Story Excerpt

Heartshock
by Nick Wolven

At first Maya can’t figure out what’s happened. Then, when the shock fades, she can’t believe it.

The world is throbbing, shooting pain through every nerve, and Maya’s whole existence, at the moment, is dark. Then she starts to hear chatter, human noise, shifting bodies. Plus a screaming of alarms. And feels pressure.

A hand on her shoulder. Firm.

“We did it.” Astrid’s voice is like something high and far away, a star far north of the galactic plane. “It’s over, Captain. We won.”

With growing consciousness comes a surge of nausea. Maya opens her eyes—and sees white. She panics. Her eyes! Then remembers, with a tingle of relief, the captain’s visor, and whips it off to find herself secure in her flight web, limbs all akimbo and tangled in the harness, chaos boiling on every side. Scraps of flight webbing drift above the gimbal chairs, gossamer litter in the ship’s filtered air, pumped hither and thither on the jets of leaking coolant.

All the conning screens are burned out and fuzzy, roiling with randomness, visual noise.

Astrid’s hand starfishes down. “Here, Captain, let me help.”

Maya waves her off.

“You’re hurt,” Astrid says.

Still flapping her hand and shaking her head, Maya reaches for the back of the harness. They have gravity, at least. She has to haul herself up, sweat pouring from her face.

Astrid winces. Maya flashes a smile.

“Captain stands alone, right?” She points at the screens. “We flying blind?”

“EM got knocked out by the shrapnel. I can get visuals, though.”

“How?”

“Switch to the subspec pings. Run a targeting sweep with the seismic array, use the grav-wave scatter to construct a sit-rep.”

“Do it.”

They hustle through the madness, Astrid striding, Maya limping. Astrid’s hands on the weapons station move with practiced ease, trained by years of conflict, expert at their task, their martial grace now oddly reassuring, like some ancient ritual of healing or care.

Conning screens blink on, ping ping ping.

And there’s quiet. Deep, ubiquitous, cosmic quiet, like the hush that settles after a bomb.

Then the cheers start. Uncertain, at first, but slowly building, strengthening. Whispers break into shouts, then whoops, and then all hell is rollicking through the deck. Suddenly every possible emotion is swirling around Maya at once.

Astrid gropes for her hand. In the screens, the shockwaves are dwindling like a bad mood, dissipating into the warp and woof of spacetime. Against the universal backdrop of stars, new glitter stirs, a shifting cloud of debris—which Maya realizes is all that remains of the orbital battery once known as Morbis Moon.

“It’s gone?” Maya whispers.

“Gone.”

“All?”

“All.”

They turn and come together, waltzing on those hard steel plates, until it’s impossible to say who’s leading, who following, the captain or her first, the commander or her soldier—or merely two old women, laughing like lunatics, borne together on the mysterious currents of history and war.

*   *   *

“We’ll have to open the records. Reappoint the council. Reach out to the protectorate directors. And do it fast, if we want to earn the trust of the neutral worlds.”

In the wardroom, the petty officers are drunk. Maya watches from the command console, a passive observer to the celebration. Yosha, the quartermaster, is posed on a table, mag-boots clicking in a clumsy jig. She sings anthems of the first assault on Andragorra, battle hymns from the dawn of the war. Five raid-squad leaders are gathered below her, wearing the rag-garb of the bandit guerreras, raising bubble glasses and shrieking cheers.

“The Aramar Alliance—” Astrid continues. And stops, leaning forward to peer at Maya’s face. “Are you listening, Captain?”

“I’m listening.” Maya’s eyes are on the party.

Astrid darts a disapproving glance as a table collapses and bubble glasses go flying.

“Isn’t this all a bit premature?”

Maya smiles. “It’s been a long campaign, As-y. I couldn’t have stopped this celebration if I tried.”

“They’re drunk.”

Maya’s smile gets wider. “I let them tap the Rhoshvin. It seemed the right time.”

“You’re too lenient.”

“They’re guerreras, As-y. Lightriding Amazons, star banditas, gunnery queens. You know the hymns. Lovers in peacetime, lustful in war.”

Astrid rolls her eyes. A crash breaks through the conversation, chairs and tables toppling with a clatter, as groups of laughing bandita soldiers tumble to the floor.

“Just so long as they aren’t ‘lovers in victory’ on the deck of our wardroom.”

Maya shrugs, pointing at the tablet. “You were saying?”

“Right.” Astrid looks down. “The Aramar alliance. They’ve tendered their concession. That leaves the Antipodean Web. The Korins operate on einstein time; when they get news by the light relays, they’re bound to follow the rest of the net. The pieces are falling, one by one.”

Maya nods. Her headache’s getting worse. She squints, watching Astrid bend over the terminal to load the latest relay reports. Maya’s body tingles, damaged by Poincaré shocks, microdistortions of strong and weak forces burning in her cells. She winces as she swivels her chair.

Astrid notices. Of course she does. She rests a hand on Maya’s elbow.

“Captain? Honestly. Are you okay?”

“Fine. Just tired.”

“You sure?”

“I’d better be. I’m the boss.”

“Take a break. I’ll fill in. You’ve done enough.”

“No. Not till this is over.” But Maya relents—a little. “Look. You’re right. I took a squirt of that subspec blowback. Hit me in the heart.” She pounds her chest, thump, thump. “We knew it was a risk before we authorized the strike. Now stop worrying. I’ll get my vacation after the armistice. The allied states are settled. Good. What about Lo Valis?”

Astrid’s eyes flick to the terminal. “We’ve relayed terms to the Mark Arbiters. They’re bound to accept when they assess the situation. At this point, they really have no choice.”

“You sure about that?”

Astrid’s face is grim. “Even the Mark can’t ignore brute physics. Resisting a fleet without orbital defense? It’s planetary suicide.”

“Still: no answer.” Maya closes her eyes as pain washes through her. “I don’t know. We have them pinned. But this is the Mark we’re talking about. What’s your counsel?”

“Counsel? You’re asking me?”

“Captain’s orders. Tell me what you think I should do.”

Astrid’s mouth hangs open. “Well—”

“Her counsel,” comes a voice, “will be disciplined, practical, thoughtful, and useless. My counsel, Captain, is to hit them where it hurts.”

And Legate Ferrin comes clicking across the deck, dodging revelers and flying bubbleglasses. Pale, lean, quick, ice-eyed, and bald, she cuts the crowd like a laser. Even in half-grav, Ferrin manages to make every movement into a small assault against the world.

“Surrender?” Ferrin’s gray eyes flick to Astrid’s terminal. “That’s a nice thought. You can float here for twelve relaxing revolutions, beaming parleys at the ground, but it’s not going to change the situation. Waiting is not how you end a war.”

“Neither is dropping payloads on civilians,” Astrid says.

“No?” Ferrin plucks up a bubbleglass, sipping pink Rhoshvin through the pipette. “You think the Mark would hold back in your place? Dropping payloads on peasants was their governing philosophy.”

“And look how it worked for them,” Maya says.

Ferrin’s mouth curls. Her eyes, the color of dirty water, glide slowly over Maya’s frame. “You all right, Captain? You seem . . . tired.”

“Try wounded,” Astrid says. “In battle. Leading the rebellion on behalf of your people.”

“Really? How charitable. I thought it was on behalf of the Allied Worlds.” Ferrin’s thin lips purse around the pipette. She sips luxuriously and lets out a sigh. “Don’t exert yourself on our behalf, Captain. Now that the Mark’s had their way with us, there aren’t that many of my people left.”

“Enough.” Maya stands, ignoring the pain that ripples through her, and shoves back her chair. She plants a finger on Astrid’s terminal. “We’ve sent our ultimatum. If the Mark won’t submit, we’ll take appropriate action.”

“Will you?” Ferrin’s gaze is cutting—as if she can see through Maya’s chest to her injuries, the quantum disruption sizzling in her heart. “The arbiters seldom respond well to weakness.”

“Watch it,” Astrid says, shoving back her chair.

“No, you—” Ferrin begins, jutting out a finger, when the deck lights flash and an alarm begins to bleat.

“Captain?” The petty officers freeze, drunkenly gaping. Tosh, the comms director, shoves through the throng. “That’s the proximity alert.”

“What?” Maya squints at the wallboard. He’s right. The sitrep blinks pink, meaning imminent contact. Astrid bends to the terminal.

“It’s a bogey all right. Coming in two degrees high at lat-fifteen-point-seventy-two. Interception in six standard demidays. Captain?” She looks up, squinting. “It’s from the planet.”

Ferrin laughs. “They couldn’t be so stupid as to launch ordnance. From their position? We’d dust their biosphere.”

“No.” Astrid peers closer. “It’s a shuttle. Single-occupant. Unarmed.” She glances up, brow furrowed. “They’re flying without clearance.”

They all stand silent, thinking over the possibilities.

“Someone bringing terms?” suggests Maya. “Or turning traitor?”

Astrid bites her lip. “We could close the distance. Scoop them up before they change their mind.”

“Or before someone changes it for them,” Ferrin says, “by liquidating their brain mid-flight.”

Maya’s already walking. “Let’s go.”

*   *   *

By the time Maya limps to the quarantine bay, the shuttle is gleaming between the docking clamps, a lozenge of low-drag, high-boost carbon shedding the dregs of its plasma caul. Maya waves off the guards. She limps into the filter field, buzzes of pan-scan tickling her skin. Speckles of phosphorescence sparkle round the shuttle, traces of biomatter wicked off by static and vaporized in the infrareds.

Astrid hurries behind. “Are you sure this is wise, Captain? Dismissing the guard?”

Maya grunts a non-answer. Her heart feels like a half-pulped orange, squeezed in a contracting fist of pain. She stumbles.

Ferrin watches from the viewdeck, eyes slitted.

“You’re limping, Captain. The way you look, you couldn’t pinch an ass without breaking your thumb. You sure this is the image you want to project?”

Maya limps on, ignoring the comments. The filter-fire’s subsiding. The shuttle cracks open, a gray shell yielding its transorbital secrets.

“Let me call a retinue.” Astrid reaches for a terminal.

For once Ferrin agrees.

“Do it, Captain. You’re a tough old bitch; I cede the point. You won the argument, don’t throw the war.”

“I’m fine.” Maya trudges on toward the ship. The hull splits open at her approach, spewing vapor, and a segmented gangway unfurls like a tongue.

The woman who steps out is cocooned in flight gear, stumbling with acceleration shock. No guards accompany her. No retinue, no drones. Maya could spit in the woman’s face, and there’d be nothing to stop her but a few strips of twill.

“Who are you?” Maya stands at the base of the ramp, blocking passage.

The woman looks down with G-blurred eyes. A fatigue-lined face, illumined like a skull in the merciless lights of the quarantine bay. Thin lips fleer back from artificial teeth.

“My name is Mare Ove Norren, and I—” She stumbles, catching herself on the gangway rail. And fumbles in robes the color of plasma burn, extracting a markstone, the rough disc clustered with bright datagems. “I served for thirteen years as First Arbiter of the Mark, in the Summary Chamber at Teal Valis.”

“Shoot the bitch,” Ferrin says without pause.

Astrid steps forward. “Maya—”

Maya holds up a hand. She climbs the gangway, step by painful step, and gives the interstellar gesture of greeting, followed by a question.

“Why are you here?”

The woman, Mare Norren, smiles tightly. “I have come to offer myself to you, Captain. To turn myself over into your custody, and to . . .” A momentary spasm distorts her features, like a ripple of gravitational disruption. “To beg for your forgiveness.”

There’s silence in the bay as Mare Norren adjusts her robes, gathers her strength, and sinks to a knee.

“I have come to make myself your prisoner.”

*   *   *

“She’s telling the truth. About her status, anyway. I ran her scan through the indices. Our data’s from before the relay blackout, but we have no reason to doubt her account.”

The rally-room display is meant for fleetwide broadcasts, one-to-many and many-to-one; the room is far too small to be occupied comfortably by three people at a time. Maya hunches in the captain’s cradle while Astrid works menus and Ferrin paces the walls.

In the globe of the viewing sphere, Mare Norren sits in her cell, indifferent to the cameras on every side. Her eyes are downcast. What is she feeling, Maya wonders. Despair? Desperation?

“So she’s who she says she is, and she’s right where we want her.” Ferrin gnaws a thumbnail. “All the more reason to finish her off.”

Maya squirms. The pain is worse when she sits, but she feels too tired to get up and stretch. She needs distraction. Anything to take her mind off the micro-disruptions stinging in her cells.

“What about our ultimatum? Any answer from the Mark?”

“No.” Astrid frowns. “And I don’t think this woman represents them. Whoever she is, she came on her own.”

“Good.” Ferrin glares heat death at the screen. “When we’re done with her, we’ll save a piece of her body and ship it planetside, tied with a bow. Maybe that’ll inspire these people to take our ultimatum seriously.”

“Captain.” Astrid leans over. “Can I speak freely?”

“Always.”

“This woman came to us for mercy—”

“Please.” Ferrin snorts.

“For mercy,” Astrid insists. “She’s unarmed, undefended. She seems contrite. Now, I’m not saying—”

“Contrite?” Ferrin explodes. “The woman’s a Valisian! Is contrition a relevant consideration here?”

“Maya.” Astrid presses Maya’s hand. “I’ve served on this vessel for fifteen years. I was with you when we dead-dropped into Nor Malah, long-falling through the satellite rings. I ran behind you in the charge on Nueva Civ, pressing the infowar station by station, winning over the maintenance crews. We built this fleet by speaking to the people of the Arm, world by world, heart by heart, convincing them to join our cause. When we took a colony, we offered clemency. When enemies surrendered, we pardoned and moved on. We never abandoned an ally on the field, and we never murdered an opponent in cold blood. We fought the war with ships and guns. But it was justice that won it for us.”

“Of course.” Ferrin glares, eyes like thick ice. “And now the war is over. And justice must be done.”

Maya looks into their faces, one dark and wrinkled, one hard and pale. Her heart beats so hard she imagines it shattering, hammered to bits against her ribs.

“The worlds didn’t rally to us because they love us,” Ferrin snarls. “They joined our cause because they hate the Mark. If we pat the hand of every penitent tyrant, we’ll lose the support we fought to gain.”

“The citizens of Lo Valis are human beings.” Astrid rises stiffly. “We can’t wipe out a whole planet’s population. That’s the Valisian way, not ours. The only option is to find some means of integrating them back into the League. If we’re too harsh as conquerors, we’ll have a new rebellion on our hands before the old one’s over.”

“The trick,” Ferrin says, “is to be just harsh enough.” She drops to a knee, meshing her hands over the back of her neck, after the custom of the old queens of Jata, and lowering her eyes.

“Captain. We haven’t always seen eye to eye. But I’ve been loyal to you every moment of this fight. And the loyalty of an adversary is worth more in war than the counsels of an intimate friend. I’ve never hidden my beliefs; I’ve always given honest counsel. Now I tell you what no one else will say. The people of the League need blood.”

Ferrin meets Maya’s eyes. The woman’s stare is like the gaze of the stars themselves, a blast of radiation.

“Not all people, perhaps. But there are those who remember what the Mark wrought on Jata. Genomes seeded, corrupted with killsnips, the people monitored day and night. Citizens infected with the Mark’s viral triggers, twisted at the slightest hint of dissidence into mutants, exiles, monsters, freaks. Prisoners of our own violated bodies, our souls held hostage to our hijacked cells. Every citizen of Lo Valis is complicit in those crimes, enriched by our torture, succored on our suffering. War is a she-wolf. Politics is a bitch. The goddess of justice weighs blood against blood. The people of Lo Valis must pay for their crimes.”

Maya sits, considering their faces. Soldier and leader, lover and rival. She thumbs the com.

“Tell the prisoner I’ll see her now.”

*   *   *

Mare Norren waits icily in her cell, hands folded, chin high. Is the woman resigned to her death, Maya wonders? Or is this merely the calculating silence of a master deceiver?

Maya bends to the viewing sphere beside the door, searching the grooves of that implacable face. Ferrin coughs behind her.

“You won’t learn anything that way, Captain. She’s got a mesh of neural overrides in her cheeks. She can switch to whatever expression she wants.”

Maya sighs, palms the pad, and limps in.

The guards follow, spreading through the room, knife-eyed banditas prepped with reflex triggers, trained and modded to kill without thought. Mare Norren, unfazed by their presence, gazes up with eyes like glass.

“Il fae donna, Mare Ove Norren,” Maya sketches the traditional Valisian greeting. “Now that we’ve confirmed your status, allow me to offer a more formal introduction. I am Dame Mistress Mayalim Astragora, Captain of the Flying Spike and acting Genetrix of the Restoration Forces. This is Astrid of Ohl, my First Preferred, and Legate Ferrin, Ranking Madre of the Jatan Assembly and onboard attaché from the Committee for Restorative Justice.”

Mare Norren’s eyes glide from face to face, settling at last on Maya’s chest.

“You’re hurt, Captain.”

“Wounded,” Astrid intercedes. “By the blow that destroyed your orbital defenses.”

“And still perfectly capable,” Ferrin snaps, “of giving the order to have you put to death.”

Mare Norren accepts the threat, nodding curtly.

“Heartshock,” she murmurs. The word purring between them like a secret.

“Pardon?” Maya blinks.

“Heartshock. Localized effects of subatomic wave interference. Similar to rad damage, but impossible to shield. A common side effect of the use of gravitational disruptors on high-mass targets.” Mare Norren smiles grimly. “My people call it the sinner’s sickness. The Jatans, I believe, call it ‘Heisenberg’s Revenge,’ while the Kholisites have a similar term: ‘Arjuna’s Folly.’ It is widely perceived as a form of cosmic karma—the price an enemy force must pay for ordering, from afar, the destruction of worlds.”

“Your people know nothing of conscience,” Ferrin spits. “You know only pain, destruction, and deceit.”

“We know something of physics, too.” Mare Norre straightens her robes. “The effects of heartshock are random, distributed in unpredictable patterns around the center of a disruption. It’s really just bad luck that you, Captain, happened to be affected.”

Astrid steps forward. “Be that as it may, you’ve lost orbital security. Within three rotations, we’ll have five hundred doomsday-grade wave emanators distributed in geosynchronous orbit around your planet. Your people have to know they’ve lost the war.”

“The question,” Mare Norren says mildly, “is whether my people know they deserved to lose it.”

The silence in the cell is disorienting, like a shift in grav settings or a shiver in the air. Even the guards are edgy. Maya holds her breath. Her chest pain spikes, as if it really is a karmic punishment, waxing and waning to the judgment of the stars.

“Do you know how it feels,” Mare Norren says shakily, composure giving way to emotion, “to realize that you’re the villain of history? That everything you’ve owned, everything you’ve loved, was bought with the wages of sadism and fear? That you’ve become complicit, along with your loved ones, in an evil so vast you have no hope of expiation—and must throw yourself on the mercy of your victims and let them decide what punishment to inflict?”

“Is that why you’re here?” Ferrin’s eyes are narrow. “To beg for your life?”

“I’m here to offer my life.” Mare Norren sighs. “And to deliver a message. I know the people of Lo Valis. I’ve lived among them since I was born. I can tell you this: they will never surrender. Not wholly. Not willingly. They may agree to terms, they may negotiate for peace, but in secret, they will always resist your rule. In every federated land, in every march of the overstate, in every council of every city on every landmass of the world, there will be people who defy you. And one day, they will rise against you.”

“Defeat is a bitter drink.” Maya draws a deep breath, speaking through the claws of pain in her chest. “Conquerors often become oppressors in turn. There must be some way to strike a peace that will be mutually agreeable to—”

“No!” Mare Norren rises from her bench, all composure lost, and stalks the cell, robes whirling. “Not here! Not for Lo Valis! Never!”

“But why not?” Astrid frowns. “Why can’t our people, after all this suffering—”

“Because we know what we are.” Mare Norren’s voice trembles with passion, shaking the folds of her deep-lined face. “Deep down, we know. Don’t believe the sweet-tongued optimists who would try to persuade you of our better nature. We are the people who purged the Crater States, turning every inhabitant to dust. We are the ones who perpetrated the psychocide of the Gamites, wiping the minds of three billion souls. We seeded the child plague of the thirty-third eon, starved the ice worlds of the outer web, force-bred an army in the worldwombs of Myroi and sent it to be slaughtered in the radiation wars. This is our heritage, this litany of sins. If we had any sense of justice, we would punish ourselves until the last Valisian received her own confession and knelt in the dust to slit her own throat. How can we allow ourselves to be judged, when we know the only just sentence is death?”

“So be it.” Ferrin turns to Maya. “They understand what must be done.”

Maya holds up a hand. Mare Norren has stopped pacing. Maya wonders what those eyes are seeing, how much a human mind can grasp of the collective evils that have been done.

“You repent, then.”

Mare Norren turns. The fit of passion has passed, replaced by cold silence. Maya realizes she is seeing a process that must have played out a thousand times over the course of this woman’s life, righteous fury giving way to grim despair.

“I repent, yes. I, and many others. There are more of us than you might think, Captain. Especially in the upper chambers. We whisper in secret, we confer with other sympathizers, we rage at our neighbors and fellow citizens. Secretly, I think, we despise ourselves. . . .”

“Yet you’ve done nothing,” Ferrin spits.

Mare Norren sits unmoving. At last she looks up as if startled from deep thought. “More than nothing. Less than enough. There have been . . . plans. Schemes. None of us will ever know, I suppose, how many millions might have been saved if we’d had the chance to put our plans into effect.”

“And what reward do you expect for all this whispering in the dark? Absolution? Honor?” Ferrin’s voice cracks like ice. “A kiss on the cheek?”

Mare Norren shakes her head. It’s not an answer, Maya perceives, this gesture, but an admission that there can be no answer.

“How many?” Maya’s voice is a croak. “These conspirators? How many are you?”

“Hundreds? Thousands? I can give you only a handful of names. But those I name will name others, and others in turn, and in time you may uncover a million scattered souls. We’re not conspirators, however. I must correct you, there. No more conspiratorial than anyone on Lo Valis. Only better at lying. We had to be. We’re the only ones who ever faced the truth.”

“And you expect some sort of lenient treatment—”

Mare Norren leaps to her feet. “No! Listen, Captain. We expect nothing. We only speak the truth. But we’re pragmatic. Every citizen of Lo Valis is a sinner. Not every one of us, however, is a sadist. There are some who have recognized, all along, the justice of your cause. Who saw past the propaganda, who resisted the war fever. When the time comes to decide our world’s fate, it may be in your interest to remember who we are.”

“What do you want, then?” Maya is surprised to hear her own voice sound like Ferrin’s, cold and cynical. “If not absolution or indemnity or treasure, what have you come here to find?”

“The very same thing you came here to deliver.” Mare Norren steps forward. The guards advance. But the old woman gives no sign of aggression, only holds Maya’s eyes as she says, “We want justice.”

Read the exciting conclusion in this month’s issue on sale now!

Copyright © 2024. Heartshock by Nick Wolven