Beta Station Primary Dome
Planet Irkalla, Survivor’s Refuge
4452.2.29 Interstellar
For the next twenty-four hours, Janus did his best to be everywhere at once for as long as his healing body would allow. Lira helped him plan his appearances and a few speeches, although he preferred to just lend a hand rather than talk, and Mick kept him juiced with just the right balance of uppers and downers to keep him functional when he needed to be and knock him out when he had a moment to rest. Syn wanted to help, too, but she’d been exposed to the swarm for a longer period of time, so whatever support she could give had to be from the hospital in the secondary site.
Janus never saw Martial. He just disappeared into the Gracian crawlers and didn’t return. So did the Gracian engineers and communication specialists at first, but when Syn started sharing the footage of Terra’s sacrifice and Janus repeatedly praised her in public, Murkinson was quick to send them back out to help wherever they would be most visible. The Gracian agent wasn’t happy about it, but on the few occasions Janus ran into him, there was a grudging respect in the other man’s demeanor, as opposed to the condescension he’d shown during their first meeting.
In the small snatches of time he was between engagements and still awake, Janus couldn’t help wonder at what he was doing. People recognized him, were overjoyed when he shook their hands, and listened carefully to what he had to say. Janus hadn’t fundamentally changed since he’d been appointed as Prime Dome’s lead aspirant three weeks ago, but everything was different. Or maybe he had changed, molded by the events of the Trials in a way that proved that the Cult of the Survivor’s ongoing experiment, if that’s what it was, was the source of his newfound power.
He also couldn’t help but wonder: if Prometheus Base had survived, or he’d been born in Lira or Craig’s situation in Prime Dome, would he always have had this kind of reach? Although his body was the same, he felt like he took up more space in the room.
Sometimes, he felt like he had lost something in the process. He found out that two of the supply specialists had been arguing about how to handle food storage for two hours while crates piled up in the vacuum, so he overrode them, barging into the conversation with little context or knowledge of the whole situation. Worse, they listened, and within minutes the supplies were flowing into a facility he knew very little about. He would have liked to spend time listening to them both, or at least hear their major objections, but they had a limited window while the swarm threw its energy at the vault and Janus was needed elsewhere, so he made a choice and moved on.
The person he was becoming would never have dragged Lira to safety or left Craig and Meg to die outside the airlock, not because he didn’t care, but because he would have told sector maintenance about the problem and they would have been obliged to listen. Would some other system have fallen behind the maintenance schedule as a result, leading to even more casualties? Looking back, he knew that the culture of limiting outsiders and a lack of systematic planning were to blame, but there was no way he could have understood that in the moment.
That had been Craig’s error, and it had cost him and several other people their lives.
He would have to be careful, he decided, and dedicate time to learning as much about everything as he could. Knowledge without power—or at least influence—was useless, but power without knowledge led to disaster.
“We’re back on schedule,” Lira told him, meaning they’d lost the lead they’d gained on the other teams.
Janus gave her a tired grin. “Strength through struggle, Lira. I think our efforts here will count for more than arriving early.”
“Wayfinder tell you that?”
He nodded. “We just have to finish. I don’t know how much I trust it—one of the other teams could do something bigger, I guess—but he said as long as we cross the finish line within the time limit, we’ll win.”
“Wow,” Lira said. “So, it’s over? I mean barring our accidental and very surprising death on the road.”
Janus laughed, which hurt a little bit but was still worth it. “Damn, Allencourt, if you aren’t the team’s light in the dark, I don’t know who is.”
“Someone call me?” Mick said, walking over to join them.
“Oh, great,” Lira said, rolling her eyes. “Here’s Happy.”
Mick grinned, and so did Janus and Lira. They’d gone through so much in such a short amount of time, and Janus felt grateful for their presence. “One more day of this, and we’ll hit the road.”
The others nodded and headed off to do their part in the hasty recovery efforts. It was only a matter of time before the vault lost the swarm’s interest, and then it would be a decade before Beta Stationers were able to reenter their home.
When night fell, Janus cleared some time and hitched a ride to the secondary site to visit Syn.
“Janus!” Syn said, putting her pudding cup down and wincing as she sat up. “Is something wrong?”
“Just coming to say hi to my favorite drone operator.”
“Oh,” Syn said. “I’m sure there are other people who need a visit from the mighty Prime Dome aspirant.”
“It’s emissary, actually,” Janus said, hooking his thumbs on his loaner suit’s utility belt.
“Really?” Syn asked.
“Yep, and that’s on top of being a Promethean prince,” Janus said, smacking his lips. “Wayfinder told me so.”
“Hah,” Syn said, clearly unsure if Janus was joking or not. “Well, that’s good, because it turns out I’m Betan royalty. Thought you should know.”
Janus winked at her. “And Mick’s king of the triliths, but they only like him because Hunters never get out of their suits. Or wash.”
Syn snorted. “Anyway, you’d better get back to whatever your important duties are. I’m fine, mostly. Trying to figure out what I’m going to do next. There are treatment facilities in the Gracian crawler. Can’t help but notice neither one of us was offered their services.”
Janus rubbed the back of his neck. He hadn’t thought about how his flipping the tables on the Gracian agent would affect Syn. “I can have a word with Murkinson, if you want?”
Syn shook her head. “I’m done with Survivor’s Grace either way. But I’d come with you, you know, if you invited me. I’m pretty good at this heroic stuff.”
“You sure?” Janus said. “Last time we spoke, you weren’t exactly excited to ‘jump onto Team Invarian.’”
“I changed my mind,” Syn said with an impish grin, but then she grew more serious. “As long as I won’t slow you down. It’s your choice, Janus, and if you don’t—”
“Of course you’re coming with us, Syn,” Janus said. “Us exiled aristocrats have to stick together.”
“Thanks, Janus,” Syn said, looking happy but embarrassed at the same time. “By the way, did you watch those videos I unlocked?”
Janus laughed. “You know what? I’d completely forgotten about those with all that happened in the past two days. I’ll check those out when I get the chance.”
He stopped by the Gracians’ maintenance crawler to find out if their aspirant suits had been repaired and was unpleasantly surprised to find Martial there in a plain set of coveralls. The two of them looked at each other, Janus looming while Martial looked like he wanted to run, but neither spoke.
Janus turned to leave.
“Invarian?” Martial said.
“What?” Janus asked, half-turning to look the other man in the eyes.
“You were right to do what you did. Terra deserved better than my stealing her victory. It was Murkinson’s idea, for Survivor’s Grace to save face, but I should have said no. I should have been better, like she was.”
Janus nodded. It wasn’t what he would have expected from the Gracian lead aspirant, but maybe there was hope for him after all. “What’s going to happen to you?”
Martial gave him a tight smile. “Four years helping other aspirant teams, letting others learn from my mistakes. Longer, if needed. If my family will still speak to me after that, I guess I’ll go home.”
“I hope it works out for you,” Janus said, offering Martial his hand.
“Probably less than I deserve, right?” Martial said, shaking Janus’s hand.
“It is. It’s less than you deserve,” Janus said, and Martial flinched. “But the more authority they give us, the bigger our mistakes can be. I hope, when it’s my turn to screw up, I’ll get less than I deserve, too.”
Martial swallowed and nodded.
Janus left and headed back to Beta Station Primary.
Had he overreacted in barring Martial from helping the Betans? Maybe. It had felt like the Gracians were spitting on Terra’s heroism, but Janus also knew it triggered him on several levels. A privileged elite getting away with having someone die on their behalf, and then taking credit for it? It was like an opportunity to avenge Meg, and himself, for so many small injuries and hurts over the years. He hadn’t thought. He’d just acted. And it was done, so he’d have to think about whether it was the right thing to do some other time.
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He devoted his energy to helping the Betans salvage as much of their lives as they could.
It wasn’t until later that night, five hours until dawn, that Janus was able to find a moment of quiet to pull up his VI. The first thing that happened was that his mother repeated her warning about Beta Station, and now he could tell from his own experience that the warning had proved true. He pulled up the folder that contained his uncle’s videos. There was the one he’d watched, and seven others besides that, all unlocked now that Syn had cleared the encryption.
He’d been angry and tired the first time he’d unlocked one of the videos by mistake. He pulled that one up now to see if he noticed anything new.
“Hey, scrub,” Ivan said. “I guess I’m dead, or whatever. Anika, your mom, she said this would only activate if we were separated, and the only reason I’d leave you and Bug is if I’m headed to the recycler. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry I couldn’t…” His uncle choked up, and he cursed before fiddling with his wrist-comm.
The scene jumped, and Ivan seemed more collected, and angry. “There are things you need to know. I plan to get us to Crossroads—got some Hunter friends there who might take us on. Either that, or we’ll head to Prime Dome. Those stuck-up assholes would love to get their hands on a Promethean aspirant, not that they’d ever admit it. Maybe that’ll give us enough leverage to disappear. Now, I don’t know how I died but I sure as hell didn’t see it coming… Don’t trust the wayfinders is all I’m saying. I’ll tell you more about it some other time. Gotta keep moving. Gotta keep you and Bug safe.”
The video cut out.
Janus played it back from the beginning. Now that he’d had time to process its existence and more experience of the wider world, he did a better job of analyzing it. There were two time stamps on the video. The first part was the day of Prometheus Base’s collapse, maybe even during their escape. Ivan was wearing what appeared to be an aspirant suit, but it had been damaged and scorched. What was strange about that wasn’t just how much punishment an aspirant could take before becoming that battered, but that his uncle was wearing it at all. The collapse of Prometheus Base hadn’t occurred during the annual Trials, but almost half a year after them.
Janus made a mental note to ask the Beta Station wayfinder if his status as an emissary meant he got to wear the suit year-round as well.
He focused on the second part of the recording, which was three months later. Ivan was no longer clean-shaven or wearing an aspirant suit. The hesitation Janus had seen earlier had solidified into rage. He must have gone into hiding by that point—Janus and Callie had spent most of their lives not even knowing he had been a famous emissary. But why was he still running three months after the accident? Were the wayfinders after him? Had he violated one of their laws, or sold the aspirant suit to pay for their way across the dust?
He opened the second video, noting the time stamp, almost two weeks before the collapse of Prometheus. Why had his uncle recorded a video when there was no threat?
“It’s done,” Ivan, his tone somber. “I’ve informed the cult of this… heresy you’re planning and it will not stand. Not only are you developing technologies forbidden to Irkalla, you’re tainting the other aspirants with this foolish rebellion. You will always be my sister and I love you, but as an emissary of Irkalla, you have to know I had no choice!”
Janus watched riveted, as his uncle stared at the camera with the all too familiar intensity of an aspirant righting a wrong.
“I’ve tried to talk you out of it, I’ve even warned you directly, but you wouldn’t listen. Within two weeks, the cult will be here and all this will be over. I’ve guaranteed your safety, although I’m sure some of the other aspirants will try to fight it. If we can’t do this without bloodshed, if I get hurt… I’m recording this to tell you I love you, sister. I wish there had been another way.”
Janus couldn’t comprehend it. He restarted the video and watched it again, and again, but still it didn’t make sense. It was Uncle Ivan, all right. Janus even recognized his behavior—it was the same steady gaze and set of his jaw Ivan had when he punched Lira in the face a month ago. He was possessed by an ironclad certainty, the same dominance Janus had feared was growing in himself. He was a crusader. A zealot.
Uncle Ivan, the man who had saved Janus and Callie, brought them to Prime Dome and raised them, was also responsible for the collapse of Prometheus Base and the death of their parents.
***
Beta Station Secondary Site
Planet Irkalla, Survivor’s Refuge
4452.2.30 Interstellar
Janus called Lira and Mick back to their temporary quarters at the secondary site. They arrived together, smiling and bantering, but fell silent as soon as they saw how troubled Janus was.
“What’s wrong?” Lira asked.
Janus looked at her. For her whole life, she’d been culturally predisposed to look down on outsiders, and since her mother died, she’d learned to hate Prometheans. If she found out about the videos, about what Uncle Ivan had done, it could erase all the rapport they’d built over the past three weeks. “I’ve just learned something that’s making me question a lot of things. I want us on the road first thing tomorrow night. Lira, let’s get some cargo to haul that’ll give us leverage at the next dome. Mick, if you can retrieve our suits and make sure we’re kitted out for a rough trip, I’ll inspect the vehicles and get them parked in a Betan Hangar. I don’t want any surprise additions this time,” he said, referring to the explosives the Gracians had used to force their cooperation.
“You got it, boss,” Mick said. “Shame we can’t get one of the crawlers to carry us during the day. They could have given us a head start.”
“They could have,” Janus agreed. “But those bridges are burned, and besides, they’re needed here.”
Mick nodded and turned to go.
“Syn’s coming with us,” Janus added. “Make sure her suit is ready, too.”
“You got it, boss!” Mick said cheerfully. “Good catch, that one.”
“I think so too,” Janus said.
The Hunter left.
Lira didn’t budge. “Okay, now that mister follow-the-aspirant’s-orders is gone, what’s up?”
Janus kept his face carefully blank and suppressed a sigh. He wanted to tell Lira to take a hike to the technocrat’s office and do what he told her to do. He was afraid of what she’d do if he answered her questions. No, that’s not right, he realized. He wasn’t afraid in the traditional sense, more reluctant to put an obstacle between himself and his goals. He didn’t even know what those goals were yet, but he was mostly sure Lira would make achieving them more difficult if she went on a rampage. “We’ve come a long way, haven’t we, Lira?” he said.
“Maybe,” the Hub-raised Primer answered, crossing her arms. “How about you tell me what’s going on?”
He could tell her no. It was within his rights to withhold information if it was good for the team. He just didn’t want to be that person. “I have something to show you,” Janus said.
He linked his wrist-comm to the room’s terminal and played his uncle’s second video for her.
Unlike Janus, Lira accepted the truth of the recording right away and moved straight to anger. “You bastard,” she said in a quiet, trembling voice. “You made me feel like I was wrong to hate you, but everything I said—”
“Wait a minute, I—”
“You killed my mother!” Lira said, taking a wild swing at him. He saw it coming a kilometer away, but with the stiffness from the bruises he had from the nanite attack, he couldn’t quite avoid it and she punched him in the ear.
“Ow, damn it! Stop!” Janus said, putting up his hands.
“You killed her!” Lira said.
“I was twelve years old!” Janus roared so loudly it drove Lira back a step. “I just found out about this! So are you going to help me figure out what to do about it, or are we going to go back to how it was like we learned nothing?” he shouted.
“Liar,” Lira said, but he could see her usually cold analytical mind was starting to reassert itself.
“Why would I lie?” he asked. “If I knew about this all along, why would I suddenly grow a conscience and tell you?”
“I don’t know,” Lira said, starting to doubt. “Maybe you felt guilty about getting Terra killed.”
“Whoa,” Janus said. That one felt like a punch straight to the gut. “You think…” Janus trailed off. It didn’t matter if she thought it or not, because he did. His eyes watered and burned. He’d gotten Terra killed, and Meg. He’d almost gotten Mick killed, too, and then there were the people he hadn’t been able to—
“Janus!” Lira said, snapping her fingers in front of his face
Janus blinked at her dumbly. At some point, he’d sat down or fallen back on his cot.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” Lira said. Her anger wasn’t gone, not hardly, but it was cold, and it didn’t appear to be directed at him.
“Doesn’t make it less true,” Janus said, feeling empty.
“Hey!” she said. “Pull it together. Your uncle murdered your parents, your dome, and my mother. So what are we going to do about it?”
Janus swallowed. Then he nodded and wiped his palms on the knees of his coveralls. “Right. A lot of people died in the collapse of Prometheus Base. Not just your mother—aspirants from all over Irkalla. Do you know what your mother was doing there?”
“I don’t,” Lira said, crossing her arms. “My dad said that Prometheus Base called in a bunch of people, including her, but my mother didn’t tell him why before she left.”
“Okay. Fine. So we don’t know, and we can’t ask my uncle about it, obviously, not least because he’s thousands of kilometers away right now.”
“Forget your uncle,” Lira said. “What about your parents? Do you have any videos of them in those folders?”
“Why would that matter?” Janus asked.
Lira stared at him like he was an idiot, and maybe he was. “Your uncle was just an aspirant among many, Janus. It was your parents who called for the assembly. Don’t you know anything about where you come from? Why do you think I blamed you in particular?”
Janus frowned. “But they were just scientists…”
“Like the scientists who made Beta Station uninhabitable?” Lira said, as sharp as a razor.
Janus looked at her. He never ceased to be amazed at how cutting she could be when she was pissed off. “You know what? We’re not going to blame my parents unless we have proof, okay? My mom warned me about Beta Station and their experiments, and that they were dangerous. I really doubt in less than three years she decided to work on a homegrown armageddon of her own.”
“What then?” Lira asked. “The Cult of the Survivor just… exterminated your people because of nothing?”
“Can we not say exterminated?”
Lira looked irritated.
“Your mother was there, too! Exterminated is what you say about—”
“Fine! Murder! Or did you want to call it genocide?”
“Murder is fine,” Janus said. “Or just the right kind of ‘not right.’ I don’t think the cult, at least, targets people because of where they were born.” Lira raised an eyebrow at him, and Janus shrugged. “I’m not sorry I said it.”
“Fine,” Lira said.
“Fine,” Janus said.
They stayed there silently for moments that dragged on until Lira couldn’t stand it anymore. “What do we do?”
Janus looked up at her from the cot. He’d thought she might quit, or sabotage him, but she was standing there asking him to lead them. He couldn’t tell her the truth—that he didn’t know, that he was as lost as she was, and on top of that the man he’d relied on and feared as a child, resented as an adult, and only recently come to respect, he now had to hate.
He should hate Ivan. He should be furious, but everything about the past month had taught him that he didn’t know enough, that the life of an aspirant was full of hard choices in which some people got saved and some people were hurt. “We can’t get to Ivan, and if we did, he might not tell us anything. We can’t go to the cult because I think Ivan was hiding from them all this time, and for good reason. Ryler was watching us. I don’t know what happened, but somewhere between that second video and the first one—”
“What first one?” Lira said.
They watched it together.
Janus and Lira looked at each other, and Lira said, “Something changed. Whatever he expected to happen, didn’t.”
Janus agreed. Somewhere between two weeks before and two days after the collapse of Prometheus Base, his uncle had gone from a zealot who betrayed his family to a grieving man on the run who despised the cult. He had to find out why. “Well, I guess there’s only one thing to do, then,” Janus said. “Only one place we can go.”