At the helm of my lifeboat, I release from the beacon and pivot to scan the area. Reaching overhead, I flip the radio on. “Claire, you there?”
“I’m here. What the fuck are you doing?”
Her voice is a blast of static and anger. I hear the soldier in her, not the nav beacon tuner. Hard to believe what we once were and what we are now.
“Listen closely,” I say. I’m watching the Reaper approach. It’s still heading for the beacon. I engage the thrust and race out toward it. “I want you to head toward the nearest big asteroid you can find. Grab hold of it with the pinchers and shut your boat down. Wait for the navy. Stay off the radio. Do you read?”
“What’re you doing?” Claire asks. And I realize that’s not static behind her voice. It’s Cricket. Hissing and growling.
“Go now,” I tell her. “Before any more of the Ryph get here. Please. Just go.”
Tears stream down my cheeks at the thought of anything happening to her or Cricket. The attack ship adjusts course toward the lifeboats. I don’t have the thrusters or control jets to outmaneuver it. I don’t have any weapon other than my desperation. I keep a steady hand on the control stick, ready to dodge incoming fire, but the enemy ship knows I’m no threat. It just races onward. I race to intercept. On my scanner, I can see that Claire has her boat going at full tilt as well. She’s heading toward the rocks. A good soldier. Can see there’s no stopping me, and that this isn’t going to be a holo where the hero and the girl profess their love while the bad guys wait patiently to make it a climactic finale. This isn’t going to be a holo where anyone has time to sit, frozen in place. This isn’t even going to be a holo with a hero. Just two people in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I adjust course to make it look like I’m trying to slide by the Reaper and escape. It’s all about giving Claire time. An extra target. I know what the Ryph are here to do; I’ve been on these runs from the other side. They’ll take out one of the beacons and rig the other to blow. Or rig them both to blow. But they’ll hold at least one so they control this airspace. It’s the same tactic used in the old wars when bridges were both lusted after and stringed with blast charges. No way through this sector without a beacon. The Ryph must’ve cracked our GWB frequency, just like we cracked theirs. I’m thinking like a soldier, piloting like a flyboy, forming tactics like a man in love.
The Reaper races my way. No shots fired yet. Claire is halfway to the asteroid field. Moments before we pass, I throw my ship to the side, attempting to ram the Reaper. The Ryph pilot is fast; he flits to the side and out of the way, but I’m spinning sideways, rotating as I barrel forward, and I extend the sampling arm tucked under the nose of the boat, reaching out, making my craft as long as possible, just want to touch, to make contact at full speed, to let this beast know that I pose a threat, for him to concentrate on me—
There’s a clang as the sampling arm hits the Reaper’s trailing wing. A racket. I slam against the side canopy, the crappy NASA restraints giving way, not meant for this. Stars flash in my vision. And then a hiss. An alarm as the cabin begins to lose pressure. Cold leaks in. A hull rupture. The constellations become a blur as the lifeboat spins in space, and I have one brief moment of lucidity left in which to wonder if I did more damage to my enemy than to myself. Just that angry hope before a bulkhead gives way in my lifeboat, and all that pressurized air rushes out, taking me with it.
As I cartwheel through the ruptured hull and out among the lonely and quiet stars, my lungs begin to burn. They say you can survive in the cold vacuum of space for nearly a minute if you hold your breath. Icy tears glaze my vision, and I wonder why anyone would even bother.
• 5 •
Every morning is an afterlife. Every evening, I die anew in the trenches amid nightmares of artillery finding their target. To wake each morning is a surprise. To rise a miracle. To breathe another breath some gift foisted upon me and beyond my control.
My eyes flutter open and settle on an old man standing before a lighthouse, a great wave crashing all around him. I know what that feels like. The man seems unaware of what’s coming, but I think maybe he knows. I think maybe he’s numb to it all. I don’t think that’s ignorance on his bearded and weathered face; I believe that’s resignation.
A Ryph Lord moves before me and blocks the view of the picture. They say I’m one of the few who have ever been this close to a Lord and lived to tell the tale. Here I am again. Life appears to be full of coincidences like this, until you learn how it all pieces together.
“You’re awake,” someone says.
I recognize the voice. It’s Rocky, the stone I wear around my neck. I try to lift my arms to touch the rock on its lanyard, this little piece of asteroid that I found among the debris of the wrecked cargo, but my arms are bound. I look down at my wrists, seized together and tied to my knees, which are bound together as well. I can’t move.
The Ryph Lord hovers over me. My throat burns, maybe from dying out there among the stars. I try to focus my thoughts on Claire and Cricket, knowing I should remember something, a vision coalescing of them heading for safety, but I can’t remember if they made it. All I care about in that moment is whether they’re alive. I want my navy to come and rescue them. I lock down on this thought, trying to ignore the voices of my insanity. I try to see my love and my beloved animal safe and in some faraway place, some place where war will never reach—
“Yo, asshole, I’m talking to you.”
“Shaddup, Rocky.”
My voice is a rasp. I should be dead. I wish I were dead. I should’ve been dead a thousand times over. Unable to move, I feel my heart racing, despite my head being so close to the GWB. So it’s not the sitting still that calms; it’s the sitting still voluntarily. A soul can’t be pinned and made to heal. It has to be talked into stillness and quietude. It has to want it.
“I’d say this is rather important,” Rocky says. His voice seems to float up from my necklace, but I know it’s all in my head. I hear voices in my dreams. Don’t we all? Our brains can fool us. Mine makes a fool out of me.
The Ryph Lord shifts his great bulk from one leg to the other. The Ryph are bipedal, like all the sentient races we know, with skin like a shark’s beneath their flight and combat suits. A face split by a vertical rift reveals rows of sharp teeth. Eyes lie to either side, and they bore into my skull. Two three-clawed hands are balled into fists. Muscles like steel. The biggest and baddest of the Ryph, Lords are never taken alive, rarely taken whole. I don’t understand what this one is waiting for. Kill me, already. Or untie me so I can do it myself.
“Stop ignoring me,” my pet rock says.
“Not now, Rocky.”
“Yeah right, not now. Like I’m happy with any of this. I need this guy looking at us like I needed the hole you put in my head. And hey, what was up with that?”
“You aren’t real.”
“Let’s table that. This guy has a favor he wants to ask. So open your ears and give a listen. Give a listen, and I’ll shut up.”
I stare at the Ryph Lord. My mind is clearing a little. It occurs to me that every moment delayed like this is good for Claire, Cricket, and the navy. Maybe my death can be put off for a moment or two. Maybe these last few minutes can serve some larger purpose.