Nova by Margaret Fortune

Author:Margaret Fortune
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-698-19768-8
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2015-06-02T07:00:00+00:00

I dream again tonight—more of those fleeting sensations when you feel like you’re both asleep and awake. The images make perfect sense and yet no sense at all.

The barbed wire fence stretches long and taut between the posts. On either end, a guard tower rises up into the air, manned with soldiers armed with LS-3500s. They’re merely a gesture though, nothing more, and we all know it. There is no safety; not here, not anywhere.

On the post, a red light remains dull and unlit. The force fence is offline again. Just as well. No one really believed it was working anyway. Not after what happened before.

A siren screams, so shrill I can almost see it with my eyes, red and blinding. No, that’s the light from the post, suddenly come to life. I run to the fence and jerk my head back and forth, frantically searching for the threat, but no one is there. No one at all.

I’m inside now. The room is small and spare, with a table and chairs, a flag, and little else.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” someone asks me. It is a man in the tired green and grays of the Tellurian fleet. His face looks as tired as the clothes he’s wearing, the smudge of dirt on his face matching the dirt on his uniform.

“What choice do I have?”

“There’s always a choice. Even in the darkest hour, we still have the freedom to choose.”

He’s trying to be encouraging, but I can’t help laughing at the blatant lie. I shake my head. “Not me.”

The man nods, accepting my decision. His eyes are full of resignation. “I’m sorry. You know that, right?”

I laugh, the sound bitter and hard. “Save your apologies for your maker. You’ll need them.”

The scene changes again and now I’m in some kind of bunker, all gray and concrete and hard.

“Lia. Lia, sweetie, please!”

The woman presses against the glass, her eyes pleading and scared. She is beautiful, though her blonde hair is lank and greasy, and black circles ring her eyes. As I watch, her body seems to shrink in on itself until her clothes hang off her form in limp folds. A yellowish cast comes over her skin, and I know she will not last much longer.

“I don’t know what they told you, but it’s not true. Look in my eyes—you know me! You know what I say is true.”

“I know,” I tell her, resting my hands gently on the other side of the glass from hers. “I know.”

In a way, she’s right, and it’s that understanding that takes my heart apart every time.

Suddenly the glass is gone, and she’s right there. I reach up to touch her face, my hands trembling as I cradle her papery skin.

Fangs explode from her mouth. Her hands twist in my hair, an unearthly howl rising from her throat, and then she lunges—

I wake up screaming.

I’m so loud that when I get my bearings back, I think I must have woken half the cargo bay.

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