“Give it up, runt,” Tommy had snarled, twisting Pendance’s arm behind his back. “You know I’m gonna take it anyway.”

  But when Tommy had loosened his grip for just a second, Pendance had rolled, grabbed the pipe, and brought it down across the older boy’s skull with every ounce of rage and hatred he possessed. The crack had echoed through the rec area like a gunshot, and Tommy had dropped like a stone, blood pooling beneath his head.

  The other kids had backed away in terror, but Pendance had felt a cold satisfaction that filled the empty place where fear used to live. Tommy hadn’t died, but he’d never been quite right after that. And nobody had ever tried to take anything from Pendance again.

  When the authorities caught him for his various thefts and violence, they’d give him a good caning in the detention center’s basement. But each beating only made him more determined to be strong. Strong enough that the universe couldn’t beat him anymore. Strong enough to be the one holding the cane.

  He’d joined a militia group in those slums when he turned sixteen, learning his military knowledge from desperate men with crossbows and makeshift weapons. They’d been poor, but they’d taught him discipline, combat techniques, and most importantly, that one must be thoroughly ruthless if one wanted to survive.

  The defining moment had come during a gang war in the lower tunnels. Their unit had cornered three members of the rival faction in a dead-end maintenance shaft. Their leader, a grizzled veteran named Kor, had ordered them to execute the prisoners.

  “But they surrendered,” one of the younger militiamen had protested. “They threw down their weapons.”

  Kor had pulled out his sidearm and shot the kid in the head. “Anyone else have objections to following orders?”

  Pendance had stepped forward and used an iron bar, smashing the back of the heads of the kneeling prisoners. He’d learned mercy was a luxury that got you killed, and the universe rewarded those who understood that.

  He’d climbed the ranks through brutality and competence, then joined a space mercenary outfit where he’d spent ten years working his way up to colonel. The Corporate Wars had been good to him. There had been plenty of opportunities for a man who understood that violence was just another tool, like a wrench or a comm unit. You used it when the job required it, without emotion or hesitation.

  Then he’d been brought aboard the Dreadstar, and everything had gone to hell.

  Well, not everything. He’d become chief of security over certain sections of the massive prison ship, enforcing the Ick’s rule with brutal certainty using his bionic arm and his brass knuckles etched with tiny skulls. He’d found that beating someone to death in front of everyone else had a salutary effect on the rest. Fear and obedience went hand in hand, just like in the old days.

  For a time, Pendance had been as content as someone like him could be. He inflicted pain and commanded respect aboard a ship that drifted through foldspace collecting specimens for the Ick’s experiments. He had to always be strong, always be on top. It was the only way he knew how to live.

  But Kane Hunter had changed everything. Even after Pendance had shown him what he was capable of—beating those two losers in the cargo hold to death right in front of Kane—it hadn’t cowed that bastard. The half-breed had looked at him with the same defiance Pendance remembered from his own youth, the same refusal to break that had kept him alive in the underground warrens.

  That had been the start of when everything went wrong.

  Pendance stepped off the treadmill, sweat dripping from his lean frame. He left and took a swift, hot shower, then made his way to the bridge just in time to hear the android burst in with a shriek.

  The android was wearing female clothes—a jumpsuit that somehow managed to look elegant on the mechanical frame. The voice that came from its speakers was distinctly feminine, high and melodious but edged with panic. This was supposed to be Axion’s niece, a High Polarion consciousness that had been trapped in the Dreadstar’s digital systems for centuries.

  “My uncle is gone!” the android cried, its optical sensors blazing with emotion. “Axion is gone! Eliminated! No more!”

  The Collector turned to her, his goggles seeming to focus with laser intensity. “You erased him?”

  “No, no! Don’t you understand? They found the Negator. And I’m almost certain that interloper from Earth negated my Uncle Axion.”

  “Erased?” the Collector said.

  “Every vestige of Axion is gone as if he never was.”

  “That makes no sense,” the Collector said.

  “Don’t you understand?” The android’s voice rose to near hysteria. “The Negator is loose! It’s a dreadful weapon! My father, he will surely go after my father next!”

  The Collector and Pendance shared glances.

  Something throbbed in that empty spot in Pendance’s brain, and for a moment, it felt like something was trying to surface, trying to speak.

  Should I come out? No, not yet. It isn’t yet time.

  Pendance shook his head, blinking as roaring filled his ears, then slowly faded to nothing.

  “Are you well?” the Collector asked.

  “Yes,” Pendance said, though his voice sounded strange to his own ears. “I need to get something to eat. I’m a little lightheaded, that’s all.”

  “Oh, what will we do?” the android wailed, her mechanical hands clasped together in an oddly human gesture of distress.

  “Do you know your uncle’s plan?” the Collector asked.

  “Of course,” she said, her voice becoming more controlled with the typical High Polarion arrogance. “I’ve been studying it. That’s how I knew. I was speaking to him when it happened.”

  “Speaking to him how?” the Collector asked.

  “On a screen,” she said. “He was plugged into a computer system. But now Axion is gone. He’s been negated.”

  Pendance and the Collector knew she’d taken a copy of Axion in a laptop when they’d left the Dreadstar. It would appear the digital copy was no longer around. The Negator’s effect appeared to have an almost magical power, erasing everything of Axion.

  “Where will the Earthling go next do you think?” the Collector asked.

  “How should I know?” the android snapped with aristocratic disdain. “Am I a mind reader? Do I know what these low Polarions will do?”

  “Wouldn’t he follow Axion’s plan?” Pendance found himself asking, that empty spot in his brain throbbing again.

  The android looked at him shrewdly. “It’s possible. Yes, I think you may be onto something.”

  “What would be the plan?” the Collector pressed.

  “What is it worth to you?” she asked.

  “The same as you,” the Collector said. “We want the Negator. We want—”

  “I want more than that,” the android said, interrupting. “I want to revive myself and my father. I want the Negator. You agree it should be mine, yes?”

  The Collector and Pendance shared another glance.

  “As long as the Ick do not get it,” the Collector finally said, “I will be satisfied.”

  “I know you are a liar,” the android said. “But… yes, there is something important waiting… The fools are going to Talon 18. I’m sure of it.”

  “Why there?” the Collector said.

  “There’s a suit,” she said. “A certain kind of suit they are going to want for their evil deeds. They will surely try to collect it from a moon.”

  The Collector moved into the piloting chair and began setting coordinates for the Talon System.

  Pendance watched the star charts appear on the main screen, but his mind was elsewhere, probing that aching void in his thoughts and wondering what Nask had really taken from him during the surgery.

  Whatever it was, he had the feeling he’d find out soon. And when he did, Kane was going to pay for every moment of pain and humiliation the Earthling had caused him.

  -37-

  I was beat, practically dead on my feet after everything that had gone down on the planet. What was weird was I didn’t even know the planet’s name. How crazy was that? I’d nearly died there multiple times, stolen a god-killing weapon from fish aliens at the bottom of their ocean, and I didn’t even know what to call the place.

  After talking strategy with Alina and Gorrax about the quarantine ships blocking our exit, I couldn’t stop yawning. This was after the medical repair. My eyelids felt like they weighed fifty pounds apiece.

  “I gotta crash,” I said, rubbing my face. “If I don’t get more sleep soon, I’m gonna face-plant on the deck.”

  “Go,” Alina said. “You’re no good to us if you can’t think straight. We need to figure out how to get past those three ships soon, though.”

  I barely managed a nod before stumbling down the corridor to my quarters. The familiar hum of the Theron’s systems should have been comforting, but all I could think about was the bed waiting for me.

  I made it to my cabin, kicked off my boots—they hit the deck with satisfying thuds—and collapsed onto the bed. The mattress felt like heaven after the alien planet. I was out before my head fully settled onto the pillow.

  For a while, I slept hard. Deep and dreamless, the kind of sleep your body demands after you’ve pushed it past all reasonable limits. I probably snored like a chainsaw, but there was no one around to complain.

  Then the dreams began.

  They weren’t normal. They had a weird, too-real quality. It reminded me of the time I’d gone on what felt like an astral journey back to the Dreadstar.

  “No,” I mumbled in my sleep, some part of me fighting against whatever was happening. “I refuse. I’m not doing that again.”

  But the presence grew stronger. I could feel it pressing against my mind. It was harsh, radiating coldness. I knew it was the Burnt Polarion.

  In my dream—or whatever this was—it felt like he was standing outside the ship. Like some vampire from a Stephen King novel, waiting at the threshold. The old legends said vampires couldn’t enter unless you invited them in. Maybe that’s how it worked here.

  “Nope,” I said.

  Then I heard a soft knocking, like knuckles against glass.

  In the dream, I was looking out through a window in some old house. The image on the other side shifted and wavered. At first, I thought it was the old woman from the mammoth-tusk throne back on the Dreadstar’s gaming system. Then she transformed into someone younger.

  Oh, right, it was still her, just young again. She was the Burnt Polarion’s daughter.

  She motioned to herself.

  I nodded. I could tell her about Axion. She deserved that much.

  “Just you can come in,” I said.

  She entered like smoke through a keyhole, and suddenly we were back at the fountain outside Axion’s study, the one in the gaming system on the Dreadstar.

  “What have you done?” she said.

  “Wait, hold up,” I said. This wasn’t right, didn’t make any sense. “You’re a computer entity, right? Part of the Dreadstar’s gaming system? How are you even here in my dream then?”

  “You don’t understand much, do you?”

  “Nope,” I said. “I’m just an ape-thing, remember? That’s what your family keeps telling me.”

  She nodded. “You’re de-evolved compared to a High Polarion. That’s simply factual. You really shouldn’t feel bad about it, either, as that’s how reality rolls.”

  “De-evolved, huh? Your Uncle Axion just called me suboptimal.”

  “That’s because you rely upon cunning instead of high intellect you don’t possess. I imagine it’s the best you can do.”

  “There you go,” I said.

  She studied me, and the longer she did that, the more cross she looked. “Well, what happened? My uncle is gone.”

  “I remember. I took him off the Dreadstar in a laptop computer.”

  She shook her head. “That was just a copy of the original. The real Axion stayed behind on the Dreadstar.”

  “You mean in stasis?” I asked.

  “No, in the gaming system,” she said.

  “A computer program with the engrams of your uncle,” I said.

  “You make it sound so mechanical and cold. It isn’t. It’s really him, or it was.”

  “What do you mean was?” I said.

  “That’s how I know you found the Negator,” she said. “Uncle Axion is gone, as you negated him. Do you understand how evil that is?”

  I blinked at her. “What are you talking about? He was trying to kill me. It was self-defense.”

  “You negated him,” she said, her voice rising. “It’s as if he never existed.”

  “Uh… I know he existed. He hijacked my ship, threatened my crew, and made my life miserable.”

  “He’s gone from the Dreadstar,” she said. “Every trace, every memory file, every backup of him was negated as if he never was.”

  “I’m not tracking you,” I said.

  “You used a cosmic weapon, you idiot. No one knows who made the Negator or how it came to be. It doesn’t just kill—it erases from reality. And now you plan to turn it on my father, don’t you?”

  The pieces were starting to click together in my sleep-addled brain, but I had to make sure.

  “Wait,” I said. “If I negate someone, they never existed? Like, throughout all of time?”

  “Yes. And if you do that to my father, you’ll negate me as well. How can I exist if he never did? I’ll be erased along with him—every moment of my existence undone.”

  “Oh,” I said, the weight of that hitting me.

  I wondered how we could be talking about Axion then. If he was negated, it seemed like even our memories should have been erased of him. I guess this proved that the gun didn’t erase our memories of Axion, and that seemed strange. But than what did I know?

  “I hope you do understand,” she said. “I hope you see now what monstrosity you’re planning?”

  I had to tear myself away from thinking about complete eraser. Instead, I thought about what she’d just said, considering her logic.

  “So let me get this straight,” I said. “You don’t want me to negate your father because it’ll erase you too. But if I don’t stop him, he’ll use the Null Equation to destroy everything anyway. You’ll be just as gone either way. What’s the difference?”

  She stared at me and stamped her foot as she crossed her arms.

  “You don’t understand anything!” she shouted.

  “I understand plenty,” I said. “And you know what else? You can’t really be here. You’re a computer entity, a program in a game. How can a bunch of code invade my dreams like a spirit?”

  Her expression shifted from anger to something like pity. “You let me in, Kane. And if you let me in… you let him in too.”

  The fountain vanished. She vanished. And the temperature dropped about forty degrees. Then I found myself in a familiar place, the damned study.

  The Burnt Polarion sat at his desk, hunched over his work. Instead of a pen, he held an old-fashioned quill. The tip trailed smoke as he scratched out equations.

  He stopped, and then slowly, terribly, he began to raise his head.

  I tried to wake up then, tried to force my eyes open, to return to the safety of my cabin on the Theron. But I was stuck, trapped in the dream with whatever this creature really was.

  -38-

  The Burnt Polarion raised his head.

  His eyes were dark pits, and his smile was sardonic—as if he’d just heard the universe’s sickest joke. He’d been hunched over his desk like an ancient scholar, but now he straightened, setting down his quill with deliberate care. He adjusted his high collar—an old-fashioned thing that belonged in a vampire movie—and regarded me from across the desk.

  “Well, well, well,” he said. “Kane Hunter. You’ve done the impossible, I see.”

  I could feel him pressing against my mind—not just his presence, but the vast, cold weight of his intellect.

  “You’re not real,” I said.

  “No?” He tilted his head. “Are you real?”

  “I’m dreaming.”

  “Is that what you think is happening?”

  “What else could it be?” I said, but my voice cracked a little. This felt way too solid for a dream.

  “I’m coming up from long-term stasis, Kane. By the time you reach the Dreadstar, I’ll be fully awake. And then you’ll all be mine.”

  “No,” I said.

  He laughed. “You found it, didn’t you? You negated my brother, the fool Axion.”

  He leaned forward, his dark eyes gleaming with something between amusement and hunger.

  “Axion didn’t realize he’d grabbed a viper by the tail when he chose you. Now, you’ve negated him because you have the Negator.”

  I shrugged.

  “I’m amazed that a brute like you could succeed where no one else in all the ages had.”

  “Yeah, well,” I said. “Your brother helped me.”

  “Axion? Who do you mean?”

  I frowned, perplexed. “Are you saying you don’t remember him?”

  “Oh, I do. I remember. My intellect is beyond that of normal people. I’ve extended some of that power to my daughter, even as a computer entity. But Axion? He’s fading from the universe’s memory. In time, even I won’t recall him.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “That’s bullshit. And this isn’t real. It’s just a bad dream because I’m exhausted. I pushed too hard down there—”

  “Do you want to wake up, Kane?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Wake me up.”

  Nothing happened.

  The Burnt Polarion’s grin widened. It was evil, with malice, hatred, and envy all rolled together. Satan must look like this.

  “You’re trapped,” he said. “You’re asleep, and you’re going to stay that way. No one else will use the Negator because you can’t wake up. Soon, I’ll put your crew to sleep too. You’ll all drift through space until I come to collect the Negator for myself.”