The Human Experience

Three Quarter P, day 7, 3413.

Vangardian holy scripture holds sacrifice in the highest regard. It says giving up your life for someone is ‘noble,’ whatever that means. But what about giving up someone else’s life so more can live? Or giving up someone’s life when they live in torment and agony? Ah, now here scripture turns a blind eye. Murder is ‘wrong.’ We all know that. Our mothers try to frighten us with talk of Pyrrhus’s Pits and the Wolf of Tychon coming to eat us in the night. But if murdering one benefits others, if it benefits even the one who is murdered, is that not like sacrificing the person?

Today I sacrificed my cell-mate, for everyone’s benefit. His ramblings and pleas were growing bothersome to me. I longed for some peace, and either way he begged me to end his life in the one lucid moment he had all week. His death has benefited us both. It has benefited the asylum, as the mentalists will no longer have to spend time and resources on a lost soul.

And yet they will kill me for this. They will kill me for my sacrifice of him, and they will call it justice.

Hector stared out the window of his cramped, cylindrical room, feeling as dead as the steel walls and the metal pipes that coiled over his head to disappear into an unseen ceiling. He tried to be steadfast. If Del wouldn’t come to see him, well, damn it, he wouldn’t go see her, either. She had to make amends. She’d been the one to hurt him. He’d tried stabbing her back, but Delia Alister didn’t get hurt. Not by him, anyways. Only by Orcadis-fucking-Durant and his perfect fucking teeth.

Hector didn’t have friends anymore. Not Zorion and Syfer, who’d be incinerated in two days; not Del, for whom he was only a tool for revenge; and certainly – certainly – not Kaed.

The stars looked bleak, nothing but cold pins of light rolling down his window like descending sparks from fireworks. Orcadis said that was because the ship was spinning to create artificial gravity. Hector didn’t care.

Apparently Serasta’s grandfather had undertaken this massive construction project in preparation for the Alignment. The ship had been completed under Serasta’s supervision; it’d been operational for many turns now. There had even been evacuation drills, he’d heard, to prepare the Helms and the king’s chosen for quick departure.

It was meant to head for Delmira. A base had been prepared for it there, but since the Alignment had brought Delmira and Amaris so close together, Orcadis didn’t feel safe landing just yet. Wait until the bomb hits Amaris and the debris scatter, he said. It’s possible the reception base on Delmira will be compromised. We certainly don’t want to be there if it is.

But if a hunk of the Amaris moon slammed into the base on Delmira, Hector thought, they’d all be dead anyways. The ship could only orbit the earth for so long. Spinning and heating it took energy – energy the ship wouldn’t be able to produce indefinitely. Orcadis gave it three weeks tops before the fuel ran out.

A general panic still gripped the ship’s personnel. Were the airlocks secure? How long would food stores last? Sure, there was an on-board greenhouse and enough vitamins to last five lifetimes, but would anyone ever see meat again? More importantly, who on board knew how to brew ale, so the king could secure a lifetime supply?

Nobody worried about those left behind. Nobody grieved the planet that had birthed them – the trees, warmth, lakes and mountains. Beauty. Did they even care?

The hiss of the flushing toilet sounded, and Queran staggered from the bathroom, moaning.

“How’s the space-sickness?” Hector asked without turning from the window.

His pappy dropped onto the edge of his cot. “Where does the toilet water go, do you reckon? Do they just shoot it out into the sky? Don’t that anger the Quintet?”

“It’s called space, Pappy, and the Star-Gods are hunks of rock like the earth or balls of gas like the suns. They’re not alive. They don’t get angry.”

Queran muttered something about big cities corrupting young minds into atheism.

“You really think the Star-Gods exist, then?” Hector grilled.

“The prophecy’s gonna come true, ain’t it? You’re the one who said! Why else did those Metal Heads show up at my door and force me into their devilish flying contraption with nothing but the clothes on my back?”

“The prophecy’s coming to pass because the Radiant Thinkers are making it come to pass. People determine their own fates – religion’s just something to hide behind, a reason not to blame yourself for what’s happening.”

“Maybe it’s something to keep us grounded. Something to remind us that powers beyond us exist. Something to....to comfort us when we lose t-those we l-love.” He choked a sob, retched, and scuttled back to the bathroom. Hector heard him coughing over the toilet moments after he slammed the door.

His own sickness had been brief, mere queasiness, really. One of the commanders had said nausea was a normal response to the rotation. Most people grew accustomed to it over time, especially considering the ship was so big it could afford to spin slowly. Still, Hector hadn’t noticed a single Helm with a green face or unfocused eyes. Many of the king’s soldiers, but never a Helm.

He remembered getting aboard the massive ship – the weightless feeling like his insides were all squirming and wandering around inside him, the way he floated like a leaf carried off by water. If he hadn’t been so damned miserable it would have been an amazing experience. Everyone had grappled their way to their rooms, using walls to push themselves down halls and flailing wildly like inexperienced swimmers.

They’d met the curious sight of furniture nailed to the walls. Every single thing from cots to chairs to dressers – erected outward from the walls in a way that made Hector feel like he’d been smoking Akkútian mushrooms.

The passengers had strapped themselves into the cots on the walls, the technicians started the ship’s spinning, and slowly, nauseatingly, the walls had become the floor.

Something about the outward force the spinning produced pushing them against the inside hull. Orcadis had spun a bucket of water in a circle to demonstrate the concept for the children, showing how the water didn’t spill out if he spun fast enough.

Again, Hector hadn’t cared.

Reflected in the window, he saw a lanky form slip into the room. Kaed clicked the door closed behind him.

“Uh, hi,” the boy said softly.

Hector didn’t turn.

Footfalls approached. “I brought you something. Do you want to see?”

Hector still didn’t turn.

Kaed set a tome bound in well-cured leather upon the window ledge: “Supernovae in Binary Systems: Gas Accretion of the Companion White Dwarf Star.”

“It’s really rare,” Kaed said. “Father had most astronomy and astrophysics books destroyed. He wanted people to believe in the Star-Gods. He said if they thought the universe had no order, that it was controlled by the whims of some gods, they’d be more afraid of it. Only elite, educated Vangardians know how stars and planets really work. Books like this one show that it’s not scientifically possible for Pyrrhus to go supernova in our day and age. The smaller companion star in a binary system needs to be a white dwarf, and when Pyrrhus becomes a white dwarf it’ll be so small you’d likely have trouble seeing it from earth. Pyrrhus has millions of turns to live.”

Why would Orcadis want people to think Pyrrhus will explode? Hector wondered, though he said nothing.

“Because those who believe in the prophecy are likely to believe it’s not a coincidence the Voices appeared around the time of Alignment. They’ll blame the Voices for the end of the world, hate them, support Father in his quest to destroy them. It’s about making people ignorant and afraid. Why do you think the Star-King keeps all technology bottled up in Fort Neoma? Even the rest of Vangarde is more primitive than it should be, but the king is paranoid. He won’t share his capital’s technology with anyone. He keeps people in the dark. Groping. Afraid.” Kaed sighed. “And fear makes people more willing to believe comforting, convenient lies.”

Hector fingered the book’s leather binding. “What does this have to do with me?”

Kaed tapped the words “Gas Accretion” on the cover. “A white dwarf sucks gas from its bigger companion star. Once it has too much mass to support, it goes supernova. I remembered how you said Pyrrhus was your favourite Star-God because he wasn’t considered fully human, because he was always considered an extension of Tychon. Well, Pyrrhus the sun will one day be stronger and more powerful than Tychon.”

Still a parasite, Hector thought listlessly. Always a parasite.

They were silent for a while. Hector suspected Kaed had picked up on his dismal thought and didn’t know how to respond.

“I’m sorry,” the boy finally whispered.

From the bathroom, Queran’s retches sounded.

Hector finally turned. “Kaed. Don’t apologize. I don’t blame you for anything. What right did I have to expect loyalty from you? I’d thought we’d established not to expect loyalty from one another.”

Not his words – Orcadis’s. How should he feel about that?

Kaed ran a hand through his hair. “Maybe you didn’t expect loyalty from me, but I expected it from you. So I should’ve given it in return.”

“I kidnapped you. It’s as you said.” My only question is, why save me from Solmay if you only planned to let me die, anyways?

Silence fell again. Kaed came to sit beside him. “It wasn’t anything against you – it was against Father. He...he didn’t even care that you were the one to kidnap me. I just lost it for a moment.” He looked down at his hands, loosely linked on his lap. “Now you know why everyone at the Iron Keep avoids me. I have outbursts. I...do things like this.”

“You don’t owe me anything, Kaed. I shouldn’t even be here. My Voice will turn me into a vegetable in under a turn. I don’t have long to live either way.”

His Voice. Hector hadn’t heard it since before he’d boarded the ship. Was it still mad at him? The thought almost made him laugh. Mad. What a stupid concept. Voices didn’t get mad.

Kaed stared out at the rolling stars. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should hate you. For most of my life, I thought I did. It’s just that...I’ve never really had a friend. You’re the closest thing.”

Hector turned to him and was taken aback by how stressed the boy looked, his whole body shaking with some withheld emotion and the muscles in his jaw clenched tight. Now, when the danger was over, when he and his family had been saved from the apocalypse, Kaed’s apathetic facade was crumbling to reveal the distress underneath. Maybe he really was sorry.

Hector wordlessly placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. A tear dropped from Kaed’s lashes, splashing on the window ledge. The boy swallowed heavily. “I...I really didn’t want y-you to die,” he whispered, and jumped to his feet. “I’m sorry.”

He turned and strode quickly from the room amid a chorus of Queran’s sickened retches.

I did everything I could to beat her out of you, Kaed Durant, but you are your mother’s son. The only thing you share with me is my name.

Orcadis’s muscles quivered as he hoisted himself with a grunt into another push-up. Sixty-two. He could go for hours if he had to, until the burning in his muscles faded to numbness and he could no longer use the pain to distract himself from thinking.

Thinking. The Greathelm had spent the last many turns avoiding it. Sixty-three, sixty-four. It had taken its toll on his mind. Memory problems. Drifting attention. His research had suffered since he’d become Iron Fist.

Sixty-seven. Of course, suppressing emotions and thoughts was a huge cognitive load. Was it any wonder his attentional resources had been depleted, leaving few for other mental tasks? Sixty-eight. Of course not. Sixty-nine. But still he preferred it to thinking.

Seventy. Orcadis rolled onto his back. He shivered as the sweat chilled on his burning skin – the ship’s heating system had been strained to the brink and still cold seemed to seep in from space itself.

He sat up, wiped his forehead with the bottom of his undershirt. Maybe he should start on his chin-ups. Seventy push-ups meant his circuit would have to include seventy of everything else, in exactly the right order.

But his hands were still blistered from yesterday’s circuit. He stood and started from the gym, resolving to finish later. After all, yesterday’s exercise hadn’t done anything for his thoughts. The images had still been there. Serasta, perhaps awake by now, finding out what he’d done. Neria, maybe pleading for Serasta to spare them, as she’d told Enver she would. Pleading for his life when he’d left her to the apocalypse. And Jesreal, stoically watching as flaming chunks of Amaris plummeted to earth.

He’d pretended the tears dripping down his nose were sweat. There was no way to relieve the anxiety. There wasn’t even a cursed punishing room in this ship.

Orcadis rubbed his hands through his hair. He burst from the gym, feeling free without velvets and cloaks and chain clasps to weigh him. Helms and soldiers alike turned in surprise to see him tramping down the halls in a sweaty undershirt and slacks tucked into combat boots.

It was the one part of his Akkútian blood he’d never been able to deny – the desire to throw off his fancy cape and coronet and stamp around in the mud.

He found himself by the door to Kaed’s room. No wavelengths issued through the wood. Of course not: this was Kaed. The boy wouldn’t censor his words or his tantrums, but he never revealed his thoughts. It made Orcadis shiver slightly. His son would grow stronger than him, one day. He’d tried to convince himself he was proud, but he wasn’t, not really. He was...scared.

Because looking into his son’s eyes, translucent like green stained glass, and seeing the anger there but not feeling it, well, that was disconcerting.

Orcadis pressed a palm to the metal door, resting his forehead against it. Why didn’t you ask me to save your mother, my boy? Did you really think that I wouldn’t have said yes for you?

“Go away,” came Kaed’s gravelly voice from within.

Orcadis frowned. Yes, Kaed would definitely grow stronger than him. Shivers crawled through him again. “Kaed, please,” he tried. “Let me in.”

The barrage of wavelengths came, hitting Orcadis so powerfully he staggered from the door. He pushed down his annoyance. Hateful thoughts, but intentionally released. Not Kaed’s real thoughts. Orcadis kept his voice patient. “Perhaps we should talk about it. We don’t talk very much. It doesn’t help anything.”

“Finally figured ignoring me doesn’t work? Revelation of the fucking century!”

Certainly taking advantage of the fact there’s no punishing room here, I see. Breathing out through his nose, Orcadis rammed his fingers in the crack between door and wall, then pulled. The metal strained, the crack got bigger. He put his shoulder into it, and with a whine the automatic door hissed aside.

Kaed sat huddled in the corner of his cot, his knees tucked to his chest and his head resting on his knees. He didn’t look up when his father entered.

Orcadis halted before the cot, hands clasped behind his back. “You know, you were an incredibly well-behaved child once,” he said. “Never used to cause me any problems. One time – you were seven or eight, if I remember correctly – you told me you tried to be good so you could make up for Lykus being bad. Do you remember that?”

The boy gave only a few sniffs as a response.

Orcadis continued. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciated that. Varali had her seizures and needed constant attention, Lykus got into trouble and needed me to keep him in check, but you needed nothing. I was...so proud. I held you in the highest regard. When Lykus was sixteen he bit me, do you know? Because I’d told him to behave more like you one too many times.” Orcadis smiled at the memory. “What happened, son? What changed?”

“Nothing changed!” Kaed shot, his voice muffled by his knees. “That was the problem.” He lifted his face and Orcadis saw it was red, swollen from tears. “Lykus got all your attention for misbehaving, while I was ignored for being good. Being good never helped me. It never made you listen to me.”

That much was true. But Orcadis was constantly being pulled in a hundred different directions. Every Helm sought and demanded his undivided attention. He’d given it to them all. All but his son.

He clenched his fists to keep from tapping something.

“I thought you were more mature than to require the same degree of care I give the troubled outcasts I shelter,” he found himself saying sternly. He hadn’t meant to lecture the boy, but stars above! Didn’t the stubborn child understand that Orcadis had only ever wanted to help others, to do good? He was only one man – one very tired man, stretched too thin.

But Kaed shot him a resentful look. “No, I’m not more mature,” he said. “I wasn’t born mature. I was just a kid, a kid who didn’t understand why his father would rather spend time with psychopaths and half-wits than with him.”

“And now you’re almost a man. Now you should understand what then you did not. By now, Kaed, I’d have hoped you realized how much I had to sacrifice...!” Orcadis pulled himself back, hearing the growing ire in his voice and forcing himself to continue in a milder tone. “I never meant for things to be this way, son.”

“Then why are they, Father? Why did you have to do it?” Kaed pressed the heels of his palms into his closed eyes as if trying to drive them into the back of his head to erase some branded image. The action made him grimace. “Why’d you put that damned cage over my head? This didn’t have to happen! None of it did! Why, Father, why, why?” By the end of the sentence he was driving the heels of his palms into his eyes with every why.

Orcadis tried to gently lower his arms, but Kaed thrashed and Orcadis had to tighten his grip on the boy’s wrists to control him. After some moments of futile struggle he gave a final thrash and went limp in his father’s hold, his breaths strained, tears streaming helplessly down his face. “There’s something else,” Orcadis realized. “Son, what are you hiding?” The boy’s breaths grew thicker with contained sobs. Terror spiking within him, Orcadis shook Kaed by the wrists. “Tell me! What happened?”

“You got me Infected!” Kaed bawled. “If it wasn’t for the head-cage I wouldn’t be this way! My Voice convinced me to...to...to hate you!”

A cold wave crashed over Orcadis. He reeled, Kaed’s wrists slipping from his grasp. “How...during...the Exodus?” he managed.

Kaed laughed through his sobs. A cruel laugh, almost. Spiteful. “The Iron Fist hunts down the Infected and doesn’t even notice his Infected son under his very nose. No, I didn’t get Infected on the Exodus. It happened over two turns ago, when you put that cage over my head.”

“Impossible,” Orcadis breathed. Two turns? T-turns? No Infected could last that long with their mind. Kaed should have fallen into a catatonic stupor long ago.

“Sometimes I stole pieces of the stone in the energy compartment of your thought wave detector. I’d wear it on me to keep my Voice from feeding off my thoughts. When the stone ran out of radiation I’d wait until you ordered a new one for your detector. That kept me sane, for the most part.”

It was too much. There was nothing to do but shut it out. “No,” he said, voice faint. “It can’t be. I-I would’ve known.” He blinked to stem the flow of budding thoughts. Don’t think about it, just don’t think about it and it won’t be real...

No! I can’t shut him out again!

Orcadis grabbed the cot’s metal posts to support himself. “Kaed...why didn’t you tell me?”

The boy looked up darkly through curtains of his amber waves. “I was afraid you’d kill me. Like you tried to kill the Star-King. Like you would’ve killed my mother, if she’d stayed.”

That knocked the wind from his lungs. “You can’t mean that,” he whispered, almost doubled over from the pain. Anger rose from that pain. He would never have hurt his wife, and Serasta...well, Serasta had planned to destroy the Helms: his children, his very legacy...!

Part of him wanted to lash out and hit the boy. He was just being dramatic, as always. As always, trying to make Orcadis feel guilty for forcing him to share his father with a thousand Helms.

But, as always, that anger was really for himself. Had his head-cage actually done this? How in Pyrrhus’s blazing Pits would a Voice get inside the cage? “You were foolish,” he heard himself saying, not really wanting to say that, but focused so much on controlling thoughts that he could rarely censor words nowadays. “If you’d told me I could have taken measures to–!”

“A Voice didn’t get through the cage to enter my mind,” Kaed said, his tone scornful. “I created it.”

Another cudgel seemed to slam down on Orcadis’s head. His thoughts were an indistinct buzz. “Created...?”

“Somehow, wearing that thing trapped my thoughts. All my resentment for you, my hatred for the world that saw a kid with a metal cage over his head and turned away – all that compounded somehow, coalesced, became...alive. It became a Voice. And that Voice despised you, because while I still couldn’t stop myself from loving you, I refused to think about that. I didn’t put any love into my Voice.”

But there was still love...?

Orcadis shook his head dumbly. “No...you couldn’t have created a Voice. Nobody knows where they come from.”

Kaed impaled him with an accusing look. “You’ll never admit it, will you? How long will you live in denial? You exiled your entire research team because you didn’t want to hear what they had to say. And the Star-King before them. You tried to get rid of him when his Voice told him what your colleagues had been saying for turns. And finally me. You physically gagged me for a turn with that cage. All because you couldn’t face that you’d created the Voi–”

“Hush!” Orcadis hissed, grabbing the boy by the front. “Don’t you start this again! You were spreading lies that would have gotten both of us and one thousand Helms killed! I had to silence you!”

The boy’s eyes flared defiantly. They stared each other down, neither relenting. Kaed’s lips thinned. “Unbelievable. You really are hopeless, aren’t you? You’ll never accept what you’ve done, and if you can’t accept it, you can’t fix it. You want to save the world from the Voices, Father?” He pulled himself from Orcadis’s hands, standing from the cot. “Save it from yourself first.”

For the first time since he could remember, Orcadis Durant didn’t feel in control. Nothing he could say would wipe the resentment from his boy’s heart. Nothing he could do would keep Kaed from sweeping out of the room, leaving doubt and fear in his wake.

“S-Son,” Orcadis croaked as Kaed made to leave. Nothing mattered now that he was Infected. “I can fix this. Stop wearing the rock. I-I think I can bring you back from the catatonic trance.” Neria seemed so certain Serasta was waking. She risked her life to free him.

Then why couldn’t I feel it? I put him in the prison near my chambers, right in my sensing radius.

Even as he wondered, he knew. Habituation. It’s difficult to notice age creeping up on someone you see every day. But don’t lay eyes on them for twenty turns and suddenly the change is remarkable. It was the same with Serasta. His brain had regained function slowly but steadily. A sliver of thought today, two tomorrow – the changes had been too subtle to notice.

Orcadis, your mind is slipping...

Kaed’s expression was cold as he turned back. “No need, Father. I fixed it myself. I’m not Infected anymore.”

“What?”

A quick rap came at the metal door, and they both swivelled. The newcomer poked her head around the edge of the door that Orcadis had mangled. She was a quivering thing, fourteen or fifteen, with huge hazel eyes. Orcadis had found her a handful of turns ago, foraging in a dumpster after she’d lost her parents to a plague. The fact that she’d survived the plague herself showed amazing physical fortitude and an immune system fit for any Helm. But then again...Orcadis found that he could justify his decision to induct even the most pathetic wretch into his order. He just...couldn’t let them be picked apart by the world.

“Greathelm,” she managed, curtseying before him. “My apologies, I wasn’t aware–”

“Pyrrhus’s bloody balls, Rhoswen!” Kaed screamed. The girl jumped, and Orcadis had to grip her forearm to steady her. “You’re still here? Why the hell didn’t you leave the Helms? Didn’t I tell you to leave?”

Orcadis could feel Rhoswen’s muscles tensing beneath his fingers. Her throat moved. “I c-came to s-see you,” she squeaked.

Kaed advanced in such a rage that Orcadis swept in front of the girl, adopting a protective stance. But Kaed walked right by her toward the wall, grabbed it, and smashed his head into it with a yell of frustration.

“Control yourself!” Orcadis bellowed over Rhoswen’s scream.

After a moment of leaning his forehead against the wall, panting, Kaed pushed off it. When he turned there was a bloody rivulet flowing into his brow like crimson yolk from the small, cracked purple egg on his forehead.

Orcadis felt sick. This boy was already gripped by the madness of the Infected. He needed help. Fast. He needed... a less negligent father, a mother who’d been allowed to remain in his life...he needed...Orcadis couldn’t think.

“Father?” Kaed’s eyes crossed momentarily. He struggled to focus them, giving his head a brisk shake. “Tell me one last time. Tell me how individuals must be compromised for the common good. It’s true, isn’t it? It’s why you killed the Infected, right?”

Weak, mind fuzzed with horror, Orcadis only nodded.

Kaed smiled a weary smile. Relief. “Good. If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the engine room looking at the stars.”

He left. Rhoswen still sobbed quietly behind Orcadis, clinging to his side. From her thoughts he wasn’t sure if her problem was Kaed’s insanity or the fact that she’d shown weakness in front of her Iron Fist. He could only put his arm around her, muttering empty reassurances as he fought back the foreign moisture in his eyes.

The rest happened too quickly. A flood of light rushed down the corridor, swallowing them; a rumble like the ship’s bowels were being torn out; and a blast that whited everything out.

Somehow there was nothing solid beneath Orcadis’s feet. He soared in a sea of fire, nothing tangible but the small robed form still in his arms. With his last remaining shred of sense, Orcadis pulled the girl against him, twisting over her to cushion her fall.

It wasn’t a moment too soon. Hot javelins of pain through his back announced the wall that came from nowhere. The breath exploded from his lungs and then pain stabbed through his hip. He rolled, not knowing where he’d landed, the thundering in his ears drowning everything out.

It was time to sleep. Someone tugged faintly on his front, but that could be ignored. Orcadis was good at ignoring. He’d ignored his son for turns...

“Greathelm! Please, sir, get up! Oh gods, please!”

The sounds swam to him through leagues and leagues of invisible water. Fragmented shapes loomed over him, orange waves with their dancing mirror-image shadows...

Fire.

“Greathelm Durant!” sobbed the girlish voice again. A muddled shape reached out to shake him.

Will yourself, Orcadis. Get up. Save the child.

He focused, surfacing through the water, blinking until the room stabilized and his mind cleared. Rhoswen was crouching beside him, backlit by a wall of flame, her eyes bulging with terror in her soot-stained face.

Orcadis told himself there was no pain when he sat up, but still he had to take a second to keep from blacking out. Not much was flammable in the room – just the cot, dresser, and end table – and everything was nailed down. But the dresser behind Rhoswen, silhouetted inside a coating of flames, had cracked in half.

And the top half was creaking forward.

With a yell Orcadis grabbed the girl and rolled aside. The broken dresser slammed to the floor where they’d been, sparks biting into his arm as the impact sprayed them up.

He clambered to his feet, barely finding balance on the careening floor. When he tried to pull Rhoswen up she screamed, her left leg buckling, and collapsed back to the floor. She hiked up the hem of her robes to reveal a piece of bed-post impaling her calf. The girl looked up at Orcadis with pleading eyes.

“Alright, then,” he sighed, scooping her into his arms. “Hold on, my dear. Think of it as pain desensitization training.”

And he stumbled to the door, swaying as the ship pitched left and right. Fires crackled and roared in all directions. He kept to the side of the chamber, guiding himself with one palm against the warmed metal wall.

Orcadis emerged into the hallway where an acrid heatwave hit him, but he pushed through it. Helms ran in every direction, shepherding wounded nobles to safety, stamping out fires with capes and buckets of water, yelling orders unheard over groaning metal and nearby crashes. The lights flickered, died, then revived. It didn’t matter. The fires left enough light for everyone.

“You!” Orcadis bellowed at a passing captain – the only soldier in sight. “Where are the rest of the Star-King’s men? Why don’t I see any soldiers?”

Sweat lined the captain’s forehead. He looked embarrassed as he said, “Star-King Serasta ordered most of his men to pull back to his apartments, for personal protection.”

Stupid man! “Get the technicians down to sector four. The explosion came from the west wing, so I need them to enable the locks over that entire quarter. Seal it off until we figure out what caused the disturbance. ”

“What about survivors in the west wing, sir?”

“Don’t bother. An explosion this big could only have come from the engine room. If all that fuel combusted, chances for survival are–”

If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the engine room looking at the stars.

Orcadis felt the blood drain from his face.

The captain went pale, too. “We...we lost the engines?”

Without a word Orcadis deposited the moaning Rhoswen into the captain’s arms. “On second thought, don’t seal off the west wing just yet.”

“But...but Greathelm!”

Orcadis turned and charged down the swaying corridor, into the rubble and smoke-clouds toward the west end of the ship. He didn’t stop when lurches threw him into the walls or when the gravitational field faltered and tossed him into the air. He should have told the cursed technicians to work on maintaining the spin, too. Emergency power supplies could keep the ship spinning for a time, but the explosion had probably created enough friction that the parts of the ship closest to it had lost all gravity.

Orcadis leapt over singed bodies, not daring to look down long enough to identify Helms he’d raised from stray children – just long enough to make sure there was no wavy honey-brown hair, no lanky frame or brightly-coloured pants.

The cloud of smoke thickened. Up ahead, light cut through the haze, wafting fresh heat.

Tell me how individuals must be compromised for the common good.

Now Orcadis was endangering the remnants of the human race for his son, because the west wing wouldn’t be sealed off with Kaed still inside, possible future explosions notwithstanding.

Orcadis burst headlong into the flames devouring the corridor. He gritted his teeth as flames lashed out from wooden beams and supports, from bodies still crackling quietly on the ground, releasing a stench like burnt pork.

Nothing but flames and crumbling ship parts stirred. He tried to yell for his son. Smoke rushed into his mouth and he choked, stumbled. He had to get closer – the engine room was only a few turns away! – but tears scalded his eyes and smoke pressed into his every pore and he was lost. Fiery tongues licked away the skin on his bare arms, his cheeks...

Pain through his shins. He’d fallen to his knees, heaving. There was no way. Nothing could have survived in this.

Orcadis sucked in a breath of fire. His insides ablaze, he released it in a scream that rose over the roar of flames.

Hands fastened to his shoulders. Tears didn’t let him see who dragged him back up the corridor. He couldn’t muster the energy to struggle, so he lay still, feeling his back sliding over blistering debris, tearing away the singed remnants of his undershirt. He wished he’d slide over a wooden spear and be skewered. He wished the cursed hands would drop him and go.

Finally they did. Orcadis’s head thunked on cool metal. He opened his eyes.

Lykus. No – Hector. They didn’t even look the same anymore. His eyes were red, too. Not just from smoke, but from pain.

“W-What are you doing h-here?” Orcadis rasped.

“Del...” Hector breathed.

“Stupid b-boy! She w-was n-never on the ship!”

Hector could only look confused for a moment, because booted feet clomped over to them, making the floor beside Orcadis’s ear judder. Another figure appeared over him.

“The escape pods have all been launched!” the commander panted. He was in such a panic he didn’t seem to notice his Iron Fist lying burnt and practically naked on the floor.

For a moment Orcadis’s numbed mind didn’t process what that meant. It didn’t care enough to try. He lay, jaded, staring up at the pipes in the ceiling.

It was Hector who perked up. “The king evacuated with his men? Are you shitting me?”

“No, it was an unauthorized launch. All pods were empty save one. There was a note.”

The commander flicked out a slip of paper and handed it to Orcadis. When he didn’t move, the commander said, “It’s from your son.”

Orcadis lurched upright, snatching the note and unfolding it with trembling hands.

Father,

I’m not going to say I’m sorry I couldn’t save those you loved, because you loved humanity, not individual humans. Not me. So I have saved humanity for you. Humanity, at the expense of every Helm. With the Helms gone, Voices will stop forming. Father, I have accomplished your goal. I wish I’d been brave enough to go down with you and your ship, but I couldn’t watch you die. I love individual people.

I love you.

- Orkaedis Durant