The Stars Like Gods Read online

  “Noted.” Her eyes scanned the room. “Come on, people. Tell me how we’re going to do this. Where can we find or how can we build a stronger containment system than the best Justice has to offer?”

  A muffled commotion outside the door drew everyone’s attention. Katherine muttered under her breath, “Fine. Let him in.”

  The door opened and a man Nika didn’t know strode confidently into the room. He jerked quick nods of greeting to several people then turned to Nika. “I can get you what you need.”

  She frowned as a hierarchy of questions queued up on her lips. “Excellent. Who are you?”

  Lance Palmer had led their military forces in the SAI Rebellion—and lost. No one realistically put the blame for it on his shoulders, for the rebellion had always been a lost cause. Still, Nika had to wonder what such a loss did to a man.

  When the Guide-led government had taken shape and the Divisions were hashed out, he’d made a hard play for a separate, robust military division. But the Guides and a majority of the Advisors felt an active military sent the wrong message about what kind of society the Asterion Dominion wanted to be. Instead, military services were relegated to a department within the Administration Division, and Palmer was denied an Advisor position, a significant budget and any real power.

  It turned out she’d dissented from the decision, for however much it mattered now. And once upon a time—700,000 years ago, to be precise—they must have enjoyed a close working relationship, together leading a failed rebellion.

  Which was why she hated that the man sitting at the table in the break room was a stranger to her.

  In most respects, he fit the bill of what one expected a soldier to look like. Trimmed, tawny hair fell neatly across his forehead above sage eyes. Rolled-up sleeves exposed tanned, muscular arms, and the detail work on his tactical pants made her envious. The only oddity was the scuffed and faded state of his combat boots. How had the man been spending his time to inflict such wear and tear on them?

  She slid into a chair opposite him. “Thanks for waiting. I needed to…talk to a few people.”

  “I understand.” His all-business demeanor relaxed briefly. “I was sorry to hear about your psyche-wipe. Also, reassured. I never did figure you for the sunsetting type.” Then the soldier guise returned, almost as if it had never left. “So you want to capture a Rasu. What exactly does ‘a’ Rasu mean?”

  She didn’t bother to ask how much he knew about the Rasu; he’d instantiated almost a dozen panes above the table, and half of them displayed images taken by the Wayfarer at the stronghold. He’d obviously been educating himself on their enemy. He also either had uncanny prescience or, more likely, listeners hidden inside the Pavilion, to have shown up when he did.

  “A reasonable question. In this case, it’s a small scout ship that crashed on an uninhabited planet three years ago. It’s since repaired itself, but it hasn’t returned to the other Rasu.”

  “A rebel, huh? Interesting.” He motioned to the panes. “I’ve seen all the footage. A small scout ship means a structure around thirty-five meters long, weighing maybe two kilotonnes, give or take. Holding it is going to require a cage measuring a minimum of fifty by twenty-five meters and a meter or more thick. Plus some crazy strong force fields, since it’s apt to be a very angry Rasu once we capture it. Our second-highest priority needs to be keeping it contained, especially once we bring it back to one of the Axis Worlds. Our highest priority is, of course, catching it in the first place.”

  She studied him curiously. “Why haven’t you been at the Mirai One Pavilion for the last week? You clearly want to help.”

  “Because I wasn’t invited.”

  “You should have taken the Guides being convicted of high crimes and locked up as an implicit invitation. It’s not just Advisors working here, either. The place is crawling with Division officers. Also NOIR rebels.”

  “How scandalous. However, I’m afraid Advisor Thornos hasn’t requested my presence.”

  “Administration Advisor Thornos resigned after the Platform blew up and most of the Advisors spoke out against the Guides. He’s in the wind.”

  “Is he? I hadn’t noticed his absence.” Palmer shrugged, trying and almost succeeding in making the gesture appear casual. “In any event, my place or lack thereof has been made crystal clear to me for a frighteningly long time, by the Guides and the Advisors. I was to sit in my office on Namino and manage my skeleton fleet like a good soldier and wait until my services were needed.”

  “So why show up now?”

  “Because now you need me.”

  Oh, she liked him already. “We really, really do.”

  He cracked a tiny smile as he banished all the panes above the table and called up three new ones. “I understand you’ve been playing around with Taiyok stealth tech, and that it’s proved successful against the Rasu so far.”

  “It has. What are you thinking?”

  “If you’re up for it, how about a staged game of cat and mouse?”

  21

  * * *

  NIKA’S FLAT

  Perrin had the door code to unlock the flat, but she still announced her presence as she walked in. “Nika? Dashiel said you were here.”

  A muffled response came from deep inside the flat. “In the bedroom!”

  Perrin found Nika rushing back and forth between the bed and the closet. Clothes were strewn haphazardly across the bedcovers, and the racks in the closet looked like a tornado had sideswiped them. “Trouble?”

  “Nika Kirumase did not own a single article of clothing suitable for a stealth military incursion onto an inhospitable planet to capture an enemy alien made of shapeshifting metal.”

  “Did you expect her to have?”

  “Not really….” Nika began folding the clothes she’d tossed on the bed. “My favorite pair of tactical pants took a serious beating in The Chalet destruction, and I thought maybe? But clearly that thought was a stray function error destined for the trash bin. The old pants will hold together for one more mission. What’s up?”

  Perrin wandered over to the mostly empty side of the bed and flopped onto it. Stars, these pillows were heavenly. “Not much. I mean, everything, obviously.”

  “How did it go at the regen clinic?”

  “Maggie and Carson are doing pretty well. Maggie’s a little bruised from the experience, but Ava’s dragging her back into the world of the living by any means necessary.”

  “And Cair?”

  She winced. “He’s Cair. I’m not sure I’d be able to tell the difference between normal Cair and psychologically shell-shocked Cair. This being said, I think he’s kind of shell-shocked. He blames himself for what happened at The Chalet. I want to gently broach the subject of him getting an up-gen again, this time without the virutox to bollocks everything up, but I’m going to give him a day or two to let things settle first.”

  “Makes sense. I trust your judgment.”

  “Always good to hear.” She fiddled with the satiny covers. Oh, out with it already! “So…you’re really old, huh?”

  Nika dropped the half-folded pants in her hands and crawled onto the bed. She crossed her legs beneath her, dropped her elbows to her knees and peered at Perrin through splayed fingers. “I was going to tell you…just as soon as I made sense of it myself. And figured out what to say. And how to say it.”

  “I know you were.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “Dashiel made Maris tell Adlai. As a result, Adlai was acting all discombobulated, and I deftly wrangled it out of him.”

  “Is he mad, too?”

  “Nah. I mean, he’s weirded out by it, of course, but he’s far more resilient than he gives himself credit for. Dashiel isn’t still mad, is he? You two were all smiles at the Sogain meeting. This is what the argument the other night was about, right?”

  “No, and yes. I think he’s made his peace with it, or with me—current me. That journal entry helped.”

  “Ha! I bet it did.
I’ve gotten teary three times since I read it, simply pondering it.”

  Nika laughed as she grabbed a shirt from behind her and resumed folding. “I feel like I have a lot to make up to him, though.”

  “You’re not responsible for who you were then or the things you did that you can’t remember because the Guides stole the memories from you.”

  “But I sort of am. It’s strange. I read these journals, and I hear my own voice echoing back to me across thousands of millennia, weaving tales of adventures and travails I have no recollection of…yet the narrative is so completely me. In the act of reading them, they’re becoming part of my past all over again.” She fell silent for a long second before gazing hesitantly Perrin’s way. “What about you? Are you weirded out?”

  Perrin sank deeper into the bottomless pillows. In truth she was, a little bit. Or she had been before coming here. But lying here crooked on a fluffy bed, talking to Nika just as they always had? Even though the location was new and the world was on fire, this part felt normal. So now it seemed silly to be bothered by some distant past stuff.

  “From the view over here—where I am never, ever getting up from, by the way—you’re the same person you’ve been since I met you. Bold, stubborn, lavishly kind, fearless, annoyingly inspirational and on occasion freakishly wise. I didn’t know you before, but I bet you were a lot like that then, too. As for being really old…I want to be really old one day myself, so I’m not judging.”

  Nika grabbed a free pillow and swatted her upside the head. “You’re wonderful, and a better friend than I deserve.”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  EBISU

  A gentle rain shower greeted Delacrai as she and her armed escort departed the Ebisu One transit hub.

  “Ma’am, do you want a leaf module to shield you from the rain?”

  She turned to the escort on her left in surprise. No, he had a name, and it was John Santain, though to use it would be to accept the long-term reality of her situation. Which…she did.

  Harrowing though the fall from the rarified heights of Guide-dom had been, on crash-landing she’d discovered herself liberated from the most insidious of all prisons: the one of her own making. Funny that only now, convicted of crimes against the state and subject to constant surveillance, did she find herself free.

  Did she want a leaf? In this newfound freedom, the choice had become hers to make.

  She stopped on the stairs and extended her hand. Plop, plop, plop, the raindrops splattered onto her palm, cool and clear as they rebounded into the air for a centimeter then splashed anew and settled into the creases of her skin.

  A vigorous splash upon her left shoulder drew her attention. Her hair was getting wet. A cluster of raindrops clung to the strands draping across her shoulder, fighting to retain their shape and independence even as others gave up the fight and soaked through. If this state of affairs continued for much longer, she was in danger of appearing…bedraggled? Yes, that was the word.

  She turned to Officer Santain, who waited expectantly on an answer. “Thank you, John, but no. I’ll be fine.” Then she set out through the rain toward her destination.

  Anavosa Kelaine greeted Delacrai at the door wearing a drab slate blue shift dress and an awkward if not pained smile, as though the woman still struggled to master her control of semi-organic facial muscles. “Delacrai, please come in. You look dreadful. You must be freezing!”

  “Refreshed, actually.” She pivoted toward her escorts. “If it’s permissible, would you mind standing guard outside? I realize the residence is lined with listeners, but I’d cherish the illusion of a few private minutes with my friend.”

  Both officers nodded, and she stepped inside the flat and let the door close behind her. The Guides—former Guides—were being held on Axis Worlds different from the one they had represented. Something about denying them easy access to familiar resources. This particular penalty evidenced a fundamental misconception on the part of the Advisors about how the Guides had lived their lives these many millennia, but it didn’t really matter.

  Anavosa had disappeared, but she soon returned from the lavatory carrying a towel, and Delacrai rubbed it over her hair while she evaluated the space. The apartment was identical in most material respects to her own—small, plain, serviceable. She’d begun to decorate her own assigned residence with the odd bauble, but these walls and shelves remained bare.

  Satisfied her hair was now a suitable wreck, she folded the towel and placed it on a nearby table. “Thank you. How are you managing?”

  Anavosa’s posture sagged, and she sank into the sole chair like her body served only as a bag of bones. “Miserably.” She held out an arm and scowled at it, then tapped a temple with her palm. “This head is too small. My thoughts keep banging against my skull, desperate to escape and spread their wings. Worse, this body is so confining. Tiny and insignificant. It makes noises and aches constantly—and the fluids! I feel like a common animal.”

  “We lived as Asterions for several hundred thousand years.”

  “I cannot recall how.”

  Delacrai suppressed a…smirk, she believed was the term for the emotion her own facial muscles desired to reflect. “I suspect that is the point of the punishment.”

  “I am not in a mood to spend my last weeks of existence being taught a lesson.” Anavosa sighed. “But such is my fate. What about you? You’re taking advantage of your somewhat longer leash, I see, but how are you dealing with this…” she flicked at the limp, ghostly pale skin of her forearm dismissively “…burden?”

  Delacrai considered the laden question as she sat on the threadbare couch opposite Anavosa. “Have you tried chocolate? Do you remember chocolate?”

  “No. My operating system keeps insisting I must eat more, claiming it requires greater nourishment to function properly, but while the eating itself is tolerable, the consequences are…unsavory.”

  Delacrai opened the small bag she carried with her on outings and rummaged around in it. After a few seconds, she triumphantly produced two square objects wrapped in gold foil. She handed one to Anavosa. “Chocolate. Try it.”

  Anavosa stared at it looking perturbed. Delacrai carefully unwrapped the foil on her piece, and on seeing her doing so Anavosa hurriedly did the same.

  She opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue and placed the nugget of chocolate atop it, then closed her mouth and let the chocolate begin to melt on her tongue before finally biting into it. A silken sweetness enveloped her taste buds, with subtle hints of bitterness adding pizazz to the adventure.

  Anavosa frowned at her piece, then hesitantly brought her hand to her face and shoved it between her lips. Her jaw worked in one direction, then the other. Her eyes widened and a smile grew on her lips, though she kept them pressed together. Finally she swallowed, an expression of wonder animating her drawn features. “That was exquisite.”

  “Yes. And there’s more where this came from. Sometimes they hide cherries inside the chocolate, which is simply delightful. There’s also a dessert called a brownie sundae—it’s both hot and cold at the same time. And gooey, resulting in such a wonderful mess on one’s hands. Oh, and strawberries. You can eat them right off the vine.”

  “Are they like chocolate?”

  “Not at all! Well, they are sweet, but also tart and juicy. You can coat them in chocolate, however—though if one is going to coat something in chocolate, it should be cherries.”

  She reached out and took both of Anavosa’s hands in hers. “There are negatives to this form of existence, yes, but the Advisors were correct. Touching, feeling, seeing, tasting, smelling? This is living as it should be performed. I am nearly prepared to say, in fact, that living inside hardware is not truly living at all.”

  Anavosa exhaled ponderously, withdrew her hands from Delacrai’s grasp and stood. “No question you appear happier for embracing it. Meanwhile, I shuffle around wallowing in misery and bodily fluids. I will work to regain an open mind…yet I wonder the point
of making the effort. We sit here, chained and helpless in our cages, while our citizens stumble toward their own end. An end we could have prevented.”

  “Postponed a bit longer, perhaps, but nothing more. The end raced headlong for us all, and as Guides we were unable to divert its course. At least they are trying to save themselves. And trying quite valiantly, I might add.”

  Anavosa’s head whipped over, her posture stiffening in interest. “You know something of what they are doing to counter the Rasu? I follow the news feeds, but I recognize all too well how such reports are filtered and sanitized.”

  “Not so much as we ensured they were when we controlled them. You can trust much of what you hear and read. As for what the news feeds are not sharing?” She crossed one leg over the other knee; she enjoyed trying out all these varied body positions, though they invariably felt awkward at first. “I shouldn’t know what I do. But as you’ve certainly guessed, my greater freedoms allow me a measure of access to the old channels. Chief among what I know is this: as we speak here today, Nika Kirumase, Dashiel Ridani and Lance Palmer are on their way to capture a Rasu.”

  “What? Impossible! How do they fantasize they will accomplish it?”

  “The Sogain told Nika where to find an isolated one.”

  “The…Sogain.”

  “If you’ll recall, it was Nika who initially encountered the aliens 200,000 years ago.”

  “Of course I recall, but does she?”

  “She does now. After a fashion.”

  Anavosa sank back down in her chair, all the momentary energy abandoning her in a rush. “She must despise me so.”

  “She is justified in despising us all, but I don’t think she can spare the time to ruminate on it. Where we talked and analyzed and calculated, she is acting.”