Chapter Twenty-One
My head feels like a burst watermelon when I come to. Opening my eyes hurts, but I try to shake it off and adjust to the brightness.
What happened? I was with Kest… and then…
Once my vision clears, I look around and find I’m on his ship, lying on the bed. I see Kest sprawled out in the pilot’s seat.
“Kest, wake up!”
He groans, then jumps to his feet, spinning around. “Haley! Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I say, pressing my hand to my forehead. “I’ll be fine. What happened?”
He growls, baring his teeth. “Bakan.”
Right. The memory floods back, including our apartment door being blown down. No wonder my head hurts.
“Why’d he put us on your ship?” I ask, not understanding why we aren’t dead.
Kest opens up the ship’s holographic display, which shows our trajectory through the galaxy, closing in on Earth. We must have been out cold a whole day, because we’re only a few minutes away from arrival.
He shakes his head, face grim with worry. “He’s interrupted the Council’s deliberations by putting us on ice, but he knows that won’t stop the proceedings. He’s either really desperate, or up to something.”
He scrolls through the holograms as I get up and make my way over.
“Like what?”
“Nothing good. If the Council finds out he attacked us, he’ll be in serious trouble…”
He doesn’t finish the sentence, and judging by the icy chill in my spine, I’m not sure I wanted to hear it anyway.
Kest tries to access the ship’s controls, but an error alert sounds through the cockpit.
“What’s wrong?”
He sighs. “Bakan’s locked me out. I can’t control the ship. I can’t stop or turn around. We’re going back to Earth.”
My fear grows like a pit opening up beneath me. There has to be more going on. “Why would he do that?”
“Let’s see. I can’t change the ship’s orders, but I bet I can view them.”
After a moment, the holographic display changes, producing a long list of directives. Reading it, my heart sinks. “Oh, no.”
“Yeah,” says Kest. “This is bad.”
Written before us is a list of instructions to enter Earth’s atmosphere and systematically annihilate every human being it can detect.
“Can this ship really do that? Kill everyone?”
“It might take a long time… but yes. Eventually it will succeed. It’ll probably only take a few months.” Kest pounds his fist against the control panel, his skin darkening with rage. “And we get to watch the whole time, unable to stop it.”
I refuse to believe that. “Won’t we be shot down?”
Kest shakes his head. “No weapon on Earth can touch this ship, Haley. Not even a nuclear bomb would stop it.”
I’d be impressed if there was time. “Then we have to stop it ourselves.”
“Yes, yes, we do.”
Fuck Bakan. We’re not letting him win.
Kest places his fingers on the ship’s control panel, and for a moment the holographic display fizzles from interference.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting my nanites to hack the ship. Maybe they can do something, but I don’t think it’ll be enough. Even with all of them working in concert, they may not break through the ship’s security.”
I hold up my hand. “Can you use mine?”
He nods. “Sure, come here. It may not be enough, but it’s worth a try.”
I plant my fingers against the same panel. Kest closes his palm over my hand, and uses his other hand to pull me onto his lap.
“I’m sorry, Haley. I shouldn’t have let my guard down. I never expected Bakan to act so brazenly.”
“Don’t talk like that,” I snap. “We’re going to figure this out. Can you call Briette? Maybe they can intercept us before we do too much damage?”
Kest activates the ship’s controls, bringing up the communications system.
System error. Array nonresponsive.
“He broke it,” says Kest. “How creative.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Unlikely. The ship should have fixed it itself already; Bakan’s taken a lot of vital systems offline, or this plan wouldn’t work. He’s smart enough to have thought of everything.”
That can’t be. There has to be a way!
An alarm sounds on the ship, and out the window the streaking stars of hyperspace turn into stationary dots. In front of us I see a familiar sight: Earth. It fills me with awe—though I recognize my planet from photos and holograms, I didn’t get to see it for real when we left. Now that it’s there, in front of me, I can’t let Bakan’s plan work. I didn’t stand before the Council, naked, just to see this all end with my people being eradicated.
No, that’s not going to happen.
“Kest… I know what we have to do. Does the ship have a self-destruct?”
His eyes widen in shock. It doesn’t surprise me that a being who is basically immortal might not consider the idea of suicide. Yet, he doesn’t respond at first, his expression growing distant.
“I know I’m asking a lot, for you to sacrifice yourself, but it’s that or my entire species…”
He snaps out of it, suddenly working the ship’s control system. “There isn’t a self-destruct, but… maybe instead of hacking the ship’s security, I can hack the engineering… trick it into causing a reactor overload.”
“Will that work?” I ask, growing surprisingly excited, considering it means our deaths.
“Possibly. The nanites are working on it now.”
I take his free hand in mine, and lean in to kiss him. “Thank you for doing this. I can’t even imagine what this must be like for you.”
He gives my hand a squeeze and reclines, allowing me to rest my head on his shoulder. “What do you mean?” he asks.
“Well, you’re thousands of years old, right? You’ve explored the stars, fought in battles, affected the fates of entire worlds. You probably didn’t think your life would end like this, so suddenly and so far from home, with no way to contact your friends or family. I don’t know how you’re not more… affected.”
Kest nods solemnly and wraps his arm around me. “Haley, you’re right. I’ve seen and done it all, had experiences a mortal human could never imagine. But that means I’ve led a full existence. There’s no end to a life like mine: it continues on seemingly forever. That means, there’s no point at which I figure I’m finished. There’s nothing I have to accomplish, or a goal to realize that makes me feel complete. The only thing in my life that was missing is someone to love. And now I’ve found that.”
I wipe a tear from my cheek. “Kest… We’ve barely had any time together…”
“No, we haven’t. But the time we’ve had has been incredible, Haley. I can’t remember the last time I was so happy.”
“Me neither.”
He kisses me, and wipes away another tear. “But Haley…”
“Yes?”
“We’re not going to die.”
I get up off Kest and spin around to face him. “What? How?”
He lifts his hand from the control panel and points to a small door at the back of the ship. “We’ve got an escape pod, pet. We’re getting off this thing before it blows.”
I blink a few times, making sure I didn’t mishear. Then I punch him in the shoulder. “You jerk! Why didn’t you say so?”
Kest leans in and kisses my cheek. “I wanted to hear what you were going to say.”
“Remind me to kill you when we land,” I mutter, though I can’t wipe the smile off my face.
A chime sounds from the control hologram. “That’s it. The reactor is compensating for an energy deficiency that doesn’t really exist, and the emergency shutdown safeguards have been disabled. Quick, get your clothes. We’ve only got a few minutes.”
I’ve had to dress in a hurry before, but never because I might literally die if I don’t. Fortunately, it takes seconds for me to don a singlet, and then we’re squeezing into the escape pod, which was clearly only meant for one occupant. There’s room for us both to fit, since I’m so much smaller than him, but it’s cramped.
“Hang on,” Kest says. He takes a look around as emergency klaxons begin to sound. “This ship was kinda my home for centuries. I’m not one to get sentimental over spacecraft but… I’m gonna miss this thing.”
He gives the ship a last look, but then the clanging alarm rises to a shrieking whoop.
“Can we go now?” I shout over it.
Kest kisses me, then pulls the hatch shut behind us. “Come on, pet. Let’s go home.”