Eighteen #2
As he reached the door, Ghati rolled to his side, his back toward Campar.
His tunic was stained with old sweat. Campar almost turned back, almost tried to insist that they go together.
He didn’t like leaving Ghati alone, but he knew that food and water mattered most now.
If he could get some blood sugar into Ghati, there might be a shower after that.
The little chores that humans did to remind themselves that they were still alive.
The tiny victories in all that vast dark.
Campar hated the feeling in his body: the tightness in his back, the barely present nausea, the awareness of threat, danger squatting on Ghati’s bed as certainly as if there had been a man holding a gun.
And that Campar’s best efforts might not be enough.
That the universe might take another precious thing from him.
No, that was wrong. That it would, it absolutely would, and this might be the moment when it did.
The common room felt small, more like a prison yard than a living space.
People and Budon were wandering around, recovering from the most recent insult.
Campar didn’t care about any of them. He needed a bowl of food and a sack of water.
What would happen if they decided to go and see the rest of the ship?
Would taking even just a little walk outside of their usual spaces help Ghati, or make his situation worse?
If the Carryx decided they were out of their places and threatened them with death, would Ghati submit and let them kill him?
He waited in the food line, distracted and distressed.
When his turn came, he took the little bowl of mush and the yellowish sack with water, and wished that it were fresh bread and a bottle of wine.
Grapes. Cheese. One of the sweet muffins filled with berries that he used to get from the kiosk at the edge of Dyan Academy.
Any of the subliminally small things he’d spent his life overlooking would have been a miracle now.
But he didn’t have them. The Carryx didn’t permit miracles.
They just separated their bees and waited to see how long it took them to die.
In among the press of bodies, he caught a glimpse of Rickar sitting with Vaudai.
The air in front of them glittered with light and Rickar laughed at something.
The little stab of resentment and jealousy in Campar’s heart gave way quickly to a thought.
It felt so much like inspiration that Campar distrusted it.
Instead of rushing back to Ghati, Campar bent his path to Rickar.
“Hey, big guy,” Rickar said when he got close. “You’re looking a little rough. You all right?”
“Fine. I’m fine. But Ghati’s struggling.”
Vaudai shifted, its skin taking on a dancing mother-of-pearl sheen for a moment and then darkening back to gray. The display the two of them were looking at was the layout of the battles. Campar didn’t want to look at it. It was just another way to spend time with violence and death.
“I’m sorry,” Rickar said.
“I’m thinking about telling him.” Rickar frowned his confusion.
Campar folded himself down at Rickar’s side, sitting close enough that his voice could be no more than a murmur.
“About Dafyd’s plan. I’m thinking about bringing him in.
Knowing that someone—someone with power—is building a way to push back at—” Even in whispers, Campar couldn’t bring himself to say it aloud.
“If Ghati knew that, it might help. But I don’t want to compromise anything for Alkhor either.
You were there. You and I are two of the only people who know. What do you think?”
“You shouldn’t tell him about Alkhor’s plan,” Rickar said. “Alkhor doesn’t have one.”
Now it was Campar’s turn to be confused. “I mean what he told us after… after Ostencour and the others… after Else.”
“We were in shock. We were numb with grief. A bunch of our friends had been killed. Again . The fucking Carryx had just beaten one of their own to death in front of us and then told us we were being honored by getting assigned out through the universe. Alkhor felt guilty, and he said some shit he thought we’d want to hear. It didn’t mean anything.”
Campar put the bowl of food down on the deck. It clicked. Of all the things he’d imagined Rickar might say, this was somehow the most shocking. “You don’t believe that. Alkhor is the one they gave power to. He’s the most influential of us. That’s what makes it possible.”
“Listen to yourself,” Rickar said. “Dafyd Alkhor is their favorite pet. He doesn’t have power.
None of us do. We’re fucked. We’re oak leaves in autumn, going where the wind blows us.
We’re going to live out whatever time we have in whatever fucking box they decide to put us in.
And when we die, that won’t mean anything either. ”
“I don’t accept that,” Campar said, and he tried to believe it. It was only because he was already so raw that the words hit like little punches to the heart.
And perhaps Rickar felt some of that too, perhaps he saw how far he had gone, because he leaned closer and put a hand on Campar’s arm.
The weariness in Rickar’s eyes was existential.
“I’m sorry that your boyfriend’s depressed.
I really, truly am. But you shouldn’t tell him Dafyd Alkhor’s got some amazing secret plan to bring down the Carryx because he doesn’t.
It’s not that you’d be risking some big secret.
You’d be giving him false hope. There’s nothing we can do, and no reason that we should hurt ourselves trying.
It’s better that he see this for what it is and find a way to live inside it. ”
“I don’t think I’ve done that,” Campar said.
Rickar looked down, and Campar waited. Gave him space. The moment seemed to be on an edge. What he said next could determine the shape of their friendship, or of what their friendship decayed into.
Only that wasn’t what happened. “Sticks-with-meat-on-them, look here. It’s happening as I said it would.”
The display that floated in the air was incomprehensible at first. Then Campar wiped away the tears he hadn’t realized were gathering in his eyes, and the solar system took shape.
The ships of the Carryx force in their positions.
The strange projection fields that crossed, sometimes whole swaths of the vacuum between planets, the scattered ships of the enemy fleet.
As he watched, one of the enemy ships vanished from the display.
“Did we kill it?” Campar asked.
Rickar shook his head. “It got away.”
“Many of them are fleeing or have fled,” Vaudai said.
Its skin was shifting textures quickly, but whether that was how it communicated or just an expression of excitement in the moment, Campar couldn’t tell.
“They thought our resonance exclusions would target the largest number of their ships, but we focused on their command structure. More of the lesser vessels escaped, but the highest-value ship will be destroyed.”
“I don’t know what a resonance exclusion is,” Campar said, but no one replied to him. Another of the ships vanished from the display, and then three more all at once. Only two more ships remained.
A thought came to Campar like a flare of hope. “Can I tell Ghati that the battle’s finished? Are we done with this shit? We aren’t going to be suffering any more of those overspill events?”
Vaudai didn’t move or seem to acknowledge Campar physically in any way, but its half-mind spoke.
“There are three thousand kinetic and energy weapons still in transit toward us on five different vectors. Three fundamental decoherence zones are still evaporating. Any field attacks they aimed at us as they left will take between twenty and sixty-five minutes to reach us, but yes. After those are cleared away, we will be done with this shit.”
It was enough. It was a moment’s brightness to go with the food and the water. They’d weathered another storm. There would be one more after for them after all.
One of the two remaining enemy ships blinked off the display.
“Now, watch,” the alien slug thing said. “The command ship will destroy itself, and all will be complete.”
Campar watched. A little red dot on the far side of the heliosphere from them. A ship like theirs, only with other beings in it who, instead of feeling a breath of relief, were consigning themselves to a permanent ending. If the war had gone the other way…
The seconds passed. Then a minute. The dot of the disabled enemy ship remained where it was.
“Well,” Vaudai said. “That’s unexpected.”