Nova (21 page)

Jao nods. “I know, but I think if we manage things right, we’ll slip right past their trap. Your biochip will have to be activated. Otherwise, if they have any of our weaker psychics under their control, a casual touch could expose you. Once you’ve left, we’ll sabotage the Tiersten spaceport by blowing out the main power relay. This should prevent any more prisoners from being shipped out.”

“Sabotage the spaceport? An undertaking of that sort would take every last person we have! Even if you succeed, it’s unlikely anyone will survive.”

Captain Jao doesn’t answer. Not that he has to. We both know it’s better to go out on our terms than the enemy’s. I’ll be making my own last stand even as Jao and his people make theirs. After that, the Celestians will be on their own. We just have to hope that what we’ve done will be enough.

I meet Jao’s eyes and finally nod. As I’m walking away, his voice calls out to me one last time. “Lia!”

I stop, though I don’t turn.

“You know I wouldn’t send you if I had any other choice, don’t you? That if there were any other way, I would take it.” Defeat colors his every syllable, and if I hadn’t believed it before, I would have known it now.

The resistance is dead.

“Yes,” I whisper, so softly I know he’ll never hear me. “I know.”

A soldier greets me at the entrance to the control station. The basement in the station is a relic from the past, a leftover from when the dust devils had free rein over Tiersten. Now, it’s used as a holding area for two very special prisoners. My parents.

Cool air enfolds me as I make my way down the stairs into the basement. Something clanks in the far recesses of the sub-floor, and my heart jumps. I do not want to be here. I do not want to see them. I almost turn around and leave, but I force myself to continue. Doc’s right. I should see them once more before I go. I owe it to them.

I owe it to myself, to remember why I’m doing what I’m doing.

The guards sit at a table playing electronic ping pong. I purposely avoid looking at the screens monitoring my parents and instead watch the guards swing their tip-pads at the holographic ball. How long has it been since I played a real game? Any sort of game? With someone my own age? Not since the internment camp anyway.

“Here to see your parents?” Cavendish asks, hitting pause on the game as she gets up.

I nod, and she gives my shoulder a pat. A burst of comforting sympathy rushes through me. I pull away and give her a look. “Shouldn’t you be saving your powers for something important?”

She gives me a wry grin. “Who’s more important than you? Come on. You’ll feel better once you get this over with.”

She takes me down the hall to a door, and I stare through the small window that looks into the room. A bed, a couple of chairs, a table, a few books. We took very little with us when we fled the internment camp, most of it practical stuff like food and weapons, but when it comes to the few niceties we have, almost all of them ended up here—that scented soap of Cavendish’s, Niven’s grandmother’s chenille throw, even Jao’s stash of chocolate-covered pretzels. Not that anyone begrudges my parents the little extras. You can’t begrudge people you pity.

Cavendish keys in the codes to take down the force fence and unlock the room. For a long moment, I don’t move, fear freezing me in place.

“Do you want me to come in with you?”

Her words tear me out of my trance. I do, and yet I don’t. At last I shake my head. “No, I can do it.”

“Okay then. We’ll be keeping an eye on the monitors just in case.” She taps the chit under her ear. “Link me when you’re done.”

I nod. Then, taking a deep breath, I open the door and go in.

It’s the smell that hits me first. Sharp and sour, like an astringent, but with a pale, sweetish after-odor. I gasp. It’s the first time I’ve smelled anything in two weeks. I knew, theoretically, of course, that I would smell something when I came into this room. I just didn’t expect them to smell like
this
.

“Hi Starshine.”

I tense at the sound of his voice, and slowly turn. “Daddy.”

He’s sitting in a chair not immediately visible from the window. Revulsion flies through me at the sight of him, and I fight the urge to recoil. He looks worse than last time, far worse. His gray eyes are completely sunken in, his cheekbones practically slicing the air through the slack skin of his face. The yellowish cast over his skin, as though he was suffering from jaundice, is new, and his body, already thin the last time I saw him, is positively skeletal now. I can barely see in his shrunken form the man who raised me. He looks as though he’s being slowly eaten away from the inside out.

Which is, of course, exactly what’s happening.

“It’s good to see you again.”

I nod and glance away, unable to return the sentiment. My eyes fall on my mother where she lies on the bed, asleep. She doesn’t look nearly as bad as my father, thin but not skeletal, eyes ringed with dark circles but not sunken. Her skin is still the pale, creamy white she passed down to me. In sleep, she looks normal, as though she’s simply overworked and exhausted, and not . . .

“How’s Mom?” I ask.

“Hanging in there,” Dad answers after a second. “I’ve given up trying to explain things to her. Without psychic abilities of her own, she’s unable to fight the reality distortions being forced on her. Her perceptions are just too skewed at this point to accept the truth. Maybe it’s for the best. She’ll live a lot longer if she doesn’t try to fight it.”

Not like him, though Dad doesn’t say it out loud.

I swallow hard, wishing for about the millionth time that my parents were whole and healthy, and we were somewhere far away from here, somewhere they could never reach us. I push away the thought, knowing it for the futile thing it is. “None of us may live much longer.”

“The force fence?”

“A warning, nothing more. Jao said if we still had Mom, things might be different, but not now.”

“No, now she would just sabotage the work without even knowing why, and do a damn good job of it too. Remember the roamers?”

I laugh softly. “That’s Mom—best mechanic in the galaxy.”

She was infected on our flight from the internment camp, she and one other from our party, though of course no one knew it at the time. On the run, with the enemy bearing down on us, Dad and Cavendish didn’t have a chance to check everyone. It was only when we were finally able to stop for a short break later and caught Mom tearing out the intelli-wires from the roamers that we knew.

She’d been taken by the enemy.

Mom managed to disable three roamers before we caught her, though we’d been stopped less than ten minutes. Dad liked to joke that it was some kind of record. That’s Dad—always able to find something to laugh about even in the darkest situation. Or maybe it’s just his way of showing that no matter what happens, he’ll always love us. He’ll always be proud of us.

It was only as they were subduing my mother that the other one showed itself. Corporal Sanderson had time to get off one shot before a rifle blast took him down. It was an accident; Jao didn’t mean to kill him, just disable him. No matter his intentions, the alien, suddenly unbonded with its host’s death, fled for the nearest possible replacement. My dad.

That’s how, in just a matter of minutes, I lost both parents. Infected by the same filth that had taken down the entire Tellurian Alliance in only three years.

“So how are you doing?” Dad asks quietly, and I realize my jaw is clenched tightly enough to make my teeth ache. Pain chokes me at the question.

My parents are dying a slow, horrible death, the resistance is nearly crushed, and in a week I’ll be going Nova on five hundred of my former friends and compatriots. I’m dying inside. My spirit withering up and drying, its edges curling up like a browning leaf at the end of autumn making its final fall. How am I doing? I can barely walk and talk and breathe, the pain is so great.

“I . . . Daddy, I . . .” I suddenly can’t talk, can’t breathe past the horrible pressure smothering my chest. I slump forward, bracing my hands on my knees as I gasp for air that doesn’t want to be breathed. Every inhalation now is a fight, my body both fighting breath and fighting to breathe at the same time. I should com Cavendish, but I can’t seem to do anything.

Cold hands cover mine and suddenly a rush of love bursts through my chest. It spreads under my skin and fills my veins, and then I can breathe again, my lungs unlocking and air flowing in.

It’s okay, Starshine. It’s okay. Our time together has been so short, but I still love you more than anything in all the galaxy. You’re my girl, my light in the dark, my starry, starry night. You are strong. My beautiful, strong girl.

My father’s voice fills my mind, gentle and loving, and I mentally gravitate toward the voice, wanting to be near him, just him, with every fiber of my being. I slide though the psychic connection before he realizes what I’m doing, wanting to burrow myself in his mind like I used to burrow myself in his hugs.

Wait, sweetie—

Something grabs me, impaling me on its claws and yanking me in deep. Slimy and acrid and pulsing, it wraps around me, smothering me, choking me, consuming me alive. The cord connecting my spirit to my body starts to thin, and I scream, fighting against it with all my will. But the dark thing is stronger. It bites down on me with a thousand mouths. Pain shrieks through my mind as I feel myself being eaten alive.

A light bursts around me and the thing falls back. Its grip loosens, and in that brief moment, hands grab me and shove. I snap back like a slingshot, and suddenly I’m back in my own mind.

Eyes jolting open, I frantically backpedal, falling over my feet as I try to get as far away from my father as I can. My butt hits the floor, but I continue to scoot back, away from his stricken face until my back hits the door.

“Starshine, I—”

“Stay back! Stay away from me!” I push myself against the door, helpless to do anything but watch as Dad raises his hands and slowly backs away. His knees shake as he collapses back in the chair. Then he does something I’ve never seen him do before in my life.

He puts his head in his hands and cries. “I’m sorry, baby, I’m so, so sorry.”

Over and over, he just keeps saying it, until I start crying too, not out of fear and hurt, but shame. Shame that for even one short moment I couldn’t distinguish my dad from the dark thing that lives inside him now, eating him alive one second at a time.

This is the reason I have to do what I’m going to do. This is the reason I have to go Nova. Because if my going Nova will prevent even one kid from losing their parents the way I have, it’ll be worth it. No matter what the cost.

After a while, I realize Cavendish is linking me, asking in frantic tones if I’m all right and telling me she’s coming in.

“No, it’s okay,” I reassure her. “I’m okay.” I’m not going to flee this time.

Cavendish clearly doesn’t believe me, but she does back off at my word, though she stays poised at the outer door, ready to let me out the minute I call.

After a while, my dad wipes his face and lifts his head. He looks so exhausted, as though he just ran an ultra-marathon on a brutally hot day. No wonder he deteriorated so quickly these past few months. How could he not, fighting that
thing
inside him every second of every day!

“Is that what it feels like then? That horrible, slimy thing wrapped around you all the time?”

He shrugs. “You get used to its presence after a while. It doesn’t speak, not in words, but it pushes perceptions into your mind. False understandings that distort reality, making you believe that what’s true isn’t, and things that aren’t real are, all meant to influence the way you act. Eventually you learn how to fight it, to push it back.” Dad glances back at the bed where Mom is still sleeping. A wisp of a smile touches his mouth, and I know what he’s thinking: Mom always could sleep through anything. He turns back to me. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t think your mother can feel hers at all. Most of the infected can’t.”

I nod. It’s how they were able to sweep through Telluria so easily. Their bodies, incorporeal and beyond our range of sound and vision, simply invaded us one after another and no one even knew they were there. Except the psychics. It was the Tellurian Psychics, TelPsy, that finally discovered what was going on. They’re the ones who formed the resistance; they’re the ones that started teaching the rest of us to fight.

My knees wobble a little as I get to my feet, and I reach for the table to steady myself. My hand knocks into the lamp, and it falls before I can catch it, shattering on the floor with a loud crash. The figure in the bed stirs and sits up.

“Arron?” my mom says, squinting a little as she rubs sleep from her eyes. “What’s going on?” A smile lights up her face as she glances over and sees me. She climbs out of bed, stretching as she comes near. She gives her husband a playful slap on the shoulder. “Arron! Why didn’t you tell me our daughter had come to visit?”

Dad looks down. “We were just having a little father-daughter talk before you got up.”

“A talk? Judging from the casualties, it must have been some conversation,” she says, spying the broken lamp. She peers at me more closely, no doubt seeing the tear tracks on my cheeks, and her face creases with concern. She looks at Dad again, and her expression suddenly clears. “He wasn’t telling you that story about aliens from New Earth taking over the galaxy, was he?” She laughs. “Your dad was just pulling your leg, silly. You know that, right? Everything’s fine, I promise. Come here, sweetheart.” She opens her arms to me.