Neodymium Apocalypse, Part 1: The Neodymium Chronicles, #4

By Jen Finelli, MD

Lem's world is ending.

That's not just her personal world, even though she's still reeling a year after burying one of her best friends at the bottom of a desert ravine—and she's got family enslaved by actual mind control on a distant planet under military blockade.

It's not just her political world, either, even though the freedom fighters she served since childhood seem pretty happy believing she died after they exiled her.

No, the actual Universe is under attack as interdimensional forces siphon its energy into another plane, eager to speed along its final heat death. They think Lem's world would look a whole lot better empty, and one of the most powerful military leaders across five solar systems agrees. He's constructing a vast, planet-spanning Structure under their direction to rend a hole in the fabric of space—and Lem may have accidentally handed him its power source. Now she's got to find an ancient bioship and assemble an inter-species team to stop the apocalypse, or find a way to tell those she loves a decent goodbye.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WordFire Press
• Release date: Nov 26, 2024
• ISBN: 9781680576795

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Lem Benzaran

I hadn’t realized how much of my world he was.

When my partner tumbled off the cliff, taking my would-be murderer with him, I almost threw myself off after them. In that split second—that long, stomach-turning, dizzy second—I screamed as if the Universe cared. As if, seeing the weight of my anguish, it might strike a bargain with me. Give them back. Please. Take me!

But Jei’s last words wouldn’t let me dive, and my enemy’s last blows left me too weak to do anything else.

I’m not the type to freeze or faint. But it was a long time after the crunch and splatter before I began my climb. At some point I woke up and found myself still lying on the top of the cliff with my arm draped over the ledge. I’d gotten my mace back somehow, but couldn’t remember crawling for it. The sandstorm was gone, leaving only the rain washing rivulets of red off my face and fingers into the gully below.

I had to get down there.

I had to.

I could see the spikes, and the—crimson—things—but no one’s dead until you’ve checked. No one’s⁠—

My heartbeat screamed in my ears as I climbed. It was a long climb. Maybe hours, who knows. My forced nap had regenerated the bio-ability that let me stick to the cliff face with weak static cling, but even with that I had to pick my way with agonizing care, this foot on that little rock, this weak hand gripping here—I lost control and slid a long way twice, twisting my limbs as I tried to stop until my ankle made some kind of sound it shouldn’t. I didn’t notice ’til I reached the bottom, but when I got there my fingernails bled. Long gashes streaked down my forearm.

None of that hurt.

None of that hurt because my core, that knot behind my solar plexus, was in so much pain each breath choked. The thought crossed my mind—I’m dying after all. This is me dying. I’m dying. The hacking sounds from my throat—not quite sobs, maybe gasps—sounded so far away. Like Cinta’s voice through a transmitter. Reality speaking on radio while I walked in a dream.

I crawled to their side at last, and even then, over an hour after impact, I tried to—well, I was never one to quit when it’s over. I checked pulses, pawed around the impaling stones as if I could knit sinew and heart back together with pure filking force of will—shyte, I even tried to wake heart rhythms with the meager electricity in my fingers that had recharged after my pathetic little nap.

I checked my enemy’s pulse, too. Jared’s pulse—I would never really know him by his real name, but I would try to remember it. I didn’t know why I cared to check the obvious. It was like I needed to verify—for fear, or for hope?—because even after death his fingers were still wrapped around Jei’s wrist.

I’m never going to let you go, he had promised.

It was the only part of him that was still recognizable.

I’m going to have nightmares about this forever, I thought.

But no, it would have been far, far worse without the bodies. The gore was good for me. It confirmed the facts I wouldn’t have let myself believe. You don’t expect the back of someone’s head to give like that when you lift it, crunchy bits of skull floating in something under your fingertips. That memory would save me from waking night after night in the future, wondering if I forgot to check something, sweating with the cold terror of oh no, wait, he was actually alive, a fantasy absolutely impossible no matter how many times I put my ear down to Jei’s mouth to feel for breath or look for chest rise and fall. With cold, merciful finality, the gore told me the truth about the universe, about what had happened, about my own helplessness.

I could not sit still. Even once the truth beat me into acceptance, my body moved on autopilot, the gears in my brain grinding through the protocol on broken, clogged metal teeth. Death confirmed. On to body disposal. After battle come the rites. I needed to⁠—

It was at that moment that I became uncontrollably furious.

I couldn’t fly them home. I had no ship. I was in the middle of nowhere. Any allies I might have were trying to survive an active battle or stop an apocalypse. And it wasn’t like I could carry the bodies away, not in their current state—or mine.

So there would be no honored onyx plaque under the trees in a soldiers’ graveyard. They weren’t coming back with me alive, and they weren’t coming back dead, either.

I was going to leave them behind.

And I don’t know why, but that last fact seemed so unnecessarily cruel, just a pointless kick in the nads on top of everything else, that I couldn’t take it anymore. With a strange, hoarse scream I ripped my mace off my belt and attacked the impaling rocks like they’d intended the kill. How dare the rocks. How dare this planet. How dare the Universe. The tallest spike cracked as my mace made impact—chunks flew—I chopped the rock formation shorter and shorter, beheading the stones over and over under roaring swings.

These two were the Yin and Yang to my galaxy, the two forces ever in battle, and I realized suddenly I’d always somehow believed Diebol would join us and Jei would outlive me. Why had I believed that? I hadn’t even known that hidden hope existed inside me, and I hated it, because on its way out it pierced through my chest with the sharpest, purest pain I had ever felt. I was impaled, too.

At some point I stopped screaming. Dust and pebbles lay scattered over everything. That terrible stabbing subsided to a throb. In its place my center felt like someone had reached in between my ribs to grab a chunk of esophagus and lung and just twist, and twist, and twist.

In the silence that followed I untangled Diebol’s grip from Jei’s wrist and, kneeling, laid my hand in Diebol’s palm instead, trying to say one last rite for my enemy. My throat strained with some inappropriate joke about the time we worked together—about our fight against Jei, who we both clearly loved in our own very opposite ways. I remember wondering, aloud, where my enemy’s soul went, if souls went places, shyte, if he had one beyond the electrical programming lost with his shattered brain. I wondered if there was redemption even now. I told him I hated him and I was grateful he was gone. And, in the same breath, I told him how badly I wished we could have found a universe where he could have lived, and we could have been friends, because with earnest pain I was always going to remember what could have been more than what was.

I took for myself his pistol, his holo-pen, and his ultraviolet neodymium mace, deactivating it with his touch and yanking it out from between his and Jei’s ribs like a king’s sword from stone.

Jei was harder to look at.

Because he’d landed on top, I could still see his face. He seemed asleep, but not in the fitful, ready-to-fight sleep I’d gotten to know after so many missions crammed together in one-man fighters. He always looked sad in his sleep then—but now, chin thrown back and lips parted, the hint of a relieved smile lingered in the corner of his mouth, his face otherwise as empty and innocent as a newborn’s. Like my little siblings used to look sprawled out sleeping beside my human mom. No memory of cages or nightmares or haunting lost love. Utterly careless.

Utterly free.

I covered up that peace too quickly; my tired limbs grasped and crawled for large stones as if hungry for the funeral mound. I don’t know if my burial pace was cowardly—I just couldn’t say shyte after seeing that face. Something in me wanted to look forever, but it was almost too intimate, disrespectful, to see him that way—a nakedness of soul I didn’t deserve to know. We’d always talked about the possibility that Njandejara, our other-dimensional energy friend, might gather up our electrical programming to store us somewhere else after death; Jei’s face now was too blinding a look into that possibility, into a hope that seemed so naive it was almost wicked. Maybe—maybe he was finally happy. It was better not to think about it. I needed a break from hope.

Don’t matter if his face looks nice now, I heard myself muttering. If I don’t get him covered up that face’ll get eaten. I didn’t know what weird-ass creatures lived in this gaudy rainbow wasteland. And there was always bacteria. Not gonna filking sit here overnight while he rots.

He was going to rot. He was going to ferment into a mush until he and Diebol became one indistinguishable homogeneous microbial soup. And then, after all, one pile of intertwined bones, with all the horror of empty eye sockets and grimacing jaws, and then maybe a fossil, a twisted stone like the ones that killed him.

Did any peace matter, at all, if that was the end?

Dusk stalked me. I looked up the cliff at some point to see a smattering dark trail of crimson that marked my descent—there was no way back up, not with my power drained again. In the evening shadows I could see Jei’s mace still glowing a few meters away on the canyon floor, its spikes of light bouncing in and out like planets racing around an emerald sun. It took me a long time to decide to take it. It felt like looting. Like I should leave it with him.

It’s a weapon. A really filking rare weapon. That’d be stupid, I muttered.

It was incredibly hard getting it over to him so his DNA could shut it off, and even harder to cut off his Frelsi wristband, with the metal casing, and the shock it emitted. I kept trying, clenching my teeth ’til the stinging stopped. He wouldn’t be buried with that filking shackle.

At some point in the process I realized Cinta’s voice was real.

It was repeating, in Grenblenian, on Jei’s wristband, at the lowest possible volume. Someone at Command got a notification when Jei’s vitals stopped and they’d seen the tell-tale, wavering false pulse from my feeble rescue attempts on a corpse. They’d ordered the closest unit—Cinta and his mercenaries—to follow up when they could.

Once I recognized Cinta’s voice I wanted to thrash him. It didn’t matter that I knew having other people around would’ve ruined our chances—that with Jei under Diebol’s control, having multiple opponents would’ve super-charged Jei, making him impossible to free and damning all our nearby allies. It didn’t matter that I knew Cinta’d been stuck on his current mission—to uncover Bricandor’s strange hunt for neodymium crystals and probably avert a coming apocalypse—and I knew he had to do that. It didn’t even matter that with the mind-control panel fried, and Diebol dead, we’d technically won, technically saved this planet for now, and it definitely didn’t matter that hey, this was war, we were all spread thin, and this was the risk you took as a special forces unit of two.

What mattered was that Jei was dead, and I wanted to reach through the speakers on his wristband and strangle anyone in the Universe who existed and hadn’t helped. Cinta most of all, because he was closest, and I believed in him most.

This is my choice, Lem, Jei had said.

I breathed, holding the knot in my stomach still as if balancing a spinning globe on my finger.

I breathed, and focused on the color green.

ONE YEAR LATER

CHAPTER ONE

Cinta

Cinta did not like running without claws.

Not that they would have mattered, on this dingy metal floor⁠—

But on this day one week after his son’s first birthday, the young Biouk space-lemur found himself running as fast as he could on all fours through an old satellite with an ominous green glow gaining behind him.

I thought you said the core was inactive! he shouted.

Yeah, inactive, chuckled the human figure running beside him in stealth space-garb. Unsuitable for life.

"I interpreted inactive as stable!"

Sounds like a you problem, brother. Jaika did not take as many risks these days since putting away her human name, Lem Benzaran, after her partner died, but what she considered a risk still differed greatly from Cinta’s definition. He wondered sometimes if she still wanted to die, but with his mercenary friends off shutting down a neodymium crystal silo near the Bont homeworld, and most Frelsi bases still in quarantine as the freedom-forces struggled to find a solution for mass-produced Growen mind-control—well, Cinta only had Jaika for sticky things like this. To stop a maniac from controlling the solar system, he needed a maniac.

Eerie static crackled through the transmitter in Cinta’s space-helmet now, rising and falling in sync with the flaring tendrils of light blooming and waning in blinding patterns behind them. The rusted hallways—dark when they first entered this abandoned satellite—now shone in stark, search-lit shadows. Metal folded in on itself behind them; Cinta’s chest tightened as if his lungs had begun to fold up, too. So bad, this! Even if they reached their skiff, could they get away? His legs began to tire; this hallway was not short. His breath burned.

Suddenly Cinta found himself pawing at air instead of floor.

Ah, there goes gravity, Jaika remarked. Her long fingers gripped the back of Cinta’s space suit, right by the scruff of his neck; she yanked him forward. Another long flare of plasma blasted through the space where he had been.

A metallic screech whined through what thin air remained in this ancient place as another segment of floor and wall disappeared into the caustic light. A field of sparks flared around Jaika; Cinta coughed in surprise. Only now? Her innate electric shield only activated just now? The growing explosion behind them, the walls crushing in on themselves, the void of space waiting to swallow them if they failed to reach the skiff—none of that caused her concern? Only now, she felt stress?

This annoyed Cinta. He did not have time for annoyance, though. He bounced against the wall, struggling to place his paws as Jaika dragged him behind her. She clambered now across collapsing hallway panels on two and three limbs, her focused static cling as effective here as his claws once in the jungle treetops of long-gone childhood. So long, really, since Cinta carried her?

Shyte, Jaika chuckled. The entire satellite spun now, thrown out of its normal trajectory by the motion of its exploding core. Floor and ceiling swapped places. Jaika clutched Cinta to her chest, shielding him from the fall with her body as they both bounced off the new floor with a thunk.

Painful, that sounded—but Jaika leapt to her feet to resume their mad sprint without a winded breath. The hallway tilted to an incline. Jaika huffed as she pulled Cinta up the metal hill, her breath peaking through his transmitter as if blowing in his ear⁠—

The hallway continued its tilt. It became vertical. They now climbed a straight chute above an abyss of jade fire.

Oh, why this? Cinta dangled from Jaika’s hand like his cousin’s leather doll, cursing his lack of claws with all his heart. Pain pierced his sensitive ears as Jaika looked back and called down to him—as if they did not have radios right by their mouths! Aren’t you glad we didn’t actually land the skiff? she asked.

Cinta winced, growled, and said nothing. She had insisted on leaving their small low-orbit vehicle floating just beyond the satellite instead of landing it inside. That protected the skiff for now but would matter very little if this junk-place spun any further: the smallest jostle from one of this asterisk-shaped satellite’s limbs would crush the skiff or send it flying into nowhere, leaving the adopted siblings the undesirable choice between incineration or suffocation in space.

Njandejara, I understand you enjoy cutting it close, but I would appreciate if you rescued us now … Cinta pleaded in a near-whisper. He feared for his sister. Carrying him Jaika could not climb as fast …

Cinta heard his invisible energy friend answer from across dimensions as clearly as if in his transmitter: Sometimes you are the rescue, little one.

Cinta nodded. That must mean—Jaika, let me go! he panted. You will make it faster without me.

I appreciate that buddy, but that’s not how this goes. Cinta heard gritted teeth behind Jaika’s otherwise pleasant tone; he could not see her eyes through the atmosphere hood cast over her space mask but with his internal ear—well-practiced after a year of training—Cinta heard a singular, vicious thought screaming from his younger sister’s mind. Only a name.

Jei.

Sister, it is not the same now as then, please— Cinta begged. Please let me go, I am slowing you⁠—

Before he could finish his sentence, Cinta’s stomach dropped. Jaika swung him by the wrist and hurled him up the chute above her.

He screamed as low-gravity momentum carried him spinning head over heels toward a window looking out into space.

Jaika

No one likes being thrown. I get that. I just didn’t really have time to explain a whole bunch of strats while dangling over a pit of alien green fire. I bit my lip, concentrating as Cinta careened away toward the hangar bay. It was above instead of in front of us now—his freaked-out yelp in the thin air was so loud I could actually hear it fade outside my atmo-suit. I was still speed climbing, switching my focus to each limb as I turned static cling on and off. Left hand, right, left boot, right—like a stupid filking kid’s rhyme in my head as my lips fluttered with hot spit. My cling didn’t work that well through the material of my suit, but there wasn’t room in my rhythm for doubt.

A lime-green petal of death-flower blossomed toward me.

Shyte.

I blasted a wave of static repulsion behind me—no point calling what I did an em-push now that I wasn’t trying to compare myself to Jei or Diebol—and my force rocketed me forward, arms out to catch Cinta before he crashed through the window to eternity. Almost there⁠—

I snatched my Biouk brother out of his spin and shoved a palm at the window. Go, I grunted at my neurons like one of those ridiculous action heroes from the Burburan light-channels. Speaking aloud helped me focus⁠—

The capacitors on my weird mutant nerve endings fired another static pulse, shoving away from the glass. We steadied, floating in low gravity centimeters from the window.

Nice, huh?

Cinta was so seething mad he couldn’t answer. Fair enough. I pointed to our low-orbit skiff floating just outside. It bobbed like a skewered water bird, rocking a bit on the solar wind it caught with its long tail panel. We’d gotten into this space station with careful rappelling, paws and hands clutching a tie line harpooned from the skiff, voices echoing each other with perfect safety calls before we finally crawled through one of the decon chambers scattered around this hangar. We didn’t have that luxury now. Flames licked just behind us as I drew my neodymium mace, my other arm still wrapped around Cinta⁠—

"Jaika, no, we shall fall into nowhere full of glass⁠—!"

Sorry, brother. I smashed the window with the red fireball at the end of my staff.

No matter how thin the air was inside the satellite it was still way thicker than outside. The moment the window cracked the void sucked us through; there was a frozen moment where I saw the fragmented crystal shards splintering around us, glittering like riches in the starlight …

Shyte, that’ll cut us to shreds.

Just one frozen moment.

I wrapped myself around Cinta like a fetus around an umbilical cord. Weird metaphor, but that’s what was in my head—that, and the vivid knowledge that the moment the energy bloom caught up it’d riddle our bodies with violently-flung glass. Glass didn’t swerve real well around my innate electric field—not like death cartridges and other shyte with iodizing charge or metal.

So … not good.

In that frozen moment I envisioned the skiff waiting just meters away. I imagined a green thread, thought come here⁠—

My static pull yanked my spine toward the ship like an invisible bungee cord. We smashed through its outer polymerwall—it softened with a terrific slurp to let the stored DNA in our suits pass through—and we rolled into the dark, narrow cockpit.

We let go as we tumbled. As soon as my belly hit the floor I reached up and slammed my palm on the dashboard. The skiff flung forward. Cinta yelped; the wall and floor sounded clonking thuds as he bumped against them. High-pitched music tinkled across our again-solid hull as the glass caught up with us on the pressure wave. The skiff tilted butt-up; I yanked myself into the pilot’s seat. My hands slid together across the compuwall like a clap; the ship groaned and creaked as it readied its shell for re-entry and I took us plunging into the atmosphere.

Jei was always the one who’d landed the ship when we flew together. He was a good pilot. I was not. In the months after he died I’d practiced over and over with this damn skiff on my first forays out into the satellite field, sometimes for days straight, until my hands shook and my eyes wouldn’t stay open anymore. I had to make money to live out here, and I could earn money fastest by scavenging shyte from old ship graveyards in low orbit—wasn’t like any of us outside the Frelsi bases could live on the good graces of those refugee fortresses anymore. Jei and I had destroyed the mind-control panel in this sector, saving the local base at the cost of his life, but there were others, on other planets, and Frelsi scientists still had no way of removing mind-control chips from people’s spines months and now a year later. With the Growen manufacturing new darts every day like sweets in demand, everyone went into lock-down, and it was almost impossible to get into a Frelsi base now unless you really, really had something mission-critical. And we needed to eat, so I’d needed to practice flying.

That was what I told Cinta, anyway.

But that wasn’t actually why I’d practiced landing so much. I’d hoped each time that I’d crash. By accident. Couldn’t do it on purpose—Jei wouldn’t let me. It would’ve been a shyte thing to do after he gave me this forced shot at life. Sometimes I only pulled up in time out of spite, to prove he was wrong, he shouldn’t have died, I was the one who was going to ruin the world. Other times I lived because I was grateful, and painfully hopeful, and couldn’t turn down his gift without spitting on his unmarked grave.

No stopping now, my guy, you gotta land this thing.

Bloodseas, Lem, get back in your seat.

Echoes of past landings flashed around me now with the wild lights, first green from the dissolving satellite, then flash-fire red from the Forge sky as we zipped toward the planet surface and the desert below. My palms shook with the shuddering dashboard, and today I didn’t crash because I had someone else on board.

Cinta

Cinta ripped away his helmet, panting and shaking sweaty fur out of his eyes as the skiff landed. A great plume of colorful dust puffed up around it, obscuring the viewscreens and windows for a moment. Dizziness racked Cinta’s skull and he wanted to bite his sister, but he could say nothing because his chest would not stop heaving. He had only just managed to fasten his safety straps before they entered the atmosphere.

For a long moment they both sat there in silence, breathing. Jaika presently turned and scanned Cinta for injuries, running her gloves along his limbs to sweep for blood. She laid both hands on his chest, watching for even rise and fall. Can you breathe, and did you hit your head? she asked.

Cinta still did not feel like speaking. She needed a response to confirm a patent airway, though—this he knew. I can. No loss of consciousness. I protected my head.

She gave a nod and a grunt; Cinta followed her finger with his eyes, gripped her long hands with his paws, and let her check his pulses. She released him then, still crouched and tense, to unbuckle the pouches around her belt, rifling through them for the software chips plundered from the old satellite.

Satisfied not a single one had cracked, Jaika finally relaxed. She almost seemed to melt, long legs sprawled out across the grey and black tile as she slumped against the back of the pilot’s seat with a heavy sigh, and with the loss of adrenaline, the sparkle left her eyes as if she had left it out in space with the stars.

Cinta, there’s something I need to make abundantly clear to you, she said darkly. And I’m gonna say it in a way I know you’ll hear. You know from the old texts our people discovered—the ones you fed Jei?

Cinta nodded. A heat bubbled in his gut.

There’s a manuscript that says the lesser is blessed by the greater, she said. You remember that?

Cinta’s ears lowered, tense. Still, he nodded again.

Okay. So I let you be the greater and bless the shyte outta me in a lotta ways. All the time, you’re being the greater. Food, clothing, medicine, all that shyte, you do. She sprinkled her Biouk speech with Grenblenian curses as her voice deepened with the timbre of a threat: But if I’m with you on mission, you let me be the greater. My shyte may look crazy but I know what the filk I’m doing, and I’m stronger than you. She leaned forward, cherry-wood eyes almost black in the shadow of her lowered brow: Don’t you ever offer to die for me again. Got it?

Cinta did not like this voice. He had never quite grown accustomed to uncouth manners and orders from the Frelsi freedom fighters—he half expected Jaika to call him cadet and order him floor exercises. Just because you have strength now does not mean I am not still older, Cinta reminded her, almost surprised at the rumbling growl underneath his own words. Jaika knew the taboos of their childhood clan. She knew well the respect owed to older siblings, and older friends.

Her eyes darted across his face for a moment; something like a restrained smirk flickered at the rim of her lip. When she spoke, the honorific conjugation did not take the ice off her tongue: "No offense, elder brother—but this isn’t a request."

Cinta blew out harshly, his ears now completely flat against the back of his head. Jaika’s words reminded him somehow of her now-dead Captain Rana and his culture. "You mean no harm, Cinta corrected her. You do mean offense. I am weak to you."

Jaika narrowed her eyes and sighed with a frustrated growl. Listen! Her hand darted out; Cinta found his forepaw enclosed in her grip before he could move. She pressed his sole against her forehead⁠—

A rush of voices flooded Cinta’s ears, a cacophony so loud he did not dare even blink for fear the darkness would make them stronger, and he winced as if in pain because with the physical contact passing bioelectricity between the two siblings Jaika’s thoughts screamed at him, tumbling over each other like horrid poison-bats shrieking to escape the cage of her cranium⁠—

He’s dead. He’s still dead. I’m not doing that again.

I need you to help me find my human brothers, so I need you alive. Shyte, I need you because you’re my brother.

Don’t you know you’re an idiot? You’re still in the Frelsi, Cinta. Shyte, if it wasn’t for the quarantines—it’s a helluva problem for a mind-reader to get tagged with a mind-control shot—the Frelsi would probably have you running interrogations 24/7, or hobnobbing with diplomats to read their true intentions, or some other shyte like that. You’re valuable to the cause.

He is dead and he is never coming back.

You’re valuable to the cause.

That last repetition offended Cinta. He pulled his paw back.

To you, I am an asset, he said.

Yeah. And to others, too. It’d be hella selfish of you to die. With that, his big little sister turned away to check engine lights and move equipment for disembarking.

Cinta’s ears twitched, then drooped, and his growing left tusk scraped against his lower incisor as it did so often these days when irritation clenched his jaw. This. For this reason Cinta usually sent Jaika to help his missions in ways that did not need him along. Only the third time this year that he actually asked her to escort him, and he already felt aged by twenty. He and Jaika did not have much work together before Jei died; most of Cinta’s time in the Frelsi matched Jaika’s time out of it. Oh, they had chores together during her early cub-time, but after her human parents took her back Jaika lived in Fort Jehu while Cinta lived with his tribe, and no matter how many starlit dewy nights they stole away to play in the thickets between, the adopted siblings grew up on either side of a wall. Cinta did not join the war until after Jaika met her moody sparring partner, and Jaika changed much during those three years with Jei Bereens. She was used now to performing with a powerful electromagnetic, someone much rougher than Cinta, and she always skipped steps that to Cinta seemed necessary. Cinta doubted the big little human really knew how many basic protocols the Frelsi had let her and Jei bypass.

Jaika pressed the release valve that dropped the skiff’s polymerwall wide open; it melted out of her way and she jumped down into the deep turquoise sand outside with a blast of dust and hot air. Cinta sighed and tucked a paw into his pouch for the black cloth mask he kept as an extra. Jaika knew lung silicosis would come of breathing too much toxic sand; she always pretended to forget.

The tired Biouk rose, slipping his muzzle into his own mask as he waddled on hind legs over to the now-open doorway. He could reach the tall human’s face now, standing on the ship floor while she stood below him on the ground.

Huh-hm, he grunted, holding out the mask. Jaika gave him a slight side-eye but took it—then, with a polite nod, she set off toward the large nomadic tent in the distance.

Ksh, Cinta stopped her with a paw on her shoulder. Did you take your medication today?

Jaika turned halfway back and popped open one of the utility pockets on her hip in answer. The tiny canister of gas in the pocket was clear, empty of its normally lavender contents. It’s weird that you call it medication, she said.

It’s a substance you need for your health, to maintain normal brain function, he said. So it is medicine.

The guy’s dead and I’m living off his girlfriend’s pheromones. It’s weird, is what it is, she said. She looked off into the horizon with a hard brow. Artificial pheromones, but still.

And on the ancient human homeworld insulin came from pigs and birth control from pregnant mares, Cinta said. Where it comes does not change its effect. Still medicine.

Yuck. The part of Jaika’s nose-bridge still visible above the respirator cloth wrinkled. Please don’t tell me things I don’t need to know.

Only if you begin to tell me things I do need to know, please.

Come on, she grinned. You should’ve known inactive meant unstable.

With you, perhaps, he sighed.

Jaika’s eyes twinkled as she slipped sand goggles over her head. Of course, if you want me to pause next time we’re running from a reactor meltdown—you know, get out the maps and diagrams to explain⁠—

’We have to go through that window,’ or ‘I will catch you, hold on,’ would be nice, Cinta said, one ear to the side, and one straight up.

Pain flashed through Jaika’s gaze—deep, incurable pain, as if her dark irises, glinting red in the evening sunlight, led straight into an open wound. Cinta did not know if her next words came from her mouth or her mind when she turned to leave.

Cinta, she said. ’I’ll catch you’ goes without saying. I always will.

CHAPTER TWO

Reise Benzaran

Reise still hadn’t stopped trying to close his eyes every time he pulled the trigger.

Ice stung his cheeks as his face pressed against the barrel of his rifle; even through his balaclava the metal weapon cooled the hot headache that’d become his constant compatriot for the past year. His sight picture swiveled between three targets: one human Frelsi soldier and two Bichank—land walrus—settlers.

The human soldier dashed from corner to corner with his weapon up and eyes wide, gaunt skin stretched taut across his cheekbones. The settlers’ fur hung limp and drab; yellowed malnutrition cracked in runes across their tusks. They took only the slowest halting steps around the corners of the buildings carved into the ice around them.

They’d all only come out of hiding for food. After a year of Growen forces cutting off their food supply and Reise sucking them one by one from their ranks … Reise estimated less than ten settlers and Frelsi soldiers remained in the back shadows of the camp. He knew. He counted every shot he took. Even now Reise tried to scream to the soldier to run. His throat burned in protest, still torn from a thousand screams on a thousand past missions.

But the gag in his mouth didn’t allow any sound, and his hands wouldn’t remove it for him. It’d become a permanent fixture ever since Reise regained control of his speech. It took about a month, but all the mind-controlled puppets eventually relearned talking.

So why can’t I relearn closing my eyes?

Counting. He lived through counting. His every breath counted down as the starving human turned his back. The waking nightmare blurred around Reise, but the target shone in media res, every detail enhanced. Reise could see the bulge of the bone at the top of the man’s spine, highlighting the base of his neck; a soft buzz ran along Reise’s own spine as his hands shifted ever so slightly, adjusting aim … breathe … two  … one …

The shot zipped through the barrel of the rifle. Reise’s eyes didn’t blink until after he’d hit his mark.

He couldn’t close his ears either. Kill me! That was the last thing the target yelled before the mind-control signal took hold. Reise’s eyelids popped open again, just in time to see his target stiffen as if suddenly turned to stone by the shot. The human’s friends turned their weapons on him—death-pacts weren’t uncommon these days—but mind-control darts were expensive and annoying for the Growen to remove. The target couldn’t die now. Reise’s next two unwilling shots were to wound the friends, to protect his new ally.

Fired. Reise closed his eyes again. Sounded like he’d killed one of the Bichanks in his shoot to wound. That was intentional, a mercy of anatomical imprecision, but Reise’s fingers had already slipped to set another control dart on his rifle and change settings—the other Bichank joined the Growen. Reise lay his forehead down against the ice, focusing on nothing but the cold against his throbbing face. Heavy boots crunched below—his three blitzer handlers moving in to collect.

A