Copyright © 2022 by Elizabeth Hartwell Bonesteel.

  All rights reserved.

  * * *

  ISBN 978-1-7373909-2-3 paperback

  ISBN 978-1-7373909-3-0 hardcover

  ISBN 978-1-7373909-4-7 ebook

  * * *

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ElizabethBonesteel.com

  * * *

  book and cover design by patrick foster design

  cover illustration ©2021 seth rutledge

  Contents

  ARCHIVE #10456

  INVASION

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Field Transition Report

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 72

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 73

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 75

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 76

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 78

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 79

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 82

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 84

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 90

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 90, supplemental

  Chapter 9

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 90, supplemental

  ARCHIVE #9451

  ASSIMILATION

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 92

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 92, supplemental

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 92, supplemental

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 92, supplemental

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 106

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 106, supplemental

  Chapter 14

  ARCHIVE #7004

  DISCORD

  Chapter 15

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 113

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 132

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 132, supplemental

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 140

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 147

  Crew Delta Report

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 147, supplemental

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 148

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 149

  Chapter 23

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 158

  ARCHIVE #2351

  REBELLION

  Dispatch: Mission Year 40, Day 164

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 164, supplemental

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 171

  Chapter 24

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 171, supplemental

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 171, supplemental

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 175

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 175, supplemental

  Chapter 29

  ARCHIVE #628

  REVELATION

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  ARCHIVE #13981

  ARCHIVE #10001

  ARCHIVE #9418

  ARCHIVE #1244

  ARCHIVE #94

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Dispatch: Mission year 40, day 205

  Chapter 38

  ARCHIVE #1

  RESURRECTION

  Dispatch: Mission year 41, day 32

  Chapter 39

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by the Author

  For the ones who chase the light

  ARCHIVE #10456

  _________________________

  * * *

  LAST RECORDED LOG BEFORE SEPARATION

  DAY 227, COLONY YEAR 22

  * * *

  LOGGED BY: EVGENIA TYMKIV

  B. SHIP YEAR 190

  D. COLONY YEAR 32 (EST.)

  * * *

  ***DIRECTIVE 17 GOVERNMENT USE ONLY***

  ***SCHOLARLY ACCESS FORBIDDEN***

  _________________________

  * * *

  The planet looks so beautiful from up here. Bright white, peaceful, the mountains scattered little dots.

  * * *

  And that massive scar, that pit in the middle of the mountain range. Our new home.

  * * *

  My new home. Without Niki.

  * * *

  We should’ve just stolen the munitions in the first place. But we asked for them, knowing they’d refuse, and then they knew we were coming. And Niki…Niki said “It’s my idea. I have to go.”

  * * *

  So now I have to go on without Niki.

  * * *

  Not just Niki, of course. Alex and Tara. Meehra. Tamar. David. They didn’t think those bastards in the city would hurt them. They thought we were all on the same side. I guess we know now, don’t we?

  * * *

  I was meant to drop the power core next week, but there’s snow blowing through from the other side of the planet, and even without a windstorm I’m not sure the engines will give me fine enough control in-atmosphere. I’ve practiced it on the simulator, and I get it into the pit about sixty percent of the time. I get it in undamaged about forty percent of the time, but Connor says we can coat it in more ice if it splits.

  * * *

  Which is just shoving the problem into next year, but Connor’s sure the city will come around, and we’ll move back there and be one big happy family.

  * * *

  After Niki? I don’t want to be their family. I sure as hell won’t break bread with them. Which means I need to get the core down in one piece.

  * * *

  I understand it now, how the Old World destroyed itself. I understand how they could keep killing each other, even knowing they were tearing it all down, destroying the future. Because I would, if I could. I would tear them down. I know we’re the end of it all, the last of everything. I know if we die that’s the end of humanity, any dusty fingerprints we leave behind waiting to be discovered by the next quasi-intelligent species to wander into our stars.

  * * *

  But if I had the chance to take my revenge, I’d do it. Over and over and over again.

  * * *

  I always thought survival mattered to me. Turns out it was only Niki.

  * * *

  Anyway. Arkhangelsk is officially decommissioned, as of now. Random Aliens of the Future: please know that humanity was a horror show and we’re best left undone. For all the gods, even out here on this icy world we can’t keep from killing each other. Let us die. Let us die. Let us die.

  INVASION

  Chapter One

  Irina and I are running late again.

  We should be traveling under the ice for safety, down the main spoke from the Hub to the Eastern Arc of the Inner Rim; instead we’ve climbed to the surface to save time, crossing the courtyard in the sunshine. Despite the bright skies I can feel the wind through my protective suit, and by the time I reach the airlock I’ll be chilled through. But Irina, dressed as always in fleece pants, white knit top, and boots too big for her eight-year-old feet, doesn’t feel the cold.

  Irina can never resist unfiltered daylight, and even facing our grim errand she’s half-running, half-dancing, skipping over the intaglio etched into the icy ground. The inlay is changed after every storm and thaw, but the weather’s been clear now for twenty-six sunsets, and so frigid the sparse foot traffic hasn't yet damaged the design. I’m glad. Sometimes the carvings in the courtyard are abstract, but this time they’re animals: fish and mammals and sinuous reptiles, Irina's favorites. I like the animals.

  There are no animals in Novayarkha.

  The etchings grow sparse before we reach the Eastern Arc staircase. Irina leaps over a wise-eyed buffalo, following me down the stairs and waiting as I turn the wheel on the airlock. Her eyes on me are black and huge, but apart from that she doesn’t look like me at all. She has yellow hair and frost-colored skin and a smile that used to keep me warm.

  I give the wheel a final tug, and the thunk of the hydraulic release vibrates through the soles of my boots. The door falls open into my hand, sluggish. Like so many things in Novayarkha, it needs to be fixed, but even when we have the materials we never have the time. I pull the door closed behind me, and as I spread my arms and wait for the decontamination cycle to complete, Irina stands on her toes to peer through the exterior window. There’s nothing to see besides the long, shadowed staircase arcing thirty meters up to a sliver of azure sky.

  I pull off my protective clothing and enter the decon chamber; when the airlock’s green light appears, I peel the oxygen seal off my nose and mouth and push the inner door release. Lauren’s front door stands directly opposite, across the wide hallway: a prestigious location, with easy access to both the surface and the main passage to the Hub. The house itself is three lu
xurious rooms wide, lit by the extra-large solar tubes that adorn every Inner Rim residence. For two, it was opulence; now that Lauren’s alone, it’s become nothing more than empty space she has to fill.

  Beside me, Irina slips her fingers into mine, and I ring the doorbell.

  More than a full minute passes before Lauren answers the intercom. “Who is it?”

  She sounds tired, disoriented; for a moment I wonder if I’ve misremembered the time. “It’s Anya Savelova.”

  There’s a brief pause before she says “Of course.”

  She’s forgotten. Whether that’s a result of the illness or stress, I don’t know, but it’s not typical for anyone in Novayarkha to forget an appointment with the city’s head peace officer.

  A moment later the lock clicks free, and I drop Irina’s fingers as the inner door opens.

  When I ran into Lauren last week in the Hub kitchens, she looked animated, almost healthy. Now she’s grown small, the deep circles around her albino-translucent eyes muddy gray, and she presses her palm against the doorframe, shifting her weight from foot to foot. The illness takes people at different speeds, but in Lauren the pace is accelerating.

  She doesn’t smile when she sees me, but moves stiffly away from the door as I step into the bright front room. The space is over-warm, and I wonder for a moment about the ventilation system, but it’s not the air that’s left the stale taste at the back of my throat.

  All around the room, Tamara is everywhere: a bas-relief of her as an infant, her head elongated from her natural birth; charcoal sketches focusing on her nose, her jawbone, her eyebrows; bust after bust showing her features blooming from childhood to elegant young womanhood. Expert work, much of it recent. There’s no other decoration, nothing else beyond the sparse furnishings. Lauren’s always been outgoing, productive, well-loved; she could have every luxury the city offers. Instead, everything is Tamara.

  Tamara inherited her mother's beauty, but inverted: dark and warm-skinned where Lauren is colorless. Lauren’s Selection was a surprise to some, but it stands to reason her rare expression of the variegated legacy of the Old World would be a variant we’d want to preserve. Tamara didn’t get her mother's pigmentless skin, but she carries her genes.

  Carried. She’s a loss, and of late we’ve had too many losses.

  Lauren braces one hand against the wall, stepping carefully until she reaches the stone hospitality stove in the corner. The room doesn’t require a stove—the Eastern Arc sits squarely over the ore processing vents—but Lauren spreads her palms above the warm surface, and I catch a tremble in her hands. “I’m sorry, Anya,” she says. “I fell asleep again. It’s…difficult, these days.” She flexes her fingers one last time above the heat, then turns to me. "I need to know if my daughter is dead."

  There’s no other possibility. We don’t lose many in Novayarkha, but the ones whose bodies we never discover are just as gone as those we find frozen in the snow, or broken at the bottom of the quarry. "I checked the security records.” It’s an empty offering, but an expected one. "We haven't had any breaches."

  Lauren’s response is predictable. ”They're getting in somehow.”

  With every disappearance, the family makes this argument. But the Exiles aren't subtle. They don't sneak. Tunnels under the city would require blasting; they could never dig in stealth. They storm our walls out in the open, take only what we don’t fight to keep, and leave again. In all the years I’ve searched for the missing, I’ve never found evidence the Exiles are kidnappers, or even particularly creative thieves.

  And yet it's the story, what people believe. It’s what we tell our children: don't play outside, or the Exiles will take you. I feel the same dread as anyone when I think of them. They’re our existential enemy, the opposite of us, anarchic and disruptive and selfish.

  They didn’t take Tamara. But I understand why Lauren needs to believe they did.

  “I’ll check again," I tell her, even though there’s nothing to check. "You said you have her diary?"

  Lauren pushes herself off the wall and shuffles toward the couch. I stand close, in case she needs help, but she doesn’t ask, and I don’t offer. Leaning over she pushes on a panel inset into the stone coffee table; it slides aside noiselessly, revealing an old electronic tablet. I hadn’t known any of them were in private hands anymore.

  Lauren hands me the tablet, and I touch the screen. “NO ACCESS” it reads, in low-res lettering, and to myself I curse. Fingerprinted, or maybe even retina-printed. I don't know enough about the old tech to be able to tell which, but it won't be easy to get into it. All I say to Lauren is "Thank you.”

  She slides the panel back into place and turns back to me, not quite meeting my eyes. “Tamara's young," she says. "I remember youth. Whatever she says in there—unless it's going to help us find out where she is, I don't need to know."

  Preserving the victim's innocence: they all do that, too. With all of the vast illogic that goes into being a survivor, this is the part that makes sense to me. They’ll never have more of their loved one than they have in this moment. They’ll cling to an image that was never fully realized, and slowly excise impurity and imperfection until they are left with a sweet-natured, smooth-edged ghost to keep them company.

  I could tell Lauren jagged edges are better, that they take longer to blunt and to fade. She wouldn’t believe me.

  * * *

  By the time I disengage from Lauren, I am more than twenty minutes late to the governor’s office, and I must wait until Yulia decides to acknowledge me.

  She sits at the desk, her back to the monitors displaying the camera feeds from the surface, and I study the silver-gray top of her head as she writes in her tight, precise hand. The graphite stylus in her fingers is trembling, just a little; I briefly abandon my post to fill up her glass at the utility sink in the corner. Angry with me or not, she’s almost certainly been pushing too hard again.

  “Thank you, Anya,” she says when I set the glass down by her hand, but she doesn’t invite me to sit in my customary chair.

  Eventually she lays down the stylus and looks up. My guess was right: she’s exhausted, her typically gold-tan skin waxy and almost green, as if she’s bruised all over. She’s smiling, but her tawny eyes, usually full of good humor, betray mild annoyance. “We have talked about this, Officer Savelova.”