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  For Sandra, always

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks to everyone who made this book what it is, including my crack team of early readers: Kim Curran, Amanda Lynn, Mark Nelson, Andrew Reid, Sharon Ring, Amanda Rutter, Kate Sherrod, James Smythe, and Jennifer Williams. Thanks also to Danielle Stockley for her valuable insight (and for introducing me to the best hot chocolate in New York City).

  I’m grateful to two people in particular, whose life-changing notes and edits helped shape this story from when it first appeared as something luminous and fragile called Ludmila, My Love: my agent, Stacia J. N. Decker, of the Donald Maass Literary Agency, and my editor at Tor, Paul Stevens. Stacia’s eye for detail and deep understanding of the text were vital (we in Team Decker are a lucky bunch of writers, no doubt about it), and Paul’s suggestions on what might really be going on aboard the U-Star Coast City were a revelation. You’re holding this book in your hands because of them. Thanks also to Pablo Defendini for the Puerto Rican Spanish and the suggestion Serra probably knew a thing or two about Santeria. And to Will Staehle—my friend, you’ve done it again.

  This book has a long history, so my apologies if I’ve left anybody out, but a big thanks to Lauren Beukes, Joelle Charbonneau, Mur Lafferty, Emma Newman, Kaaron Warren, and Chuck Wendig.

  Finally, to my wife, Sandra, whose endless support, enthusiasm, understanding, and love make everything worthwhile. Thank you, and I love you.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Yomi

  The Relief of Tau Retore

  Some Kind of Hero

  Part One: The Signal

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  The Situation on Warworld 16 Has Been Resolved

  Dreams and Nightmares

  Part Two: Dark Shadows

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  The Starchild

  Part Three: The Ghosts of Subspace

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Aokigahara and the Girl with Blue Eyes

  Part Four: And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  May 19, 1961

  By Adam Christopher

  About the Author

  Copyright

  YOMI

  In the shadowland of the dead, she sat and cried for her husband, but the prison was sealed and she could not leave and nobody could hear her.

  The shadows surrounded her, swarming like living, breathing creatures. The shadows caressed her skin, holding the rotting flesh onto her bones. Things crawled over her and ate the flesh, but the shadows kept her firm, kept her whole as the things ate, and ate, and ate.

  It was too late.

  She had eaten the food of the underworld, and she could not return. So she sat in the shadows, and cried for her husband, and things ate her flesh.

  Abandoned, imprisoned in the dark, her fury burned like a black sun. Trapped in the basement of the world, she waited, and grew resentful. Her mind didn’t break, not exactly, but it grew as black as the walls of the prison in which she sat. The walls that rippled and cracked and filled her head with the roar of the ocean when she touched them, but that did not yield or break. They were solid, inviolable.

  He had left her here, left her trapped while he returned to the land of the living. He had tricked her and betrayed her. The one she loved had betrayed her.

  They were one; they were kindred. Yet here she sat, in the dark, imprisoned beyond time, beyond space. In the dark, her despair turned to hate.

  She knew now that she could not return, that she was changed and that the world had changed. She also knew that he would pay, one day. She would have vengeance. She would have revenge.

  Her tears dried as the last scraps of flesh were eaten from her face. The endless night of her prison grew even blacker as her dead eyes were sucked from their sockets like rotting eggs by something crawling and screaming in the shadows. In their place a blue light shone, the cold blue light of the end of the world. Her eyes lit the prison. The things that crawled squirmed to escape her.

  In the dark she burned.

  She stood in her prison for the first time in eternity and screamed for revenge. She would return to the world outside, not to life, never again to life, but to find him, and punish him, from here to the end of time. This she vowed.

  Then she sat in the black nothingness and waited. Her husband had sent her here; there was no way out. Someone would need to free her. But she knew someone would, in time. The living were curious, and the dead were patient.

  And then it came: a knock and a voice, from somewhere else, somehow. An offering, a proposal. A way out. And it was so simple, all it needed was power, just enough to crack the walls of the prison. And if there was a crack, she could reach out and touch the world. She could reach out and drink her fill of life, a thousand souls a day, until she was whole again. And then, when she was whole, she would be able to break free. She would be able to escape, and her husband would not be able to flee her wrath.

  In the dark she burned, and she pressed her skull to the wall, and she listened.

  THE RELIEF OF TAU RETORE

  This is how the shit went down. Lemme tell you about it, right now.

  We came out of quickspace at oh-fifteen, which, even pushing warp as we were, was still too damn late. And when we popped back into the universe above Tau Retore, there was already a gap in the arrowhead. One ship hadn’t made it—engine burnout in quickspace, or some such. That can happen, and the loss—hell, any loss—was a shock. But we had a job to do first and my crew was fast, filling the gap without even needing an order, sliding the pack of cruisers together just so. It was pretty sweet, lemme tell you.

  So, formation tight, one ship down. We spin down into planetary orbit, braking hard so the cone of warp exit didn’t knock the goddamn planet off its axis. That’s why you don’t pop quickspace until you’re far off out into the unknown. It’s bad enough pushing just a spaceship through the gap between now and now, but, trust
me, you don’t want a planet dragging in your wake. The whole universe shakes when a single mote of dust leaves it to fly quickspace. Shove a spaceship through the hole, the universe shakes, gets mightily pissed off, and then gives you a smack at the other end. Universal punishment. God doesn’t like you messing with his shit, that’s for sure. That’s what the quantum dampeners are for. A whole planet? Forget about it. They don’t make dampeners big enough for that.

  Anyway.

  We came in hot and close, but we were too late. They were there already, on the other side of Tau Retore, and we couldn’t see the main body, but we could see its claws stuck deep into the mantle of the planet, the liquid interior spilling out around the talons like hot blood. And the claws. Jesus. Shit, man, I’ve seen them do it before, the way they crack a planet open, then spin it—spin it!—like a spider. Don’t know how they do it, how they find the sheer mass to build machines as big as moons. At the heart of a Mother Spider lies the guttering embers of a star, we know that much, and as the claws reach the core of their victim, the planet’s magnetosphere gets all fucked up to shit, and they siphon the energy off that too. That’s some crazy tech, way beyond what we got. And it’s an amazing sight, the death of a planet—a planet physically pulled into pieces by the biggest fucking machine in the universe. You don’t forget a sight like that, not in any kind of hurry.

  You could hear it on the bridge. The viewscreens were green with the shitstorm of quickspace, then they flashed, then we’re almost in fucking orbit around Tau Retore and that thing sucking the power and the life out of it. And everyone, everyone on the bridge of each of the twenty-three ships left in the arrowhead cries out in horror, and the captains give their pilots the command to decelerate and change course to deflect the nose of the warp cone past the planet, but they’re already doing it and cursing blind as they do. Because in front of us there’s a Mother Spider eating a planet, and the planet is bleeding. And on our ships, the comms channel is choked with one hundred people shouting in surprise and praying to whatever gods or goddesses they hold dear and precious.

  I mean … Jesus …

  Anyway.

  We were too late to save it, really. We knew it, but that didn’t mean we weren’t going to try. So the arrowhead is in formation and we push the warp cone up just as it fizzes out over Tau Retore’s north pole and we slam it toward the Mother Spider. If we can take that out, then the planet will at least stay in orbit, and if it stays in one piece, then when this whole crazy shit is over they can send out some terraformers to reconstitute the landscape and restabilize the core while whoever is left alive goes on vacation to Elesti or Alta or somewhere nice with beaches and sunsets.

  Now things start to get interesting, because the Mother Spider has seen us. It’s weird, it really is. I don’t think the Spiders have actual spiders wherever they’re from, but they sure as hell built their whole space tech around them. You know those little spider egg sacs, those balls of web on a leaf that you flick and then they break and about a million of the shits swarm out over everything? Just like that. The Mother Spider’s still chowing down and we’re flying toward it—and the U-Star Boston Brand is right in front, leading the charge, because I’m goddamn Fleet Admiral for the day and I want to get there first—when the main body splits, kinda like one of those paper folding games that girls make in school. You know, it’s a kinda pyramid, you stick your fingers in, and it opens up, like a flower, and there’s writing and jokes and suggestions about who loves who.

  You know?

  Anyway.

  The Mother Spider opens and more Spiders come out—little small ones, half the size of our U-Stars, coming out of these shells that they shuck off like cocoons, and then they unfold their legs and head toward us. There’s some more swearing but I order comms silence. Then—Bang! The ship that filled the gap in the arrowhead? Gone. These Spider babies are like their momma. They don’t have weapons; they have claws. So they close in and latch on to your hull, and start chewing it up, and with so many of them swarming—hundreds, thousands maybe—they take just a second or two to reduce a U-Star to particulate matter. I don’t know whether they ever developed projected energy, or even projectile weapons. Maybe they just think eating enemy ships is funny. So: Bang! U-Star Gothamite is history, nothing but metal and vapor. But we’re in comms silence now, and that seems to keep everyone cool, I guess because they’re now looking at me for instructions and trying not to think about how a U-Star can be taken out just like that. It takes the responsibility off them, let’s them disengage, the conscious mind giving way to training and experience. Which is good for battle. You need your cool, and you don’t need your emotions. Plenty of time for that later.

  Of course, I’m standing there watching the other Spider babies getting too close and I’m as angry and scared as the rest of them, but nobody knows that. I signal my pilot and then hit the comms, ordering the arrowhead to break up. So long as everyone stays the hell out of one another’s way and shoots at the right thing, hunting season is officially open. The Spiders are going straight to whatever hell their creepy insect intelligence believes in.

  I can see the arrowhead split on the screens to the left and right. About a dozen ships on each flank peel upward and apart like an aerobatic display, and a few seconds later the same screens are filled with flashes and sparks and flames as the Spider babies are put into the grinder. I let myself smile, just a little, because I know that everyone on the bridge isn’t watching the fireworks outside, they’re watching my face, waiting for their orders. And if I smile—just a little—they’ll smile too and they’ll do their jobs just another one percent better than before. That’s leadership, yessir. You gotta show and project it to everyone. They’re depending on you, and this time it’s not just the arrowhead; it’s Tau Retore. That’s a whole planet with a giant machine Spider trying to crack it open to make a galactic omelet. We’re here to save the day again.

  I’m smiling because, although we’re still blasting toward the center of the big Mother Spider, right about where the main body splits to spit out the babies, I see the U-Star Stripes and its twin ship the Stars swing in ahead, rocketing in from underneath the Boston Brand. I smile because when the Stars and the Stripes are flying side by side, they’re cool as shit. Those are the cruisers that everyone wants to be assigned to. They’ve got the kudos, the cachet, the shiniest damned paint jobs in the whole of Fleetspace. But, I mean, what a mouthful. The U-Star Stars? Huh.

  Anyway.

  So the Stars and the Stripes pull up ahead, and the screen goes pink automatically as the pair empty all their torpedo tubes at once at big momma’s belly and the Boston Brand’s AI doesn’t want its crew to go blind. Ammo spent, the two cruisers curve off out of the way. It’s going to take a few seconds for the missiles to hit, and that’s when I decide to give them a little push on their way.

  Now, you gotta understand, I’ve got no rep in particular. I don’t take risks. I do things by the book, and I know how to lead, and I get results. And that’s what counts—boy, does the Fleet need results. And true, there have been those who have taken risks and acted with rash strokes of genius, but those guys are mostly assholes and mostly dead.

  But look. When you see a Spider up close, it’s one thing. When you see a Mother Spider with twelve legs, each ten thousand klicks long, eating a planet like it’s a goddamn apple, it affects you. Something stirs in the back of your brain, like you’re watching a movie or having a dream. So sometimes you get ideas, and then you know what it’s like to be one of those assholes, and you start hoping to hell you’re not about to find out what it’s like to be one of those dead assholes.

  I think somebody on my bridge says something but my head is buzzing and my ears are full of cotton wool, and not just because I’ve got a pink-tinted Fourth of July show outside. Do they still do that back on Earth? They must. I haven’t been back in … Well, I’m not that old, but sometimes a five-year tour on the edge of the galaxy can feel a lot longer. Could be worse
. There was this friend of mine, commander on one of the really big ships. “Wraiths” is what their crews call them, these ships that stay out for so long, hiding like an old-fashioned submarine just in case the Spiders pop up. After his last tour, he found me at Fleet Command and he said to me, Ida, he said …

  Um. Anyway.

  I’m sure somebody says something but I’m on the first pilot’s back, pulling his position around and grabbing the sticks. Maybe it’s the other pilot saying something, but then he sees what I’m doing, and looks at the screen ahead, following the green trail of the torpedoes through the pink wash—and that looks fucking freaky, I tell you—and he grabs his sticks and nods. That’s it. He sits there, and nods, and looks ahead.

  See? That’s leadership, right there. He trusts me and is ready to follow me into hell if need be. Which actually isn’t far from the truth, because I count to three and open quickspace right there, with the torpedoes in front of us and the Mother Spider in front of them. The warp cone pops ahead of our nose, and the screen goes from pink to blue.

  Well, it’s crazy and suicidal, and now people really are standing up and shouting at me, and the comms kicks into life with so many people all screaming at me that it sounds just like the wild roar of the universe.

  But it works. The warp cone shunts the torpedoes forward at a speed way, way, way beyond their design tolerance, and when they hit the big fat Spider, they don’t just explode, they go fucking nova, the energy spilling from our warp cone the same as throwing gasoline on a barbecue. You ever done that? Well, next time you’re planet-side and can afford to take a trip out somewhere natural and you don’t mind a little smoke. But this, it’s like a new star has just sparked up, right over Tau Retore, right in our flight path. If there’s anything left of the Mother Spider

  (The star falling and burning as though it were a lamp and then they died one and all and)

  we never found it. The only shit left was a few trillion tons of scrap metal and a high percentage of helium floating in high orbit around the planet.