The Blood Solution (Approaching Infinity Book 3) (30 page)

The four of them were well into their daily routine when they received a visitor, who promised to crowd the block further. Forbis Vays arrived with a request to join them from here on out. It sounded perfectly reasonable to Jav. After all, he and Mao had basically monopolized Blue Squad since they arrived. But there was one thing to address.

Jav excused himself and jumped down from the gravity block. He placed a hand on Vays’s shoulder, gave him a conspiratorial look, and walked him out of earshot of the others.

“Look, Vays, I don’t pretend to speak for Blue Squad, but
you
came
here
. If you’re going to use my block, then you have to put in time sparring with Mao. It would be good for her to go up against some weapons.”

Vays made a sideways smile and stared at Jav. “Am I so transparent?”

Jav pursed his lips.

“Okay,” Vays said. “That’s fair. It doesn’t have to be here, and I don’t have to have Blue Squad’s full attention. Though it would be good to get in some practice with both Lowe and Set, quite frankly, I’m more interested in sparring with you.”

Jav gave him a suspicious look. “With me?”

“It’s no secret that I don’t make friends easily. Maybe I don’t make them at all,” he said grinning, “but, as I’ve told you before, I respect you, Holson. I respect your fists. I respect what they can do against enemies and what they can do against my sword.

“I know you’ve been pushing your gravity rank. It’s not that I’m jealous or that I want to compete with you on that, but if you
are
improving, then you would make an even better sparring partner than you were before. Besides, we’re peers. It wouldn’t be a bad idea for us to keep each other sharp. Eventually, Blue Squad will split up and go back to their respective homes. You and I are going to be working together for a long time to come.”

Jav let him speak, staring at him dumbly until he’d finished. “Wow. Okay. You’re more than welcome to join us. We can work out a schedule for the future. As a favor, though, I
would
like to see you work with Mao, if only a little.”

“I can do that.”

Jav smiled, took a deep breath, and moved to usher Vays back to the block. “Then welcome.”

Like most things now, work on the latest version of Gran Kwes was proceeding according to schedule. In the Grans’ docking bay, beneath the access scaffolding that surrounded it, it was starting to take shape, though this iteration was one and half times larger than its two predecessors. The engineers were building it up, adding the black cubes that characterized all versions of the Gran to a spindly steel skeleton which would be abandoned once construction was complete. The cubes clung, like conglomerations of cells, to the skeleton in asymmetric masses, giving a sense—at a distance, anyway—of life; life perhaps ravished by some disease, but nonetheless vital and on the mend.

Jav and Raus stood at the rail overlooking the bay. Neither had spoken for some time and then finally Jav broke the silence.

“Ren and I used to come here to watch them working on the Grans. Froster, too, sometimes. I don’t know why, but it’s comforting somehow. It’s like a reminder that this isn’t all a facade, that it won’t just shatter suddenly for no reason, that there’s structure, that there’re lives invested in the Empire and its progress.”

Raus nodded, raising his eyebrows in acknowledgement.

“They’re making progress on Ban, Raus. We just can’t see it.”

Raus stared off in the direction of the construction, but didn’t really see anything.

“I’ve stopped counting the years,” he said flatly. “Every time I’ve looked in on him, he’s been the same. Just exactly like he was the day I first put him into that tank.

“I’m sure you’re right, though. I’ve seen things done here that I could never have imagined before. Miracles, wonders, and a horror or two.

“Thanks for coming with me today,” Raus said, turning to look at Jav. “It means a lot to me.”

“Of course.”

He saw her face and remembered it. It was beautiful, and it made his heart ache. Jennifer, with her lovely hair like a silken bronze waterfall, framing her porcelain-perfect face. Jennifer with her bright, intelligent eyes, and the kittenish whims she saved only for him. She wasn’t his, but there could be no doubt that she was meant for him. And yet, perhaps that was justification enough to lose her. He saw her now as he’d seen her then, with that sad, wistful smile on her lips as the golden apparition before him—the Sun Lion, some part of him knew—rent her limb from limb. All he could do was watch and rail. He knew that the Sun Lion had been tricked, that it hadn’t meant to kill her, but this he learned afterwards and still wouldn’t believe or accept until it was too late and didn’t matter. He was a stone set into motion, rolling, rolling, and every possible course ran downhill.

Like a stone, he rolled indifferently through blood, through bone, through bodies live and dead. Everything was on display for him, but passing by at breakneck speed. He could only make sense of some of it, only what was vivid enough and shocking enough to pierce his tautly drawn awareness. And then he slowed.

When he slowed, he was able to find an anchor. It wasn’t Jennifer, and yet it
was
Jennifer. Or rather, she and Jennifer shared some underlying sameness, as if they were reflections—with minor distortions—of a perfect, radiant source. But then Mai, olive-skinned and black-haired, died as well. Taken from him as Jennifer had been, and just as unfairly. Mai. God, how he missed her. But didn’t he still get to see her? Certainly she had died, but. . .

Now the face he saw belonged to someone he’d nearly forgotten. Anis Lausden. Strange how all of these women, shared that underlying sameness. It wasn’t how they looked, though there might be some similarities now and again. It wasn’t in their speech, or in their manner. It was in their spirit, what lay at the core, at their centers. Poor Anis Lausden. What had happened to her, and why was it that she had to die? And she wouldn’t be the last to die, either. A succession of faces now competed for his attention, faces he didn’t recognize, women he’d never met and would never meet, but these women he knew just the same. Every one of them was a clear reflection—a resounding echo—of the source. One stood at the forefront. She wasn’t the source but she was physically close and he would meet her soon. She told him her name and smiled at him, making him feel warm and wanted and full of immeasurable potential. But then she frowned and everything faded.

Jav was suddenly wide awake in his bed, staring up at the ceiling in the dark. Mao was snoring quietly beside him. He was oddly excited and depressed at the same time. A name danced upon the dark waves of his mind. It bobbed, nearly took shape, bobbed again and was gone. So too was the image of a pretty girl’s face. He turned onto his side to look at Mao and was filled even more with a strange and overwhelming sense of bittersweetness. He reached out and gently stroked her cheek, not at all sure what his feelings meant.

Jav and Vays did their sparring at Vays’s facility. On other days, Vays was making good on his promise to help train Mao, but Jav could tell that, though acquiescent enough, he didn’t enjoy his sessions with her. That Lowe and Set were there made up for it to some degree, but Vays wasn’t shy—nor, thankfully, was he particularly vocal anymore—about spending as little time as possible with people he felt were his inferiors.

When they’d first started practicing together, Vays had chosen a blunted, heavy plastic sword, but Jav insisted on a real, sharpened blade. After all, the competition that made them Shades in the first place had required such, and if they couldn’t get comfortable using their true weapons with each other, the training wouldn’t do them any good up against real enemies. Vays had consented without argument.

Today was their day at Vays’s facility. Both were in their grays, though Jav wore a white T-shirt and Vays a gray tank top. Both were dripping with sweat. Vays played his long, slim blade smoothly, expertly, but fruitlessly. Jav always managed to vacate the space that Vays’s blade carved through the instant before it came. Jav had unwittingly taken to operating in pure defense. Somewhere down below conscious thought, was the simple, matter-of-fact conviction that he could take Vays anytime he wanted to.

“Damn, Holson,” Vay’s said, panting. “Your extra work on the gravity block is starting to piss me off.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t keep up with you.”

“You
could
.”

“Yes, I
could
use my power. I’d be able to keep up and even surpass you. For a short time.” Vays shook his head while he danced, lunged, recovered, tried again. “I don’t want to rely on that.”

“If it wins you the fight, it doesn’t matter if it’s only for a short time.”

“Maybe, but I don’t think I’d be too popular or doing any of us any favors by killing you at practice.”

Jav chuckled. “No. Least of all me.”

“I need to be pushed. My father did that for me up until the time came that I could beat him. No, I need to be pushed. And while I can’t seem to lay my blade on you, I don’t think you’re really even trying. You haven’t attacked in the last ten minutes, and I don’t think it’s for lack of opportunity.”

“Oh,” Jav said awkwardly, realizing that Vays was right.

“Come on, Holson. I can take it.”

“All right,” Jav said, but he sounded a little unsure. He stepped forward, almost artlessly, striking the flat of Vays’s blade with his forearm, knocking it out of the way easily, and ending up in position to put a clawed hand to Vays’s throat.

Vays gasped in shock, his mouth closing and resolving into a sneer.

Jav backed off and allowed Vays to regain his composure.

“Okay,” Vays said, trying to master his burgeoning anger. “Let’s try that again.”

Jav nodded. “Right.”

Vays held his sword before his chest, tip pointing straight up, in the signature salute of the Single Element Ghost Sword. He knocked the blade with his knuckles and a sonorous tone began to sound from the steel’s core. Jav knew that a Union Blade could kill him in one stroke, but he was unconcerned, because he also knew that the only way Vays could touch him was if he allowed it or if Vays invoked the power he’d perfected at the Locsard Psychic Academy.

“Use what you’ve got, Vays,” Jav said. “If you don’t, you might as well still be using that plastic practice sword. You said you needed to be pushed.”

Goaded to new and swelling anger, Vays rushed forward, but Jav matched his movements easily. If anything, Jav had become more elusive than before, all liquid grace and impossible precision. Vays could see some of Dolma Set in Jav now. What frustrated him about this was his knowledge that it was unintentional. Recently, he’d overheard Set and Lowe talking about Jav, about how he was like a savant, picking up techniques and unconsciously adapting them and working them seamlessly even
naturally
into his Eighteen Heavenly Claws. Truly, his superior grade F-gene was a terrible thing.

Humility wasn’t something that came easily to Vays. He’d respected his father. He’d come to respect Kalkin. He’d never lied about respecting Holson, but he’d always considered them peers, near equals with Jav having some distance to cover before they could be called true equals. But now, he was seeing the truth. It hadn’t always been like this. Jav had simply gotten better. Vays had been naive to think that Jav would progress no further and it vexed him to no end.

His vexation mounted when Jav once again got inside his defense and drove a palm, like a cotton hammer, into his chest. The blow unrooted him and sent him sprawling, so that he landed heavily on his butt. He was so angry that he thought his eyes might explode right out of his head. But he gathered up the anger, focused it into the blade, and invoked the psychic mechanism which increased his physical prowess in every way to one hundred and twenty percent of his normal ability.

Vays performed an easy kip-up and powered forward, his sword tracing intricate figures that, for the first time that day, harried Jav with a real challenge.

“Good!” Jav cried, increasing his speed to match his opponent’s.

Vays ground his teeth. Jav was giving him exactly what he’d asked for, but it was biting into his ego. Raising the stakes was what it was all about. There could be no improvement without such. He worried Jav with his blade, all the while preparing mentally for one of the Single Element Ghost Sword’s most deadly techniques.

In the space between seconds, time stopped for Vays. He marked with his impossibly fast eye the one hundred and eight targets all across Jav’s torso, head, and arms to be lanced by the Star Factory. When time resumed for Vays, the blade was in motion, a blur of horizontal rain, every streak perfectly parallel to every other. And as he let the Star Factory begin, he noticed the light go out of Jav’s eyes. Though time had resumed, it moved slowly, and he could see that Jav’s attention was somewhere else. Something had seized his consciousness, and he appeared to be completely vulnerable to the Star Factory.

Jav watched as Vays rose up from the ground. He could see that Vays was incensed but that he was already turning that anger to his use. And finally he’d gone one hundred and twenty percent. Now the real challenge began. But then something snapped inside Jav. Something in the sponge of his brain had been drawn taut and become hard, and succumbing to immeasurable pressure, it broke. What had broken and what had broken it he did not know, but it was devastating. His mind felt like a desert, barren and empty. Lonely. Cripplingly lonely. Vays’s blade had gone plural before his eyes, but he had no time for this. He closed his hand around the blade just before it could pierce the layer of muscle that offered thin protection to his heart.

Vays didn’t move. He simply gaped. He’d never seen nor heard of anyone ever catching, let alone
holding
, the blade of the Star Factory. The speed with which it was delivered, the strength that Vays could put behind it, the finely honed blade of the sword itself, empowered with the Single Element—not quite a Union Blade, but far more than any normal blade of coarse steel or treated ceramic: any one of these should have been reason enough for the success of the Star Factory. He simply could not believe that all three of them combined had amounted to failure. Nor was he disappointed. For a moment, he thought he might have actually killed Jav with such an attack, making the earlier joke into some kind of terrible prophecy. He eased the blade back and Jav let it go.