Chapter 65
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
AIRIK
Airik was in hell. The human concept of damnation perfectly described the depths of his suffering as he imagined Nora trapped in a small, shadowy room because he had put her there.
After hours of trying to restore the ship’s systems, Torren and he had managed only to partway wake the drozekar’s neural engine. The input panels displayed options, but none of them responded. Even the Watcher—the Veynari’s eye, which never closed—had blinked off.
They were morazir. Not meant to fix but destroy.
Torren, exhausted, spent most of the day lying on the open ramp, chewing on blades of grass, and staring blankly at the sky.
Ever aware of the passage of time, Airik left a bowl of protein broth for Nora outside her door. He cut the dense calorie rations into small cubes, then added several nutritional pouches for Lucky.
For a moment, his hand hovered over the latch.
He wanted to go in. To feed her from his hand.
To whisper I’m sorry repeatedly against her skin, her lips, anywhere she’d let him touch her.
Instead, driven by his guilt, he knocked once to signal her, then returned to the command deck where he could do nothing but wait.
Torren had stacked nutritional packets for them. But both men sat at their respective stations, not eating.
“I am ashamed, brother. What has happened to your human is my fault.” Torren pushed the packets aside. “I should have checked the equipment myself—”
Airik said nothing, a black rage spinning in his head, punctuated by Nora’s eyes, trembling with fear.
Torren let out a frustrated sound and tossed the omnislate aside, now just a useless piece of glass. He glanced at the ship’s error notice on the command panel. “Drozekar!” he suddenly called out.
The ship responded with a slow, hesitant drawl. “Osiiiian P-P-P-Prime.” The androgynous voice stuttered as its processes caught up. “I think I have failed. Forgive-ive-ive me.”
Torren spat out the stalk of grass he’d still been chewing on, then looked to the ceiling, where the audio receptors were.
“You sad thing, it’s not your fault. Your brain has been scrambled by a traitor.
You’re doing your best, aren’t you?” Torren stroked the surface of the wall as he had done with Lucky.
“Are you still connected to Ed’un’s local network? ”
“Yes.”
He exhaled in relief. “See? You’re already doing better. Is the plasma shield around Ed’un operational?”
“I…don’t know.”
“Can you check?”
“I’m not sure.”
Torren dragged a hand through his hair, then smiled to the ceiling, as if he were speaking to a child. “I’d like for you to try. Can you do that for me?”
The ship’s interface flickered, signaling an attempt. Airik stared at the door to the right of the command hall. There was nothing to do. But wait. And wait. And wait.
“The plasma shield isss ninety-eight percent operational. An error-error-error has been detected in the portal gate. End point unknown. Uncharted. Unnavigable. Unauthorized. Un—”
“That’s enough, drozekar.” Torren rubbed his eyes.
The ship’s interface flickered once more and emitted a sad sound.
“Can you at least tell me if the shield mechanism works?”
“Yes. Only Veynariii craft may pass.”
“I want you to alert us—even if it’s Veynari. For unauthorized craft—”
“DESTROY.” The interface’s voice shrieked so loudly that even Airik jerked upright.
Both men looked to one another, startled by the overzealous response.
“Your human came through the portal, yes?” Torren asked.
Airik’s heart faltered, imagining what would have happened if things had gone right all those days ago.
Her ship, sliced into ribbons. He would have never known her.
Never have known his touch could bring any pleasure at all.
And then, as Torren had found out, his existence would have ended soon anyway. The striker would have detonated.
He nodded to Torren, unable to speak because he wasn’t sure what would come out.
“It’s odd.” Torren’s gaze dropped to the floor as he fell into thought.
“I almost feel sorry for them—the reapers.” When he looked back at Airik, his eyes had clouded.
“Why? Why am I mourning the lives of those who want to end ours and millions more with kudra? Do you think this is the…Madness that Aelior speaks of? That I think—hope—it has all been a mistake.”
Airik shut his eyes.
“You’re worse than the drozekar.” Torren scoffed, then got up. He pulled on his molded suit, then his weapons harness.
Pausing before putting on the helmet, he gave Airik a strange look, eyebrows drawn together.
“You look a little more deranged than usual. Don’t exact any justice of your own.
The Watcher may not work, but Xallix is still the Veynari’s, as are we.
Whatever you feel is his punishment, no matter how well deserved, is not for you to decide.
I don’t know exactly what happened on the Lemides, but what you did there—that wasn’t you.
This is not the Lemides. Xallix is not an insurgent and will be dealt with by the Ourex.
Don’t mar the small bit of happiness you’ve found here by doing something stupid. ”
At the implication, Airik’s body tightened, and he instinctively opened his mouth to deny everything. But before he could say a word, Torren crossed the deck and leapt off the ramp, sparing him from telling another lie.
Left in the quiet darkness of the ship, Airik sat in the chair that had been Nora’s.
His mouth watered—for her or for the iilas berries he could smell again, he didn’t know.
Each near miss with death he had ever faced, dredged from a swamp of memories he had tried to forget, forced its way into the forefront of his thoughts.
Every misfired plasma charge from his gun.
Every malfunctioning part of his gear. Each failure was etched on his body in jagged, deep cuts.
Documented in his records as unfortunate circumstances, possibly due to wild constitution and personal error.
A suit that flexed the wrong way, nearly crushing his bones.
An over-correcting anti-collision system that veered into space debris, plunging him into a crashing descent.
In the silence, truth came into focus.
Airik suddenly found himself caught in an inescapable whirl of loneliness, even though the most important thing in his life was only two sliding portal doors away.
He needed Nora. Air did not reach his lungs unless it carried her scent. Light had nothing to illuminate if she weren’t where his eyes could find her.
Never one to talk to neural engines, preferring to input commands manually, Airik cleared his throat. “Drozekar, is this the Morazir’s Madness?”
Without questioning the validity of his concerns—what he’d expected it to do—a blue light emanated from the ceiling.
It fell over him, head to toe, even capturing the blade beside him on the bench.
Though he shouldn’t have felt anything, his skin stung with searing pain, as he imagined it would if he were being branded.
“The Sword of Ulliel is issued to Airik of the Jortag Clan. Scan-scan-scanning.” The light blinked out, plunging him into darkness. “Mora-Morazir. Of wild constitution. Unable— Cannot find a tagion code—”
“Is this the Madness?” he asked again.
“I-I-I don’t know. There is no madness. Only wildness. Incompatible. Untraceable. Error: Cannot detect madness, but that is the incorrect word. I cannot see a madness—I need a different description. Try another word.”
Airik let out a short laugh. He could describe it, and he knew the exact other word for what made it feel like his chest would tear in half at any moment.
He could deny it no longer. It was killing him to do so. It was love. His brain pounded as the word filled his thoughts, as if a dam had been broken, drowning him in all he’d managed to suppress.
But was it really just love that caused this, or was it something else too?
Was it love that had held him standing at the end of the hall, watching Nora’s door, waiting for her to open it and take the food he’d brought for her?
Until he grew so hungry that he went to the galley, only to find himself unable to eat because she hadn’t yet eaten.
Was it love that made him imagine a child’s face with dark hair, pale gray skin, and eyes that shifted from light to dark? Or was it madness to want a child at all—one who would surely be taken from him, just as he had been taken?
It couldn’t just be love because there was a madness, too. Maybe love and madness had once been the same word, describing the same unbearable state of being.
It couldn’t be anything but madness that, even now, fueled the hope he could have Nora. He had endured a lifetime of pain, and now he wanted more—all of hers. To fill what remained of him with her smiles and hums.
There was no end to this burden, and he wanted it—all of it.
There would be no healing from this madness because it let him feel the love he’d believed he’d forgotten.
On the brink of delusion, he could thrive here.
With Nora. Playing with her hair and listening to her praise him for being a man he knew he wasn’t.
A hero. An angel. Whatever else she wanted to call him.
Except hers. She can never call you hers. Because you can’t ever be hers—you don’t even belong to yourself.
Needing more air, he kicked out of the chair and, a moment later, stumbled in a stupor, finding himself beneath the ship.
It hovered several lengths above him, its gravity engine could never be killed.
Already, the grass beneath had wilted, blocked from the suns’ light.
Xallix’s equipment had been arranged beside the Veynari-sealed cargo boxes they’d been loaded onto in Zarmur.
His finger twitched. He needed to destroy something, before he destroyed everything.
In a frenzy of motion, Airik tore through the molecular disrupters meant to trigger the first quakes that would end Ed’un.
He didn’t hesitate or question the recklessness of such a move because he knew what he’d find.
A moment later, after slicing through the last “molecular disrupter,” he’d confirmed it.
Empty shells. Just the metal skins of equipment, sealed with the approvals of the Veynari shield system that prevented any sound or heartbeat from falling out of sync or straying from its watch.
Xallix had boarded this craft with no intention of testing new technology.
A reaper—a traitor seeking weapons of mass destruction—among the ranks of the Veynari shield forces, possibly with its blessing.
Breath did not come, though Airik was gasping. Kicking sheets of metal out of the way, he barely made it back aboard.
In a confused state, desperate to move or else he’d die, he retrieved tools from the mechanical cabinet and returned to Nora’s chair.
With exhaustive effort, he worked to repair her delicate chain necklace.
Using the needle-shaped tip of one tool, Airik opened the two broken loops, then bent them back into the proper shape around each other.
Eventually, his fingers calmed, allowing him to check each link in the chain and straighten the kinks and breaks. Little by little, he fixed the last pieces of Nora’s world as his own fell apart.