code. However, until this illness is resolved and cured, they will be locked into this ship under Quarantine Extreme, the same as the rest of my crew.”
Seconds stretched into minutes as they considered her offer. However, none of the Salik vessels fired on the da Gama, though they did spread out and turn to follow her backwards-sailing course. The bridge door slid open and a cadet in the grey-striped blues of an infirmary medic hurried inside, a bottle of pills in his hand. Ia accepted two from the man, tucking them into her shirt pocket. As he left, the Salik pinged them again.
“The lengthhh of Quarantine Extreme is unknown. Will hhyew provide sssssussstenance for our volunnnteers?”
The query was followed by the pop-pop-pop of the speaker smacking his lips. The insult, Salik-style, was one delivered to their enemies just before the amphibious race tried to eat their sentient prey. The few cadets remaining on the bridge shuddered, save for their acting captain.
Ia smiled. If they had been communicating via the vidscreens instead of merely via audio, she would have bared her teeth, too. “Most cheerfully, I am required to inform you that feeding potentially contaminated food sources to sentientarian aid-givers is against the rules. Whoever you send will have to bring sufficient supplies of non-sentient foods from their own stores, or chew on the standard Terran ration packets like everyone else…and I’ll remind you that this disease is hopping between species, so even your non-sentient live food sources will be at risk for contamination.”
Behind her, the door opened, admitting the duly assigned third-watch bridge crew. Most of them had bleary eyes from lack of sleep. A few swallowed quickly, grimacing at the smells left by the missing cadets. With quiet murmurs coordinating everything, they swapped places one at a time with the remaining bridge crew, or left to grab cleaning equipment to sterilize the hastily emptied stations.
“Captain,” T’siel warned her, not yet giving up his seat. “The Salik are pinging us again.”
Nodding, Ia let him put it on bridgewide broadcast once more. “This is Captain Ia. You have something to say?”
“Bring your ssship to a sstop, Hhewmans,” the Salik speaker ordered. “We will sssend over two obserhhvers.”
“Lieutenant Shinowa—ah, sorry, Lieutenant Pushnatta, what’s the status of the ion storms?” Ia asked, adjusting to the change in bridge crew.
“Still going strong, Captain,” he replied, checking his screens.
Shinowa patted him on one restraint-strapped shoulder and picked her way out of the bridge. She, too, had eaten the food from the galley. “I’ll report to the infirmary to get my digestive tract pumped, Captain—I’m sure that sounds much more pleasant than it actually will be, but I was the last one to eat and get back, so I’m bound to be contaminated.”
“Good idea. Dismissed, Lieutenant.” Flicking open the channel once more, Ia addressed the aliens. “Negative, Salik vessels. The ion storm is still too strong to launch a boarding pod at this time. Accompany us to system’s edge, on our current heading and speed. When we’re…four hours lightspeed ahead of the solar storm front, we’ll come to a stop, effect repairs from the asteroid we hit, and board your volunteers.”
“Negative, Hhhumans. Hhyew will sstop now and outwait the sstorms,” her counterpart argued.
“Negative, Salik,” she replied. “If we really did pick up this bug from the ice rings in the Ceti Ceti Delta System, we have to proceed there with all speed. There is a risk that other ships might pass through that system, and a risk that they might stop by the rings of the fifth planet to refuel like we did, rather than pick up hydrofuel somewhere in the Oort zone. Sentientarian Spacefaring laws require that we track down the source of the biological contaminant as quickly as possible and either eradicate it, develop and distribute a counteragent, or place Quarantine buoys around the materials in question.
“As we’re the only ship currently infected, we’re the only one worth risking a second wave of contaminants. I repeat, this contaminant is jumping species; your own race is potentially at risk. Those ice rings must be examined for the source-point as soon as possible.” She paused a beat, waiting for a reply. When none came, Ia added, “At most, you waste nothing but a day or two: a few hours to get to system edge, a few hours for repairs, a few more hours to get to Ceti Ceti Delta 175 once we have full FTL capacity, and hopefully just a few hours past that to find where we picked up the fuel and discern the extent of the contaminant. You can accompany us all the way to the fifth planet, if you like.”
“Hhhyew do not sssound like you are in disstress, Captain,” the Salik speaker pointed out.
“That’s because I myself haven’t eaten anything since before we processed part of the ice into our drinking water. I only drink bottled water while on duty, and don’t snack. Naturally, this means I’m rather hungry, but Terran ration packets aren’t exactly known for their appetizing qualities. Of course, if you’d like to volunteer, I’d be happy to have one of you for lunch, for once.”
The wheezing-whistling and smack-smack-smack of the alien’s lips that came over the ship-to-ship channel let her know that her rather morbid, disgusting joke had struck the equivalent of the Salik funny bone.
“Prosssceed to system’s edge on your heading, Hhewman. We will accompany hyew, all of our ships. If you lhhied to usss, I will personally eat your sssoft meats.”
“My spleen quivers in anticipation,” Ia drawled. “Captain Ia out.” Shutting off the link, Ia sighed and sagged into her seat cushions. “Well. Now we head for system’s edge, and hunt down the real source of the contaminant. Lieutenant Commander Zagrieve, pass the word through the ship for crew and cadre to rely only on bottled water and ration packs for sustenance until further notice.”
“Aye, sir,” the cadet now in charge of ship systems agreed.
The relief watch cadets finished cleaning up the mess left by Chen, Vizzini, and the rest, and took their posts. Ia’s right secondary screen lit up again, indicating another direct comm call. Once again, it came from lifesupport.
“This is the Captain, go,” she ordered.
“This is Lieutenant Jinja-Marsuu again, Captain. After reviewing the security logs of Lieutenant Wong’s actions, both here when he was ‘repairing’ the water pipe, and back up in the cadre galley…the evidence points very strongly to sabotage, sir. You can review it if you want, Captain.” Jinja-Marsuu added, “But the evidence is there. He deliberately poisoned this crew.”
“Lieutenant Broxt, call up your security teams,” Ia ordered, covering her headset pickups with one hand as she addressed the new gunnery officer, who doubled as the da Gama’s security officer. “Find Lieutenant Wong and throw him in the brig. He was supposed to go to his quarters, but he could be anywhere. The charge is Fatality Thirty-Five, Sabotage.”
“Sabotage, sir?” Broxt asked, eyes widening.
“Lieutenant Jinja-Marsuu in lifesupport says she has evidence. Find him,” Ia stressed, “strip and zip him, and throw him in the brig bare-asteroid naked. If he resists or fights back, tell him that should a trial of his superior officers find him guilty, I will personally feed him to the Salik medical observers that are coming on board if he doesn’t surrender immediately. And do remind him, in case he has forgotten my Service record, that Marines don’t bluff. I see no reason why I shouldn’t continue that tradition, now that I’m a member of the TUPSF-Navy. Let’s hope he doesn’t resist, however.”
“Understood, sir,” her new gunnery officer stated. He readjusted the headset tucked around his ear, moving to comply with her orders.
Lieutenant Commander Zagrieve, scenario-senior-most of the third-watch cadets, finished relaying orders and checking over his system controls. Turning to face her, he asked, “Captain, are we really going to board Salik observers onto this ship?”
“Yes, Commander, we really are,” she told him. Not that Ia thought the testers would actually go that far, but she knew they were listening and wanted them to hear the confident determination in her voice. “We are also going to do our damnedest to get the da Gama’s starboard bow warp panels repaired, repowered, and the section secured for FTL speeds. Once we do, we are going to head straight for the fifth planet of the Ceti Ceti Delta 175 star system…which is more or less in the very same direction we’re headed right now.
“The only thing is, that same course will take us right over the top of Battle Platform Freeman, which is due to arrive at the rendezvous point around the ninth planet at Ceti Ceti Delta, which is on the near side of its system relative to us…and they will arrive about five hours before we’re due to hit the system’s edge,” she stated. Her mouth quirked up on one side. “We’ll drop out early without warning our friendly little escort, and ping the Battle Platform to scramble all ships and fighters. Even if it’s undermanned due to an abrupt relocation, the defensive and offensive capabilities of a Battle Platform is easily a match for twenty warships, never mind twelve.
“Lieutenant Bruer thought the latest of our problems was a Kobayashi Maru,” Ia told her fellow cadets. “Under normal circumstances, I’d have to agree with him. Had we been at full health, our choices would have been to fight and die, or be boarded, eaten, and die. But in a strange way, we owe Lieutenant Wong our lives. Unless of course, I’d been quick-witted enough to think of faking an Extreme Quarantine lockdown, and ordered the infirmary to distribute medicines capable of faking a suitable level of illness among the crew.” Smirking, she patted her shirt pocket, with its two capsules of emetic medicine. “As it stands, I believe we should all remember this little maneuver for the future.”
“Captain…you said Marines don’t bluff,” Broxt stated warily. “Yet isn’t this a big bluff, what you’re having us do? Pretending to be sick from some sort of spaceborne contaminant?”
“It isn’t a bluff. If any of this were true, Lieutenant, I’d carry it out in a heartbeat,” Ia promised him. “Marines don’t bluff. We make promises, and we keep them. We do, however, lie to our enemies…but only when it’s absolutely necessary. Now, eyes back to your boards, gentlemeioas. We have a long way to go to finish pulling this off, and hours of constant vigilance to ensure we do pull it off—and not a word about any of this to our ‘observers’ once they’re on board.”
He nodded and returned his attention to his workstation. The ventilation system was finally getting the stench of sickness out of the air. Ia debated getting up to fetch a ration packet. Dabbling a mental toe into the nearest timestreams, she decided to refrain.
Four minutes later, the white overhead lights flashed yellow and turned green, and they heard the Eastern European Province accent of their chief tester once more.
“All hands, stand down,” Captain Rzhikly announced, voice echoing through the mock starship. “Congratulazhuns, Class 1252, you heff successfully survived your Hell Veek. Howeffer, you vill clean op each of your messes before you vill be allowed to disembark de ship.”
Ia opened the shipwide comms. “Acknowledged, Captain Rzhikly. All hands, this is Acting Captain Ia. You are under orders to scrub-and-shine from stem to stern. Consider this your last task of the simulation. Captain Rzhikly, for the sake of quelling false rumors among those who were on the bridge or in the infirmary, I respectfully request that you please explain to everyone on board exactly how we ended up sick, and why.”
“Reqvest granted. All hands, Cadet Wong vas asked to join de testers for a moment vhen he left de bridge at de end of de last scenario. He vas instructed by us to simulate sabotage via biological contamination. De illness you are suffering is nothing more dan a time-released liqvid emetic, very much similar to de version Acting Captain Ia ordered distributed in order to fake further illnezzes. You vill, of course, be reqvired to hand back in each and every distributed emetic pill before you vill be allowed to leave de ship,” he finished. “Now attend to your cleanup detail. Captain Rzhikly out.”
“You heard the Captain,” Ia sighed, unbuckling her safety harness. “Let’s grab some gloves, buckets, and cleaner bottles, meioas. Don’t think for a moment the enlisted sailors will do it all for us.”
“Let me guess: The best leaders lead by example, and all that rot,” one of the other cadets muttered. “I just thank god we weren’t slipped a diarrhetic on top of the emetic.”
Disgust warred with amusement across the bridge, finally settling into a collection of wry chuckles from most of them, Ia included. She lost her humor as she exited the bridge, erased by a stray thought.
A pity this was only a simulation. I can warn, and warn, and warn…but to some beings in this galaxy, I’m nothing more than an ancient Cassandra, whose prophetic warnings went utterly unheeded, however true they turned out to be. But I will be believed by everyone else before all of this is through. Everything depends on it.
At least the rest of my time here will be easy to endure. We don’t have that much longer before Class 1252 graduates…and then…Right. Don’t think about any elephants just yet, Ia, she ordered herself, taking a pair of gloves from the box being passed back to her by two cadets who had gotten into the supply closet ahead of her. You have other problems to pursue.
SEPTEMBER 1, 2493 T.S.
SOUTHEAST OF SINES, PORTUGAL, WESTERN EUROPROVINCE EARTH
“I don’t believe you,” Meyun dismissed. Head propped up on one palm, the other covering the muscles of her stomach, he shook his head slightly. “An entire planet of colonists experiences massive, widespread, spontaneous bouts of precognition? Even the non-gifted members of sentiency?”
“It’s true. The Gatsugi, the K’katta, the Solaricans, and the Tlassians have all experienced it, the same as the Humans,” Ia told him, shrugging. “The Chinsoiy don’t like the electrosphere’s energies, the Dlmvla can’t tolerate the atmosphere, and the Salik have been Blockaded all this time, so we don’t have any information on them, of course.”
“What about the Choya?” he asked.
She rested her head back against the pillows of their shared bed and sighed. “Of all the sentient species, the Choya—and the Salik—are truly mind-blind. Zero psychic sensitivities, and zero abilities whatsoever. I think it’s something biological, some neural wiring or protein combination they’re missing…Anyway, the few rare Choya to risk the high gravity didn’t sense a thing. Not during any visits, not that we know about. The Fire Girl Prophecies are truly the single weirdest thing about my homeworld.”
“Well, how do they know these prophecies are truly prophetic?” Meyun pressed.
“When the Elders of the Church of the One True God arrived on Sanctuary, they had already designed plans for the Great Cathedral. The holopics of the mock-up matched exactly to the visions everyone was having, of a great cathedral catching on fire. Only they hadn’t shown everyone the final draft of the models before that point, just the few on the Church Council,” Ia told him. “When they discovered people who didn’t even know what the cathedral would look like were having visions of it being built, and then possibly destroyed—the images aren’t entirely clear as to which will actually happen, which is the usual nature of precognition—well, they realized these were true psychic visions.”
Meyun shook his head, frowning slightly. “How is it a whole planet of colonists can experience these visions? Is it something in the water? In the air? In the food? If even the tourists get it, it’s obviously not a genetic mutation.”
Ia shrugged eloquently. “No one can say. And you can experience it the moment you come into the troposphere, never mind actually land on the planet, breathe the air, drink the water, or eat the food. In fact, it could even be a side effect of the planet’s electrosphere meddling with our brains. So. Your turn. What is the single weirdest thing about Dabin, in your opinion?”
“I’ll have to think about that one. My home’s not nearly as strange as yours,” he demurred.
Ia nodded, letting him think. This cottage, tucked into the hills overlooking some of the villages south of Sines, was quiet, peaceful, and secluded. Perfect for a four-day tryst. It had taken her most of a day to quell the guilt over taking this time for herself, but Meyun had proven to be quite distracting when he put his mind to it.
In fact, his hand on her stomach, thumb subtly caressing her bare skin, was still quite distracting. It reminded her of all the other things his hands had done with her in the last two days, as well as other body parts. The things he had showed her…
“Passion moss,” he stated out of the blue.
“Hmm?” She looked at his face.
“Passion moss,” Meyun repeated. “It grows on the northwest continent, and comes in shades of yellow and orange and red, and even hints of purple, and the oil it secretes when it’s in bloom—if a moss-like plant could be said to bloom—enhances the fertility cycles of all the native animals around it. In fact, biologists have even been able to artificially induce fertility by coaxing the moss to bloom and ooze its oil. But only in the native animals. It doesn’t do anything for the imported livestock.”
“How does it smell to nonnatives?” she asked, curious.
He wrinkled his nose. “Like oily, burnt plexi with hints of sugar. Some people like it, but most can’t stand it. There are rumors that some of the newest generations are starting to be affected by it,” he added, subtly rubbing her stomach, “but it’s such a subjective thing, the scientists aren’t yet convinced it’s a planetary adaptation. It’s probably just a placebo effect.”
Ia chuckled. “If they ever do adapt, your homeworld will have a major population explosion.”
“Well, it’s rare for a genetic mutation to crop up so quickly, so I think it’s just psychosomatic at best, like most so-called aphrodisiacs,” he dismissed. Then grinned and slid his hand upward, exploring a different part of her skin. “I suppose we’ll just have to rely on the old-fashioned methods of rousing passion.”
Smirking back at him, she slid a hand down his chest, doing some exploring of her own. Her smile turned wry, wistful. “I am going to miss you, you know. Not just this,” she added, tickling his bare stomach, making him squirm and grin, “but everything else. Talking with you, laughing with you, getting to know you…and even being surprised by you. Meyun…You have no idea just how rare that is.”
“Maybe I can convince you to save up some of your Leave time for me.” He leaned forward and kissed the corner of her mouth. “In the meantime, let me surprise you some more…unless you can guess what’s on my mind?”
She grinned and pulled him closer. “I don’t have to be a telepath to guess that.”
Bliss. Sweet, aching bliss. For the first time in a very, very long time, nothing existed for Ia but this: The moment of now. No past, no future, just right now.
Rational thought had been replaced by pure feeling. This close to him, this intimate, she could sense his every thought, his every emotion. Yet never had she felt so safe, so free. Euphoria filled her with soul-deep longing. Ohhh…if only I could stay here forever…
Meyun groaned and kissed her throat. “I don’t want you to leave.”
“I don’t want to leave.” The confession escaped her in a whisper, bittersweet bliss. So many possibilities hovered on the edge of her consciousness, the timeplains so close, so many potentialities almost within her grasp. No thought existed of caution, nor of control, only of wistful wishes. Such closeness bred a level of comfort and trust Ia hadn’t expected.
Clinging to him, she let the bliss carry her forward, deep into herself. Deep into him. Like her limbs, her mind entwined itself around him, cradling him in this precious moment. If only we had more Time…
A unity of thought, as much his own as hers. Shuddering, he whispered fervently, “If only we had more time together…”
Time.
Time. Word and thought, sense and psyche. They dragged her—both of them—onto the timeplains. Ruthless, remorseless Time.
Meyun gasped, eyes wide. A golden explosion of amber-hued water enveloped them, a tsunami of possibilities. Caught off guard, too closely entwined, it was all Ia could do to cling to him, to try and keep him from drowning. It didn’t work. Flailing for purchase, for understanding, for anything, Meyun dragged both of them under.
Them. That was the key word. Images flashed through the waves crashing through their senses. Scenes of him, of her. Intimate moments, public moments, laughing with friends, weeping over deaths, scenes of battle, scenes of domestic bliss. Children—the children they could have, should have, would have. Enemies—tearing them apart, carving them up, scorching the universe and stealing their last breath. Pride in accomplishments…and regret. Regret for the deaths of innocents…and the madness that surged up because of it.
Regret. That wasn’t the word for it.
Madness, death, despair, destruction. The golden light withered and turned an arid, lifeless, fiery brown. The water chilled and froze, filled with the bodies of untold lives, slaughtered and wasted. They pressed in, ice-cold and clammy, bumping closer and closer in the sloshing waters of Time with inexorable horror. Their arms, their legs, their corpses pushes against the two lovers. Pushed them apart, though Meyun screamed in wordless bubbles and tried to cling to her.
The galaxy burned, the dead froze, her lover lived and died, lived and died, lived and died…all because she wanted to reshape Time for herself.
Climbing onto the banks, saving a future for her and Meyun, that would only be met by the fires of her conscience. The flames of destruction would burn away her sanity. If she stayed in the water, the ice of her duty would freeze everything else she wanted right out of her life. If she stayed immersed in the waters, she would drown from the effort of trying to push everyone else out. If she climbed onto the bank…every world would burn, and the stars would be snuffed out.
Everything would die, because she wanted things for herself.
“NO!”
Desperation thrust them out of the timeplains. Thrust them out of the water. Thrust him physically and mentally away from her, off of the bed. He hit the wall with an oof and thumped to the carpeted floor.
Once again, she had chosen the ice over the fire. To drown, rather than let everything burn. And it hurt. It hurt because this time, she had seen the personal cost to her…and to the one she loved. Now Ia knew why she hadn’t been able to see him in Time. Not because he somehow didn’t exist, but because he was the single greatest threat to her plans. Her gifts had protected her by sheer instinct, until now.
Love was the one thing that could sway her from her path, as well as keep her on her self-imposed course. Love for this wonderful man, a very concrete, tangible, and real love that would be returned wholeheartedly…versus love for the untouchable, unknowing, uncaring, unrequiting universe.
Love that could save her sanity, or love that would steal it away.
Tears welled up and spilled over in a silent rain of regret. On the floor at the foot of the bed, Meyun groaned, recovering from his stupor of too many visions, too much information. “Oh, god…oh, god…what…what am I seeing? Ia, what am I seeing?”
Concerned by his dazed demand, she scrambled to the end of the bed, scrubbing at her tears. He had pushed himself onto all fours, but his dark brown eyes gazed through the foot of the bed. He wasn’t seeing anything in this world. Warily, she extended a hand. Her fingertips brushed against the locks of his hair, connected with his brow.
He was still on the timeplains, immersed in the waters of his own multiple lifestreams. Of their multiple lifestreams…
Shock snatched her hand back from his brow. Panic sent her mind racing. This was nothing she had experienced before—none of her brothers, none of her followers, no one she had touched had ever been trapped on the timeplains once she withdrew her touch.
“Ia?” he asked, pushing up onto his knees, only to sag to one side, visibly disoriented. “Ia? Why can’t I see you anymore?”
“It…it’s going to be alright—I can fix this,” she muttered, mind racing in frantic circles. “I can fix it…I think…” She castigated herself a moment later. Stupid stupid stupid!
Closing her eyes, Ia blocked out his sightless gaze, his groping hand. The first step was to fix herself, to stop the useless, energy-draining panic. Reaching for the old centering exercises, she breathed in deep, gathering in her scattered sense of self. Exhaling, she reabsorbed her fragmented thoughts, her faceted personalities, and pushed out the negativity and fear. In again to blend, out again to cleanse. By the third breath, her thoughts were stabilized. By the fourth, she was calm.
Or at least calm enough to act. Slipping off the end of the bed, Ia caught his hand. He clutched at her, mind still racing too fast, too full. Cupping the side of his face, she insinuated her thoughts into his. Dove gently back into the waters, rather than plunging without control as before.
…He was swimming. Stormy waters crashed and sloshed, and he was barely afloat, but he was somehow swimming. Ia swam as well, used to the waters. Getting close to him, she reached for Meyun’s hand as lightning flashed, bringing with it another stream of possibilities.
“I can help you out!” she shouted, trying to catch his attention as well as his hand. “Meyun, I can get you out of the water! But you have to trust me!”
That focused him on her, not on the visions swirling in the waters around them. “You? Trust you?” he shouted back. “You’re going to leave me in here!—You’re going to leave me to die!”
“Shakk that, I love you too much to let you die!”
Grabbing his hand, Ia pulled them out of the raging lake the timestreams had become. By sheer force of will, she separated each potential-probable-possible future back into its own unique, disparate streambed. Holding on to him grimly, she reorganized Time itself, water and wind whipping around them, grass and storm and streaks of light forced into separation until the amber-drenched grasslands unrolled around them, resettling into an orderly network of life and light.
“What…what is this place?” Meyun asked her, peering at the rolling fields and interweaving waters.
“Time.” The word echoed as it always did, like thunder, though this time it darkened the skies in memory of the storm that had swept him up and held him prisoner. Ia forced the skies to stay clear and free of dusk’s gloom, to brighten in the golden light of afternoon. “I’m never quite sure if it’s all in my head…or if I’ve somehow tapped into the actual dimension…I never told you what I am, nor what I can do. I couldn’t risk it. I didn’t…
“Meyun, I couldn’t see you,” Ia confessed awkwardly, looking at him warily. “Of all the lives and life-choices around me, of all the possible, potential, probable paths in the future, I couldn’t see you.” She looked down at the waters beyond their feet, orderly streams of images like liquefied vids. Rippling snapshots of existence, they surfaced and sunk almost randomly. “Any grey spot, any blank, any anomaly, was and is a danger to my task.”
“What task is that?” he challenged her, gaze fixed on her face. “I saw horrible things. Destruction, death…”
It was the same conversation she’d replayed hundreds of times with others here on the timeplains. She looked away from him, off to the future and the desert in the distance. “As melodramatic as it sounds, I’m trying to stop the galaxy from being destroyed. I’m setting up a path of dominoes, each to be knocked down at the right time and place, to prevent an extragalactic invasion centuries from now. I am…I was supposed to be ignoring the side possibilities that would otherwise lead away from that path. Including things like dating.”
He looked at her. “But I know we could have a good life…good lives…”
Ia shook her head slowly, still not quite looking at him. “I told you I never wanted to hurt you, Meyun. I knew when I was fifteen that I’d have to give up quite a lot. But I never foresaw you. And…I would beg your forgiveness, but I suspect you aren’t in a mood to forgive me for what I have and will have done.”
“Get me out of here,” he growled. “Return both of us to sanity—to reality!”
Sighing, Ia complied. Grasping his hand, she flipped both of them inside and up again, pulling them out of the golden light of the timeplains, and back into the half-shadowed light of their rented cottage bedroom.
Meyun shuddered as he came back to himself. A moment later, he flinched away from her fingertips. Away from her. Ia let him move away. While he sagged back against the base of the wall, slumped and struggling to deal with whatever he had seen in Time, she rose and padded over to the closet.
Shrugging into one of the complimentary robes that came with the use of the rental house, Ia brought the other one back to him. When he didn’t reach for it, she dropped it onto his lap, letting the nubbly white fabric pool over his knees. It did seem to give him something to focus on. His hand shifted to touch the material, fingers first resting, then clenching. A frown of confusion creased his brow.
“You’re going to Antarctica.”
“What?” Ia asked him, confused. The statement had come out of nowhere, a non sequitur in an already unstable moment.
He looked up at her. “It was one of the things I saw. I had a…a vision of you, an older you, and you—we—were in Antarctica.”
“That’s impossible,” Ia said flatly.
“No, it felt real,” he argued. “I was there, at your side. Or will be.”
She shook her head. “No, I mean that’s impossible, because I’m going to walk away from you.”
He pushed to his feet. He fumbled and clutched at the robe, shrugging into it, and faced her. “I know what I saw. You were a ship’s captain, I was a commander, and we were going to…to steal schematics for something from a…a place you called the Vault of Time—why would you walk away from me? Away from us?”
Ia shifted back a step, putting distance between them; his demand had made her flinch, and she didn’t like what his vision implied. He stepped forward, closing the gap between them. His hands caught at the sleeves of her robe, holding her in place.
“Ia…why can’t I see you?” Meyun asked her, staring into her eyes. “Why can’t we be together?”
She could see him now, in the timestreams. Not always clearly, but she could finally see the consequences of allowing him to stay with her. This is going to hurt…“Because you’ll distract me. You will distract me so much that I will fail. And failure is not an option.”
“Shova v’shakk!” he swore. “You may only think you know—”
“I have known for five years!” she snapped back. “I can see every possibility, and I have searched every corner of Time itself for some other way to get through to what must be done. Do you honestly think I would be in the military if I had any other choice? I grew up wanting to be a singer. A singer, Harper! Innocent. A civilian. With unstained hands.”
She lifted her hands, fingers curled into claws at the memory of all the blood she had spilled so far, and in warning of all the lives she had yet to take. His hands slipped from her sleeves at the movement, letting her clutch the air between them.
“I dropped out of school and spent half a year of my life trying to find any sane path that would stop the coming invasion and save our galaxy—you spent a minute in the timestreams!” she scorned. “What do you know about the path I need to take? Or sacrifices I’ll have to make? Or the ones I’ve already made? Yes, I will walk away from you. For two reasons. One…because the feelings I have for you are a distraction and a liability. Because my sanity is on the line. I cannot, dare not fail because I’ll have a trillion screaming lives echoing in my brain until the day I die!
“And for the other…I promised I wouldn’t hurt you.” She held his gaze fiercely, willing him to understand. “If I tried to divert the future so we could stay together, I’d hurt you a lot more than I already have. A lot more.”
He started to argue the point. His breath caught in his throat, his eyes unfocusing for a moment. “Suicide…”
“I’ll be driven mad. Literally mad. And worse,” she agreed quietly. “Meyun…I may not have wanted to go into the military, but when I realized what course the future would have to take, I made a pledge to myself. As long and as strong a vow as that which any soldier makes to defend their country, their people, and their beloved homes. I swore a solemn oath that I would do anything to save the future of our beloved homes. It’s the only way I can retain my sanity.”
“Such as it is,” Meyun shot back, though without much heat. He stared at her for several seconds, then flipped his hands helplessly, taking a step back. “So you’d just walk away? No second thoughts, no looking back, no hesitations, or even a single regret?”
“I didn’t say that,” Ia retorted, folding her arms over her robe-draped chest. They glared at each other for a moment, then Meyun lowered his gaze. Ia let out a shaky breath, looking away. “All I wanted…was one moment of peace. A moment to call my own. Some…some semblance of everything I must otherwise give up—the same things I’m fighting a race against Time itself to give to everyone else.
“Something to warm my heart when the days ahead grow long and cold…but that one golden moment has turned to useless dross and slag. Regrets? Oh, yes, I have regrets. But no matter how much I love you, I will not be distracted from my task,” she stated roughly, slashing a hand between them. “If you cannot understand just how important this is, or at least how important it is to me…then we have nothing more to say.”
He wrapped his arms tight across his chest. “It’s not like you’re giving us—me—that much of a say, anyway.”
“I wish I could, Meyun,” she confessed softly. “But you’ve only had a small taste of what it’s like to be me. A single bitter drop from my ocean of misery.”
“An ocean of misery?” Meyun challenged. “Well, you seem to be fully capable of enjoying life.”
“Well, maybe I’m just a good actress. Or maybe I’m just a masochist,” she offered.
Meyun snorted at that. It wasn’t entirely mirthful, though her quip did feel like it had softened some of the sharper edges buried in the mood between them.
Shaking her head, she gazed at her former roommate and brief lover. “I’m sorry I hurt you, Meyun. I truly am. I’d give up a lot to be able to go back in time and not hurt you. I just…I cannot give up the universe. I cannot give up my conscience, and I cannot give up my duty, and I cannot give up the future. I’d gladly give you my heart,” Ia offered, “but my life is no longer my own. I’ve already traded that.”
Meyun gave her a sarcastic look. “Trade it for what? Your sanity?”
“That, and saving the lives of everyone else.” She gave him a lopsided smile. “You could say I got a real bargain.”
“You’re going to throw away your life for people you don’t…even…” Faltering at his own words, he hung his head. “You’re doing what I’m doing. What any soldier would do.”
“Just on a larger, far more complex scale.” She started to say more, but a horrified look widened his eyes.
“You…you’re going to have your ovaries removed?” Meyun stared at her as if she had grown a second set of arms, Gatsugi-like. “Why would you do that?”
She didn’t realize that was one of the visions he had seen in the timestream flood. Uncomfortable, she tightened the arms folded across her chest and gave him the truth. A modified piece of the truth. “One set will be donated to my homeworld, the other to the heavyworld genetics repository, to be distributed to worlds like Eiaven and Parker’s, and other 2G-plus planets. Since I don’t plan on having any children myself, it makes sense to send them where they’ll be of use.”
Shaking his head slowly, he leaned back against the wall behind him. “How can you…how can you just give up something like that?”
She wasn’t about to tell him how much her younger self had agonized over this choice as a teen. “Some people are born to be mothers. Others aren’t. I’ve never been maternal, but there are women out there who would literally do anything to be fertile. Why should I hog all my eggs to myself, when they actually want them?”
It seemed to take him a few moments to absorb that idea. Ia gave him the time to think about it. Finally, Meyun shook his head. “That is just…not the choice I would have made. I, ah, can respect your reasons, but…”
“It’s the best choice, really.” She didn’t know if she was trying to convince him, or reconvince herself. Ia shrugged. “I’m career military, heading into an unofficial war zone. They’ll be removed between flight school and shipping out to the Salik Interdicted Zone—thank you for respecting my right to choose what to do with them.”
Meyun shrugged, then raked his hands through his hair. “What else could I do? It’s your body, not mine. Though a part of me…”
He didn’t finish that thought out loud, just shrugged and folded his arms across his chest again. Moving to the bed, Ia sat on its edge. She tucked the edges of her robe over her legs. “So…What do we do now?”
“What do we do? What do you mean, what do we do?” he retorted. “Can’t you already tell?”
She gave him a chiding look. “Meyun, I above all others know that the future is fluid. And I told you, I cannot see you clearly. Or I couldn’t. Now I can sort of see you in the future. Some of the potential possibilities, but not all of them. I think it’s my mind trying to protect me from myself…”
That earned her a confused look. “What do you mean, protecting you from yourself?”
Ia shrugged, tightening her arms protectively under her breasts. “If anything happened to you, I’d…want to prevent it, whatever it was. Which could upset the delicate flow of events that must progress, if I am to achieve my goals. Which means if we stay away from each other, there’s less of a chance I’d be tempted to veer off course.”
“Is that what you want?” he asked tersely.
“No. But it’s what I need to do.” Sighing, she ran a hand over her short locks. “I should pack and go to the Afaso Headquarters…”
His eyes widened at that. “No…no, if you go there, you’ll die! I’ve seen it, in one of the visions. A hovertaxi accident.” Dropping to one knee, Meyun caught her hands. “Don’t go to Madagascar.”
Even knowing it was really the wrong response, given the intensity of his reaction, Ia couldn’t stop the laugh that escaped her. She squeezed his fingers. “Meyun, don’t worry. What you saw was just one of the many possibilities that could happen if I ever go there. Trust me, I’d see it coming, and take a completely different cab. I have no intention of dying anytime soon.”
He squeezed her fingers in his, holding her gaze intensely. “Don’t you ever die, you hear me?”
That made her roll her eyes. “Meyun, everybody dies. Even the Feyori, though it takes them a few thousand years.” She started to say more, but honesty prompted her to tilt her head and amend, “Well, everyone except for the Immortal, but technically she can be killed. She just keeps popping back to life afterward. Which is why the Feyori think she’s so dangerous, and why they want her destroyed somehow.”
Brow creasing, Meyun gave her a confused frown. “You…We’ve had this conversation before. Or…will have had it…? In the Vault of Time—Ia, what is the Vault of Time? And what is it doing here on Earth, if it’s the creation of…of some sort of Feyori?”
“Don’t ask—don’t,” she asserted. “Don’t go there, don’t try to get inside, don’t even think about it. Just put it from your mind. As much as having you around would be a severe distraction and a danger to my goals, having the Vault’s owner take an interest in anyone even remotely connected to me would be an outright disaster.”
“Why? Would she try to stop you?”
Ia shook her head. “Worse. She’d try to help.”
He started to speak, then sighed. “Right…because some kinds of help end up being far worse than the problem at hand, don’t they? Is that why you don’t want me at your side? You think I’d mess things up for you?”
Instinct warned her this was one of those questions. One she had to answer carefully. Ia opted for honesty, because that was the one course least likely to stab her in the back, later. “I think…I know you’d want to help me. I think you could actually be helpful. But…”
“There is no way that our paths will cross in the next few years,” Ia told him bluntly. “Even if you weren’t such a huge distraction, our orders will keep us apart. You’re headed to the Terran–Tlassian Border for the next six months, whereas I’m headed off to flight school for the next three, then being shipped out to the Blockade. We won’t get within four hundred lightyears of each other, Meyun,” she told him. “Not unless the probabilities shift you to that seventeen percent chance that you’ll wind up on Blockade for your second tour of duty. But even then, we won’t be on the same patrol routes. Trying to keep something going between us would be an exercise in futility and frustration. A distraction for both of us.”
He looked down and away at that. With her fingers tucked into his, she could sense the press of the thoughts racing silently through his head. She did not pry, though she could sense him coming to some sort of conclusion, and the resolve backing it. When he lifted his head again, she met his gaze steadily, gripping his hands.
“Fine. We’ll part ways, as we originally planned. But not without a cost,” he warned her. Dropping her hands as he rose from his knees, he pushed her back onto the bed. “I’ve never considered myself as a bastard type before now, but I plan on making damn sure you will regret walking away from me.”
Trust me, I already do, Ia promised him silently, arms already lifting to help bring him back down to her.