Beacon 23: The Complete Novel (17 page)

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Two hundred and twenty million lives—a settled planet’s worth of young men and women—hurtling through space.

I can feel them.

I touch the button that will kill them.

Wires run to the dome behind me that brings me peace.

Hanging from my neck, a small rock trembles in fear.

“Are you sure about this?” Rocky asks.

He knows I’m not.

There’s a clock on the wall ticking down the minutes. There’s a picture of a lighthouse keeper there as well. He and I stand watch over rocks. We let ships pass without thinking what’s in them.

Deep down, I know that I’ll do nothing. I’ve been here before, with the power to annihilate. I keep these thoughts buried deep so the Ryph don’t know. One of the Lords stands watch over me. The other has taken Claire to her beacon. There’s another switch wired to her GWB, a finger hovering over it missing its nail. There’s no way this happens. Claire’s last words to me echo in my ears:

“You can’t believe them.”

Sitting there, contemplating treason upon treason, I nearly laugh out loud at how ridiculous it all seems. It’s something I felt on the front before, when the kinetic rounds were coming down from orbital artillery and throwing up geysers of hot earth and shrapnel, and somehow you’re wading through it all and handing death to those on the other side, and you just have to laugh. The orange blossoms of HE rounds, and the curving tracers like glowing and screaming bees, and the howling jets diving through atmo and dropping hell. The fact that you are alive is hilarious. The fact that the universe can come to this, that anyone finds it normal, is comically absurd.

I remember Scarlett, naïve Scarlett, the equally absurd. I remember the bounty on her life. I remember the risks she took to get to me and the impossible task she expected of me. I remember, vividly, that she knew things she shouldn’t have. She knew what had happened on Yata. She forced me to admit it, but she already knew.

Looking up at the Ryph, whose hand matches my scars, I think about the fact that he was there. He’s the only other soul who knows what happened that day. This explains how Scarlett knew. It’s because he knew Scarlett. They were working together. I see this in his thoughts, and he sees what I’m thinking. I see that this is a test.

“They don’t know if we’re capable of kindness,” I tell Rocky. “We can’t speak their language, can’t think to each other like they do.”

“You mean they don’t talk crazy like you do,” Rocky says. “You know I’m not real. None of this is real.”

“I think it is,” I say.

I touch the button that will kill my beacon to reassure myself of what’s real. This button is real. One press, and the greatest army of humans ever assembled disappears.

“This is what’s wrong with me,” I say. And Rocky listens. “It’s why I feel the gwib. It’s why I don’t want to go on. It’s too much.”

“Listen to Claire,” Rocky says. “Listen to her.”

I shake my head. “No. This is right. She should listen to
me
. They want to see if we’re worth saving or if we’re too dangerous to have around. I want to see the same from them.”

“And then what?” Rocky asks.

I rest my head against the dome. I can feel the cosmos breathe, can feel the black hole at the galaxy’s core pulse. There is a rift between the two, between pulse and breath. A warring divide. I sense Claire over there, near the other GWB. Two antennas. I reach out to her, feel her anger and fear, the fact that I’ve betrayed her. I feel her bound arms, Cricket trembling by her side, the Ryph Lord who will push the button when I tell him to, if Claire won’t. They just need to see what we’re capable of. Will one be enough? Just me? I think of Claire’s spreadsheet with all the checkmarks and no Xs. That’s data. What will the Ryph conclude if only one of us goes through with it? And what if the Ryph sitting elsewhere don’t go through with their end? Will I be killing my people or their people? Is there a difference? Is this what they want me to see, to feel? That there is no difference? That life is life. Is this the test?

Two hundred and twenty million lives. Even more on their side. Over half a billion souls. Tearing along through the cosmos at each other. They are already dead, all those young men and women. I tell myself this, and I tell it to Claire. Half a billion now or billions and billions more later. No end in sight. Don’t generals and admirals make this call? Don’t they kill our boys and girls every day? When I was sane, I bawled over the death of eight human souls, the crew of a cargo bound for Vega. What am I thinking now? I go back and forth, like a man crazed then sane, like a finger punching in three digits of a lock code with confidence, then hovering over the fourth, a man who can only kill himself so far, who can’t quite go all the way. I hear Scarlett yelling at me from the beyond to do this, to end this war, to be brave.

Just a few minutes to decide. All those boys and girls. The smell of gun oil. Anticipation. Dreaded Sundays. Fathers clutching their dead pups and old hearts and strong wives and crying for the first time in how long? How fucking long?

“I’m gonna do it, Rocky. For Scarlett.”

“No—”

“For Hank.”

“Please—”

“If there’s a chance, just a chance—”

“And then what?”

It’s Claire speaking. It’s her thoughts. She’s crying too. She taught me how.

“Do you love me?” I ask.

There is quiet.

Tears.

Fear.

“. . . yes.”

“There are good people, Claire. There are enough good people on either side. You and me—”

She sees into my thoughts. I hear her laugh behind those tears. I feel the word:

politics—?

“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe. Something more than this. Something less cowardly.”

The ships are near. A wall of ships. Designed to break through and hit sector eight all at once, to overwhelm with the element of surprise, but everyone sees this coming. Just as everyone must see the coordinated response from the other side. Some of the people working with the rebels helped plan this, helped on both sides, helped line them up like sitting ducks.

I look to the Ryph Lord who nearly took my life. “I’m trusting you,” I tell him. “I’m trusting you.”

He makes a sign with his claws. I don’t know what it means, but I can read his thoughts. I am an empath, a dangerous thing. I didn’t ask to have my soul torn open, or my belly, or my goddamn life. I didn’t ask for any of this. But it was handed to me. And the only thing that ends a war like this is trust, release, love for those we hate, arms around those who would kill us, forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness.

“Do you love me, Claire?”

“I do.”

She is shaking with tears, listening to me, knowing the time is here, that it’ll be with her or without her. It’ll be her clawless hand or the Ryph’s. But she knows now, either way, what my hand will do.

Rocky is gone. Clarity takes his place. All my brothers and sisters, and why is this act so unthinkable when my orders on Yata were the exact same? Who gets to make that choice? Right now, I do.

The moment.

Here.

War, coming.

They’ll kill me for this.

When I deserve a medal.

I pull my head away from the GWB, want to feel what I feel, want my mind clear, want to allow those memories of war to creep in, creep back, torment me for a sliver of time longer, before I pull a trigger of horrible pacifism, a button of treason, those ships traveling too fast to stop, and the world is aglow, Claire crying for what we’ve done, the two of us, a million stars coming to life and full of death, and across the module the portholes facing out toward Yata glow as in the distance a similar wall of flame erupts, more stars appearing briefly and burning out, this violent, terrible, treasonous, glorious eruption of peace.

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Note from the Author

I know it is fiction to imagine, but what would happen if we stood on the rubble of attacks against us, whether literal or figurative, physical or emotional, personal or political, and we chose to forgive rather than escalate? What does that world look like? Maybe we’ll never know. But I like to pretend.

• Epilogue •

The Ryph turbines and the navy jet engines scream in harmony. Steel cables hang taut from two craft built for dogfighting but now converted for commercial use. Swinging from the end of the cables, and hovering over the shore of the Chesapeake, is an old lighthouse. The stonework is intact, but the crown and foundation will take rebuilding.

I’ve spent countless hours staring at a picture of this lighthouse, a giant wave crashing up its spine, an old man standing there back when those rusted stumps were the stanchions for steel railings. I can almost see the ghost of the old man there, smiling at me.

When I got back to Earth from the Yata Peace Council, the first thing I did was track the old lighthouse down. I found her like a battered old soldier standing out in the waves, the foundation ready to go at any moment. Soon, she would have been lost for good. And so I decided to save her. I did the opposite of what those old wreckers used to do who demolished for profit. It took calling in some favors, but there’s very little a planetary governor-elect and old war hero can’t do.

The crew marrying the old lighthouse to its new foundation are a motley bunch. The foreman in charge of the project is Tryndian. There are two Hokos on his crew, three humans, and one of the pilots up there is a Ryph. A Ryph on Earth. Races that grew up warring among themselves and with each other now concentrate on the job at hand. And the job at claw, I suppose.

Reading my mind, Claire slips her hand into mine. Her other hand rests on her belly, which is full as the moon. Ten paces away, Cricket slinks into the tall grass, only her tail visible, stalking something only she can see.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed with contentment. Sometimes I question what I did. Laughter and sobs still orbit too close to one another for comfort. But it won’t be my challenge to forgive my actions. That’s a test for the next generation. It shouldn’t be easy; that’s the whole point. I remember what I felt after the attack on Delphi. I remember the anger that caused me to enlist. The last thing in my mind was forgiveness. With the end of the war, someone tallied the total cost of all those little decisions, and it came to just over eighteen billion dead.

Half a billion of those are on me.

Claire pulls me close, places her hand on the back of my hand, holding my palm where the baby is kicking, is trying to distract my thoughts and redirect them to life. To renewal. The old lighthouse settles onto its foundation, the work crew tight and organized. I can feel the lacework of scars beneath Claire’s dress. She’s been trying to convince me that the boy should have my name. I haven’t liked the idea. I don’t want him to turn out like me.

But maybe he won’t. Maybe he’ll do my name proud. And so I squeeze Claire’s hand and I agree. I test it out, whispering my own name in Claire’s ear, but the syllables are lost in a sudden breeze, and the soft sound is carried far out to sea, where it will swirl and mingle and be lost and present for all the rest of time.