Chapter 40
FORTY
EDDIE
Eddie barely held himself together.
Augustus had done more for him than almost everyone Eddie had ever met.
He’d mentored Eddie, gained his trust, treated him like he was a real person, not a broken disappointment.
He’d treated Eddie like his son, had warned Eddie away from the path he’d taken, encouraged him to fix his mistakes, and now he was dead.
Soon his body would be but vapor and dust.
Eddie rubbed one hand over his eyes. They hurt from so little sleep, from constant change, from stress. He wanted a long vacation and to not think about Quasar or horrors or anything but Jett.
“Do you need another break?” Cosma stood just below Eddie on his platform, her voice breaking through the buzz and the subdued hum of the Control Room.
He rubbed the sleep and stress from his eyes, wincing at the sting, the swollen sockets. “No. I need this to be over.”
I need to check in with Jett.
Eddie turned to the panel only for a blood-splattered Jack to fill the screen. Around him were the dead bodies of Jett’s team and several Affected. Eddie switched his headset over to Jett’s feed.
“Jett? What happened?”
Jett stood, pulled something out of a pouch strapped to his leg.
“They got rushed as I was coming back from the Captain. Everyone’s gone but Jack.
” He knelt over Jack and slammed a stim into the man’s thigh.
He flinched as the cartridge pumped his leg full of medicine.
“Stay still while that does its job,” Jett said.
Eddie watched as Jett walked away from the tangle of bodies, the strewn limbs of his friends and subordinates.
“I don’t think Jack is gonna make it, Ed.” Jett’s voice was calm, subdued. “I couldn’t save the rest of them, Kepler or Johns or Huffman. Clark and Holmes and Paul are gone too.”
“I’m sorry, love.”
“I don’t know why they didn’t approach.” His voice was still calm, that deep vibration that Eddie loved the feel of against his skin, but there was something else there.
A crack in his veneer of calm. “They stopped right outside this field of body parts and wouldn’t come closer.
Jack’s delirious right now so I can’t ask him.
” He paused a moment. “I hope the stim helps. I can’t fucking lose him too. ”
Eddie didn’t know what to say so he remained quiet.
I hope he makes it through too. For your sake, beloved.
A long moment passed before Jett spoke again. “Did you have another vision? I heard you gasp, but you didn’t respond.”
Eddie shuddered. He’d had another vision, one of Augustus. He’d seen the Captain’s fate, the damage done to his body. But that hadn’t been the worst part. He could barely keep the images from his mind now. Something about it stuck, repeated.
The buzz grew, and it flashed before his eyes once more.
Jett walked through a dark corridor. The black walls sparkled, pinpointed by distant stars, endless and formless.
Tendrils of the darkness, of the Void, draped over the floor, writhing. One tendril lifted itself as Jett passed over it, reaching for him. Another quivered as he walked through the coagulated fragment of Void.
Jett walked down endless hallways, looking for something, searching in this strange endless Unknown.
Everything blurred and restored itself.
Jett sprawled on the floor, his legs engulfed by the tendrils of Void. It suckled on him, pulled him deeper into the nothing of its form. It engulfed his hips, his waist, reaching toward his chest and shoulders.
Jett reached out, a wide smile on his face. He mouthed something, but no sound existed in this space. Then he was gone.
“Eddie?”
A crack exploded in Eddie’s ear, bringing him back to the Control Room, to Jett in his headset. Cold snaked through his heart at the repetition, the intensity of the vision. He’d never had one repeat like that before.
“Eddie, fuckin’ answer me!” It was the closest to panic that he’d ever heard from Jett. The fragments of his vision faded.
“I’m here,” he called out, his voice hoarse though he didn’t know why. Around him everything had stalled and everyone was looking at him. “I am here,” he repeated. On the screen Jett was standing over Jack.
“I’ve got Jack stabilized for now. I’m gonna leave him here and carry on to D3 by myself.”
“Like fucking hell you are.” Jack’s voice was more a gargle as he pushed himself onto his feet.
Eddie watched the feed blur while Jett helped the man up. Jack was able to stand and walk on his own, but his usually dark skin was sallow. An Affected had swiped him across the guts, tearing his shirt and the skin beneath. Blood coated the exposed skin, stained his shirt a deeper shade of black.
“He looks like shit,” Eddie said under his breath.
Jett snorted and started laughing. “What the fuck, Ed?” he said aloud.
“What did that big asshole say?”
Eddie barked out a laugh, happy for this one moment of surreal normality between the three of them. Even though Jett and Jack were going through hell, even though Eddie was about to set their ship to blow, they could have this one moment together.
“He said you look like shit.”
Jack smiled. It was a pained smile, but a real one nonetheless. “I’m sure you can hear this, Captain. I feel like shit, and you owe me at least one drink when we’re safe on another ship.” He coughed, a wet sound stuck in his chest.
“He can have as many drinks as he wants.”
Jett snorted. “Ed says that drinks are on him when we’re safe.”
Jack coughed again, this time red splattered his lips, dribbled down his chin. Neither of them said anything about it, just wiped it away.
I don’t think I’ll see Jack again.
Eddie watched Jack through Jett’s camera and tried to memorize the man, the conflict they’d had over the many years they’d both been on the Neo-Tokyo. They’d never really gotten along, but their shared, but different, love for Jett had forced them together, to tolerate each other.
“We’re heading toward D3 now. I’ll let you know when we’re about to cross the barrier.”
Eddie nodded. It was time for him to do the next step too. Time for the Bridge to evacuate.
“I am going to pull the black box and send the Bridge Crew down to the shuttle soon. Then it will launch after I have set the self-destruct.”
“And you will be on it, right?”
Eddie smiled. Jett had caught on to his plans even if he wasn’t physically present. “I will be on a shuttle before the ship explodes, I promise.”
“I don’t like the sound of that, but I can’t do shit about it right now, can I?”
Eddie’s smile widened. “No, love, you cannot. I have a plan, so do not worry about me.”
Jett grunted in response. “You better be on one of those shuttles. I’ll ping you when we are closer to D3.”
Eddie turned his attention to the black box. He was more confident going through the process than he’d been relaying the instructions to Jett. He had trusted Jett to follow him to the letter, but he hadn’t trusted himself to say everything properly, to get the code correct.
It took half the amount of time to pull the black box.
There was only a moment when he feared that the container would be empty like on the Golden Lion, but it wasn’t.
Eddie pulled it out and entrusted it to one of the Techies with instructions to make contact with Maria’s shuttle and hand it over to them immediately.
The Bridge Crew filed out without a word, nodding to Eddie on their way.