Liminal Space (Shadows & Light Book One), page 44
No, he shouted to himself. He’d defeated this enemy the last time, well and truly. Whatever the reason for their return now, there had been no signs it might be possible back then. He couldn’t have foreseen this was going to happen.
And now? The diati was not his slave, but in truth it never had been. They’d merely been allies for a time. It refused to prostrate itself to him for this fight, and that was its choice. It had nothing to do with him personally.
Yet the doubts raged relentlessly in his mind. He wasn’t worthy. He wasn’t strong enough. He was all charisma and no substance. How could he be, when his arrogant, petulant son had vanquished him with little effort? His selfish, narcissistic colleagues had bested him and killed the love of his life. The diati had deserted him for a better, more noble soul the instant Caleb strode onto the stage. He’d never defeated the Directorate at all—the Humans had. Without the diati, he was only a man, and a weak, vain one—
The ring of the door chime assaulted his ears like a slap across the cheek. Zeus be damned, he hadn’t wallowed in such muck since the months after Renato had brutalized him to within a centimeter of final denouement.
He slapped his own cheeks for good measure before checking the door cam, and stopped cold at the sight of his visitor. There would be no salvation for him today, then. So be it.
He drew in a fortifying breath and went to the door to open it in person.
“Eren. Will you come in?”
“It’s why I’m here.” Eren strolled past him into the office and took up residence in one of the high-backed chairs, where he slouched against the arm. His skin displayed the faint sheen of regenesis, suggesting he’d left the medical capsule a few hours ago at most. And Corradeo realized he had no idea why. He’d been too wrapped up in his own self-pity to stay abreast of the work going on around him.
Corradeo sat in the chair opposite Eren and tried not to appear stiff and formal. “What happened?”
“Killed that Pale Viper bitch—Olivia Montegreu, the Humans call her. She took me out with her, but I got the job done.”
“Good work.”
“I do try.” Eren stared at him, expressive eyes dancing with a notable inner fire. “So here’s the deal. Part of me understands why you thought you needed to protect me from my own past. For one, it’s who you are, what you do. You hoist every burden upon yourself, as if you’re Atlas shouldering the heavens all by your lonesome.
“For another, I’ve spent most of the time you’ve known me—this time around, I guess—being an utter flaming shiteshow. The hypnol addictions while I was an anarch, then my flailing, ugly mourning of Cosime for the last four years. You missed the fourteen years where I was fairly healthy and happy, on account of your walkabout. So I get it. Given this history, maybe I should be thanking you for protecting me.
“But the thing is, you’ve got me all wrong, which makes me think you never knew me half as well as you thought. Do you have any idea how much it would’ve meant to me to learn I had always been a fighter? That I’d tossed off those fucking integral chains more than once, and I wasn’t as weak as I’d believed for so long?”
“Eren, you have never been weak—” he began.
“But I was. I spent the first two hundred years of this incarnation yucking it up in the finest hedonistic Idoni style. Did I ever tell you what finally set me off and led me to the anarchs? I was ordered to rape a helpless alien by an elasson. I damn near did it, too. Another dose of ferusom, and I’d have been flying too high to notice and would’ve forgotten it by morning. Still keeps me up at night sometimes, wondering what crimes I did commit while I was too high to remember the next day.
“You want to know why the decades of hypnols and alcohol? Why righteous suicide after suicide ‘in service of the anarch cause’? This was why. I was consumed with guilt over how weak, how shitty, of a person I’d been.”
Eren exploded forward to lean in and drop his elbows to his knees, then leveled a passionate gaze at Corradeo. “Don’t you think I would have liked to have known I was trapped in a hellscape by the Directorate itself? That I was made to suffer because I’d dared to fight them? That every time I tried to rise up, they forcibly stomped me back down again, yet I nonetheless rose up one more time? Don’t you think I deserved to know all of that?”
Gobsmacked, Corradeo sank deeper into his chair. His eyes sought out the visual of Lauren on the shelf behind Eren. Her ghost scolded him for his foolishness, but only in the compassionate way she had. And when he considered this fraught moment the way she’d have seen it…he finally understood.
What a powerful weapon, perception. The stories we told ourselves shaped the way our lives played out. We could be our own greatest champions or our worst enemies. We viewed the world through a glass, darkly, until someone came along to clean off the smears.
His chest ached with love for the woman he’d lost, and for his dear friend that he perhaps hadn’t.
A wistful smile graced his lips. “Yes, Eren. You deserved to know all of this and more. I told myself I was protecting you from pain, but I should have known you better. Once upon a time, I did know you better. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life—a mild understatement—and learned a few lessons from them. But it seems there’s one lesson I just can’t manage to learn: it’s not my right to keep secrets from the people I care about. It’s the height of hubris to believe I always know best.”
He leaned forward to match Eren’s posture. “The instant I learned you’d joined the anarchs a second time, I should’ve sought you out and welcomed you to the cause once again, as a friend and compatriot. I wanted to, as I’d missed you greatly. But whatever justification I gave to myself for not doing so, the truth is, I was afraid. Afraid to stare a broken past in the face. Afraid I’d grow close to you once more, only to lose you to the Directorate again. Afraid being around you would remind me too much of Lauren, when I insisted I’d put her memory to rest. Eren, I was the one who was weak, not you.
“I don’t have the right to it, but can an old man who’s lived for far too long ask for your forgiveness?”
“Ah, hells, Corradeo. You’re not weak. Whatever suffering I’ve gone through, you’ve endured a thousandfold more, and here you are, standing tall. You may be the strongest person Anaden genes have ever produced. What you are, however…” Eren cracked a devilish smirk and held up a finger “…is fallible. Sporting a few tiny flaws here and there. But here you are admitting them. Laying them bare on the rug so I can poke a sharp stick at them if I want to. Nah, that’s some strength there.”
Had Eren ever called him by his first name to his face, this time around? He didn’t think so; it had always been ‘sir,’ or ‘Advocate.’ Their relationship dynamic had shifted, which was fine by him.
“You’re gracious to say so, given the topic of conversation.” Corradeo clasped his hands together. “No matter what the future holds for us, thank you, Eren. Though you didn’t walk in here intending to do so, as you couldn’t have realized the depths to which I’d sunk, you have given me a proverbial kick in the head. And oh, how I needed it. You always were talented at doing so. But…the question does still stand.”
“Forgiveness, right.” Eren nodded slowly. “I think I can find my way around to forgiveness, on one condition. Sorry. It seems I’m always laying conditions for my fealty on you.”
“I’m not asking for your fealty, Eren. I’m asking for your friendship, and you can give it, if you give it at all, on whatever terms you wish.”
“Whoa. The magnanimity is getting a little thick there.”
“Forgive me—” He winced. “Why don’t you tell me what your condition is?”
“Happy to.” Eren stood and went over to the bar. “I’m going to fix a light drink, though. One for you, too.”
Corradeo shook his head wryly, unsure whether this was a good sign or a bad one. Either way, he accepted the glass of scotch and took a small sip.
Eren settled back into his chair and rested an ankle on a knee. “I hate to pick at a scab, but I need to do it. Tell me about the first anarch rebellion. Highs and lows, parties and failures. Tell me about Lauren, so I’ll feel like I remember her.”
His heart panged; Eren had no idea the magnitude of this ask. But his friend deserved nothing less. So he took a deep breath, then a much longer sip of his drink, and began.
Corradeo crouched beside Eren’s chair and showed him the visual he’d kept saved in his internal storage for two-hundred-fifty millennia. It captured him, Lauren, Eren and two of their close associates, Anastasia and Macron, gathered up close together on a couch in his and Lauren’s suite at the anarch base. It was supposed to be a posed visual—a group portrait, as it were—but they were all smiling and goofing off, and Lauren had been caught mid-laugh. After three failed attempts, they’d gotten serious enough for a proper memorialization, but he’d tossed the official version aeons ago in favor of the candid one.
“We’d successfully obliterated a Directorate weapons lab and were celebrating. It was a good night, even if it might have benefited from one or two fewer drinks by the end.”
“The best nights usually do.” Eren chuckled. “Sounds as if she had the better of you.”
“Almost always.” He returned to his chair. “It was her rebellion, and I was merely learning at her knee.”
“Then we all owe a debt to her.” Eren sipped on his drink, which he’d been nursing throughout their conversation. “You obviously loved her a great deal. You, uh, never talk about Nyx’s grandmother, and I admit I’ve been curious.”
Corradeo rolled his eyes at the heavens. “My relationship with Imena was never about love. Often respect, occasionally mild affection, but mostly power. Once we’d both gotten what we wanted from our union, we parted ways. Not precisely friends, but at least not enemies. And of course the children, Renato and Melia, Nyx’s mother. Now her? Her I adored. The greatest sin Renato ever committed wasn’t trying to take my life. It was ending hers.” He leapt up and returned to Eren’s side to show him a visual of Melia.
“Nyx looks just like her.”
“She does. Acts like her, too. It regularly brings me an equal measure of sorrow and joy.”
“We’re together, by the way. Nyx and I.” Eren’s eyes squeezed shut. “I mean, we’re not…ah, Hades, I honestly don’t know what exactly we are. Lovers, evidently. As for anything more….” He shrugged helplessly.
“I know you are.”
“You, too? Seems we’ve done a poor job of keeping it a secret. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if I spotted an exposé on us in Olympia’s morning news report.”
“I asked them not to run it.” Corradeo sighed quietly. “I’ve hoped you two would grow close. I think you complement one another. Not quite so close, however. It’s not my place to intrude, but I confess I do worry. I don’t want to see either of you inflict pain on the other.”
“But that’s what relationships always do, isn’t it?”
“In the end? Maybe. But if you’re lucky, the joy they bring far outweighs any eventual pain. I was lucky with Lauren. If we live through the Dzhvar, it’s even possible I’ll be lucky with Maris, though the field in front of me remains littered in landmines.”
“You’re definitely playing with fire with that one. Listen, I can’t make any promises about Nyx. I pretty much always fear I’m one rash decision away from a stay in Tartarus, and I’m feeling this acutely with her right now. But I do try to point my collateral damage clear of bystanders, and while she’s no longer a bystander…” he winced “…I’ll do what I can.”
“It’s all I can ask of you.” They both stood, and Corradeo clasped Eren on the shoulder. “Thank you, my friend. For everything.”
64
ARES
Maris peered out the window of Corradeo’s office, a judgmental frown tightening her features as she considered the small grove of mesquite trees off to the left.
Corradeo laughed warmly and wound his arms around her from behind. “This is a terraformed planet. Beauty can’t always be the top priority when choosing the flora.”
“Yes, yes.” She rested her head against his chest. “You’re in a better mood this afternoon.”
“Better than when?”
“Do I need to grace that question with a response?”
“No, I suppose not.” He kissed her temple. “My conversation with Eren went well. It was challenging and laden with difficult emotions, but it ended in a much friendlier place than where it began. I daresay we’ve reconciled, which is more than I had any right to hope for.”
She twisted around in his arms to face him. “And now one of your burdens is lessened.”
“Why is everyone so concerned about the burdens I carry?”
“Not everyone. Merely the people who care for you.”
At times he could hardly believe she counted herself among them. When they’d first met, she’d despised him, for understandable reasons, and the tempest of this woman’s hatred tended to leave a lasting mark. But when he set out to accomplish something, the universe rarely denied him, and he’d set out not to have her, but to have her forgiveness. Along the way, he’d gotten a little more. Then a lot more.
He kissed her softly on the lips now. “Thank you for—”
An alert blasted through his internal system, burning his vision with crisp orange text: Dzhvar incursion in Concord space.
A knot of tension mixed with anticipation, weighed down by the gravity of consequential purpose, coiled through his chest. He’d hoped for years, bet on months, but only gotten weeks. So it was.
He stepped out of her arms, touching her cheek by way of apology. “Dzhvar. I must go.”
Her chin dipped in acceptance as he turned away and opened a wormhole to the CAF Aurora.
CAF AURORA
Concord HQ Stellar System
“Where?”
Miriam didn’t spare a glance at him as five screens populated in an arc around her. “The Volie system. I’ve ordered full fleet mobilization and triggered evacuation protocols.”
Corradeo heard the words and registered their appropriateness as his thoughts dove into a maelstrom. Their evacuation plans were complex and dependent on a number of moving variables, though they’d had time and the benefit of many Artificials to work them out in great detail.
But Volie hosted almost a billion residents. If the Dzhvar moved half as fast now as on their previous incursions, only a tiny fraction stood to make it offworld before the planet began to crumble. Yes, eventually those who perished would be returned to life, but it would take years to complete regenesis procedures for a billion people. And when they awoke, they’d find their homes were gone. How many more planets were going to fall between now and then, sending ever more people to the back of the regenesis line? “What about—?”
“A modified Rift Bubble is en route. It will arrive in time to be activated before the Dzhvar reach the planet.”
“Thank you.” They didn’t yet have a name for the fractalized rift device, but it promised to redirect the dimensions surrounding the planet fivefold. It hadn’t been tested in the field, however, so they had no way to know how much time it would buy them. And it was something of a Faustian bargain they were making by using it, since the device was going to shut down all wormholes on the surface. Evacuations must cease for as long as it remained active, which was why they weren’t activating it right away.
‘Commandant, you should reschedule the Echo Rift deployment with Lakhes,’ the ship’s Artificial intoned.
“Yes. Thank you for the reminder, Thomas.”
Corradeo caught Miriam frowning as she ascended the overlook. “Are you reconsidering your decision to use the Echo Rift on the Ch’mshak?”
“No. Just accepting that my conscience will take a greater hit from continuing to endanger every Concord citizen by risking the escape of more Ch’mshak than it will from not personally witnessing the sealing away of the species.” Miriam sighed. “Thomas, I need to send Brigadier General Nathan Roan to handle the deployment in my stead. I don’t believe he’s interacted directly with a Kat before, but he has been in their presence. He’ll be able to navigate the encounter without too much difficulty.”
‘A wise choice. Roan has displayed superior calm in the most stressful of situations.’
“Agreed. I’ll inform him of his new assignment, then alert Lakhes to the change of plans. They can move forward as soon as they’re ready.”
Corradeo backed away from the overlook to let Miriam work as the bridge began to come to life with bustling personnel. Should he move to Casmir’s Imperium? A flare of nativist pride counseled for him to do so, given an Anaden world was soon to be under attack. But while he liked Casmir well enough personally and respected the man’s military leadership skills, Machim rigidity as a character trait rankled him. And though Casmir never said anything, he knew the man twitched beneath Corradeo’s watchful gaze. The long shadow of his former military career would never dissipate. So he stayed on board the Aurora for now.
Why was an Anaden world the first to be targeted? Was the enemy retracing its steps? Following well-worn treads it had left behind in the first war?
A bitter taste settled into his mouth. It was as if the enemy was taunting him, or else seeking revenge for its long exile.
He shouldn’t anthropomorphize primordial cosmic energy. Intellectually, he recognized that it was simply a matter of odds: Anadens lived on thousands more planets than any other Concord species, thus any random inhabited planet was more likely to host Anadens than anyone else. But the bitterness persisted.
VOLIE STELLAR SYSTEM
The Dzhvar writhed through the outer reaches of the Volie system like a rampaging wildfire, burning everything in their path, even the very fabric of space. By Hades, how Corradeo loathed the sight of them.
