Heaven's Queen (32 page)

When the phantom had taken the virus into itself before to make a point, the darkness had crept slowly, eating the phantom’s light in little bites. But if that had been a drop, then whatever the phantom had done to pour the knowledge of its home into my head must have been a mainline, because in the few seconds I’d been out, my sickness had overwhelmed the emperor phantom completely.

The beautiful snake’s nest of tentacles was now a blackened knot, and where the virus hadn’t yet reached, it was spreading in waves. I could actually see the light vanishing before my eyes, but I didn’t understand why. It had formed itself out of smaller phantoms, hadn’t it? Why didn’t it break apart again? Cut off the sickness and go back to how it was?

But the phantom did no such thing. It just hung there, its blue eyes watching me even as they succumbed to the dark, and I couldn’t do a damn thing but watch back as the phantom died.

“Home.” Its booming voice was thin and brittle now, but the word was clearer than ever as its last glowing tentacle, the last light of its entire body, reached up to point at my face.

I met it on instinct, grabbing the offered tentacle with both my hands. I didn’t even have a name for the emotion tearing through me. No word seemed big enough. I hadn’t understood before, but I knew now on a deep, primal level that this phantom had given up its life so that I would believe. It had sought me, found me,
grabbed
me knowing that I was death so that it could show me the truth. Even now, I could feel its longing, the phantom’s—maybe
all
phantoms’—desperate need to go back, and as the last of its light faded, I swore.

“I’ll take you home,” I whispered. “On my honor, by my king, I swear it. I will open the door. I will end this. All of it.”

I don’t know if the phantom heard me. I don’t know if it understood. But as the final light snuffed out, the tip of the enormous, snakelike tentacle curled very slightly around my hand, brushing my fingers like a promise, and it was enough. And as the darkness fell again and I felt the lelgis returning, I was not afraid. I didn’t fight or answer or acknowledge the wordless rush of rage and fear that threatened to stomp my mind to nothing. I just closed my eyes and let go, falling out of the dark and back into my freezing body.

When I opened my eyes again, the lights were back on and Caldswell was in my face.

“Morris!” he yelled, his voice hoarse, like he’d been yelling for a while. I also caught a hint of panic, though that part might have been my imagination. “
Morris!
”

I rolled away from him with a groan, curling into a ball on my side. God and king I was cold. Cold and achy, like I’d just woken up from death itself. But when I reached up to rub my eyes, my hand felt funny, almost like it was asleep.

My eyes popped fully open and I sat up with a gasp, holding my hands in front of me. Sure enough, they were black as the void outside, but the mark was already fading, slipping away down my arms. Usually that would have made me feel better, but now all I felt was tired. Tired and empty and flat, like I should lie down and never move again. But I couldn’t, because as the pins and needles faded, I could still feel the slick residue of the dead phantom on my fingers, reminding me of what I had to do.

I took a deep breath and looked around to check where I was. Still in the fighter bay was the answer, though it took me a moment to recognize the place with the lights on. They must not have moved me at all, because I was lying right below the window where the phantom had lifted me up. I could hear alarms blaring from other decks of the battleship, but other than Caldswell, I was alone in the huge hangar. That struck me as odd for a second before I saw the blast doors over the exits were in lockdown position. Of course. Caldswell had quarantined the area.

“Morris,” he said again, leaning closer. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said with a sigh, wiping my now virus-free hands on my baggy scrubs only to realize that my pants were also covered in the phantom’s slick slime. “I think so.”

“Good,” Caldswell snapped, reaching down to grab my arm and haul me to my feet. “Because I need you to tell me what just happened. The emperor’s field isn’t jamming us anymore and it released you. Why? Did it go back into hyperspace?”

I blinked, caught off guard. I opened my mouth to tell him the emperor hadn’t come out of hyperspace at all, that it had formed itself out of the millions of tiny phantoms, but one look at his face told me I should skip the particulars and get right to the point. “It’s not gone,” I said, finding it surprisingly difficult to get the words out. “It’s dead. I killed it.”

Caldswell’s eyes widened, and then his face fell into a relieved smile, but before he could congratulate me, I held up my hand. “That’s not a good thing,” I said. “Listen, I’m not sure how to explain this, so I’m just going to lay it out. That phantom didn’t come randomly. It came to talk to me.”

The captain’s eyebrows shot up, and I took another deep breath. Oh boy, where to begin?

“They want me to set them free,” I said at last. “The door Maat holds closed isn’t just keeping new phantoms out. It’s also keeping the old ones
in
. They don’t want to be here. They want to go home but they can’t because Maat’s in the way. The phantom came to explain that to me.”

Caldswell’s face, which had been growing more and more skeptical as I spoke, was now set in a firm scowl. “It told you, did it?” he said. “The phantom just popped in to talk to you?”

“Yes,” I snapped. “Sort of. That’s not the point.” I leaned closer, dropping my voice even though there was no one to hear. “Look, Caldswell, I think this is the solution we’ve been looking for. The phantoms don’t want to fight. They never did. They eat plasmex. That’s why they’re drawn to inhabited planets. The fact that they destroy things in the process is pure accident. They’re not our enemies. They don’t want to kill us or wipe us out. They just want to go home where there’s food, but Maat’s in their way. All we have to do is take down the barrier she puts up and, bam, we fix the phantom problem.”

Like saying the words out loud made them real, my whole body started to shake with excitement. “Don’t you see?” I asked, grinning. “We don’t have to use the daughters or the virus to kill them. We don’t have to kill them at all. All we have to do is clear the way and they’ll leave on their own!”

By the time I’d finished, hope had filled me to bursting. After days of fighting, even resigning myself to death on the mere hope for a compromise, I felt like I’d just been given another chance at everything. Thanks to the phantom, I’d solved the unsolvable problem, and now everyone could live, maybe even
me
. Just the idea made me want to jump around and sing for joy, and in my happiness, I didn’t see the deadly frown stealing over Caldswell’s face until it was too late.

“The phantom told you this?”

“Yes,” I said, my smile fading. “But—”

“And you believed it?”

“Yes,” I said again, staring at him. “Caldswell, it
died
to tell me. Of course I believe it.”

“There’s no ‘of course’ about it,” he said, his voice rising. “I thought you were smarter than this, Morris. If you close off the path of attack for an invasion force, do you go open it again because the surrounded soldiers caught on the inside tell you to?”

“It’s not like that!” I cried. “They’re not soldiers and this isn’t an invasion. They just want—”

“You don’t know that,” Caldswell said, crossing his arms. “Intent doesn’t change the crime. Even if they meant no harm, phantoms destroy everything. They disrupt the flow of space and time just by their presence. What’s to say if we open that door we won’t just be trading out new phantoms for the old?”

“That won’t happen,” I said. “They know there’s no food for them here now. Compared to what they’re used to, our universe is a desert. If you’d just open the door for a moment you’d see.”

Caldswell’s face went from angry to incredulous. “You honestly expect me to open the floodgates for the phantoms and possibly undo seven decades of work because you saw something in a dream? Are you completely out of your skull?”

I glowered, grinding my teeth in frustration. It was hard to be really mad at Caldswell, though. Had our positions been reversed, I would have been a lot less kind. But I
knew
I was right. I just didn’t know how to make him believe. I was still trying to think of something when Caldswell held up his hand.

“I can see your wheels turning,” he said. “But you’re wasting your time. Even if I did buy your story as told, I can’t open the door. The setup the lelgis created with Maat is a combination of machinery and plasmex mumbo jumbo even I don’t understand, but I know it’s not something you can just turn on and off. Whatever the lelgis did to her that lets Maat hold the universe closed, it’s forever. It doesn’t matter if she’s completely nuts or drugged catatonic, her barrier never goes down. The only way to open the door is if Maat dies, and that’s completely off the table.”

“But Maat wants to die,” I said, pleading. “You
know
how much she wants to die, Caldswell. This is our chance to break this endless cycle, to set us all free. Dr. Starchild said Maat could possibly remove my virus, and that if she did, she would die with it. But that could also mean the virus dies
with her
. Maat would finally be able to rest, and if the threat of the virus was gone, the lelgis would leave us alone. Don’t you see? We all
win
. Maat, the phantoms, all the daughters, the Eyes, even me, we’d
all
be free.”

I poured my confidence into the words as I spoke them, trying to make Caldswell understand, even if he wasn’t really listening. I’d never pleaded so hard for something in my life, but I’d only get one shot at this; I had to make it count. And for a moment, I thought it did. When I finished, I could almost see my hope reflected in Caldswell’s eyes, but then the captain sighed, dropping his head to rub his temples with his fingers, and for the first time ever, I saw how old and tired Caldswell really was.

“I want to believe you, Devi,” he said quietly. “It’s like I said before, your heart’s in the right place, but you’re asking the impossible. Only fools gamble what they can’t afford to lose, and I was done being a fool a long time ago.” He lifted his head, and the flash of weakness was gone, replaced by the captain I knew too well. “Your request is denied. The plan does not change. Hyrek’s already preparing your new quarantine chamber. As soon as it’s ready, you’ll be going back under sedation until the ship arrives to take you into hyperspace for study. I’m really sorry, but this is for the best. For everyone.”

My fists clenched so tight my hands ached. “Don’t do this, Caldswell,” I said. “Don’t—”

The piercing shriek of an alarm cut me off, making me jump. Caldswell jumped, too, though not in surprise. He’d jumped to his feet to go to the bay’s window, yanking out his com as he did. But there was no need to call to ask what this new emergency was. Even from my spot on the floor, I could see the bright flashes outside as ships came out of hyperspace. And came. And came.

I swore and pulled myself to my feet, crawling up the heavy bay door until I was finally standing beside Caldswell. Something funny was going on, I told myself. There couldn’t possibly be as many ships out there as the flashes suggested. But I was wrong. There were more.

“King protect us,” I whispered, eyes going wide.

Out past the battleship flying in formation with ours, in space where the emperor phantom had been, lelgis cruisers were popping in one after another. Already, they filled the sky as far as I could see through the small window, more ships than I could ever count, and still they were coming, surrounding us in a wall of beautiful, deadly force.

I swallowed, turning to Caldswell because, for once, he was less frightening. “How long was I out?”

“Not five minutes.”

“How did they get here so fast?”

“Lelgis move through hyperspace instantly when they know where they’re going,” the captain explained, leaning into the little window like he was trying to get a count. “The queens are much better at navigating than our jump gates.”

“I thought you said they wouldn’t come so close to Maat.”

“Guess they decided you were worth the risk,” he said, squinting. “What the hell is that…” He faded off, his face going pale. I pressed my nose against the glass, searching frantically for whatever was awful enough to make Caldswell speechless. In hindsight, I should have taken the warning and backed off, because what I saw only made everything worse.

Something enormous was lurking behind the wall of ships. Not enormous like a battleship; our Republic cruiser was barely big enough to match the lelgis ships. No, this thing was big like the emperor phantom had been, a great looming shadow so huge it blotted out the stars behind it. Unlike the lelgis ships, though, it didn’t glow with its own soft, iridescent light. It was black, visible only in the light thrown up by the ships that surrounded it and the shape of the stars it blocked. And though it wasn’t nearly as large as a xith’cal’s tribe ship, it scared me more, because this wasn’t a ship. It was
alive
.

Caldswell shoved off the wall with a stream of profanity that blistered even my ears. “Goddamn queen,” he finished, half shouting. “They brought a goddamn
queen
into this.” He punched his handset as he jogged for the door, yelling into the com. “Bridge! This is Commander Caldswell. I’m ordering a full weapons lockdown. Do not engage the lelgis. I repeat, do not—”

The blinding flash of cannon fire outside cut off the end of his orders.

“
Who the hell fired that?
” Caldswell bellowed, whirling back to the window.

“I don’t think that was us,” I whispered, my voice trembling.

On our port, the second Republic battleship was now listing, a huge column of debris shooting out of its far side. I’d been watching Caldswell, so I hadn’t seen the first shot, but I saw the second clear as day when the closest lelgis ship fired again, lighting up the sky with blue-white fire. The same fire that had consumed Stoneclaw’s ghost ship was now eating ours, burning the battleship from the inside out. In the light, I could actually see the tiny shadows of the soldiers as they burned, and bile rose in my throat, scalding my mouth as I realized what this meant.