calling us, Soldier,” Seer said, her voice singsong. “She wants us home. We must hurry.”
Her words dispelled any thoughts of a life lived in quietude.
After a time, the HUD showed Farpoint a bit over fifty kilometers ahead. He sought a suitable landing spot. There were no signs off habitation nearby, so he slowed and settled the cloakshape in a large clearing in the center of a wood.
“I’ll get what meds I can and come back as fast as I can,” he said. “I’ll need help, though.”
Seer said nothing. Though her eyes were open, she still seemed lost in a trance.
“Seer? Seer?”
He left her in the cockpit and headed to the cargo bay. The other clones had moved little since he’d last checked them. The medicine coated their minds with an artificial calm and dulled the pain of their bodies, but through their shared mental connection he could feel the growing madness in the adults, roiling underneath the surface. Absent the medication, he imagined, the ship would be chaos. The medicine would work for another hour or two, at most. Then the madness would assert itself, or the illness. Either way, there would be death. He had to move fast.
He went to each of the clones in turn, the children first, evaluating their physical state, opening his mind enough to get a better feel for their emotional condition. All were flush with fever, their breathing too rapid, their minds seething with anger, terror, power. Blessing, Grace, and Gift were catatonic. He lingered over them, feeling a sadness that hit him hard. He had to save them, them above all.
Runner seemed the least afflicted, so Soldier took an adrenaline hypo from the medical supplies and injected him with it. His eyes flew open, the pupils dilating, and fixed on Soldier. Dry, cracked lips formed a word.
“Soldier,” he said, his diction slurred.
“Are you able to stand? I need help to get meds.”
Runner seemed not to hear him. He closed his eyes, winced as if with pain. His mouth, nearly hidden in the brambles of his thick beard, twisted in agony.
“I can manage,” Runner said. “The power, Soldier …”
“I know.”
Since killing Maker, Soldier had bottled up the power within himself. But he still felt as if the cap might blow at any time. His body, all of their bodies, struggled to contain it.
He tried to help Runner sit up, but Runner shoved his hands away and sat up on his own.
“I don’t need you,” he snarled.
Soldier resisted the angry impulse to punch Runner in the face. “You’d already be dead if not for me. Now, listen. You and I are going to a medical facility nearby. We’re going to take the medicine we need to keep the Community alive.”
Runner’s glassy eyes shone. “Take it?”
“Yes, take it. Whatever we flew through when we left the moon accelerated the onset of the …” He almost said “madness,” but thought better of it and instead said, “… illness. We’ll need the meds or we’ll all die before we reach Mother.”
“Not you,” Runner said, as he stood. He stank of sweat, of fever, of sickness. “You won’t die.” He leered. “At least not from the illness.”
Soldier said nothing, merely stared into Runner’s fevered face.
Runner’s gaze took in the cargo bay, the clones. “Did you kill Scar and Maker?”
“I killed Maker because he gave me no choice. The illness killed Scar, and it will kill the rest of them, and you, if we don’t get what we need. Do you understand?”
“I understand.” Runner found a flask of water among their supplies, drank, and wiped his beard. “They won’t let us take medicine, Soldier. They’ll try to stop us. We’ll have to kill them. Lots of them.”
“Maybe,” Soldier said, trying to ignore the eagerness he heard in Runner’s words. He, too, felt the impulse to violence, but he could control it. Runner, with the madness taking hold, could not. But Soldier needed him. A medical facility would be guarded, even on a backwater planet. He could not assault it alone.
“We should leave now,” Soldier said.
When he turned to go, he found himself face-to-face with Seer. Beside him, Runner fell to his knees, head bowed, and took Seer’s hand in his own.
“Everything you said was true, Seer. You’ve saved us. Saved us.”
“What I say are Mother’s words,” Seer said, her eyes on Soldier rather than Runner. “And those words are truth. And now I say that we all leave.”
Soldier gestured at the comatose clones. “They’re too sick to move, Seer. And