Beacon 23: Part Five: Visitor Read Online Free

say.
    “Listen harder,” Rocky tells me.
    I wait. I can feel a thrum in the deck from distant machinery somewhere in the beacon. I can hear the whirring of a pump way down in the living modules. I can hear Rocky breathing, as if rocks can do such a thing. And then I hear the whisper, a hoarse voice launched across the cosmos like a dandelion seed on a breeze, a hiss beyond the vacuum, a single word below the senses, too dull to register, coming like an ache in my bones, like neutrinos dancing across the surface of my skull—
    hello
    It is fainter than my imaginary voices, and yet somehow more real. Able to be believed. I hear Rocky holding his breath. I feel the welcomed numbness of the GWB leach into my mood.
    “Hello,” I whisper back, the word held in my mouth, uttered inside my throat, not passing between my lips. A word of thought.
    remember me
    It’s not a question but a command. A desperate plea. Like how the dead wish to be remembered. Like great-great-grandfathers would have others know their names. Not the war heroes with the medals, but the obscure, those who didn’t fight. Those who died quietly with loved ones around and who were lowered into fathom-deep trenches rather than scraped out of kilometer-long ones.
    The Ryph Lord moves, comes at me with his fist uncurled, those fearsome claws sharp as razors, and reaches past my bound arms. The alien grabs my shirt and yanks it up to my neck, handling me roughly, but almost as if arms so powerful have no choice.
    Alien skin touches my flesh, my gnarled and ropey scars, the Ryph’s palm placed flat against my skin. I look down. The Lord’s hand covers the three gouges that lead into my surgically repaired knots of flesh. It covers the gouges perfectly.
    remember me
    “I remember you,” I say, the words trapped in my throat. I know that I am dead and that none of this is real, but nightmares aren’t escaped so easily. Dreams are where men are free, not nightmares. I can escape no more easily than I can slip my bonds. I am back on Yata, beneath the grand Ryph hive, the last one of my squad alive, sitting in front of the bomb we’d carried across hellish klicks. But I don’t set off the bomb. And then a Ryph Lord opens me up. It’s the last thing I remember.
    “I remember,” I whisper. I little more than think the words. This is the same Ryph Lord. He came back to finish what he started.
    look
    I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking at. The Lord moves his open hand up and presses it against my face. I don’t know how I’m supposed to see anything. Rocky gives me some advice:
    “Close your eyes, asshole.”
    I smile. I feel drunk from the GWB. And Rocky still sounds angry at me for drilling a hole through his skull. I only did it to keep him close. Woulda lost him otherwise. Do we have to hurt the ones we love to keep them close?
    When I shut my eyes, I see the Ryph Lord standing in front of me, just as he is, but with his hands to his side. And yet I can still feel his hand over my face. My mind relaxes. I am no longer fighting life. This is what we fight. Not death. We fight life. I let go of that, and I can hear Rocky smile.
    Your war-mate, who came here on our behalf, she is gone.
    Clearer now, I hear the Lord talking. And I see visions beyond him of Scarlett, my old love from the trenches, who came to my beacon and spoke nonsense, who died in my arms, whose lifeless body was carted off by a bounty hunter in all black who never uttered a word.
    I think all of this, and by thinking it, I say it. I say Scarlett’s name.
    War is coming , the Lord says.
    “I know,” I say. “It’s always coming. But you could stop. You don’t have to come for us.”
    Both have to stop. Only we can stop this. Only you can stop this.
    I think Scarlett’s insanity has leaked into my thoughts. Her nonsense is mixing in with the rest.
    A great fleet moves to crush another great fleet. It will pass through here. You will not allow it.
    I sense more than just