Remnant

By Moira Katson

It has been 187 years since Benito Sandoval destroyed the seed colony on Guan-Yu, since the SHN Persephone found what was hunting beyond the borders of Human-occupied space - and only now has a threat come to humanity's borders.

But any knowledge of what existed on Guan-Yu was lost with Sandoval and his allies. If humanity is to survive, it must rebuild from the ashes - and it has precious little time to do so.

A young lieutenant crippled by her encounter with the Henth. A scientist with nothing left to save. An admiral choosing who to save...and who to sacrifice. A new father choosing between his son and his species. A young woman whose blood may hold the key to humanity's salvation. In their hands lie the remnants of what was created and destroyed on Guan-Yu...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Moira Katson
• Release date: Jun 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781938735073

Moira Katson

Moira Katson is an indie author living in the oft-frigid wastes of the American midwest. As a transplant, she is learning to love hot dish, fried food on a stick, ice fishing, and the hilarious faces her friends make when she posts about winter temperatures. Her less geeky interests include running, STRONG coffee, and cooking; her more geeky interests include gaming, voracious reading, and, of course, writing science fiction and fantasy novels!You can find Moira’s work online through Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and all Smashwords affliates. Moira is also on Facebook, and can be found on twitter as @moirakatson.Questions? Feel free to contact Moira at [e-mail]!

Book preview

Prologue

Year 3645

Tartarus 2, second moon (unnamed)

Westward Quadrant, Subsection 14

They sat in silence for a long time, looking out at the valley. A snowstorm prowled north along the cut of the eastern mountains and, thwarted by the cliff face at the furthest point, swirled around on itself to circle the western mountains as well. In the high cold of the peak, they could see the clouds breaking like waves.

Your shuttle is going to get snowed in, he said to her, and she shrugged. Neither of them spoke for a while after that. Cold set into their bones. The little cabin behind them creaked in the wind that blew up the mountain slope.

Do you have any regrets? she asked him.

No. There was no point in regrets anymore. He did not see any way around what was about to happen, or any way around what had led to it. That he had regrets anyway was not relevant.

I do. She blinked a few times and he looked away to let her grieve in private. I should have known you’d do it. It wasn’t meant to be you.

Someone needed to. It hurt him that they were talking about different things.

I would have done it. You were supposed to leave the military; settle down, have a family. You never belonged. Her voice broke. I’m so sorry.

When are you coming back? The memory was sudden, vivid: a little girl like a ghost in one of his old tee-shirts—no nightgowns her size on their outpost—and her skin faded to copper in the sunless black of an arctic winter. Hair growing in like a cloud around her head.

I don’t think I’m coming back, Anushka. Skinny arms wrapped around him.

You have nothing to be sorry for, he told his commander. It’s been two years. I’m ready. Did they believe your warning? The newspapers had not believed it; only a few people mentioned the crew of the ship, with their eyes that did not seem quite normal. But maybe the Council…

I don’t know. She looked over at him, tried to say his name, failed. Swallowed. I promise you, humanity will find a way through what’s coming. She reached out and wrapped her fingers around his, and he wanted to look into her eyes—she would feel better if she reassured him—but he felt certain she would see all of his lies if he looked at her now.

So he squeezed her fingers back, held out his other hand, and she did not hesitate, only pressed the gun into his palm. She never once thought he would turn it on her.

She had decided to trust him, then. His heart twisted. He pictured the children as he’d left them: Anatu, sleepy in her nightgown and clutching one of the guards’ hands, her brother sung to sleep with a lullaby from old earth. This was for them.

He stood and walked out into the fresh snow. This was a good place to die. The barrel of the gun was warm against his skin. Only one moment. He only had to be brave for one moment.

A single shot echoed in the valley and he crumpled. The commander straightened Vasiliy Chagaev’s body where it lay in the snow and reached out to close his eyes.

Section I

February 3827

League Space

Lt. Niv Cedar

SHN Freyja

Sabine (Sutthard Quadrant, Subsection 3)

They came upon it together: the Bowen and the Zheng He flying scout, three more carrier groups coming in ten seconds behind. The Freyja took center, the Empresa flanking them to starboard and the Adriyatik to port. A small city’s worth of soldiers with the group ships ready to spread formation, fighters in the launch tubes, pilots at their stations, bridges fully staffed.

The majesty of the formation was, given the relatively empty subsection of space and the lack of an audience, wasted on the soldiers—and they were more annoyed than anything else, truth be told, to be moving in such ponderous formation through the fast channels and the jumps instead of the bars and open air of the shore leave they’d been promised. More so, when none of them had been given a reason that an entire carrier group should be sent on this mission, much less five. Just a scouting mission, Delphi command had said, and Niv Cedar, slopping food hastily into her mouth in the mess hall of the Freyja’s lead ship, heard that Commander Scharer did not even have the words to respond to such an order, and had only nodded.

Five carrier groups on a scouting mission. Of course, yes.

They probably should have known something was wrong, but the very clue was so glaring as to be nonsensical. How long had it been since humanity had an enemy worth sending five carrier groups against? Efficiency drills, one of the officers muttered. Give us peace for a while, and everyone thinks they know everything about preparedness. Some councilor, I bet.

Shut up, Smith. But everyone had agreed with him, even if more than a few had the faraway look that said they were pretending this was real, and they were all about to be heroes.

All right, the commander told them before they came out of warp. Let’s scout this mining outpost, soldiers. He allowed the touch of a smile at his lips, and Niv—leaning against the wall, waiting to relieve Smith—grinned. There were a few aye ayes, the enthusiasm of a shared joke on the brass, back at Delphi. The sort of thing they couldn’t really be called on if anyone went over the logs. Niv watched it hungrily, this moment, because no one had noticed she was here on the bridge yet, and she could pretend she was a part of it.

It was moments like this that kept her coming back when she should have given up years ago. Easy moments in the spaces between the indignities of fleet life and council orders, an intimacy earned through shared pain, all of them stretched to the breaking point in training. An awkward teenager, self-conscious, watching human contact and terrified by it, but so sure of what she could have here. So sure of what she could earn.

It would have been easy to quit when she first saw how it was going to be for her. Only a few weeks into training, and she still remembered the realization, and the sinking feeling in her gut. She could have washed out then, no one the wiser, and walked away to a better life. Inarguably, she should have. The one thing she wanted was out of her grasp, and she knew it.

What she’d found instead was some scrap of stubbornness, a relentless drive that she was sure would get her nothing at all, carrying her out of training onto the Nimitz, from there to the Sparrow and onward: Fermat, Gagarin, Li Bai. The Freyja, now. She could not stop, no matter how times the thin disguise of her name fell apart and the whispers started and there was the same interview with the ship’s commander: Tell me, lieutenant, what are your career aspirations? and the rising, hysterical urge to ask them if they expected her to say she wanted to crash a carrier into a seed colony. As if the whole massacre of Guan-Yu could have been prevented if someone only thought to ask Benito Sandoval where he saw himself in five years.

As if some sort of taint had dripped down one hundred and fifty-nine years, coursing in Niv’s blood and waiting for them to give her an opportunity. As if they might have evidence of her duplicity from her own mouth—that she might say, outright, that she was planning mass murder and the overthrow of the League while she was at it. Because until then, of course, they’d always wonder, wouldn’t they?

She should have left and gone home as soon as it became clear that she would get nowhere in the Fleet. There had even been opportunities. There was always the option not to talk her way out of discharge for infractions real and imagined, and somehow, on every single goddamned ship, there was the medic’s offer—when Niv came in once too often with blackened eyes and broken arms—to declare her unfit, recommend a transfer. There’s no shame in it, dear. Not sure which it they meant, halfway certain they’d been told to offer her an out. The Fleet didn’t want her; her competence was an annoyance, an obstacle.

Why are you still here? The question no one ever asked her, and she had learned not to ask herself. She had no answer for it.

Maybe it was her brother, so worried about her when she went away. An older brother with an older brother’s fears, and she wanted to prove he had nothing to worry about. He’d raised her himself, or close enough. If Niv washed out, would Jon feel like he’d failed?

And she had her own pride, too. To leave because of something so small as the little comments in the halls and the humiliating, petty assignments… Niv only knew that she would come home to unwavering support, Jon and his wife taking her side without question, and somehow it was just too much. She could never live with that. Every time they offered, she did her best to keep from shrinking back on her infirmary bed, and said only, No, it’s fine. I want to be here. And then she looked away, so she wouldn’t see the pity in their eyes.

And so she was reduced to snatching moments like these, pretending they were hers, playing them over in her mind at night like pressing on a bruise. She stood near the doorway and looked out at the command center, and for a brief moment it was her home, too.

Coming out of warp, sir. Smith hadn’t left the station yet. Niv should have given that notification, but she wasn’t going to ruin this moment.

It went wrong so fast that there was nothing to do but react. The sensors blared to sudden life, screens lit up red and black, white noise, and there was shouting on the comms, hoarse-voiced:

Get out! Get out, jump now! Across the room, she saw one of the officers tense, flipping up the cover for the jump button, fumbling at her neck for the key. They hadn’t primed the drive, wouldn’t have thought to do so. Wouldn’t normally jump out of formation, had come in too tightly packed for that.

A scouting mission. Well, they’d found something.

Spread formation, Scharer said, biting the words off. He’d gone white in the face. Anger, Niv thought. Perhaps fear. He nodded at the woman with the jump key—Salak, Niv remembered her name, a newbie—and she slid it into place, began pressing buttons.

Thirty-seven seconds to a primed core. They’d need two fingerprints for the authorization and Niv was the only one without a screen, without a headset, without something to do. She started across the room, threading her way carefully between officers who were shouting for Scharer’s attention. Thirty-four, thirty-three…

Sir, it’s the Bowen. A communications officer holding his earpiece away from his head as he patched the feed into Scharer’s headset.

Evans! Scharer’s voice was clipped. An aside: Someone get that viewscreen working, goddammit, we’re flying blind. Evans? Then, his voice turning formal as habit set it, SHN Bowen, this is the Freyja. Do you read me?

A pause, blaring alarms and the terrifying sense of blindness, something wrong and no way to know what. Niv took a deep breath, counted to steady herself: twenty-eight, twenty-seven…

Get out! the call came back at last, not on the headset but over the main radios. Weapons won’t—

Twenty-five, twenty-four… The newbie looked like she was about to throw up. Niv had a sudden, vivid memory of breakfast, and the XO laughing and clapping the woman on the shoulder: It’s a scouting mission, Salak, want the jump desk? She’d been flushed then, laughing, pleased to be singled out. Now she gripped her hands on the overhang of the desk and fixed her eyes on Scharer; the shouts were deafening—a jump authorization would be Scharer’s nod, none of the usual signoff. Niv approved of the woman’s attempt at composure. Solid. The type of person who should be on the bridge. Like Niv would ever advance far enough in the Fleet to make that sort of call.

Do we launch the fighters, sir? One man, swiveling around at his desk and peering around Niv as she passed. For once, she was invisible.

Nineteen, eighteen, seventeen…

Adriyatik, come in. Another was hunched over her earpiece. SHN Freyja moving to jump formation, please confirm coordinates eight five—

Zheng He, come in.

The Empresa is moving into jump formation, commander—

Sir, I’ve got video!

The shouts ceased momentarily.

Good. What in hell is going on out there? Scharer was leaning across the table when the feed came up.

Niv heard someone behind her lose their breakfast. She looked up in time to see black: perplexing and all-encompassing. For a moment, one blessed moment, she didn’t feel it.

Thirteen, twelve—

And then the beast roared.

The light was blinding. Bodies were pressing in on her from everywhere, hot, crowding close, and water was soaking into her boots, pressing the legs of her pants, rising around her knees. Niv shoved with all her might, but she could not move. She had to get out, that was all she knew, because the water was pulling at her thighs now, close and cold, and up to her hips.

Evans, what the fuck are you doing?

Blaring, constant, a horn-sound that meant something-and-nothing, something she could not quite hear, a world she couldn’t see anymore. She looked around herself at the faces sliding in and out of focus. Something wasn’t right. It didn’t fit.

No one around her would move, no matter how she struggled. The water seemed warmer. It was at her chest now, and when she looked down it glimmered back, opaque, mercurial. Niv pushed, pressed out with straining muscles and there was no response.

The water was at her neck and there was no escape, at her lips and creeping up to her nose. She tipped her head up desperately. Over her eyes and she could not see, and then there were hands dragging her down: a hundred of them fastened on her arms and her legs, dragging at the fabric of her blouse. Fighting for air, Niv bent to try to pry the fingers off, but there were too many.

"Evans!"

She was running out of time. She flailed desperately, blind in the murk, trying to pull herself to the air only she no longer remembered where up was, and the hands were pulling at her, pulling her down while she thrashed—

Jesus Christ, somebody, anybody—

Impact jolted her back to herself. She was sprawled on the floor. Her ankle gave a burst of pain and a stinging sensation told her that the metal grating had cut her cheek, but she didn’t care. Nothing mattered now that she could breathe. She hauled air into her lungs and her eyes drifted closed. Flashes behind her lids as the alarms went.

Oh, my god. Oh, god. Please…

Was the voice real? Niv turned her head and took as deep a breath as she could. Surely she could just rest a moment now…

Can anyone hear me? Please— A choking cry cut off the words and Niv breathed, still taking big gasps of air, trying to understand what they meant. Her eyes flickered.

She felt the curious sensation of her hair standing on end. The grating wasn’t pressing so hard against her shoulder, and her ankle, twisted wrong underneath her, did not hurt quite so badly. She let her eyes drift open and the floor was receding. Was this a dream, too? At her side, scattered papers began to lift, tumbling slowly in the air currents. No more screaming. No more panic. Only the blare of the ship’s alarms.

Niv’s head turned lazily at a grating sound on the hull, something scraping. The view screen was oddly black—no, a scrap of dawn, creeping light on metal… Words slid into view from one corner and disappeared: ADRIYATIK. It was as the Freyja wheeled in space, tipping end over end on collision course with the rest, that Niv realized what she was seeing: fragments and scattered ships, disarray. System failure.

She twisted in mid-air. For a moment she did not remember how to move in zero gravity, and she got nowhere for her first efforts, but at last grabbed at one of the chairs and pulled herself along. She had to get to the jump drive. The alarms were almost deafening.

Had it been enough time?

An image came to her, unbidden: her brother and his wife, the curve of her stomach under her dress, smiles over a dinner table. Their home on—

Tell me where they are. That was no human voice. It spoke like air raid sirens and the quiet tread of someone unwanted in the house at night. It echoed in her head and it whispered. Its voice drowned out the blaring tones of the Freyja, poor ship, its crew unresponsive and something wrong, everything wrong, why wouldn’t they wake up—and Niv, who might have helped, heard the voice like water in her mouth, her nose. The world flickered and began to disappear, the alarms faded to silence. Tell me.

Is anyone there? A human voice. Niv clung to it. Her heart was pounding and she was afraid, so afraid. This is the Adriyatik. Can anyone hear me?

I can, Niv whispered. A headset, she needed a headset. She twisted in mid-air, and saw something glowing red below her. The jump button. The drive was ready.

Salak lay with her head on the desk, eyes wide and staring. Her necklace, a golden pendant with a blue stone, floated up near her face. Niv reached down for the earpiece, and her fingers came away wet with blood. Salak’s skin was cooling, and Niv gave a convulsive shudder. The feeling of a dream was fading quickly.

Adriyatik, this is Freyja.

Jump. As if it was the one word the officer still remembered.

I can’t, Niv told her. The tail of the Adriyatik still loomed in the viewscreen. She locked her fingers around the jump desk to keep from floating away. Did she hear crying from somewhere on the bridge?

Jump, the woman said again. There was a sound from the other end of the line: sobbing.

"I can’t, Niv whispered. You don’t understand, it’s going to—"

It doesn’t matter.

Listen to me—

"You have to go." The woman’s voice was harsh, rising in hysteria.

Can you get your ship into jump formation? It was possible. Gingerly, Niv reached out, took one of the still-warm hands in hers, pressed a cooling finger against the pad. Gold. Her own finger and the button lit green.

No. I’m trapped. The sound of sniffling, fear suppressed. My leg is crushed.

You need to get free. It was as if her voice belonged to someone else, someone without fear. Don’t think, just listen to me. You need to get free and get to the jump desk. We need to move out of range of each other for jump, but you have to prime the core first.

I can’t. She was crying. "Keep talking. I need to hear—oh, god, no—it’s coming back."

And Niv felt it, saw it without even looking up at the viewscreen. It looked at her. Looked right at her. Marked her.

You have to jump, the woman pleaded with her.

Yes. Jump. Niv wanted to clap her hands over her ears, but she knew it wouldn’t help. The voice echoed inside her skull.

I can’t, Niv whispered. It will kill you. The shockwave from the Freyja would tear the Adriyatik apart at the seams.

You have the chance, the voice whispered, at once deafening and whisper-soft, a lover’s murmur in her ear. No one would blame you, and you could get back at them all…

She heard Jon’s whisper in her mind, a midnight conversation with his wife: It isn’t just the Sandoval thing. I’m worried about her—there’s so much we don’t know about, out there…

She looked at the Adriyatik, viewing windows sliding past her in the black, her hair fanned out around her face.

Are you still there? You have to go! Get the ship to—

No time. She couldn’t let the beast hear Delphi. Niv slammed her hand down on the jump button.

*******

Livingstone Station (Sutthard Space, Subsection 28)

Hello, Lieutenant. The man who waited for her in the interrogation room was short, with black hair swept sideways across his brow. His eyes sloped down at the corners, and high cheekbones sat above curved, clean-shaven cheeks, a small mouth, a rounded chin. He looked at her gravely. I am Admiral Cheng, of the Persephone. Please, take a seat. Understand that I regret this necessity.

You don’t need to do this. Niv looked around herself a bit desperately. They had gone to great pains to make her comfortable. The room was small, mirrored along one wall, with a bare table and two chairs, but there was a plate of food on the table, and a cup of coffee, still steaming. She thought she was going to throw up. Really, I won’t make a fuss. I’ll admit everything. I’m ready.

He was not expecting that. He shot a swift glance at the mirror, and then back to the table, where he sat and waited for her to join him, leaning forward on his arms. After a pause, Niv sat as well. She ignored the food and folded her hands in her lap. She could feel herself shaking.

No lies, she promised herself. They were going to execute her, but it would be quick. She could drive a bargain here if she was clever, ask them not to go to tribunal—she didn’t think she could say all of this more than once. She didn’t want a panel asking her questions: do you think you did it for revenge, Lieutenant? The same questions she had whispered in her head over and over as the Freyja slid silent through an endless night, as the boarding crews took away the bodies and Scharer told them that he did not know how they’d made it out…

She had admitted it then, and she could admit it now. They’d taken it strangely, without recrimination, and so she had sat alone in the red glow of the Freyja’s quiet halls, and picked her course: she would disembark and admit everything, and if they were merciful they would spare her a trial, and she would never have to face the families of the soldiers she had killed.

Through all of it, the voices had echoed in her head. You did this. You killed them. You always hated them. And the nightmares, waiting when she closed her eyes, the water rising up over her mouth and the hands dragging her down, the angry drone of voices…

She was crying again, in this dark room—she cried a lot now—and she couldn’t figure out how she’d give anything for peace and quiet, silence beyond the reach of her own guilt, but she was still so scared to die.

Lieutenant Cedar, the admiral said gravely. Please be patient with us. We understand you have been through a traumatic experience, and this will be very difficult to talk about. Niv swallowed and tried not to rock back and forth. Could you explain what you mean when you say you have things to admit to?

You know what they do to murderers, don’t you?

Niv’s head was spinning, snatches of music and psalms, the prayers her father had taught her at bedtime. She had to have courage. I killed them, she said, as clearly as she could, and she was not sure if her voice worked or not. She thought she heard herself say it.

There was the sound of activity in the other room, footsteps moving towards the door. The admiral had gone very still.

Killed who, exactly? he asked her.

Everyone, Niv said. On the Adriyatik. All of them. It was cruel to make her say it, but she supposed she had to. There was the faint whir of hidden cameras somewhere close by. Infrared and eye-tracking, and whoever was beyond that mirror, all watching her. They would know she was telling the truth.

The admiral swallowed, sat back in his chair. You turned weapons on the Adriyatik.

No! He did not seem surprised, he had accepted it at once. But she was horrified. I would never do that.

And what right do you have to say so? asked a cruel little voice inside her head. Was what you did any different?

I only meant to—

"Intent is not relevant here, Lieutenant." Any of a dozen meetings with command, and her wanting to scream that it wasn’t fair, she hadn’t started the fights, she never started them. "What matters is what you did. It is by our actions that we must be judged."

And you’re a murderer, the voice reminded her. It was her and not her; when she heard that voice she could feel the water at her chest, creeping up—

Lieutenant! She was bent over the table and gasping, the taste of bile on her tongue.

I’m fine.

Of course you’re fine. You killed them so you could be fine.

"Lieutenant, I need you to stay with me. What happened after the Bowen went into the anomaly? Start from the beginning. You’re safe here."

I didn’t see what happened to the Bowen, Niv said. I heard someone calling out for Commander Evans. She had a memory: throwing up a hand against the blaze of the Bowen’s engines. She hadn’t remembered that until now. I was seeing things that weren’t there. She had practiced these words in front of the mirrors. It was like a nightmare. I expect that this sounds like lies.

Your commander described the same phenomenon, the admiral said. Continue.

"I believe I fell, and it woke me up. I had been going to the jump desk to assist Lieutenant Salak. When I woke