The Stars Like Gods Read online

  He started to shake his head…then nodded instead. “A sandwich would be nice.”

  19

  * * *

  MIRAI

  Dashiel was waiting in the hangar bay when the Wayfarer landed—lurking in the entry hallway like a stalker, hoping she didn’t spot him as she landed. He’d almost rushed to the spaceport the instant Perrin pinged him to let him know Nika was on her way home, but he’d forced himself to plow through another futile meeting before coming here.

  He just needed to see her, alive and in person. Then he’d leave, since he still had no bearing pointing to what came next. The sting of betrayal continued to burn hot, singeing the edges of every memory it touched.

  Yet as soon as she descended the ramp and her feet touched the ground, he was no longer lurking in the hallway and his arms were wrapped around her, holding her tightly against him. Her warmth cooled the heat of betrayal in soothing, reassuring waves.

  She gasped in surprise, then wound her own arms around his waist and sank into his embrace. He could feel her lips rise into a smile at the curve of his neck.

  Holding her body against his felt like coming home. The answer to every question. Gods, how he didn’t want to let go—but then he remembered, and the sting flared to burn away the contentment, and he did.

  His gaze met hers fleetingly before running from the hope and confusion her expression conveyed, darting to the ground, behind her, anywhere else. “I’m glad you made it home safely—I’m glad you returned.” He took a step back and tried to dislodge the lump in his throat. “There are a lot of people waiting anxiously to hear what you learned, so…” another step back “…you should go talk to them.”

  “No!”

  He looked up in surprise, accidentally meeting her gaze again. What he saw there broke his heart…but so had she. “What do you mean, no?”

  “You don’t get to show up out of nowhere and touch me like you mean it, then walk away.”

  A visceral image of that night at his place, when he’d lost her and found her all at once, burst into his mind in full living color, as vivid as when he’d lived it. The moment when he’d known the woman he loved still existed inside her, not yet realizing how much more did as well, or how much he’d never known.

  He spat out a response. “Don’t use my own words against me.”

  Her shoulders sagged, and she gestured weakly at nothing. “Why did you do that? Why did you make me think…” her hands came to her face, muffling her voice “…why are you here?”

  Because no matter what I do, I somehow always find myself standing in front of you. Because every road, every twist and turn, every fork in the trail? They all lead back to you. “I was worried, then…relieved. I wanted to make certain you were all right. And where the hells are your psyche backups? You told the others you’d taken care of it, but no one knows where they are. Not Perrin, not Adlai, not anyone!”

  “I left behind a message detailing their location and queued it to be sent to Perrin and Maris if I didn’t return in two days. I’m a touch paranoid about my backups, for obvious reasons.”

  Which made perfect sense, and now he’d made an idiot of himself all over again. “Sure, but…okay. I didn’t know.”

  “How could you have known? You’ve been blocking my messages.”

  Though her words should have sounded biting and caustic, the delivery was nothing but sincere. Quiet, resigned, perhaps even sad, but genuine. It would be so much easier to hate her if only she’d act annoyed and dismissive. “I just needed time to think.”

  “And? You’ve had time, and now you’re here.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “You must have something you need to say to me.”

  Did he? Had all the hours of tumultuous arguments with himself, of ragged swings between despair and hatred and desperate longing added up to anything coherent? She was standing right here; she wasn’t arguing or fighting him, and no one waved frantically in the distance to demand their immediate attention.

  This opportunity might never come again, only in part because they both might be walking through the dwindling reservoir of their last days. So why was he here?

  The answer formed clear as the sun’s rays shining through the storm of questions drowning him.

  “I suppose I do.” He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Nika, when I heard where you’d gone, putting yourself in extreme danger in the slimmest hope of finding any advantage we can use to protect ourselves from the enemy, I realized…I don’t want to live without you.”

  Her eyes gleamed like jewels set afire. “Is it so simple as that?”

  “No. Because if I’m not able to trust you not to lie to me about something so fundamental as who you are—as who I am—I can’t live with you, either. And I have no idea how to bridge that chasm.”

  She nodded thoughtfully, even as the light in her eyes dimmed. “I understand. She, I—godsdamn these pronouns—was wrong to keep all this from you. I would not have kept it from you. Hells, the reason we’re here now is that I was effusively honest with you, which must count for something?” Hope lifted her features, but she didn’t fall silent to wait for an answer that remained tangled in his throat.

  “But I recognize it’s not so simple as that, either, and my actions now can’t make up for the lies of the past. My psyche was her psyche, and I don’t blame you for thinking this means I’ll make the same choice again in the future. I won’t—having your identity and memories stolen from you has a way of making you appreciate the preciousness of truth—but it is what it is.

  “I’ll never be able to re-inhabit my mindset from before. I’ll never be able to completely and without reservation understand why I made the choice to lie to you. The best I can do is this.” She reached into her pack and retrieved a data weave, then extended her hand, palm up, and offered it to him.

  He groaned and shook his head. “I can’t listen to any more earnest excuses.”

  “Believe me, I know where you’re coming from. But if this is it, if this is you—” the words choked off in her throat “—walking away from me, I don’t want you to do it entertaining any doubts or misconceptions about how much Nika Kirumase loved you.” She thrust her hand and its contents toward him. “Please. Do this one thing for me.”

  He stared at the tiny object resting on her palm. He was terrified of what it contained, though whether his terror arose from a fear that it would confirm his worst assumptions or make him no longer care about them, he couldn’t say.

  He took the weave. His hand trembled as he placed a fingertip upon it.

  Date: Y9,189.021 A7

  Subject: Dashiel

  I almost told him yesterday. All of it. The day before that, too.

  Why did I stop myself? Why am I telling a journal instead of him?

  I need to let go of this internal conflict and move forward. I don’t want to dwell on the past any longer. I don’t want to introduce doubt and pain into Dashiel’s mind, where it should never exist. Not about this. He owes no debt to his ancestor, and he should carry no burden left behind by the same.

  The thing is, he’s like Steven in the ways Steven was best—and he’s all the things Steven couldn’t be. Decisive where Steven was hesitant; kind and generous where Steven retreated to selfishness; displaying a quiet yet extraordinary inner strength where Steven too often broke to weakness.

  And while ancestry does matter, he is his own man where it matters most.

  Sometimes he’ll make the smallest gesture or flash the tiniest expression my way, and it’s identical to something Stephen would do. The first few times it happened, I felt as if I was transported back in time.

  But then he’ll smile more broadly, stand more proudly, and it becomes an action belonging fully to Dashiel. And now, Dashiel is all I see. Because he’s not an improved copy of Steven. Not a version or an echo. He’s his own man, whole and complete, and I owe it to him to see him, to love him, unencumbered by any ghost haunting the shadows.

  And I do. When I l
ook with new eyes freed from the past, I see a man worthy of walking with through eternity. I love him.

  Ironically, by deciding not to tell him, I feel as though I can finally close the door on a past far too long gone. What happened before no longer has any claim on me.

  With Dashiel, all I want to do is move forward. To take his hand in mine and walk with him, only him, into the sun of an endless future.

  —Nika Kirumase

  Dashiel closed his eyes…or were they already closed? He’d succumbed to the spell of the journal and utterly lost himself in it.

  Was it possible he remembered that very day? He checked the date, and it was possible. All too possible. A spring morning, eight months after he’d been named an Advisor. Eight months after he’d met her, and everything about his life had changed.

  I grimaced at the arrangement of charts and graphs in front of me, at their quantity as much as their content, until the bridge of my nose began to ache. I hadn’t expected being an Industry Advisor to involve so much busy work.

  Managing the manufacturing output of an entire planet, if at a nosebleed level, ought not to be qualitatively different from managing the output of my own company, except I had far less flexibility to fix problems when I spotted them. File a report, schedule a meeting, recommend corrective action, devise remedial contingencies, but otherwise….

  Nika emerged from the kitchen, two mugs of steaming coffee in hand. She’d dressed in black leggings and a teal wraparound that shifted between blue and green in the light, just like her eyes. She did that deliberately, I was fairly certain. Her hair was still damp from her shower; held away from her face by a matching headband, it cascaded in soft, lazy waves over her shoulders and down her back.

  She handed me one of the mugs, then reached out and took my other hand in hers. “It’s a lovely morning. Let’s go for a walk.”

  I pondered the sea of charts. A lot of work remained to be done, but it was only work. It could wait.

  I sipped on the coffee. “All right. Where are we walking to?”

  Her countenance shone with extraordinary joy, even for her. I didn’t know what had brightened her mood, but I looked forward to letting it infect me as well.

  “Around the block. Around the world. It doesn’t matter, so long as we’re walking together.”

  Tears escaped his eyelids to dampen his cheeks, and he did not care. He suspected they’d been escaping for a while now.

  He reopened his eyes to find her gazing at him. Open, hopeful, kind, unreserved. Loving. So breathtakingly like how she had gazed at him that morning. “Not fair. You’re playing dirty.”

  “What do you expect? I’m a diplomat and a rebel.” She tried to smile, but the muscles around her mouth faltered as they struggled to hold it in place.

  He offered the weave back to her. “Thank you. I…thank you.”

  She held her hand out, and he placed the weave in her open palm. His fingertips lingered there, barely touching her skin as he drank her in.

  In her beautiful features he saw pain, of course—hers and his in turn—but he also saw everything that made their world worth saving. Everything that gave his life meaning and joy.

  Her expression flickered as her lower lip quivered. She blinked, and a tear escaped her left eye, then her right. He’d been staring for too long, teasing her with the hint of his touch and the threat of removing it forever.

  He folded her fingers up and over the weave, squeezed her closed hand and let go.

  Then he let go of the rest, too—the clenched grip of his psyche on the bitterness and resentfulness, the knotted noose of fear he’d tied around his neck. Yes, she had lied to him. But hearing her reasons for doing so in her own voice, he now understood something: the lie hadn’t stolen their shared history, it had created it. He wished she’d never kept all this from him, but dammit….

  He swallowed roughly. Cleared his throat. Leapt. “Forget about generations and ancestors and fractured memories and sunsets and ancient journal entries. Strip them all away, because you and I are the ones standing here today, trying our damnedest to find a way forward. What about now? Does Nika Tescarav love Dashiel Ridani?”

  Everything in her countenance broke, shattering into pieces at their feet. “Beyond madness.”

  He sensed himself moving. Then she was in his arms once more, and this time he meant it. Maris was right about one thing—this was what mattered. This moment, and the ones they created together to follow it.

  “Dashiel?” It was a whisper against his lips.

  He ran a hand through her hair, tucking strands blowing in the wind behind her ear. “Yes?”

  “You’re not toying with me, are you? Because while I might deserve it, I don’t think I can survive it if you are.”

  He chuckled lightly and kissed the tip of her nose, then the corners of her mouth. “I’m not toying with you.” Her damp cheeks. “Do me a favor, though? Say it again.”

  Her lips danced across his. “I love you.”

  “Poetry of the gods. I love you, too. I need you. I want to walk through eternity with you.” He reluctantly drew back enough to see her face. He wished he didn’t need to ask, but a pesky little voice haranguing the depths of his mind insisted. “You’re not keeping any more life-altering secrets from me, are you?”

  She winced, letting a lingering tear escape to trail down her cheek. “Honestly? I don’t know. If I am, I’m keeping them from myself, too. But I promise you this: if I am, you’ll know the secret seconds after I do.”

  It wasn’t a perfect answer, but it was a true one. “I guess that’s all I can ask for, isn’t it?”

  “It’s everything I have to give.” She rested her forehead on his as her hands tenderly caressed his neck and wove into his hair.

  They stayed that way, touching and holding on for dear life, for a long second. Then another, and another, until at last he sensed the joy creeping into her countenance.

  She chuckled lightly. “Oh, also, you can read all of my journals, carte blanche. It’s going to take me ten thousand years to get through them all at this rate, so I need the help.”

  He reveled in the buoyancy of his heart. He felt renewed, like an oasis in the desert hadn’t been a mirage at all. “Maybe I’ll read a few here and there. But I’m more interested in the woman standing in front of me now.”

  “Good.” She tugged him closer to hold him so tight he could scarcely draw a breath. But who needed air, anyway?

  READ/WRITE/EXEC

  DAYS UNTIL RASU DEADLINE: 18

  20

  * * *

  MIRAI ONE PAVILION

  “What you’re describing? Ethereal, cosmic beings of light? They sound almost like gods.”

  Nika smiled even as she shook her head at Cameron. Smiled because she had not merely survived the harrowing encounter with the Sogain but returned with actionable intelligence. Smiled because right now, the joy filling her soul had pushed aside all the fear and worry. Better yet, it spurred her onward with renewed determination to somehow defeat their enemy. Everyone was going to live, dammit.

  “No, not gods. I can’t say for certain whether the lights that transported me from and to the Wayfarer represented an actual Sogain or were a device controlled by them—or one of them. Their species could number in the millions, but it felt as if I was interacting with a single entity. In fact, it’s possible there’s only a single Sogain.”

  The two dozen faces staring at her displayed the full gamut of reactions: shock from Julien, deep skepticism from Cameron, ‘the fuck do I care’ from Katherine, and so on. The size of the group didn’t rattle Nika too much, as she’d speechified to more people at The Chalet countless times, but it did stand to make productive debate challenging.

  Regardless, all the Advisors needed to be here for this. Also Perrin, because after hugging Nika for a solid ten seconds upon arrival, her irrepressible friend had refused to be denied entry—and if Katherine had so much as opened her mouth to try, Nika would have put her on th
e floor, so.

  A couple of murmurs began surfacing to debate the population size of the Sogain, and she hurriedly started talking again to save everyone from the rabbit hole. “More important than their number, though, is the fact that the structure I observed was constructed. It was built of real, physical materials, assembled and shaped for a specific purpose. Yes, that purpose was beyond my comprehension, but it wasn’t magic or a supernatural manifestation—it was technology. While they’re clearly far more advanced than we are, it’s a difference of degree, not of kind.”

  Maris sighed. “This is a great deal more than we knew about the Sogain before today, and it’s somewhat reassuring to learn they’re not gods passing judgment upon our prolific sins from on high. But nevertheless…they wield unfathomable power, technology and presumably weapons, and all they gave you was, ‘here’s a map, go do it yourself’?”

  Nika laughed. Damn, it felt good to laugh. “Essentially, yes. It’s entirely possible the Sogain are just assholes. But if we can’t comprehend their technology, odds are we can’t comprehend their motivations, and I suggest we not waste valuable time speculating. Instead, let’s make use of what they did give us. Let’s go get ourselves a Rasu.”

  “But you said our weapons are no match for Rasu defenses. How are we going to capture one?” Dashiel asked the question with a wicked smirk and a speculative tone, which her brain delightfully translated into, let’s do it—what’s our plan?

  She tried to keep her gleefulness tuned to a respectable level. “I said we couldn’t defeat their defenses using a handheld Glaser or a standard blade. The Rasu are powerful, but they’re not Sogain-powerful. I refuse to believe we can’t devise a way to trap and hold a single, isolated Rasu.”

  Adlai had been strolling across the rear section of the room since the meeting began; now he leaned against the wall beside Perrin and stuck his hands in his pockets. “I’m not saying we can’t do exactly that, but I will say this: the force fields we used to contain the Guides won’t get this job done. And those are the strongest force fields Justice can deploy.”