Ghosts of the Fallen

By Ross Harrison

Four inquisitors, four paths. The path of justice. The path of vengeance. The path of love. The path of fear.
The Vanguard is still reeling from Bane and his master. There are still scattered remnants of the Fallen to hunt down. But so too are there unknown elements moving in the shadows. A cult whose path to their god of war is through the death of inquisitors. An empire on the path to something terrible. And meanwhile, a familiar darkness rises anew.
The little girl with accelerated ageing asked only one thing before she died: don't let them do this again. It was a promise they could not keep.

NOTE: This is a direct sequel to Blades of the Fallen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ross Harrison
• Release date: Nov 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463228081

Ross Harrison

Ross Harrison is the author of novels and short stories in the realms of science fiction - specifically space opera and science fantasy - thriller, noir, and steampunk. He has been writing since childhood, and occasionally likes to revisit those old stories for a good cringe and nervous laugh. He also talks about himself in the 3rd person because it seems more professional.Ross lives on the UK/Eire border in Ireland, where he moved from England in 2001, hoping the rain will help his hair grow back.

Book preview

REBIRTH

The Cave

Who are you?

Who are you?

Where are you?

In darkness. Seared flesh. Broken bones. Hard to think. Someone’s to blame. Must kill…

How will you know who’s to blame? You don’t even know who you are. How many nights will you ask the same questions?

What other questions are there?

The past brought this pain, suffering, confusion. Vengeance will only drag the past around and place it back in front of you. You don’t question who you are; you question who you were.

What other questions are there?

Who will you be now?

Planet Kabaall,

Krathan Space

A wave of powdery snow hissed as it drifted idly down the mountainside. At the perimeter fence, it had to compete with the quiet whistling of the wind through the metal links. Once past, the snow danced and pirouetted for a bit in a gentle whirlwind before continuing across the frozen expanse, over and around the tanks and trucks, then on to the runway. Skirting the dark dump hauler sitting there, it pressed on down the unnatural strip and dusted the fifty or so corpses, indifferent to their violent passing. Indifferent to their milky, staring eyes and their blue, contorted faces, frozen in pain and fury.

Finally, the snow-wave split in half to avoid the young woman standing alone amid what it would inevitably turn into a mass grave. Even her hair and cape didn’t shift in the wind, both as white as the snow avoiding her like the plague.

She allowed another minute of stillness, surveying the confusing battleground and absent-mindedly working her fingers around the remains of the shredded leather jacket she’d found in the centre of it. Then she dropped the jacket and moved on, carefully. The blood had turned much of the area to sludge, which had refrozen into a black and brown skating rink.

Past the corpses lay four long, neat rows of plump body bags. Beyond that hulked the dump hauler, its landing feet barely accommodated by the breadth of the runway. Its silence was somehow eerie. Dwarfed by it on either side were four hangars. The body bags were lined up outside the first on the right. The first on the left bore hundreds of holes and gashes where shrapnel had torn through it. That debris now made up part of the hauler’s load.

The second on the right lay empty, but opposite that, the final hangar called to her. The trail of bodies leading to its doorway would have done the job even if the murky, dizzying fog of depressive energy hadn’t. She crunched her way over.

Inside was empty except for a brightly lit opening in the centre of the floor and the only other living person within a thousand miles. Sitting nonchalantly on the concrete as though lounging at home, this was the woman who had called her there. This was Inquisitor Tillann.

Mara had never met Tillann, despite sharing a title and an academy. But she had heard stories. Her skin, warm and silky, was striking and instantly alluring. Flawless except for a deep, pink scar along her left jawline. There wasn’t a lot of middle ground for Necurians. Either they were high in melanin like Tillann or, like Mara, they were deficient, their skin weak, ashen, and easily burnt. Tillann was half Krathan, and Mara felt an inexplicable desire to see her elongated canines. Stupid.

‘Are you hurt?’ she asked, instantly feeling stupider. Despite the cold, only a grey vest covered Tillann’s torso, and multiple slashes and two shallow stab wounds were obvious. Mara guessed the shredded jacket outside was hers. The slow and deliberate turn of Tillann’s dark eyes to meet her gaze highlighted what she thought of the question. ‘I mean, obv— Do you want a medical kit?’

‘I’m fine.’ Mara couldn’t tell if it was sarcasm.

‘What happened out there? Nefar, the last of those Sykall mutants the Nefar bullied and tricked into doing their bidding, Krathan soldiers, and…who? More Krathans, but it’s clear they weren’t on the soldiers’ side and they even killed some Nefar. No small feat.’

For a moment, she thought Tillann wasn’t listening. She’d turned her attention back to the opening in the middle of the hangar.

‘Later.’ With a badly hidden wince, Tillann forced herself to her feet. She walked towards the opening and Mara spotted no more signs of pain.

At the small of Tillann’s back, clipped to her belt, was a dark cylinder. Maybe a skira, the Krathans’ close quarters weapon of choice. No sign of a katana, an inquisitor’s rarely used weapon. Mara couldn’t help a quiet snort at that. She felt like she’d had a katana permanently in her hand since she’d graduated and taken the title of inquisitor herself that very month, ten days after her twenty-second birthday.

When the thumping of Tillann’s boots ceased, only the hissing of the snow and a distant whistle of wind were audible once again. It didn’t fit a military base. Not even one as small as this. But all the soldiers were dead. All the soldiers who’d come to tidy up and prepare those bodies for transport were dead. All the Necurians, Krathans, and mutated anthropoids who had killed that second group of soldiers were dead – and it didn’t strain Mara’s deductive skills to determine that was down to the one woman left standing. All that remained there now were ghosts and two inquisitors of the Necurian Vanguard.

As Mara approached Tillann and the rectangular opening, her heart started to beat harder and faster. She’d hoped recent events had reached their conclusion, or at least their climax, but there was only one reason that an inquisitor seven or eight years her senior and infamously solitary would have summoned her. She’d discovered something terrible.

Mara stepped up beside her and followed her dark eyes.

The sight that met them threw her.

The passageway below was brightly lit, which ruled out some kind of trick of her eyes. It wasn’t coincidence. It wasn’t, as her mind innocently suggested, a mirror. Which left one simple conclusion: she was looking at herself.

And herself was looking back.

The Cave

Did you ever know who you were? Or were you always who you were told to be? What you were told to be?

Seared flesh calms. Broken bones knit. But thinking…hard.

You were never supposed to think. You were never allowed to think. Thinking is hard, but it doesn’t hurt anymore.

Thinking solves nothing. Someone needs to die.

Why? Why kill?

There is no why. It’s what you do. It’s what you are.

Why? What purpose does it serve? There must be something else. You have a choice now.

It is what you are.

It is what you were.

Planet Kabaall,

Krathan Space

Mara leaned to one side. The familiar green eyes in the other her didn’t follow. They kept staring past her ear, as though there was something mildly interesting behind her.

For a while, she simply looked at herself. She was aware that there were numerous thoughts and questions that should be passing through her mind, but they were absent. There was nothing but the staring eyes. Her staring eyes.

‘What the f—’

‘Sykall’s side project,’ Tillann said. ‘Too many of them to be any good. They wouldn’t have struggled to create the perfect Necurian if they’d already created the perfect clone. Maybe good enough to be used for infiltration. Sabotage. Assassination. Probably at least one significant flaw.’

Mara knew she was right. The Krathan corporation had been intent on the creation of new life, built from scratch, but cloning and then mimicking existing life had been the first steps. They had failed repeatedly to mimic Necurians. Even when they thought they’d had a success, she turned out to have some kind of flaw in her that ultimately delivered her to an early grave.

At age nine, Lyra had escaped Sykall’s clutches and taken a recording device with her, which the Vanguard later found. Mara had fallen in love with the little girl with accelerated aging and her innocence, her excitement, her perpetually awestruck narration of her exploration of the galaxy. But it was short lived. Lyra had realised she was dying and had taken the recording device back to where she was created, declaring herself a warning. Her final plea had been burned into Mara’s mind since: ‘Please don’t let them do this again’.

Mara had silently made her a promise. She had been on the way back to Krathan space to keep it when Tillann summoned her and now she saw that the promise was already broken. This was not the bespoke creation Sykall was aiming for, but it was no different to Mara.

Her fists clenched without thought. She and the Vanguard had failed Lyra once again. A deep breath chased the anger back into its unlocked cage for the moment.

‘Why did you call me?’ As far as she was aware, only three other inquisitors had listened to Lyra’s recordings, and Tillann wasn’t one of them. ‘How can you be sure that I’m not one of them?’ She nodded down at her own unblinking eyes, still staring without seeing.

‘Because you’re the only you out here.’ Tillann jerked her head towards the opening. Mara assumed she was expected to go down into the passage.

The idea of getting closer to the other her was not a comfortable one, but she felt an absurd desire to please the more experienced inquisitor. Carefully, she descended the steep steps. They were dry except for some lingering sludge prints, presumably from Tillann’s descent earlier.

The passage stretched on further than the length of the hangar above. No, not a passage, she realised. This was simply one path through the midst of dozens of cylindrical tanks containing clones of her Vanguard brothers and sisters. Her view of the room was obscured by the nearer tanks, but it seemed to be a big square space, perhaps twice the size of the hangar. If the tanks reached the side walls like they did straight ahead of her, the clones could number in the hundreds.

Directly opposite the other Mara was a third Mara. This seemed to be the pattern, except every second tank on either side was empty, staggered so that each clone was staring at an empty tank. Mara seemed to be the only one whose clones were both accounted for.

She stepped slowly along the pathway, forcing herself to look at the familiar faces one by one. The bright white lighting strips over her head made the sickly yellow liquid in the occupied tanks glow a diseased gold. She was thankful that no smell accompanied the aesthetic. No one but her moved a muscle. No eyes followed her. No one banged on the glass and begged for release.

She stopped.

Rialen. Her closest friend. He stared straight across the aisle at an empty tank as though he missed his twin. Except…that was strange. How could someone in stasis look sad?

Mara steeled herself and stepped closer. Closer again.

His eyes were heavily bloodshot. The horror of looking at an all too real copy of her friend was knocked aside by a jolt in her heart.

In the dreamlike state brought on by the surreal sight of herself, she had neglected her senses. She pushed them out now to every corner of the room, encompassing every clone down there.

‘Oh god!’ She ran back the short distance to the steps. Tillann was crouched at the side of the opening. ‘They’re all dead!’

Tillann nodded, her face expressionless.

Mara didn’t know how to feel as she took in both of her own clones in turn. ‘I’m dead.’

‘Pirates didn’t know about them. Shut down all power when they left. Gives us a vague timeframe.’

‘Why am I the only one with two clones down here? Everyone else I can see has one missing.’

‘Bane put a blade through you.’ The sealed wound on Mara’s stomach tingled. ‘If all of these were meant to be spies or assassins, there wouldn’t be anything convincing about a dead inquisitor walking through the door.’

That made sense. Whoever brought the clones out of stasis couldn’t have known whether she would survive, and even if she did, she’d probably be in recovery for a while, so they couldn’t risk using her clone. That made the timeframe less vague – if that was the reasoning behind leaving Mara’s clones here, the others must have been released after Rialen and Solan were at this base with the pirates, but before the second group of soldiers arrived to clear up the mess and recover their comrades’ bodies. Or were Rialen and Solan’s clones being roused even while the real Rialen and Solan were standing just a hundred feet away?

A thought crossed her mind. If she was the only one without a clone out there, wouldn’t the best way to change that be to lure her here and kill her?

Instinctively, her eyes flicked to Tillann’s before she could stop them. Tillann gazed back, unblinking. Her midnight eyes were hypnotising. Mara knew she should already have said something to avert suspicion. The eye contact had gone on too long. Tillann knew what she was thinking.

‘I’m going to count the empty tanks,’ she said, backing away. The dark eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.

Tightly shielding her thoughts, Mara forced herself to turn away and walk normally. She could feel Tillann’s eyes boring into the back of her skull. Could she expect to hear quick, light footsteps rushing up behind her in a moment? The whooshing of the woman’s skira flying through the air? Maybe she’d seal the opening again and leave Mara to starve or suffocate.

With one part of her mind keeping tabs on Tillann’s position, she turned her focus to searching for a pink scar on a left jawline and the empty tank she was afraid of finding opposite.

She confirmed that every last clone was dead. And it was with deep gratitude to the universe that she found no sign of Tillann clones or pair of empty tanks.

The next grateful sigh came when she found fewer tanks than she had first estimated – perhaps eighty. Of these, forty were empty. Forty too many, but at least the intimidating half-Krathan staring directly into her soul wasn’t one of them. Perhaps those left behind had flaws. Perhaps they were just backups.

Mara returned to the entrance, and climbed the steps, feeling stupid again. She decided not to leave it lingering. ‘You might have mentioned that you had no clones down there.’

‘Just what an evil clone would say.’ Tillann had moved to the hangar doorway. Her voice was blown inside by a wind stronger than was present when Mara arrived.

‘Some of them are my friends. We need to find some way to warn them. Some way of being sure who’s who.’

‘I only know one thing about cloning and it’s not how to tell them apart. Might not be a way to know. Except fighting them.’

Mara thought back through everything Rialen, Solan, and Kvann had told her. They’d been sceptical at first that Sykall could replicate a Necurian’s psionic ability. Not only had Lyra exhibited psionic ability, but they had learned that Bane, the wild brute of a Fallen Necurian who had murdered a Vanguard agent and nearly killed Mara herself, was in fact one of their experiments. Lyra’s predecessor. He was as psionically powerful as he was physically, if not more so.

‘No,’ she said. ‘There must be a way. Maybe they’re flawed, like you said. And I don’t want to goad my friends into a fight on the off-chance they might be clones,’ she added, unsure if that part had been serious.

Tillann didn’t say anything. She didn’t strike Mara as the kind of person who shared her thoughts often. Her eyes seemed to be on the corpses further down the runway.

‘I think we can trust Rialen and Solan,’ Mara continued. ‘They rarely leave each other’s side. They’d know if one of them was a clone.’

‘And if they both are?’

‘If they both are, they wouldn’t have taken down Bane and Taelan.’

‘No telling if the Rialo and Silon we’d talk to are those same two. Could be dead.’

Mara felt an unexpected prickle of anger at the suggestion. No clone would have got the better of Rialen. Besides, she was sure she would have felt it if something had happened to him. Even as she thought it, she knew it was ridiculous. Any connection they had wouldn’t reach this far across the galaxy.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Tillann said as Mara opened her mouth to protest. ‘We can’t involve anyone.’

‘We should at least tell Prime Avarr. There are no clones of him or any of the primes down there.’

Tillann was quiet for a while. Mara hadn’t noticed a change in her posture or expression the whole time they were talking. But at the mention of Avarr, Tillann’s eyes flicked down to the ground. They stayed there, moving ever so slightly, as though she were watching a scene play out in the snow.

‘No.’

Mara waited for the explanation. The elaboration. The older inquisitor’s deep reasoning for not sharing with the head of the Vanguard and member of their species’ ruling council this vital news. Tillann walked away.

Mara remembered the gossip about the inquisitor and how different she was to most Necurians. She started after her. ‘No? Just no? Okay, sure, I can get behind that compelling reasoning. You’re quite the debater.’ Rialen had rubbed off on her, she realised.

‘I’m not involving him until I know more. If at all.’ The building wind required Tillann to raise her voice, making the situation feel more like an argument. Mara wasn’t used to those.

‘And if I want to involve him?’

Tillann kept walking, but turned her black gaze on Mara over her shoulder. It was only for two seconds, but they were two of the most intimidating seconds of Mara’s life. She decided not to go to Avarr behind Tillann’s back.

‘Where are you—’ Mara clenched her fists again and took a deep breath. She’d been through too much in recent days to be cowed by one inquisitor. ‘You called me here, I assumed, to do my job. Our job. You don’t want to involve Avarr, fine, but I want to know why. I want to know who all these dead people are. And I want to know where the hell you’re going. Because you called me. I’m here now, I’m involved, and it’s staying that way.’

Tillann crunched to a stop. She stretched her neck to the left. Then to the right. Then she slowly turned back to Mara, who ignored the urge to keep her distance and stepped up close enough to feel Tillann’s body heat. In that vest, Mara was surprised she still had any.

‘I’m going back to my shuttle to close my wounds before the alien bacteria in this alien snow on this alien world infects them,’ Tillann said. ‘If you don’t object.’

The wind whipped Mara’s alabaster hair across Tillann’s cheek. It was an agreeable contrast.

‘Oh.’

Planet Llor,

Neutral Space

‘Nothing in range of sensors that isn’t ours,’ Rialen said, his voice given a synthetic quality by the medical half-mask he still wore across his jaw, nose, and left eye.

‘I suppose that would have been too easy.’ Solan watched the dark-green and brown planet grow bigger. A momentary glint caught his eye. A Vanguard shuttle, keeping an eye out for any Nefar ships.

‘They must have switched off the warning broadcast. No more New Necurian Republic.’

Solan wasn’t sure what to think of that. Had that so-called ‘New Republic’ been only Taelan’s dream, or were the people who still lived down there seeing their beloved system dismantled by the abhorrent Vanguard their leader had warned them about?

He wondered what would become of them now. There was no reason to relocate them. Only a relative handful had taken up arms against the Vanguard. The others were civilians who had fled as Bane raged through their village, burning their homes in his rampage against his one-time mentor. Technically, they were Nefar, but certainly they didn’t deserve the derogatory moniker ‘Fallen’.

‘Do you think anyone here will know anything useful?’ Rialen asked as they began their descent through the atmosphere.

‘Unlikely. Kvann will probably be the one to get information. The prisoners will know more than these farmers. But we can’t sit around the academy and wait.’

Rialen nodded. Two academies had been attacked by Taelan’s militarised Nefar. One was their own home, where they had grown up, been educated, and which housed the headquarters of the Vanguard they had eventually joined. Twenty-seven adults and students had been killed in the attack, including a close friend of theirs.

Bane himself had led the attack on the other academy, and it had been where Mara had managed to turn him against Taelan. That was the tipping point. But still more people had died there.

Despite the many arrests, too many of the attackers had escaped. Their minds had been filled with Taelan’s poison and now they were running about the galaxy armed with ships, psionic ability, and a persecution complex. There was no telling what they would do without their leader or where they would do it.

Mara was taking care of the Sykall side of things, if there still was one, so the hunt for the remaining Nefar terrorists was for Solan and Rialen to take up. The problem was working out where to start. They already knew that Taelan had possessed more than one capital class ship, too large to go groundside on Llor, but how many or where they were now, they had no idea. As he’d said, Kvann would probably get at least some of that information from the prisoners.

‘Doesn’t look right,’ Rialen said, looking out at the dozen Vanguard shuttles dotted about the village ahead.

Solan grunted an agreement. The people down there already thought the Vanguard was the ultimate enemy; so many agents arriving would do that perception no good. But perhaps it would be tempered by the agents’ gentle and caring nature. They were there to assist the villagers in getting back to their lives as much as to investigate every inch of the place.

In the distance, Solan could make out figures erecting a tall, golden spire. One of the emitters for the damping field that would allow the villagers to live without neural dampers permanently clamped to their temples. Without damping, the thoughts and emotions of who knew how many would flood their minds and drive them mad.

The landing space they had used last time was taken up by another Vanguard shuttle. Its gleaming white hull almost seemed to be squared up to the dirty black of Bane’s shuttle. The latter had not been removed, pending the arrival of an expert to check its computer.

‘Do you see anywhere good to land?’ Rialen asked. ‘I don’t want to churn up their field or scare the cows into a stampede.’

There was a fenced off field beside the two shuttles, but frightened-looking cattle were crowded in the far corner.

‘Let’s not add to the invasion aesthetic,’ Solan said. ‘I’ll ask the shuttle to move.’

A minute later, the shuttle’s assigned agent gave it permission to move, and it shot away into the clouds.

Rialen carefully, but not entirely steadily, lowered them to the ground. The engines whined themselves into ticking, clicking peace.

‘Cloaks,’ Solan said. Rialen nodded and pulled his on as he exited the cockpit.

They had no idea how much training any of the Nefar they were hunting had been given, so they both wore their exoskeletons. Although light and comfortable, these full suits of white battle armour spoke of war – especially as scratched and scuffed as Rialen’s was after taking on Bane and Taelan. The cloaks hid the armour, making them look a little more peaceful.

Outside, the air smelled of damp ash and recent rainfall. The silver-edged grass was slippery but firm underfoot as they crossed between the two craft.

The end of Bane’s loading ramp was forced a foot into the ground, lifting the back of the shuttle. Bane had been impatient to disembark.

The ramp led into a small cargo bay with two narrow rooms on either side and a two-seater cockpit ahead. The air, although left open to the outside, smelled faintly of sweat and rot. Solan could imagine the latter came from remnants of food that Bane simply threw aside when he was done.

Both small rooms were as empty as the cargo bay. In the cockpit, a white android was sitting in the pilot’s seat, interfacing with the shuttle’s computer. That must be the expert.

‘Have you retrieved anything useful?’ Solan asked.

‘Many locations are stored in the computer, Inquisitor,’ the android said, turning politely to look at him. ‘However, the shuttle’s owner made no attempt to erase them, suggesting that they will not lead you anywhere useful.’

‘Bane wasn’t exactly the type to carefully erase data,’ Rialen said, opening and closing various compartments. ‘He was more the punch things until they stopped working type.’

‘I see. I will copy everything I find to you both and to Master Kvann. I have yet to analyse the data fully, but there is a notable change only months ago that suggests a transfer of ownership, which could account for the number of locations stored.’

‘Even one location we don’t know about after that transfer could be of use,’ Solan said. The android nodded as the two left again.

Solan didn’t know how smart these fugitive Nefar were. Not only did the Vanguard have prisoners that might give up hideouts, but every entertainment medium had long ago taught people that a ship’s computer could give away secrets. No, even a stupid Nefar would find somewhere new to hide out.

He felt no desire to return to the longhouse at the top of the village, where Taelan and Bane had both finally been apprehended and taken back to Veranzen. The place held no secrets, Solan was sure, but he could think of nothing else to replace the aimless feeling inside him. Rialen had only a shrug to offer.

As the two headed through the settlement, they heard snippets of conversation between Vanguard agents and those villagers brave enough to go near them. Solan was amazed at how unpleasant the realisation that these agents wouldn’t kill or enslave them had emboldened the villagers to be. Taelan’s allusions to the contrary did not appear to be causing any hesitation now.

‘The spires will allow you to live free from dampers on your head,’ an agent assured a small group of men and women.

‘Aye, and brain wash us in the process? No one asked for your tech and no one wants it here!’

This elicited a cry of assent from the group. He would probably have felt more important and influential had there been more than a handful of others around him. Still, it was a clear sign of how easily things could get out of hand in the village. Solan hoped the agents here would stay vigilant and finish their work quickly.

‘This is an invasion of sovereign territory,’ someone was stating confidently on the other side of the next shack. ‘Every boot that muddies our ground, every ship that pollutes our skies is an act of aggression. But you’re stronger than us, right? So you can keep us in a choke hold while you tell us you’re on our side. Open your eyes to the shame you’re bringing on your own people!’

Solan surveyed everything around him as they continued up the scuffed and scattered gravel path. It was a skill to find the balance between not looking over and past people as though thinking oneself better than them and not making eye contact long enough to prompt interaction. A skill Solan apparently did not possess.

‘You think this will end well?’ a quiet, thin voice said. Solan turned to the elderly woman sitting beside a singed tent, cradling a poor quality katana.

Solan considered the words for a moment. Rialen made no attempt to answer. ‘I think it will end. There is no good ending for something that has claimed so many lives.’

‘They’re still out there,’ the woman said calmly and as though he hadn’t responded. ‘They will make you pay for every one of your vile crimes.’

‘What are you hoping to hear from us?’ Rialen said, his synthetic voice causing the woman to screw up her nose. ‘We could educate you on how your beloved leader attacked schools, murdered children, and manipulated you all until it inevitably backfired and resulted in the death and destruction around you now, but you wouldn’t listen. So why waste the words?’

The accuracy of this was demonstrated by the resolute shaking of the woman’s head. It was the unique head shake of one whose mind was entirely closed to the possibility that they were lacking knowledge. Such a person possessed the ability to deflect words and facts that conflicted with their existing beliefs. To prevent them from even entering their consciousness.

Rialen resumed the path to the longhouse. Solan dropped his gaze to the katana in the wizened hands. He wished some words of sympathy and peace would come to him. None did. He followed after Rialen.

‘The hell are we doing here?’ Rialen demanded.

‘Trying to feel less useless.’

The Cave

Who are you?

You are no one, living in a rotting cave, talking to yourself. These crustaceans are more of a who than you are.

Better to talk to yourself than go mad.

Madness came first. Madness caused everything.

And now the madness is gone. The rage is soothed. What will you cause? Pain?

Suffering?

Anguish?

No point. No goal. No aim. No more life.

Whose life?

Whose life?

Don’t pretend you’ve forgotten. Did madness cause everything, or did she?

Her life.

What did she cause?

Pain.

No. She caused change. She caused you to see the truth. She caused you to be reborn.

Everything must change again.

Yes. So what will you cause?

Thinking is still hard.

WHAT WILL YOU CAUSE?

Re…birth?

Planet Kabaall,

Krathan Space

Tillann’s shuttle rocked gently in the blizzard’s unpredictable path. It might have rocked Mara to sleep if it weren’t for the cold. Tillann had left the loading ramp open too long, probably to air out the shuttle, and hadn’t turned the heat on since finally closing it.

Still, to ward off the possibility, Mara had stayed on her feet, leaning against the cockpit doorway while Tillann sprayed various things on her wounds. She’d rolled her eyes when Mara told the computer to scan her for any signs of infection, but hadn’t objected. As expected, the sterilisation field across the shuttle’s entrance had taken care of anything untoward.

‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were taking as long as possible fixing yourself so you won’t have to answer my questions,’ Mara said.

Tillann dropped the little spray can back into the medical supply box with a sharp crack. The force of her unexpected glare almost matched the blizzard. ‘You don’t know better. The first thing you need to do is get that through your head. And I don’t have to do a damn thing.’

‘And the second?’ Mara was quickly understanding that this was not