The only thing harder than being a psychic is loving one.

— attributed to Ryland LeSarte, circa 4853 PD

 

5 Octem, 5249 PD

“Don’t let go.  Please, don’t let go.”  Her face was half buried against his chest, eyes squeezed shut.  She was shaking from head to foot.  It took a moment and what few shreds of awareness he still had to realize that he was the only thing keeping her upright.

He’d swallowed hard and held her tighter.  He’d looked directly at Rachel.  “We’re leaving.  Now.”

She hadn’t argued.  She’d nodded, in fact, giving tacit approval.  No one had argued.  Who would have wanted to?  No one, especially after Alana had come in and seen what was going on.  The cold rage contorting her expression had been enough to still any tongue.

He sat Lindsay down on the bed, crouched to take off her shoes.  Lindsay sat there with the heels of her hands pressed against her eyes, shoulders shaking silently.  The visions had stopped, but the memories of them hadn’t faded.  She’d be having flashes of them for days, now.

“I want someone to have a look at you,” Brendan murmured, setting her shoes down near the bedside table.  He straightened and took her hands gently, pulling them away from her eyes.  They were bloodshot, red from crying silent tears.

Lindsay shook her head slowly, swallowing hard.  “I’m fine, Brendan.  There’s…there’s nothing anyone can do for any of this.”

He frowned and started to gently ease her back toward the pillows.  She offered no resistance, slowly starting to curl into a ball the closer she got to horizontal.

“You don’t believe me.”

“No, I don’t.”  He drew the covers up over her, leaning down and kissing her temple gently.  His fingers lifted some hair away from her face.  “But I’m not going to fight with you about it tonight.  Get some sleep.”

“You’re not coming to bed?”

“Soon,” he soothed, running his fingers through her hair.  “Your aunt wants to talk to me, I think.”

Lindsay bit her lip.  “Tell her I’m sorry?”

“I think she already knows.”  Brendan kissed her again and turned out the light.  “Sweet dreams, Lin.”

“I hope so,” she whispered, tugging the blanket closer and closing her eyes.  Brendan lingered a few minutes, until her breathing evened out and she dropped off to sleep.  He sighed, watching her for a moment, then turned and made his way back into the living room.

Rachel Farragut eased back into the house from outside as Brendan sank down on the couch that faced the cold fireplace.  Scrap composite logs stood stacked on the grate, ready for the first chill that would stimulate the need for burning them.  Brendan stared at them for a long moment, then looked up toward Rachel.

Rachel smiled weakly at him.  “Is she sleeping, then?”

He nodded and waved for her to sit, glancing toward the window that dominated the front wall.  Alana was outside, hands shoved into the pockets of a thick sweater she’d gotten out of the skimmer, wandering across the front yard, down the gravel drive to the tree line and then back up again.  He tried not to sigh.  “Is she going to stay out there all night?”  He wondered aloud, watching as she passed in front of the window on one peregrination.

Settling into an easy chair with her back to a corner, Rachel shrugged slightly.  “Unless I can talk her into going home, more than likely.”

“I wish she wouldn’t.”

Rachel shook her head.  “She’s worried, Brendan.  Can you blame her?”

He tried not to sigh, slumping back against the cushions.  “I guess not.  There’s no reason to stay, though.  She can’t help.  This wasn’t an external attack.  This…this was something that Lin’s abilities did to her.  Not something Alana can protect her from.”  He frowned.  “There hasn’t been an attack on Lindsay ever.  Why does she hang around so much?”

For a moment, Rachel looked uncomfortable, then stood abruptly.  “Do you have any tea?”

Brendan blinked.  That was random.  Or just a hint I’m being a bad host and that she taught me better than that?  “Yeah, we traded the Potters some tomatoes for some of Madeline’s black mix.  Did you want some?”

“Please.”

He nodded a little and waved for her to sit back down, moving toward the kitchen to put some water on.  “Sometimes I wish Lindsay could figure out how Madeline mixes it up.  Be nice to not have to rely on them to have extra.  We drink it more than water during the cold seasons.”

“You could always put up more cider.”

Brendan made a face.  “Goes hard too fast, and when it goes hard we can’t drink it.”  Trade it, sure, but not drink it, and if we’re putting it up like that, we’re meaning to drink it.

Rachel had followed him into the kitchen.  She leaned in the doorway, watching him to take down the ceramic mugs from their hooks near the stove.  “You seem to handle mulled wine all right.”

“We don’t drink that every night, either.”  He scrubbed a hand over his face.  “Lin was going to try to put together a new blend, but she’s been so exhausted lately, I haven’t asked how it was coming.  I guess the increase in my patrols hasn’t helped that at all.”

“You feel guilty for that.”

“Of course I do,” he sighed.  “I should be here more.  To help.”  To do a lot of things.  But we’re shorthanded in flight operations, and if her visions are real and something’s coming, we need to be vigilant.

Rachel shook her head.  “Brendan, you do your service to the colony the same as everybody else.  You two are entitled to more than what you take.”  She smiled at his surprised look.  “You think I don’t keep track of these things?  Someone’s got to, Brendan, and oft times it’s me.”  She took the small teapot down from the shelf next to the refrigeration unit, the teapot she’d given them because it was Lindsay’s favorite growing up.  “I know that you two don’t go hungry or anything, I’m just saying that you’re allowed to take more than you do.”

He shook his head a little, spooning some of the herbal tea mixture into a metal basket, latching it closed and dropping it into the pot, waiting for the water on the stove to come to a boil.  “I don’t feel right doing it, Rachel.  Don’t ask me why, I just…don’t.  I’ve already been given so much just by being able to live, and to live here.  It doesn’t feel right to take more than what’s already given.”

Rachel smiled wryly, shaking her head again.  “And that’s why we usually have so much left at the end of the season every year.”  She tousled his hair, the smile growing into a grin.  “If you don’t do it for you, do it for my niece.”

He made a face.  “She feels the same way.”

“All the more reason for you to do it and not tell her that you’ve done it, Brendan.”

His jaw fell open and he just stared at her a moment before snapping his mouth shut.  “I can’t do that, Rachel.  I can’t lie to her like that.”

“Learn,” Rachel suggested.

The kettle began to whistle on the stove.  She reached past him to turn off the heat.

Brendan stared at her.  “You want me to learn to lie to your niece?  To my wife?”

“Sounds counter-intuitive, I know.”  She smiled wryly.  “Sometimes, we all need to be lied to, Brendan.  That’s why she’ll never tell the Council what she saw today.  By not telling them, she avoids lying to them, and a lie will be what they need, at least for a little while.  They can’t handle the truth, not yet.”

Maybe not ever, not the whole truth.  A shiver worked its way down his spine.  “She’ll tell you and I, though.”

“I don’t think she’ll tell me all of it.  The worst of them she’ll hold inside, or she’ll tell you about and no one else.  Or she’ll bury them and try to forget, but she’ll never be able to.  That’s how these things work, you know.”  Rachel picked up the kettle and started to fill the teapot.  “She won’t tell me what she saw, but you will.”

His stomach dropped.  It was like coming down out of the sky without inertial dampening.  He felt sick.  “H-how did you know?”

“Because I was watching your eyes.  You got this look when you grabbed her, and I knew.  She had that same look her first time.  She’d never shared them with you before, had she?”

He swallowed, mouth suddenly dry.  “Not like that,” he murmured, leaning heavily against the countertop.  “After the fact, yes—images and snippets she’d managed to freeze in her mind.  I’d be able to see them if I looked, but it was hard.  It was never…never like this.  I just…I don’t know.  I guess I figured her defenses were down and it was like…like touching a stripped cable.  All the energy—all the images and sounds and feelings—just flooded into me.”  He stared at Rachel.  “Who else knows?”

“No one.  No one else was looking at you.  They were all looking at her.  I was the only one watching you, Brendan.  Watching your face, your eyes.  You and I are the only ones who know you saw what she saw in those last few minutes before she snapped out of it.”

Brendan shuddered, groping blindly for a mug.  “It was awful,” he whispered, staring at the floor without seeing it.  He kept seeing flickers of Lindsay’s visions instead—fire and pain and destruction.  “I don’t know how she does it.  How she handles it.”

“By having you,” Rachel said softly, picking up the teapot and her own mug.  She started to move back into the living room.  Brendan followed more slowly, almost in a daze, falling onto the cushions of their wooden couch, cradling his empty mug in both hands.

“You want me to tell you what she—what I—saw, don’t you?”

Rachel smiled wryly, setting the teapot down on a folded towel on the table between them.  “That was the idea, Brendan.  You tell me what you saw when you touched her so it’s not a burden that you two are shouldering alone.”

He managed to laugh, the sound tinged with bitterness as he leaned forward, setting his mug down on the table and resting his elbows on his knees.  “It wasn’t pleasant.  Death was…well.  Rampant.”  He could see the steel-colored sky in his mind’s eye, the burning wastes, the streaks of fire raining down from the sky.  And then the scene switched as abruptly as it had in Lindsay’s mind, like swapping from one video feed to another.  It was some sort of medical facility, all shadows and clean and chrome…with blood, and pain.  “I don’t know what it all means,” he admitted quietly.  “I’m still trying to make sense of the jumble.  Things kept switching so fast.  Hard to keep track of what’s what.”

“Would it be easier to write it all down?”

“No.”  The thought of writing it down turned his stomach.  “No, I couldn’t do that if I wanted to, which I don’t.”  He glanced toward their bedroom, where Lindsay was sleeping, and exhaled through his teeth.  “I need to be with her tonight, Rachel.  She’s going to need me.”

“I know,” the older woman said softly.  For a moment, the lines around her eyes deepened in the shadows and she seemed tired, indeterminably old.  She turned on a lamp, finally, rather than leaving both of them in the gathering dark.  Outside, still pacing, Alana seemed unphased by the setting sun, though it was now sinking below the mountains behind the house.  “What did you see, Brendan?”

“I saw war,” he whispered.  “War’s coming.  I don’t know if we can stop it this time.”  He licked his lips.  “I don’t know if we can win.”

Rachel filled his mug, eyes on him.  “Brendan.”  Her voice was quiet, but at the same time commanding—the same tone he’d heard time and again as a teenager adjusting to a new life on a new world, the tone that brooked no disrespect, no refusal.  He took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly.  She didn’t need to say more to get him to talk.

“It’s hard.”  He couldn’t meet her gaze.  “It’s hard to describe it.  All I…all I want is to stop seeing it.  The sky was gray, like raw iron just out of the asteroids.  It felt…dead.  The wind burned even though you couldn’t see the sun.  Anything green was covered in ash.  I could see fire raining down in the sky in the distance, like a meteor shower, but closer.  Bigger.  There must have been a city where I was standing, but there was nothing left.  Flayed earth.  Wreckage.  Rubble.  Hot and cold all at the same time.”  I’m rambling.  He scrubbed a hand roughly over his face and took a long swallow of tea, letting the liquid sear his throat and momentarily distract him from the images he’d seen.

“You’re trying to spare me the worst of it.”  It wasn’t a question.  He just nodded.  Rachel shook her head.  “Don’t, Brendan.  You should know by now I’ve seen a lot worse things in forty years than whatever you and Lindsay saw.  I was there when Mimir fell, remember?  When the genocide began.”

He shuddered.  That wasn’t something he wanted to think about, either.  The pride in the voices of his brothers and sisters at arms during that time had been bad enough.  Somewhere, deep down, even though the Corp had taught him that it was all right to hate the Psychean Guard—they were different, they were dangerous, they were too powerful to be allowed to live and congregate as they did—he’d always known what he was being taught was wrong.  He didn’t know how he knew, just that he’d known.  At least he’d been clever enough to hide it.

She patted his knee gently.  “Don’t try to spare me, Brendan.  Just tell me what you saw.  Was it here?”

His mouth was dry.  “I don’t know.  I couldn’t tell, really.  If it was, it wasn’t Nova Spexi…probably Danse Point, if it was here.”  Danse Point stood on a promontory that faced the eastern shore of Oceania, two thousand miles and then some away across the water from Nova Spexi.  It overlooked a massive natural harbor where most of the seagoing ships on E-557 were built.  “I don’t think it was here,” he admitted quietly.  “I think it was New Earth.  Maybe Yurvicov.  Was hard to tell.  Everything was just…gone.”  He swallowed.  “I’ve seen what radiation does to people.  That’s what the bodies looked like.  And others…like melted glass.”  He shivered, squeezing his eyes shut and rubbing them, hard.  “One was more than half-cybered.  The cybernetic parts…they were still trying to move.  Whatever happened hadn’t fried the circuits completely.  It…didn’t realize the rest of it was dead.  Or maybe it wasn’t.  I just…I don’t know.”  He smiled weakly at Rachel.  “I don’t know how she could stomach it.  I wanted to puke.”

Rachel matched his smile, though hers was more sad than his.  “She saw too much before I got her here.  She’s not as innocent as most people seem to think she is, unfortunately.”

Brendan stared at her for a long moment, then looked away, back toward the window.  “I saw a return of the Cullings, too.”

The temperature in the room felt like it dropped a few degrees.  While they were called the Cullings, the movement of centuries past was so much more than that.  The attack on Mimir had been considered a prelude to more Cullings—when psychics would be killed, or captured and then subjected to experimentation by scientists from various congloms, experimentation that even animals wouldn’t be subjected to.  But a second round of the Cullings hadn’t come.  Not yet.  Not yet, but they were still coming, based on the vision Lindsay and Brendan had shared.

“There has to be something we can do,” he said quietly, watching Alana outside.  She was standing in the middle of the yard, staring up at the rising moon.  Abel, they called it.  Brendan had asked why, once, and been told a story from one of the Books.  It hadn’t made much sense, but then again, some of the Old Earth religions just didn’t—not to him, anyway.  It had occurred to him, though, that some of the congloms back at New Earth could stand to read some of the so-called morality tales that came out of the Books.

“Was there anything else?”

Brendan shook his head slightly.  “I caught…I caught the end of something when I first grabbed her.  Landers splashing down off the coast, I think.  But I couldn’t tell when it was happening.  But it was off the coast here.  That much I’m certain of.  On Cape Royale, in the shallows.  But that’s all.”

“Nothing to tell you what season it might have been, then?”

He shook his head.  “Nothing.  It could be tomorrow.  It could be ten months or ten years from now.  I just…don’t know.  Maybe she saw more than I did, but I…”  His voice trailed away.  He gulped down some more tea.  “I can’t ask her, Rachel.  We can’t ask her.  Not yet.  Not so soon.”

Rachel’s expression hardened, though there was pain in her eyes.  “She knows that’s her lot in life, Brendan.  It’s the fate that chose her.”

“Give it a few days, Rachel.  Please?”  He looked at her with a pleading gaze, pressing his lips together.  “Let her get a night’s rest without a nightmare about it.  It’s going to be bad tonight.  I already know it’s going to be bad.  It’s going to take a lot out of both of us to get through it.”  He glanced back toward the window.  “She doesn’t need Alana hanging around tonight, either.”

Rachel leaned back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other.  “That was abrupt.  Don’t you mean that you don’t need Alana hanging around tonight?”

“When Alana’s mad at me—and she is tonight, and we both know that—she seethes.  Lin can’t tune out her seething for some reason.  I don’t have any explanations for it, either.  For someone who keeps her thoughts held in so tightly, she sure feels loudly.”

“Mm.”  Rachel glanced toward the window.  Alana was moving again, walking another slow circle of the yard.  “I’ll talk to her.”  She grinned a little.  “Maybe I’ll tell her that I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

Brendan snorted.  “She won’t buy it, Rachel.”

“You never know, Brendan.”  Rachel took a sip of tea, watching the moonrise.  She was quiet for a few moments, clearly thinking, mulling over something.  “You need to teach those kids like the war starts tomorrow.”

“My students?”  He frowned, leaning back.  “They’ll wonder why I’ve suddenly become such a bastard.”  They’re not ready for a war.  I don’t know if any of them could ever be ready for a war.  That’s…that’s never been what we’ve expected here.  We thought that the congloms would leave us alone.  All these kids ever needed to know how to do was chase off a lander or two.  He thought of Tomasi, so much more serious about her job than her fellows.  They needed more like her, but he suspected there just weren’t enough on-planet, not like her.  I’d give a lot to have a half dozen like her.  I wonder how many kids couldn’t take the stress of waiting to find out if they could handle an implant walked away instead of sticking it out, living with the nerves for a few weeks.  Maybe more of them would’ve been like the girl by the end of the ordeal.  “Marshal Windsor will ask questions.  I’m not sure I could come up with a good answer and not get Lindsay hauled back to the Council chambers for a repeat of today.”  He set his jaw.  “I’m not going to let a repeat of today happen, Rachel.  And neither are you.”

She didn’t argue, just took a sip of tea.  “I’ll deal with Adam.”

Did she just call Field Marshal Windsor Adam?  Never in his career had Brendan ever heardWindsor referred to by his given name.  The man was his uniform, and you couldn’t call him anything but ‘sir’ or ‘Marshal’ when he was in that uniform.  It took a moment for him to get his bearings again, to work through the shock.  “How?”  He blurted.

She smiled wistfully, tilting her head toward Brendan.  “Thirty years of friendship creates a bond, Brendan.  I’ll deal with him the way only I can deal with him.”

Thirty years.  That means…  “You knew him on Mimir.”  Rachel had grown up on Mimir, the now-dead home of the Psychean Guard.  He’d known that Marshal Windsor had been from the world as well, but he’d never dreamed that they’d known each other.  He’d never seen any sign of friendship, any warmth pass between them.

But the man is the uniform.  Maybe it’s all image.  He doesn’t want anyone to see the softer parts, if they actually exist.  The vulnerable parts.

“I did.”  Rachel drew one knee up against her chest, smiling wryly at Brendan.  “You didn’t think that a nineteen year old girl escaped from that hell alone, did you?”

Brendan just stared at her.  He knew which hell she was talking about—he’d heard stories, seen pictures of what the bombings on Mimir had been like.  He knew Rachel had been there when it happened.  “Is that why he ended up here, instead of staying in N-E space?”

Rachel smiled sadly.  “Can’t a girl keep a few secrets, Brendan?”

He blushed, looking down into his mug.  “Sorry, Rachel.”

“It’s all right.”  She swallowed the last of her tea and set the mug down on the table, standing.  She tousled his short-cropped black hair as she passed.  “Try to get some sleep tonight, all right?  Tomorrow you start teaching those kids about war.”

“Yeah,” he said softly.  “G’night, Rachel.”

“Good night, Brendan.”

He watched her through the window, from the couch, as she walked outside and threw her arm around Alana’s shoulders.  She started to draw the other woman down the drive, toward the trees and the winding roadway that led toward Rachel’s cottage and Alana’s bungalow.  He watched them until they disappeared into the trees, then cleaned up, rinsed the teapot and the mugs and racked them.  He checked to make sure everything was locked up and went to bed, finding Lindsay mercifully in the same position he left her in, fast asleep.

No dreams.  Not yet.  He got undressed and slid into bed with her, wrapping his arms around her and drawing her against his chest. She sighed in her sleep, relaxing a fraction more. He smiled and kissed her gently, then settled in.  He had no confidence that they’d sleep through the night.  After she had visions, they almost never did.  At the same time, he still would never have chosen a different life.  Not for a minute.

The fifth of Octem 5249 post-Diaspora seemed like the beginning of some kind of end for some of us.  Would we survive to see another year?  Would anyone?  Or would humanity be dead, finally slain by its own hand?  We just didn’t know.  In the end, I’m not sure any of us really wanted to.

— Kara Grace-Forester, member of the Rose Council (5245-5250)

 

5 Octem, 5249 PD

“Brendan!”  She sprang up from the couch in their small living room as soon as he opened the door.  Lindsay Farragut filled his arms and buried her face in his chest even as he stumbled fully inside the house.

“Lin, what’s going on?”

“The Council wants to talk,” she said, her voice muffled against his shoulder.  “They said they needed me to come.  Aunt Rachel couldn’t convince them it wasn’t a good idea.”

He exhaled slowly, lacing his fingers through her honey-blonde hair, one arm sliding around her small waist and drawing her tightly against him.  “Then you’ll have to go, Lin.  They’re not going to take no for an answer if the rest of them have made up their mind about it.  Maybe it’s just a vote or something.”

“It’s not a vote and you know it.”

Let me have my hope, Lin.  “I can hope, Lin.  We can hope.”

She laughed weakly into his chest.  “Sometimes it’s all we’ve got, right?”

“Right.”  He smoothed her hair and slowly took a step back, rocking against his heel and looking down at her.  “You going to be okay?”

Lindsay glanced toward the door, which stood slightly ajar.  Alana had the good grace to wait in the skimmer.  “Were there lots of people around while you were coming back from base?”

He considered her question for a moment, brow furrowing.  “Enough you’ll get a migraine, I think.”  Or worse, possibly.

She nodded.  “That answers that question.  You’ll stay with me, right?”

Leaning down, he kissed her forehead gently.  “They’ll have to tranquilize me to get me away from you.”

“Good.”  She squeezed one of his hands, then disappeared deeper into the house.  He shut the door and sank down in an easy chair for a few long moments, waiting and trying not to think of the possible outcomes of this meeting with the Rose Council.

I hope they don’t know.  God, I hope they don’t know.  He closed his eyes, leaning back in the chair, unbuttoning his jacket slowly.  He dug his notes out of his pocket and tossed them on the table.  His communications link joined them a minute later, clattering and sliding into the pile of notes.  He wouldn’t need those until tomorrow at the earliest.

Brendan lingered in the chair for a moment, then stretched, stood up, and headed back into the bedroom where Lindsay was changing her clothes.  He left his link on the table with his notes.

“Never seen you so spooked about a Council meeting, Lin.”  He slid his arms around her waist and kissed her neck gently, interrupting her in the process of changing her shirt.  She exhaled a sigh, leaning back into his chest.

“They’ll ask what I’ve been seeing, Brendan,” she murmured softly.  “And by god, they don’t want to know what I’ve been seeing.  Not really.”  She nuzzled his cheek and finished pulling her shirt on, sighing.

“You’re the Oracle, Lin.  They value your gift.”

“It’s a curse, Brendan, not a gift.”  She turned toward him, cupping his face between her palms.  “It’s a curse I didn’t do anything to deserve and never asked for and god knows, I wish I could be rid of it sometimes.”

“But only sometimes.”  He brushed some hair back from her face and smiled at her gently.  “Only sometimes, Lin.  And then you think about all the good you’ve done, and how many people look to you, need you to be there to reassure and guide them…”

She hugged him, then, burying her face in his neck.  “Why do you have to be right about this all the time, Brendan?”

He smiled wryly.  “Something about being wrong almost getting me killed, I guess.”  He kissed her temple, rubbing her back for a moment before letting go.  “You shouldn’t keep them waiting.  Last thing any of us need is for the Council to be ornery when we get there.”

“Not caring about that all that much comes to mind,” she admitted ruefully, stepping away from him.  She went to the dresser and picked up the small case that contained her blackout glasses, rondelles of blackened glass that would protect her from visual stimulate—from seeing anything that could spark another set of visions.  “What are you making for dinner?”

He smiled wryly.  “I’ll figure that out after we see how fried your nerves are at the end of this meeting.  Something soothing.”

She shook her head, sighing softly as she slid the glasses into place and shrugged into a hooded sweatshirt.  “Are we walking?”

“No.  Alana’s waiting in the skimmer.”

She winced as she drew up the hood, tucking her hair back into its shadows.  “You didn’t tell me that.”

“You didn’t ask, sweetheart.”  He kissed her temple and then locked an arm around her shoulders.  “Come on.  She hasn’t been waiting that long.”

“She’ll be angry with you.  I hate it when she’s angry at you.  She seethes and I can’t…I just can’t tune it out.”

“We could walk,” he offered.  “It’s not that far.”  She shook her head quickly.

“No.  You’re right, we’ve kept them waiting long enough.  She’s got the skimmer, we might as well use it.  She’d follow us all the way down anyway.  Why prolong the suffering?”  She managed to smile.  He sighed and gave her a squeeze.

“I’m sorry, Lin.”

She shook her head.  “Don’t be.  You can’t help the way she feels.”

“She still doesn’t approve of me, does she?”

“Brendan, she wouldn’t approve of anyone.  Don’t delude yourself into thinking that it’s you in specific she doesn’t approve of.”  Lindsay smiled up at him as they headed out the door.  Brendan paused to lock up and set the perimeter alarms.  Lindsay shook her head, continuing toward the skimmer, where Alana was waiting, studying the nails of the hand that was nothing but flesh.  “You act like someone’s going to actually try to do something to our house, Brendan.”

He shook his head.  “Force of habit, one I’m really not keen on breaking.  Besides, you never know what those cadets of mine might do.”  He climbed into the skimmer with the pair of women.

“What took so long?”  Alana’s voice was flat, her gaze lingering on Brendan for a moment, even though the question was clearly directed at Lindsay.

“I had to change my clothes,” Lindsay said quietly.  One hand found Brendan’s and squeezed as she leaned against him, pressing her face against the side of his neck.  Her voice came slightly muffled.  “Drive fast, Alana.  I think the Council would appreciate me in a coherent state by the time we get there.”

Alana nodded.  “Yes, ma’am.”  Lindsay was the only one that rated a ‘ma’am’ anymore from Alana.  Even Rachel Farragut, who’d raised Lindsay, didn’t rate a ‘ma’am’ anymore.

Brendan glanced off toward their right, not looking at Alana as he squeezed Lindsay’s hand back.  He hoped that there would be fewer people on the streets now than there had been half an hour before.  For her sake.

●   ●   ●

            Local stone had built the building that housed the government of E-557—housed the Rose Council and the offices of the Guardians, the colony’s military commanders.  It was bluish gray, flaked smooth, but still clearly natural.  Like most of the architecture on E-557, it looked like it belonged.  It all felt like it belonged.  It must have had something to do with the Foundation’s assertion that their colony on E-557 should be sustainable—that this world would not follow others down the dark path that had claimed Old Earth, Telluria, and now was slowly claiming New Earth and a few surrounding worlds that humanity had overtaken.  This world would survive.  Somehow.

Despite the speed at which Alana had gotten them through, Lindsay was shivering and looked tired by the time they arrived at the steps of the building.  There had been more, not fewer people in the streets by the time they’d passed through, and she hadn’t been able to fully block the wash of impressions and thoughts from them all.  Not everyone lived with a psychic.  Not everyone knew how to keep their thoughts to themselves.

Brendan helped her out of the skimmer, ignoring the dark looks Alana gave him.  Lindsay pressed her lips together in a tight line, so hard her lips had turned nearly white.  Her fingers tangled in his as she steadied.  “I don’t know that I can do this, Brendan.”

He drew her tightly against his side, his arm firmly and protectively locked around her shoulders.  “Do you want to go home?”

She shuddered and shook her head quickly, almost convulsively.  “No.  This meeting will probably run into the night.  Fewer people out and about when we go home, for sure.”

I hope so.  He gave her a squeeze and moved toward the doors.  Alana brought up the rear, keeping a wary eye on the surroundings.  He still marveled, sometimes, at the woman’s paranoia.  No one was coming to E-557 to hurt Lindsay, and no one already here was going to harm a hair on her head knowingly.  But there was no convincing Alana of that.  He’d tried, and failed.

The corridors were quiet, and they made their way from the large foyer toward the centermost room of the building, down the short flight of steps to the doors to the council’s meeting chamber.  The room was circular, sunk underground—“nestled in the bosom of the earth,” was what one of the early colonists had said of it.  In truth, about half the room was actually underground and the tiered seating for most of the members of the Rose Council had them sitting at ground level or higher.  The chamber’s floor, the circular expanse ten feet wide with its entries marked with the four stations of a compass, however, was underground.  It was said that the stone mosaic that created a compass rose across the floor of the chamber had taken five years to finish—and that the early meetings of the Rose Council had taken place at the Mulcahey farm ten miles away.

Urban legends in a barely urban landscape.

Alana held the door for Lindsay and Brendan.  Lindsay took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

The full Council was in attendance, including the two of the three Guardians.  Lindsay slowly pushed back her hood.

The grandmotherly Amelda Watson smiled, though Lindsay’s eyes were still covered.  Watson was from old, old Pyschean Guard stock, though she’d been born on E-557.  Born at a time when there hadn’t been open war amongst the congloms in living memory.  “We’re glad you could come, Oracle.”

Lindsay flinched at the title.  She cleared her throat softly quietly and nodded a little in Watson’s direction.  “Thank you, Sister.  Pray it always be so.”

It was an old ritual.  Brendan had heard it a few times before, when he’d accompanied Lindsay to Council meetings.  She didn’t come often, even though she held one of the permanent seats on the Council by virtue of her gift—or despite her gift.

Lindsay climbed the few steps and found her seat, sitting down slowly.  Brendan lingered near the steps, his existence unacknowledged—also part of that old ritual.  He and Lindsay had been together for nearly seven years, but still he was all but invisible to the Rose Council.  Only Rachel Farragut and the Guardians acknowledged his presence.

The door clicked shut behind him.  Alana hadn’t entered the chambers, like he had.  She almost never did.  That was fine with him.

Let her seethe outside and leave Lindsay in peace.  He closed his eyes as he leaned against the wall that separated the entryway from the seats, glancing upward toward Lindsay.  She still hadn’t removed her glasses.

Is she afraid of what she’ll see?

“The Rose Council has requested me, and so I’ve come,” Lindsay said simply, voice quiet.  She looked delicate and demure, sitting behind the long, curved table in her seat next to the more imposing Marshal Aidan Church, one of the Guardians.

The big, dark skinned man smiled at her, and the warmth of his smile bled into his voice.  “Your seat stands empty too often, Oracle.  You’re often missed in these halls.”

She managed to smile.  “Thank you for saying so,MarshalChurch.  I wish it wasn’t so painful to get here.”

Across the room, next to the Speaker’s chair, Kara Grace-Forester shook her head slowly.  “I’m sorry it’s gotten more difficult rather than easier these past few months, Lindsay.”  Some of the other consuls looked askance at the woman, a statuesque beauty at just past thirty, questioning the familiarity of address.  Kara didn’t seem to notice, or care.

It was just too damned hard to be formal with a woman you fished out of millponds when you were twelve.  Never mind having been witness to her Bonding.

Lindsay shook her head again.  “It is what it is, Kara.”  She smiled weakly.  “Let’s get to business, shall we?”

The Speaker, Sergei Petremoore, nodded.  “As well we should.  Consul Farragut told us something that the rest of us felt we should discuss further in your presence.  You have been Seeing again, correct?”

Lindsay winced again, but nodded.  “They come strongly and I have no control when they do.  That’s why the Council hasn’t seen me in two months.  I can’t go out in the street without running the risk of being overwhelmed.”

“Hence the glasses today, then?”

She nodded.  “Yes, Speaker.  I had assumed you’d appreciate coherence rather than the potential alternatives.”

He smiled wryly.  “Rightly so.  Consul Farragut also mentioned that you had seen something in particular.”

Lindsay tilted her head slightly.  “I’ve seen a lot of things, Speaker.  If any of it was important, I would have appeared before now to tell you about it.”

What’s he playing at?  Brendan frowned slightly.  There had been more than a few sleepless nights that summer, finding them huddled in the starlight streaming through their back window, the one that faced the woodlands and the valley, him cradling her in his arms.  Many, many sleepless nights with her sobbing bitter tears, cursing the gift she couldn’t seem to control anymore, trying to convince themselves that what she’d seen were only nightmares, nothing more.  Her ability to control her gift hadn’t been this bad since before they’d met.  She didn’t understand what was happening or what it meant.  Rachel hadn’t been able to figure it out, either.  Brendan was at a loss.  And Alana…

If Alana had any theories, she was keeping them to herself.

The Speaker nodded again, leaning forward slightly and steepling his fingers.  “One vision in particular is of interest today, Oracle.  We’ve had some intelligence reports reach us through unconventional channels, and…”  He let his voice trail away as he considered his words.  Finally, he shrugged and said simply, “We think your parents are still alive.”

All the color drained from Lindsay’s face.

Oh bloody hell.  Brendan barely stopped himself from reaching up and taking her hand.  He didn’t do it.  He stayed invisible, outside of their notice.  A silent observer.  A sentinel.

Her voice was small, like a child’s, but somehow flat, devoid of emotion.  “Where?”

“That’s still a little sketchy, I’m afraid.”  The Speaker glanced toward D’Arcy Morgause.

D’Arcy cleared his throat.  “Preliminaries have them in the hands of the larger congloms in N-E space.  We’re sorting through other data to confirm our suspicions as to which of the two they are in actuality.”

“If my aunt has told you what I saw, then you already know who has them.”  There was a slight tremor, but more steel in her voice, now, less child-like.  She was shaking off the initial shock of the news quickly, then.

A shiver worked its way down Brendan’s spine.  He knew one of those places.  After all, he’d told her what it was.

But we didn’t think that one was real.  We were sure that one was a dream.  A nightmare.  A dream.  Both all at once.  They were alive, but somehow out of reach, and in pain.  And in those places…  He suppressed another shiver.  How could there be hope?

Rachel Farragut wasn’t looking anywhere but her hands.  D’Arcy cleared his throat.  “You’re certain of the places you saw?”

“I’m not as certain about Eurydice Compact.  But I’m very certain about Chinasia Corp.  Commander Cho was able to confirm that what I saw was, in fact, a Chinasia Corp facility.”  She licked her lips, hesitating a moment.  “We thought it was a nightmare.  Something that I’d gleaned from his mind at some point, from his nightmares.  He’d been there, Consul Morgause.”

Marshal Windsor leaned forward.  “How long ago?”

Lindsay bit her lip.  “Almost twelve years ago.  Before he crashed here.”

Windsorglanced toward the shadows that hid Brendan.  “That was right before he crashed here.”

“Yes.”  Lindsay took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.  Her voice had normalized, now, steadied despite the news she’d been given.  “Yes, it was.  But he never saw anyone there.”

“Which is why you thought it was a nightmare?”

She nodded slowly.  “Yes, sir.”  It was hard to not call Adam Windsor ‘sir’ when he got that tone of voice.  The man commanded respect.  Most of the Guardians did.  They had to.  But it was the kind of respect that they earned, and easily.  They were good at what they did, and they gave a damn.  About everyone.  They had to do that, too.

Windsorglanced toward D’Arcy.  “What do your preliminaries say to that, Oh Great Spymaster?”

D’Arcy flinched at the title more than the sarcasm that laced Windsor’s voice.  It was entirely possible he hadn’t noticed the latter.  “Preliminaries point to Chinasia more solidly than they point to Eurydice.”

Brendan felt his heart sinking.  She’ll never see either of them again.

Rachel looked sharply at him.  He winced.  He was thinking too loudly again.  He withdrew deeper into the shadows by the door and took a slow, deep breath, finding calm and his center—and shoring up mental defenses that he’d been letting flag.

As he worked on those defenses, he prayed that Lindsay wouldn’t need him to get through the rest of the conversation.

“Is there anything the Foundation can do?”  Of course, Lindsay knew the answer to the question before she ever asked it.  There wasn’t anything the Foundation could do.  The Foundation had withdrawn from New Earth space, from that sphere.  They only contact they had with New Earth and its satellite settlements, the conglomerates of New Earth, was mostly to sell them food.  Limited resources, too, but mostly food.  And to quietly smuggle any surviving members of the Psychean Guard still in hiding to E-557 where they could be safe.

Safe.  Once upon a time, the Psychean Guard had been considered the only ‘safe’ place for a psychic.  Now, being Guard and being back in New Earth space would get you killed, or kidnapped, or any number of worse potential outcomes, despite the supposed protections that the New Earth Commonwealth claimed to enforce.  Brendan had little doubt that they did try to enforce their own laws, but he suspected that law enforcement was stymied by the congloms and other factions.

“From where our agents are?  No.  From here…”  D’Arcy looked toward the Speaker, then the Guardians, then back to the Speaker.  “We’ll have to see what we can come up with.  We can’t do anything until we can confirm locations, though.  That’ll take at least another week.  Maybe two.”

Rachel Farragut finally cleared her throat, forestalling comment by Kara and another consul, Mugabe Zenak.  “That’s unacceptable, D’Arcy,” she said quietly, though her tone brooked no argument.  “And you know all too well that’s unacceptable.”

“We understand that she’s your sister, Consul Farragut. But that doesn’t mean that her rescue—”

“Bullocks, I’m not talking about her rescue, Consul Arigato.  If America and Grant have been captured by any of the congloms—but especially one of the Big Five—they pose a strategic threat to all of us.  To all of us.  To this world.  To the colony.  To everything that the Foundation set out to do when they sent the first settlers here.  Hell, to everything the Foundation thought and believed four hundred years ago when they came up with this idea.  They know things, Daichi.  We can’t afford to leave them where they are for very long, now that we have leads on them.  We can’t.  It’s an unacceptable risk to take.”

Arigato Daichi leaned back in his chair, dark eyes wide as he stared at her.  Rachel Farragut had never been considered a powerful force on the Rose Council.  She was docile, quiet, listening more than speaking, a mediator.  She wasn’t often assertive like this.  It was a shock.

Brendan smothered a smile.  The Council had just gotten an eyeful and earful of the woman who’d raised him.

The Speaker looked toward Lindsay.  “Do you see why we needed you here, Oracle?”

“Speaker, they’re my parents.  I can’t necessarily trust anything I see regarding them.  I just…I just don’t know.  Whatever I might see could be dreams and imaginings.”  She hadn’t seen her parents since she was very small, since they gave her to Rachel and told her to get her to E-557, where she could be safe—where she could be happy.  America Farragut and Grant Channing had a war to finish, and a people to avenge.  They have been part of the Inner Collegium of the Psychean Guard.  Most of those that had lived through the attacks that killed Mimir had vowed to finish the war they had been sucked into against their will, to avenge their fallen brothers and sisters, even as they ordered most of the survivors to flee, to find their way to the safety of E-557.  To the safety of the colony.

“Your visions are the only ones we know we can trust, Oracle, regardless of whether or not they’re fantasy.”  The Speaker sighed not quite dramatically, shaking his head slowly.  “There has not been a Seer such as you since LeSarte.”

He left it unsaid that her bloodline ran directly back to Ryland LeSarte.  That was an open secret in the colony, though a bare handful of those living on E-557 that were not in the Council’s chambers knew that the tiny, almost frail Lindsay Farragut was, in fact, the rumored, fabled Oracle.  No one off-world knew her identity.

The entire population of E-557 aimed to keep it that way.

Lindsay cleared her throat.  “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the insinuation, Speaker.”

He sighed.  “Then let me be clear.  We need your visions now, Oracle, now more than ever.  We all know that something must be coming.  Whatever it will be has been building since the congloms exhausted themselves in their infighting seventeen years ago, since we blocked their last attempt to colonize Etrasia nine years ago.”  Etrasia was on the other side of the world, rich in mineral deposits, and only lightly settled.  The land was largely pristine.  That was all part of the plan.  The Speaker folded his hands.  “And we need them right now.  If that is something you cannot do, I beg of you, look me in the eyes and tell me that you cannot do this one duty for the people who look to you for guidance and the world that is your home.”

It was guilt, and they all knew it.  They also knew it would work.

Lindsay swallowed hard.  “Pray I don’t enter a fugue state, Speaker.  I can’t control my visions these days.”

“So you’ve said,” the Speaker said softly.  “Consul Oronoko is prepared to record anything that may be said.”

Lindsay nodded slowly and reached up to remove her glasses.  Brendan held his breath.

I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

Me, too, Brendan.  Me too.

He winced at the pain in her thoughts.

She folded the arms of the glasses in and set them down gently in front of her and stared at the smooth wood of the table for a few long moments.  After a few deep breaths, she lifted her gaze, taking in the faces of the rest of the Council, faces she’d seen rarely these past few months.

For a moment, it seemed like all the fear had been for nothing, that everything would be fine.

Of course it didn’t turn out that way.  The visions hit her like an avalanche coming down the slopes ofMountQuartermain.

She went rigid, then started to shake as words tumbled from her lips in a semi-coherent stream describing what flicked past her mind’s eye, her Seer’s eye.  “Sky is purple, sky is purple, mushrooms light the dark sky, no stars, no stars, no stars, dying, dying, they’re all dying, everyone all around me the plains are burning the plains are burning the sky is burning it’s dying it’s dying it’s dying pain, oh the pain, it hurts so much…”

Brendan was already moving.  He dashed around the wall and up the three short steps toward where Lindsay was seated.  Her hands were squeezed into fists, knuckles white.  Her eyes were open wide, but she wasn’t seeing anything but what was going on behind her eyes, nothing but the visions.

“Acid, burning, fire, pain.  Starships and fighters fall like snowflakes, like rain.  Storms and swarms and ow, ow, ow…it hurts, it burns, it consumes…”

I have to snap her out of this.  He knew it in his gut.  He knew it.  Something was going on here, something more than he could tell, could perceive.  He knew something was wrong.  Brendan swung around behind her, grasping her by her arms and starting to haul her up and out of her chair.  She was limp, but somehow heavy, dead weight in his hands.  His arms closed around her and he crushed her against his chest, heart pounding.  Snap out of it, Lin.  Snap out of it.

His world exploded.

We planned for four hundred years to do what we did.  Four hundred years is a very long time to wait, a very long time to plan.  But we did, and we waited, and we planned.  We picked the right moment, and then we left them all behind when we found the right place, the right world.  I pray every day that the sacrifices of yesterday will not be for naught.

— Anthony Shaw, Rose Foundation, circa 5210 PD

5 Octem, 5249 PD

The eighth month on E-557 saw the fading days of summer and saw the second summer harvest, of the early cereals and yet another round of fresh fruits, some of which hadn’t been cultivated anywhere else in the five thousand years since Earth died.  In a few weeks would come autumn, with leaves of trees that once grew on Old Earth changing their colors, dropping to the ground to tumble and roll in the winds that came off the waters and fields or down through the mountain passes.

By the time summer turned fully to autumn, another cadet cadre would have completed basic training and would move on to more specialized, advanced training.  They would become the problem of a mix of full-time and part-time instructors, away from the watchful eyes of their drill sergeants.

They would fill the chairs in the small lecture hall where Brendan Cho was standing, mulling over what he’d make for dinner when he got home.  He only had one more lecture to give before that happened.  This one had gone smoothly enough.

Better than the last one.  No one fell asleep this time.  He scrubbed a hand roughly over his eyes, glancing down at his notes, now strewn haphazardly across the lectern.  Must be finally getting the hang of this. It had only taken several years.

This batch of students wouldn’t be his problem anymore in another six weeks—not that they had been a problem thus far.  It was only week four, though.  Things didn’t tend to get dicey until he started teaching advanced combat maneuvers, which came during week five.  It didn’t help that most of these kids—and most of them were kids, sixteen or seventeen years old—god, that was a lifetime ago—didn’t think they would ever need to use the maneuvers he taught them outside of the simulators.  He glanced at his watch, then eyed the dozen of them that were still loitering, chatting amongst themselves.  They had to be in the simulators in twenty minutes.  Let Rymer yell.  They’ll figure it out soon enough.

“Commander?”

His gaze jerked toward the source of the voice.  She was maybe seventeen—probably barely that, unless he missed his guess—with dark hair cropped short, her eyes large and green.  Her uniform was crisp and starched, unlike that of many of her fellows.  She was serious about what she was doing there, training.  It was a calling for her, and it showed in her appearance, how she carried herself.  She’ll do well, he thought.  She blushed a little.

“I’m glad you think so, sir.  It’d be thanks to you.”

“Pardon?”  He looked at her uniform again.  There it is.  Next to her flight bars was a smaller bar, about the size of his pinkie nail, blue and green enamel swirled together in a distinctive pattern.  Guard stock.  Psychic.

She smiled a little, almost shyly.  “Your simulations, sir.  The ones that you put together?  I wouldn’t have been able to pass basic flight without those.”  She fidgeted a little, scuffing an immaculately polished boot against the stubby carpeting of the lecture hall.  “Truth be told, sir, most of us wouldn’t have made it through basic flight without those simulations.”

And if they’d been born in the congloms, most of them would be dead.  Brendan returned her smile, stacking his notes together and sliding them into the breast pocket of his flight jacket.  “Good.  They’re designed to help you learn.  I’m glad that the hell I lived through did someone some good.”

“Sir?”

He waved off the question.  He kept forgetting that a lot of them were too young to remember when he rode a dropship into the shallows off the coast of Andalusia, what had happened in the minutes and hours after.  Most of the refugees these days were Psychean Guard, after all, when refugees arrived at all.  They weren’t common.  Not anymore.  The Foundation had been here for over one hundred and fifty years now.  Anyone they’d left behind in New Earth territory was long dead.  The Psychean Guard, however, still had thousands of men and women out there, and every so often they trickled to E-557, the only safe haven they had.

Brendan glanced toward the seats.  Most were empty.  Two cadets were deep in conversation up at the far corner.  He looked back at the girl.  “How are you finding Commander Rymer?”

“Permission to speak freely?”

This ought to be good.  “Granted.”

“He’s a hardass, sir, and frankly I already don’t like him.”  She scratched at the back of her neck, then winced, letting her hand drop away.  “When do we get to start having our sim-time under you?”

“Next week.  Implant still tender, Cadet…?”

She looked a little sheepish.  “Tomasi, sir, and yes.  How’d you know?”

“You winced, that’s all.  I remember what it felt like, back when they put mine in.  I wore a bandage over it for as long as I could so I wouldn’t pick at it.”  He shuddered at a memory that floated up unbidden, of one of the boys in his cadre who had scratched himself bloody, almost down to the bone.  That boy had disappeared one day and he’d never seen him again.  “Trainers didn’t like it, but they didn’t say much.  I was near the top of the curve.”

Tomasi smiled again, nodding.  “Got it put in last week.  There was a hold-up.”

Brendan nodded knowingly.  “Testing and background checks.  How are you adjusting?”

She shrugged.  “No buzzing.  I still pick up stray thoughts—I’m sorry, by the way, for reading you like that.  I’m usually not that sensitive to surface thoughts.”  A flicker of fear passed through her eyes.  “…could that be because of the implant?”

“Not to my knowledge.  Last I checked, that wasn’t a side effect to the wetware.  I was probably just thinking too loud.”  He smiled wryly.  “I was distracted.  I don’t usually think that loudly, but it happens sometimes.  Usually when I feel something strongly.”

“I’m glad you did, sir.  Thinking loudly, I mean.  It’s been…rough.  The past few weeks.  I was afraid that they weren’t going to clear me to get the implant.  You can’t be a pilot without it.”

Brendan winced.  Is that what they’re telling them these days, or is that just what they think?  “That’s not entirely true.”  He leaned against the lectern.  “You can still be a pilot without the implant, it’s just harder.  But if your genetics bar you from having wetware implanted, then usually you’re pointed toward other pursuits as a matter of course.  You’ll end up less frustrated with the whole enterprise with an implant.”  He shoved his hands into his pockets.  “Not all of your instructors or your future commanders will have the piloting implants.  Some of us elected to have them removed.”

It took a moment for what he was saying to really sink in.  He tried not to smile as realization began to dawn in her eyes.  Hard to believe, sometimes, that as smart as they all are, they don’t realize that just because something is common doesn’t mean that it’s a universal truth.

“You don’t have an implant, sir?”

He shook his head slightly.  “Not for the last eleven years, no.”

“Eleven years?”  Her eyes widened a little.  “Did you react badly to it?”

He chuckled.  “You could say that.”  He glanced at his watch.  “Don’t you have to be in a simulator pod in five?”

“Shit.”  She slapped a hand over her mouth.  “I’m sorry, sir.”

Brendan stifled more laughter, shaking his head.  “I’ve heard far worse, Cadet.”  Hell, I’ve said far worse.  “Go on, get out of here.”

She snapped off a quick salute and was gone.

“Don’t let that hero worship go to your head, Cho.”

Brendan glanced toward the tall, slender woman standing in the shadows near the back of the lecture hall, shaking his head slightly.  “What do you want, Alana?”

From a distance, Alana Chase might have been beautiful.  Once upon a time, in another world, another life, she might have been beautiful close-up, too.  She wore her white-blonde hair longer since she’d retired from the colony’s small cadre of commandos, and it cascaded down to her shoulders in a line curved slightly inward at her chin.  She hid a lean, athletic form in baggy clothing—better to hide a few extra weapons, she’d once told him with a feral smile.  Her eyes were like blue ice and colder than the poles.  The nearer you got to the woman, the more frightening, almost disturbing she became.  Mostly, it was her eyes, and the cold expression on her face.

Here was a trained killer, as sharp as any razor.

She didn’t straighten from her lean, just watched him as he walked toward the exit.  “She sent me to get you.”

His heart froze in his chest.  “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”  Alana straightened, raking a metal-sheathed hand back through her hair.

I thought Ezra had convinced her to get that removed.  Guess she changed her mind.  Again.  “Then what did she send you for?”

“The Rose Council summoned her.”

“What?”

Alana’s brow furrowed.  “Are you deliberately trying to annoy me, Brendan?”

He barely prevented himself from pinching the bridge of his nose.  I’ve got some kind of headache coming on, I just know it.  “No, I’m trying to understand what you’re telling me.  The Rose Council summoned Lindsay and she sent you to come find me?  Did she say why?”  It has to be about what she’s been seeing.  Rachel must have slipped and told someone.  That must be it.

“She wants you with her.”  Alana shrugged.  “She seemed nervous.  Wouldn’t say why.  She just kept telling me to come get your sorry arse.”

He exhaled.  Great.  Just great.  Because we need this.  They’re just nightmares, right?  Right.  And now the Council’s involved.  “Do you have a skimmer?”

“Ready and waiting.”

He nodded.  “Good.  I’ll leave a note with the commandant about my afternoon lecture.  Then we’ll go.”

“Make it quick.”

His voice dripped sarcasm she’d make him pay for later.  “Yes ma’am.”

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

— Confucius

20 Quadret, 5238 PD

Water rushed up to meet them—that’s what it looked like.  The pilot’s eyes widened as he realized he could see the bottom in those last seconds before they hit.

It’s too shallow.  It’s too shallow.  It’s too shallow…

“Hang on!”  It was his voice shouting, but he wasn’t aware of making the decision to yell at the troops locked into drop harnesses behind him.

Hanging on won’t help them.  We’re all going to die.

The impact was bone-jarring.  The dropship, contrary to design, started to come apart as it cartwheeled through the shallows off the coast of the larger of several continents on the colony world, perhaps twenty miles away from where they were supposed to set down.  To suppress resistance to Corp colonization of the far end of the continent.

Pain seared through his skull as he was jerked out of his seat.  The jacks were stuck.  Damnation, the jacks were stuck and he was going to be stuck in the crumbled ball of metal if he couldn’t get out and the thing was going to explode if he wasn’t careful and I don’t want to die I don’t want to die I don’t want to die…

He fumbled for his combat knife, jerked it from its sheath.  He hacked blindly, knowing instinctively that he had to disconnect himself from the ship that was coming apart.

The screaming behind him had stopped.  He wasn’t sure if it was because the troop compartment had detached or because they were all dead.

We’re all dead anyway.  We’ve failed.  If any of us survive, they’ll kill us.  We’re dead.  The Corp doesn’t accept failure.  We’re dead.

It’s E-557.  I don’t have to go back if they’ll take me.

But why would they take me?

He couldn’t see.  The pain was terrible.  Something ripped and he was flying through the air, tumbling head over feet.  He hit the water shoulders first, skipped like a stone, and landed face-down in the water, coughing and choking.  His whole body hurt.

As he pushed his head out of the water, throwing up water and struggling to remember how to breathe, he heard a familiar sound.

The whine of a gun powering up.

 •   •   •

Her chest heaved.  She pulled the trigger on one of the ones still moving, one of the ones dressed in light powered armor, as he struggled to win free of his drop seat.

Can’t let them live.  They’ll destroy us, if we let them live.  They were sent here to hurt people, to kill.  Can’t let that happen.  She pulled the trigger again, to make sure the soldier was dead.  Then she marched on.

She was catching her breath, but her blood was still pounding in her ears.  It hadn’t been a hard run out here, but a long one, one of a type she’d grown unused to.

I’m getting lazy and sloppy, living here.  I’ll have to fix that.  She’d seen a chunk of debris spin out in this direction.  Behind her, the rest of the shore patrollers were picking through the debris, trying to sort out what happened—trying to sort out what she already knew.

They were coming here to distract us.  She toggled her voice pickup.  “Nova Spexi, this is Chase.  Scramble some fighters to take a good look around and get the satellites pointing everywhere they’re not flying.  Chinasia Corp is trying something.  I’m not sure what, but they’re trying something.”

More than five thousand years and they still couldn’t get the voice transmissions to be as clear as voices were in person.  Distortion was one thing, this was entirely another, she thought with a hint of annoyance.  A wave of static passed over the line before she caught the reply from Nova Spexi, the coastal city that had become the nominal capital of E-557.  “Y’sure, Major?”

“I wouldn’t be making the call if I wasn’t sure, Nova Spexi.  Make the call.”

“Roger that, Major.”

She clicked the transmitter back off and moved forward, spotting a glint of twisted metal.  There it is.

She almost stumbled over the pilot of the craft, a small man, black-haired with the dark parchment colored skin that was a genetic hallmark of the Chinasia Corp conglom.  The back of his neck was a bloody mess and he was retching, shoulders shaking.

She stared at him for half a moment, then powered up the gun.

At her feet, the man—no, a boy dressed as a man—looked up with her, hazel eyes wide, though not just in fear.  He knew what was coming.  Moreover, he knew why it was coming.  She smiled a cold, grim smile.

At least he understands what’s about to happen to him.

Her finger tightened against the trigger.  The boy closed his eyes and prepared himself for an oblivion that never came.