Killbox

“Commander, LC, it was my pleasure to serve with you,” Argus says.



He pushes out of the nav chair then and offers up a perfect salute. I’ve never seen anything so brave or so awful. Since the next hit will blow the ship wide, I get to my feet also. I don’t take the last shot.



To my astonishment, it doesn’t come because there’s another ship on the horizon, coming from the planet and rising fast. The sleek, smooth lines identify as a pleasure yacht, and when it comes closer, I realize I’ve seen it before. I took a ride on that ship once.



I scramble for the comm. At this range, I don’t need the codes. “Ramona?”



Her image flashes to life. As always, she’s lovely. Her dark hair has been looped in elaborate coils, and she’s dressed head to toe in white. “You’re looking pale, darling. Happy to see me?”



I laugh unsteadily. “Right now? Not really.”



“You will be. There’s not much time now, Sirantha. Everything I have is yours. You’ll find all the documents in order on Venice Minor. I think you know where, you’ve stayed at the villa.”



“What are you talking about?” I ask, bewildered.



“In all these years,” she says, as if I haven’t spoken, “you’ve never asked me for anything. Not once. When I got your message . . . well.” She lifts her slim shoulders in a shrug. “This is what I can do now. You’ll be free to allot my assets as you choose. Believe what you may about me, but I have always loved you. Now, go.” Her gaze focuses on March. “Take her away from here.”



She smiles at me one last time, then the message shifts from private comm to open transmission, bounced to every satellite. Her very expression changes, becoming prouder, colder, and almost . . . majestic. “I am Ramona Jax,” she tells the universe. “And I do this because this is my world.”



At first I don’t understand, but March falls back as instructed, as quick as our limping vessel will carry us. The dreadnaught focuses on Ramona as the greater threat. Her pilot, if there is one, doesn’t try to dodge its hits. Instead, her ship sails directly toward the beast, gaining speed with every second. I watch in horrified silence.



“She’s going to ram it,” Argus breathes.



That won’t be enough. It could never be enough. She’ll break up on its hull, and leave it gleaming in its dark power. The dreadnaught doesn’t try to take evasive action. Why would it? The thing’s untouchable.



I close my eyes, unable to watch her die.



“No. Look.” The demand in March’s tone jolts me.



Impact. At first nothing seems to happen, then her ship splits wide, revealing the payload inside. She’s turned her entire yacht into a bomb. Light radiates outward, almost like sunrise after the longest night. The dreadnaught crumples inward. I can’t hear the force, but both ships go up, and the enormous shock waves ripple outward.



Dead. My mother’s dead.



It’s absurd, but I’m both proud and grieving at the same time. When I asked her for help, I never thought it would come this way.



“She saved us,” I whisper.



March nods. “Probably half the damn universe, too. We have to find out if there are more of those. I took readings. We can scan for them.”



“Not to be unheroic, but maybe we want to find somewhere with breathable atmosphere and fix the ship first,” Argus suggests.



“Two hours and twenty-two minutes of oxygen remaining,” the computer advises.



“Venice Minor is closest. I have a house there, apparently.”



I can hardly assimilate her sacrifice. It goes against everything I thought I knew about her, but then, people are never precisely as we see them, for good or ill. Billions of people will see that transmission; Ramona broadcast every last second until her ship went up. Maybe now, going forward, I’ll be known as her daughter. I find I don’t mind at all.



“If you’re not the luckiest son of bitch in the whole galaxy, then I don’t know who is.” Hon’s voice crackles through our comm. “Remind me never to play cards with you.”



March scowls. “I thought I told you to head for New Terra.”



“I thought I’d hang around to watch you die first.”



“We’re here, too,” puts in the captain of the Sweet Sensation . “What’s our plan, sir?”



He answers, “We need to get on the ground. You two follow us in and pick up any pieces that fall off.”



“Roger that,” Hon says.



March flies with kid gloves. The nav com’s shot, so he guides the Triumph on pure instinct and expertise. The landing is hell, but he manages to put it down outside my mother’s private hangar with a minimum of extra damage. By the time he stands up, I’ve almost accepted that we’re still alive.



Well, some of us. We lost deck two. That’s everyone in maintenance and comms.



Foreboding ripples over me, then I realize who I know that works in comm.



Rose. We lost Rose.



CHAPTER 53



While everyone else is eager to see Venice Minor while the ship is being patched up, I head toward medical. By now, Doc has to know. Besides him and Rose, I’m the only one who knows what passed between them, so I’m the only one who can understand what he’s going through.



Half the lights don’t work, so I stride through a flickering wasteland of blown ceiling panels and loose wiring. Near med bay, the air turns acrid with the stink of charred polymers. The ship seems deserted; everyone else has disembarked, but I know he hasn’t.



I find him amid the wreckage of his lab. Any progress he’s made better be backed up in the ship’s database because the physical samples have been smashed. Maybe the dreadnaught is to blame for that, but from his expression, I think not. His silver hair stands on end, suggesting rough, careless hands in it.



He’s removed his white jacket and stands in his Armada uniform like a soldier, but his pose comes from anguish, not military bearing. That’s when I realize he’s not alone, at least not entirely. He already went to get her.



Rose’s body has been laid out on one of the tables. Doc must have covered her face, unable to look at the bloodshot eyes brought on by asphyxiation. For a moment, I consider backing out of the room, then discard the notion. He senses me anyway.



“She died thinking I had been untrue—even, perhaps, that I didn’t love her.”



“I know. I told her you did, and that she needed to talk to you about it.” This isn’t the time to mention how spectacularly he mishandled the confrontation. I suspect he doesn’t need me to figure that out; he’s a smart man.



“So she discussed our relationship with you?” He sounds numb, quiet now that the initial storm has passed.



“Yes, she did.” I summarize what she saw.



“The worst of it is . . .” He gazes up at the ceiling, hands clasped behind him. “She wasn’t wrong.”



I knew that by how you answered her, Saul. You’re not too clever for me to read.



I lean my hip against a counter littered with broken instruments. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”



He shrugs. “Who else is there? If she confided in you, then it’s fitting I do.”



“Evelyn,” I prompt.



“She is . . . intoxicating,” he says quietly. “Her intellect shines like a diamond, but she’s strong and resourceful, too. How many people could survive what she did? I enjoyed our work together . . . too much, perhaps. I would find myself watching her, the slope of her chin when she studied a specimen, the way she curled a strand of hair around her finger while she pondered a complex problem. I had never met anyone like her, and she struck me as brilliant, fascinating and new.”



Whereas Rose was familiar, safe, unexciting. Yes, I understand how it happens. It’s not really my business, but I can’t help asking, “Did you—”



“No. But it wasn’t for want of desire. It was for lack of opportunity and excess of work. Rose saw the height of it. Ev lost many friends to the Morgut. That day, grief overcame her, and I tried to comfort her. But in my heart, I wanted more.”



So I was right about that part, but . . . so was Rose.



“Saul, I’m so sorry.”



“Men can be very stupid,” he says bitterly. “We cease to value what we have until it’s gone, and only then do we realize the gold we glimpsed in distant hills paled as dross compared to treasure we had in hand.”



“She loved you.” It’s a thin attempt at comfort because I’m angry. Things shouldn’t have ended like this. He should have run after her and begged for her forgiveness.



“She wouldn’t have been here but for me. I should have made her stay on Lachion.”



There’s nothing I can say to that, except: “I don’t see how you could make her do anything. She was a grown woman.”



“Perhaps you’re right. Mary knows, she did as she wished without regard for my opinions. When I said I was leaving again, she wept. I could never stand her tears since she was always so fierce in other ways.”



That offers a sweet glimpse of how they were together. I remember how Mair spoke in her journal of Rose fighting for him when the Lachion men challenged his beliefs. What does he believe now?



“How long were you together?”



I see him thinking back over the years. Memories sit heavily on him, pleasure and comfort now denied. “Twentyfive turns, but I knew her longer.”



His broken aspect defeats the kernel of anger in me. I can’t hold on to righteous indignation in the face of such obvious torment. Pushing away from the counter, I cross to him and put a hand on his shoulder. His muscles feel heavy and solid beneath my hand, evidence of a childhood on a high-G world.



Saul turns into my arms, much as Evelyn must have. The irony doesn’t escape me. For endless moments, I hold him and feel fresh grief shaking through him in a silent storm. At length he steps back, and I find that his eyes are dry. Too many tears to shed.



“What will you do now?”



“I think you’d better leave me, Jax. I’d like to say good-bye to her.” There’s such awful composure in his face. I would feel easier if he screamed or raged.



As LC, I make a decision. “I’ll go, but I’m setting the AI on watch.”



“You think I’d do myself harm?” An ugly smile twists his mouth. “Then you don’t know me. You see . . . I deserve to suffer.”



In his eyes I see he believes he does. Nevertheless, I keep my promise with instructions to the AI once I leave med bay. From there, I pick my way to the exit ramp, negotiating bits of debris. It’s going to take days to get us in the air again, assuming we have anyone left on board who knows anything about repair. The crew from the Dauntless and the Sweet Sensation may have to pitch in.



I come across Evelyn sitting just outside the ship in a pool of sunlight. Here on Venice Minor, the days are long and bright, the sky impossibly blue overhead. On another part of the world, a dreadnaught rain will be falling.



“He hates me now,” she says without looking up. “I cost him everything he loved.”