The Queen of Titan

The old man in tattered coveralls followed Dav Jase as he tried to pre-flight his ship, biting at his heels, raking him with his tongue. Dav did his best to ignore the verbal onslaught. He knew the kind, frustrated old men desperate to blame their own wasted lives on anyone unfortunate enough to listen. That much, at least, he could understand. Life in the Reaches was never easy, seldom fair, and always, always too brief.

Even for the Chosen.

"That's the problem with the Authority now'a times," the old man said, his accent so thick Dav could barely understand his drifting, watery voice. "Always quick to send in the shooters if the taxes come late, but where are they when the real trouble brews up, eh?" A crooked smile split the man's leathery face. "Not that I'm meaning you, you understand."

Dav said nothing. Instead, he ran his hand along the underside of the port stabilizer. His fingers flicked over dozens of deep gouges in the diamond-hard carbon. Nimble as the little corsair was, even he couldn't avoid every strike. He ducked under the slender hull and began inspecting the starboard side. The old man followed, his endless stream of complaints echoing softly in the cavernous fuel-bay. "No, siree, I would never mean the likes of you. Why, you're all the law we got, ain't it so?"

"Yes," Dav said, barely paying attention. He frowned as his fingers slid over another, deeper bite in the nano-tubed skin, the tiny puncture fresh, a souvenir of the morning's encounter. No doubt there would be more such scars should he ever catch up again to the enigmatic scavenger.

If the old fool nipping at is heels ever finished refueling his ship.

"And that's the truth of it," the old man declared with false sincerity. "All the law there is out here in the Reaches. I would never be so bold as to suggest one of the Chosen was derelict. You know where your duty lies, to be sure. Not that it would keep you from going out after your dark-half if you should cross paths, now would it? I mean, what's a few of our lives compared to something as important as chasing down your darker half. Ain't that so, Sir Pilot?"

"Uh huh." Dav pretended not to hear the insults. His cold, gray-blue eyes narrowed as he inspected the outbound weapons pod, the drone ports gleaming with an oily, rainbow sheen. Quiet relief swept through him. He would sooner lose one of his own hands than find damage to the corsair's weapon systems.

A deep, sighing crack rang through the bay, louder than the soft whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of the fuel pumps. Startled, Dav ducked out from under the pod and spun a half-circle. Instinctively, his right hand dropped to the pistol strapped to his hip.

"Ha! Gotcha, didn't it!" The old man laughed uproariously, slapping his leg. "Why, tain't nothing but these old walls creaking in the cold. Not that you immortals would know. I don't imagine the stations your kind keeps ever pop and creak, now do they?" Again, he laughed, the sound as pleasant as a burst of static. "Think of the irony, eh? One of the Chosen scared witless by a little old vacuum pop!"

Dav spun on the old man, his hand still hovering beside his holster. Unblinking, he said, "Are you going to see that my ship is fueled, or should I put a hole in you and do it myself?"

The man's lined face paled until he was as gray as the sooty walls around them. He swallowed, bowed quickly then ducked away, back to inspect the thick umbilicalis that connected the corsair to the bay's fueling dock. Frightened though the withered fool might have been, Dav could still hear him muttering to himself.

"Arrogant prig." The old man shot him a look of pure hatred from beneath his untended eyebrows, but looked away the instant he saw Dav watching. "Wouldn't know his dark-half if he crossed it."

Dav smiled grimly, then slowly let his hand drift away from the pistol. Sometimes, he doubted it himself.

He had danced with the ship before.

It had been a brief encounter, a flash of laser fire and a tracery of engine noise, but he had recognized the other ship at once, savoring the memory like the half-forgotten flavor of a childhood treat. Dav actually licked his lips. In front of him, the display lit the forward view with torrents of information, velocities and masses, positions of known hazards to navigation. More information poured directly into his brain, relayed by the nerve bundles in his wrists and ankles, ship systems and targeting as instinctive as breath.

The target wasn't using neural amplifiers. Dav hadn't expected any, not from a ship of this vintage. As the distance between them fell, the sensors narrowed his field of attention until the interloper filled his mind. Heavy engines thrust out from a squat, asymmetrical body, the ancient framework festooned with antennae and weapon turrets. Automatically, the vast library housed in the corsair's data-banks supplied a name. Queen of Titan.

He blinked, startled by the revelation. "That can't be," he whispered. "The Queen vanished centuries ago."

The information reloaded, replaying in quick-time through his brain, the computer insistent. Dav nodded, as if he was carrying on a conversation with his ship. The nimble little fighter owned him in a way no lover could, possessed him down to a cellular level, the hyper-virus that lengthened his life in constant contact with the corsair's systems. Though his body and mind might be nestled behind the titanium safety of the cockpit, Dav felt the ship as an extension of his flesh.

Only one other entity in all the universe might touch him deeper than did the symbiotic network he shared with the machine. And that creature, Dav thought sourly, was unexpectedly tied to the battered freighter in front of him. A tingle, a subtle, deep pull called to him, his psychic twin he so close he felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. Soon, one way or another, his echo would reveal himself. And when he did, Dav would kill him. Or he would kill Dav. Either way, the equation would be balanced.

Ahead, the interloping ship slid out from the shadow of a massive hab-tube, hanging close to the long abandoned structure. "Hello, my dear," Dav whispered to the image displayed on the screen.

The other vessel gave no indication that it had discovered Dav. He was running silent, his thrusters cold, relying on the benders for movement as he tracked inward. If the pilot of the other ship suspected he was closing the gap between them, she gave no sign.

Dav frowned. Why, he wondered, did he think of the scavenger as a woman? Despite the name, the Queen of Titan was nothing more than another hoary old shadow, a relic from the dust shrouded past. The ship housed a queen within her hull no more than Dav's ship sailed beneath sheets of canvas like its namesakes once had done. Still, he thought of the other pilot as a woman. Perhaps it was the quiet, almost sensuous way the ship slid in and out of view, working through the tangled mesh of habitats that cluttered the outer reaches of the solar system like a sargasso of carbon-fiber tunnels and solar collectors.

The Queen slid behind a massive wheel, the old structure still rotating ages after the fragile humans who had once lived within it vanished. Chancing discovery, Dav fired a brief burst with his thrusters. Already, his targeting system projected a series of concentric rings along the other ship's flight-path. The last time they had met, the Queen of Titan had bested him, firing and then tearing away before he had even fixed a trajectory. Bitterly, Dav accepted the failure as his own, his overly cautious need to follow procedure slowing his reaction by the millisecond it took the other ship to escape. He had no intention of repeating that mistake.

"What are you looking for?" he wondered out loud.

Most of the junkers, the scavenge ships who eked out a living by stripping the ancient habitats and selling what they found on the black market, had abandoned the Sub-Uranian orbits centuries ago, moving out to better hunting grounds in the Kuiper Belts. The inner system was as dead as Earth itself, the bones long since picked over. Why, he wondered, would a legend like the Queen of Titan be prowling the ancient forests of nanotube glory?

"It's a trap," a soft voice whispered in his mind. "Get away while you can "

Dav pushed the thought from his mind. He was Chosen, sworn to preserve. The past and the present were one and the same, a continuum against which his own life, long as it might be, was merely a spark, a flash against the hungry darkness. Even if he knew beyond any doubt that he was hurtling toward his own doom, he would go on. To do less was more than dishonor. Run now and it would eat at him for the rest of his life until he was as hollow as the empty structures around him.

Let his dark-half run, Dav told himself, steeling his nerves. For his part, he would live in the light until the end.

The old vessel slid once again into shadow, vanishing behind a twisted labyrinth of broken solar collectors. Dav fired another burst from his thrusters, closing the gap further. When the Queen of Titan reappeared a few moments later, he could see it without enhancement, a drifting mote backlit by the ruddy glare of sunlight poking through the twisted skeleton of what once had been civilization. She was as ugly to the naked eye as to the scanners, but he couldn't look away, the vista hypnotic in the way a man might watch his blood ooze from a wound. Something about the ancient craft called to him, whispered seductively, nipped at his neck with horny teeth. The sensation was almost sexual, the game of chase and play pounding in time with his heart. Again, he let the scanners roam across the other ship, hungry to discover what lay inside it.

"Who are you?" Dav whispered as the probes rippled over the pitted hull. His eyes narrowed to slits, his mind riding the thin, wavering line between sleep and wakefulness. Millennia earlier, his state of mind would have been called hypnagogic, a sleepwalker staring into his own fluid dreams, but to Dav the hazy shift in reality was simply the path that carried him. From childhood he had been trained to walk this path, balanced between the welcoming light and the icy, seductive shadows. His breathing slowed, his heartbeat a muffled gong. Downward his conscience crept, lingering over the ship's angular form, probing for a doorway to enter the pilot's mind.

A faint smile creased his face as he found it.

The other pilot's attention drifted, a momentary distraction, but that was all it took for Dav to slip in. Now he saw the Queen of Titan's cockpit as clearly as if he sat inside it, the banks of equipment so antiquated he was amazed the ship still flew. His smile widened, a glint of teeth hiding wolfishly behind his thin lips. He had been right. The pilot was a woman.

She was not young, and certainly not a near immortal like himself, no hint of bio-enhancements in her nerves. But, she was still vital, dripping with life in a way only a shortee could perceive. A rapacious, predatory veneer overlaid her psyche, a feral patina guiding her actions. She was a hunter, a wild thing prowling the empty places, ruthless in her pleasure. To Dav's somnambulant mind she seemed an awakened goddess, a carnal nymph cast among the stars, sexual as a cat. His own desire peaked as her thoughts drew him deeper. Was she thinking about a lover?

"Yes," Dav whispered.

He had no idea how deeply he had been drawn into this strange woman's mind, as if they were two pieces of an interlocking puzzle, shaped to fit like gears in some ancient clockwork. Somewhere, nearly lost in the pleasure of the encounter, the warning voice chimed again.

'It's a trap.'

Dav blinked. Suddenly, he drew away from the woman, her hypnotic sweetness broken as he crossed yet another mind swirling in the ether, the touch so cold he felt the flesh prickle between his shoulders.

"Where did that come from?" Dav said, once more fully awake. He drew back, the single touch of that other mind confusing, as if he had glanced into a mirror and found the face staring back at him no longer his own.

With a shock, he realized he had brushed his Dark-Half. Here, amid the fortresses of dust, he had actually sensed his psychic twin. Impossible as it seemed, he had been right about the earlier encounter. Slowly, he shook his head, his mind drifting back to his boyhood.

"Dav, you're hopeless!"

The other boy was taller than Dav, fair-skinned with a wild cap of blond curls that even his cadet's cap couldn't completely hide. At fourteen Luven Dool was everything Dav wanted to be, outgoing, charming, a bundle of laughing, unrestrained energy. Already, the female cadets - and some of the younger trainers - had begun to notice Luven, casting sidelong glances as he sauntered past. The boy pretended to be oblivious to their attention while poor, unremarkable Dav could only tag along in his shadow.

More maddening still, despite Dav's dogged, mind-numbing effort, Luven bested him at every test, academics coming as easily to him as everything else he did. Only in one area, the ability to mind-touch, could Dav actually out perform his friend. And even that mild accomplishment was eclipsed by the knowledge that Luven not only didn't care about the touch, but actively scoffed at the idea.

"Everyone has a dark twin," Dav insisted. "It's our fate."

"Not mine." Luven grinned, the skin around his eyes crinkling with ready humor. "I'm my own person. I don't have a fate."

Dav looked nervously around them. To say such a thing was tantamount to heresy. All the Chosen believed in fate, didn't they? Relieved that no one was in earshot, Dav tried to think of an argument to counter his friend's stubborn resistance.

Walking swiftly, the time between classes short, they stepped out of a narrow tunnel onto a broad, tiled courtyard. Overhead, clearly visible past the transparent bubble that shielded the Citadel, lay the star-dusted blackness. Along the eastern edge of the dome rose the vast curve of Pluto. Centuries of the Chosen had trained here on Charon, the massive complex of tunnels and domes so steeped in tradition it felt at times as if the air itself pulsed with history. Space-benders enhanced the weak gravity, the boundaries between generators weaving a giddy pattern of shifting forces as they crossed from one region to the next. Dav swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry.

"You have to believe in your dark-half," he said.

"Why?"

"Because, without one, what keeps us in the light? If we don't have a twin to fight against, what holds us from the shadows?"

Luven began to laugh. "You sound like Old Bullet Head."

"Don't call Master Bu'huv 'Bullet Head,'" Dav whispered sharply. "Do you know what would happen if someone heard you say that?"

"Yeah." Luven's grin broadened. "First they would give me a toothbrush and then they would point at the nearest latrine and tell me to scrub it until it shined like the sun."

"No," Dav said, his worry rising. "They would expel you."

"Expel me?" Mock horror shifted across Luven's handsome face. "Dav, they're not going to expel any of us. They can't even fill the roster for morning chow, let alone find enough pilots to work the Reaches. Trust me, they're too desperate for fresh recruits to kick any of us out."

Dav said nothing. As much as he doted on his friend, he couldn't bring himself to follow such a cynical line of thought. To do so denied the very reason they existed. Already there were those among the general population who whispered the Chosen had outlived their time and should be set aside, left to wither like the ancient structures they guarded. A shiver ran down the back of Dav's neck. He refused to surrender who he was, even if it meant going against his only friend.

"You're wrong, Luven," he said softly. "We all have a dark twin, whether we admit it or not. You'll see. Trust me, someday you'll see."

"Maybe you're right." Luven sighed. With an abrupt twist of mood, the taller boy started to run toward a low, gray stone hall. Looking over his shoulder, he called back, "Come on, slowpoke. I'll race you to the chow hall!"

The argument already forgotten, Dav chased after his only friend, desperate to catch up. As usual, he could not.

Dav smiled wistfully as the memory faded. How long ago had that encounter been? A century at least, perhaps more? It had been during the long season before they were fledged, assigned to duty despite their untested years. In many ways, it had been the last happy period of his life, the brief interlude between childhood and adulthood a placid island basking in the warm glow of memory, the sharp edges blunted by the intervening decades. Luven had been assigned to convoy patrol, escorting the flow of goods between the outposts scattered among the cold, ante-solar clouds, while Dav had gone on to the more traditional role of sweeping the abandoned Inner Reaches. He had never questioned their assignments, but had secretly wondered why he, and not the more competent Luven, should have been given the choice position? Though it could never be proven, he suspected it had something to do with Luven's maverick attitude. The gods knew it wasn't because of his ability.

He drew a deep breath then sighed. It had been years since he had seen Luven, and he missed him deeply. Shaking his head, Dav brought his attention back to the battered ship lurking ahead of him, drifting among the twisted buttresses of carbon and steel.

With deceptive speed the corsair sped past the edge of a ruined habitat and slipped within the jungle of tubes and fractured collectors. The size of the tubes was daunting. What seemed from a distance as little more than a congealed mass of pipe now showed itself to be enormous, each tube a city unto itself. How many minor planets and asteroids had been stripped to create the labyrinth of interconnected dwellings? Old legends insisted that a traveler, if they knew all the myriad paths, could walk from inside the scorched orbit of Earth to the very edge of the solar cloud without ever stepping outside the warm confines of the artificial environments. Dav smiled at the thought of some hoary old pedestrian shuffling even now along the darkened corridors on his quest toward the finial end of the tube cities.

Ahead, a brief flash of sunlight glinted off metal, the reflection betraying the Queen's position. Dav tweaked the forward bender and let the corsair accelerate into the maze. The ship banked hard to starboard, the nose dipping as it followed the change in gravity. Dav checked his instruments. Within minutes he would be in firing range. The thought should have made him hungry with anticipation. Instead, he frowned. Had he really touched his own dark twin out here, or had it simply been his over-worked imagination? A new idea tugged at him.

Was he losing his mind?

Carefully, he cast the thought net out once more, but the elusive touch was gone. Now, even the Queen of Titan's pilot lay beyond his grasp, the tenuous connection with her severed. Perhaps, he thought glumly, he had imagined the entire incident.

"Stop it," he said, scolding himself. The Chosen depended on their confidence, and to lose it now, moments before battle, was an invitation to defeat.

Again, his thoughts drifted back through the years. Another version of himself and Luven flashed through his senses, the two of them still little more than children. When had it been, he wondered? Sometime after his first tour, his leave cut short by an emergency call-out to some little border skirmish. It would have been, he recalled with a dour shake of the head, his first real action. He had been leaving, strutting across the launch deck toward the waiting line of ships, his flight-gear banging at his knees when he glimpsed a familiar figure ambling in his direction.

"Luven?"

Dav had stared at his friend, astounded at the changes the intervening months had wrought. Luven grinned and waved, but made no effort to hurry. His uniform was rumpled, as if he had just stepped out of the cockpit, a heavy carry-bag slung over his shoulder. His hair was longer now, his face fuller, the confident flicker in his eyes bright as ever. But now, unlike the exuberant youth who had left a year earlier for patrol duty, practically jumping in his haste to be away, Luven moved with the assurance of a veteran, the old swagger tempered by experience. Dav recognized it immediately. Luven had gone out as a boy, but returned a man. Self-consciously, Dav had tensed, his own confidence lagging.

"Dav!" Luven let the bag slip off is shoulder and whump to the scorched deck. Before Dav could say anything, Luven threw his arms around him and pulled him into a hug, thumping him on the back hard enough to knock the wind from him.

"How long have you been in?" Dav asked awkwardly.

"Just landed. You?"

"A couple days." Dav shrugged. "I've been recalled to my squadron."

"Damn." The regret in Luven's voice sounded sincere. "I was hoping for a chance to talk. I have so much to tell you."

"Oh?"

"It's a wide universe we live in." Luven glanced at the transparent dome high overhead. "The Reaches are just the beginning. If you could see the places I've been. It's amazing. There must be a hundred-thousand cities out there, some of them so distant no one from the inner system has ever landed there. It's wonderful!"

"Then," Dav had asked hesitantly, "You'll be going back on convoy duty?"

"Even better." Luven paused to let the tension build, his blue eyes practically glowing with excitement. "I applied for the Exploration Services and was accepted. I'll be going out to the heliopause. Maybe even beyond it." Again, he paused. "I was hoping you might apply, too."

"Me?" Dav stiffened, taken aback by the question. Never had the thought crossed his mind, the idea of serving out his career in the distant, sunless regions anathema. Stuttering slightly, he shook his head. "I... I think my destiny lies In-System."

"Oh no, not that again." Luven's grin brightened as he took Dav by the shoulders and gave him a friendly shake. "There is no destiny. Come on, why spend your life guarding a bunch of crumbling ruins when we could be out discovering entire civilizations? Trust me, until you've seen the outer reaches, you can't begin to imagine what it's like. There's a city called Aquadeen where the entire habitat is filled with oxygenated water and the people swim in it like fish. And then there's Voogal. They call it the City of Walking Miracles because every woman living in it is a sorceress. And what woman they are!" Dav waggled his eyebrows lasciviously. "Come on, what do you say?"

"I..." Dav shifted his weight to his other foot, unnerved as always by his friend's intensity. "I'll think about it."

"Promise?"

"Yes. Of course." Dav had smiled, then held out his hand to shake. "I really have to report in to my commanding officer. We launch on the hour."

They shook hands, then Dav gathered his gear and turned to go.

"Remember what you promised," Luven had called after him.

"I will," Dav said, waving. By the time he returned though, several weeks later, Luven had shipped out again. It was, Dav thought sadly, the last time they had seen each other.

A faint ping echoed inside his earpiece, the firing computers calling for his input. Dav blinked, surprised that he had let his attention wander so badly. Chagrined at his carelessness, he quickly recalculated the coordinates. The images on the screens flickered as the corsair followed the ancient freighter deeper into the maze, the two ships mere specks against the massive dwellings that stared mutely upon the unfolding scene. He kept the corsair near one of the abandoned tubes, using the cream colored structure to conceal himself while he stalked the Queen.

"Now," he whispered, bending so close to the control panel his face nearly brushed its cold surface, "You are mine."

Dav's fingers tightened around the joystick as the concentric circles closed around the swiftly moving icon. His chest began to ache and he realized he had been holding his breath. Again, the freighter vanished behind one of the intervening struts that connected the enormous tubes. A cold smile flitted across his face in anticipation. When the ship reappeared, he decided, he would announce his position and fire, giving the other pilot no chance to either flee or strike back before her ship was disabled..

His finger began to twitch, dancing like a butterfly's wing upon the firing stud.

"Having fun?" a sardonic voice blared inside his earphone.

Dav jumped, startled so badly his head banged against the backrest of his chair. He scowled, furious, his first thought that he had been led into an ambush.. Quickly, he searched for the new-comer, the computers scanning for the signal source. To his relief, he saw that the frequency was one of their own discrete data-feeds.

"Unidentified ship, what is your position?"

"Unidentified?" The voice in his earphones said in mock dismay. "Dav, you wound me."

Warm laughter followed. Dav stared at the screen.

"Luven?"

Dav wasn't certain whether he had actually spoken the word or not. Suddenly, the flood of memories made sense. Small wonder his old friend had been on his mind, his enhanced nerves picking up Luven's approach and relaying it as an almost palpable sense of nostalgia.

"I was wondering when you were going to notice me," Luven said, laughing. Information flashed across an inset window, showing the new ship less than a thousand kilometers out and falling fast. Though Luven sounded more mature, his voice seasoned by years and distance, Dav had no doubt it was his friend.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Looking for you, what else?" Luven's signal clicked out for a moment, probably blocked by the tangle of deserted habitats, but quickly returned. "I landed on Charon almost a week ago and have been trying to catch up ever since. Heard you had some excitement earlier?"

Dav winced. The last thing he needed was to explain how he had been outwitted by the Queen's pilot. Damn the noisy fool at the way-point who had fueled his corsair. No doubt he had told Luven everything. Creeping tendrils of jealousy ate into his spine, the old competition awakened.

"Nothing I can't handle," Dav said. He was thankful the transmission was voice only. Luven had always been able to read his face. "I've been tracking a scavenger for a couple days. Looks like I finally have her cornered."

"Oh?" Luven sounded only mildly interested. "Have a name on this scavenger?"

"Yes." Dav hesitated. For some reason, he didn't want to share his find with Luven. He sighed, then spoke clearly into the boom-mike hanging beside his lips. "It's the Queen of Titan."

"You're not serious? That ship was dust ages before either of us were born."

"The registry insists that's who it is."

"Well, maybe." Luven said. When his voice returned a heartbeat later there was an edgy quality about it, something Dav couldn't quite put his finger on. "The Queen of Titan vanished centuries ago. I don't know who you're chasing, but as far as I'm concerned, it's a ghost. Let's say to hell with it and head back to Charon. We have some serious catching up to do."

"Don't worry," Dav said, his confidence returned. "This won't take long."

He turned his attention back to the targeting screen. Just as he expected, he caught the engine signature of the old freighter powering up as it slid out from behind the ruined habitat. He made a fast scan, worried that Luven's arrival might have tipped the other pilot, but so far she still seemed unaware of him. Gritting his teeth, his mind focused only on making the shot, Dav ringed the icon within the bulls-eye, then thumbed the arming switch. At the edge of his conscience, he heard Luven once again in his headset.

"Dav, I'm serious. It's a ghost. Let it go."

He ignored him. Again, the fleeting sense of self swirled out of the ether, the odd juxtaposition of his own darkly mirrored mind shadowing his movements. He almost told Luven why he so desperately needed to make this kill, but at the last moment couldn't. Would Luven still scoff at the idea of a Dark Twin, the mere mention of entwined fates sending him into peals of mocking laughter? Somehow, Dav expected it might. He bit down on his lower lip and carefully increased the power to the benders. The corsair dipped steeply toward the unwary ship. Closer he drew, almost in range.

"Dav... Let it go."

"No." Dav ignored Luven. Ignored everything around him, his only thought now on centering the Queen of Titan in the targeting ring. A droning, high-pitched tone sounded in his earphones, a quavering note that grew louder, rising in pitch as the distance between them fell. Thumb on the trigger, Dav flipped the transmitter to the common frequency and in a calm, icy cold voice announced, "Unidentified pilot. You are in violation of the Preservation Code. Power down and prepare to surrender."

The Queen's pilot made no reply. Dav expected none. The old freighter passed behind one of the thick, tubular struts. Dav smiled grimly, then squeezed the firing stud. A brief hiss sang through the corsair's frame as a quad spread of drones flew from the launchers. Immediately, he switched from missiles to lasers, intending to fire the moment the freighter came out from behind the strut.

Seconds passed. Dav stared at the screen, his earlier sense of elation changing to dismay. Instead of finding a target, his drones sped past the point where the Queen of Titan should have been and impacted against one of the distant habitats. Bright flashes lit the endless night, shards of broken plastic and metal splintering outward from the holes they created. Too late, Dav saw the old ship reappear, not in front of him but thirty degrees to starboard and coming fast. Alarms screamed as his scanners detected an incoming spread of drones racing toward him, too close to avoid.

Again, he felt the touch of his dark twin as the first of the tiny missiles struck. The cockpit rolled sharply, an acrid whiff of ozone filling the cabin as the panel went dead. Dav swore loudly, furious with himself as he struggled to engage the escape mechanism. He felt the second impact, heard the muffled explosion, felt the hull begin to buckle.

Then, he felt nothing at all.

The scent of juniper and wild rose swept over him. Dav frowned. Born and raised on Charon he knew of only one place where the low, thorny bushes grew, the arboretum tucked into the north terrace of the Citadel. It had been a frequent meeting place for the classes of neophytes, the sons and daughters of Chosen setting out on their own path toward the blue and gold uniforms their parents wore. Kneeling around him, their faces glowing starkly in the concealed UV lighting that fed the trees, spread a semi-circle of children in trainee tunics, their eyes fixed on a gaunt bald man standing beside a gnarled oak tree.

"This can't be happening," Dav whispered.

He shot a glance at his own hands. Instead of the scared, calloused skin he expected, he found stubby, childlike fingers, the nails bearing tiny crescents of embedded dirt beneath them. The sleeves of his tunic were bright red, like the children spread around him, the cuffs tattered from play. His legs seemed heavy, stiff from kneeling too long on the warm dirt.

From the corner of his eyes he saw Luven beside him, a bored expression on his handsome, adolescent face. In front of them, the bald man spoke.

"By now, you have heard the Dark Twin. Some of you may even think you understand what it means." Master Bu'huv paused, the edges of his thin lips bearing the faintest trace of a smile. He seemed ancient, his skin yellowed with age, a fragile collection of bones covered in brittle paper. Only his eyes appeared young, so bright they shone as he swept his gaze across the line of students. "Let me assure you, whatever you may think, it is almost certainly wrong."

Nervously, Dav cast a glance at Luven. The other boy rolled his eyes. Afraid that Bu'huv might notice, he quickly turned his gaze back to the old man. Generations of cadets had learned the hard way how sharp Bu'huv's wit could be. And how swift his punishments.

"Each of us," the Master continued, his voice unnaturally strong for someone of his advanced age, "Every man, woman and child, is born of stardust." He tapped his breast with the tips of his fingers. "We are mere strands in the net that binds reality. And just as each strand of a net shines in the light, the underside of the waft and weave remains forever shadowed."

Again, Bu'huv paused, his bird-bright eyes raking the class.

"For each of you," he said slowly, "there exists a twin, a psychic double. One twin dwells in the light, the other in darkness. Most of the shuffling, mewling fools who populate the universe remain blissfully unaware. But, you are different. You, if you should be so lucky, will be among the Chosen. Your duty is plain. It is the supreme task of the enlightened mind to seek out its dark twin and destroy it. Only then will you be whole."

To Dav's horror, he heard Luven squirming beside him, shifting his weight as he raised his hand to catch the old man's attention. Unable to stop him, Dav could only wait for the hammer to fall.

"Does that mean," Luven said, his boyish face perfectly rapt, "that you found your dark self?"

The old man raised a single eyebrow as he fixed his gaze on Luven. Dav stiffened, unable to breathe, certain Luven's impertinence had at last gone too far. To his relief, Bu'huv had only smiled, though his eyes remained icy cold.

"Have I met my own twin?" the old man asked rhetorically. "No. But I expect to before I die. In the meantime, I keep my mind open and my mouth closed. You would be wise, young fool, to do the same."

A breeze whisked across Dav's forehead, so cold it sent a spike of pain deep into his skull. He blinked, tried to sit up, but felt pinned to the ground he lay on. Around him, the arboretum faded, replaced by hazy, shifting patterns of rainbow light. Above him, a face loomed, smiling.

"Thought for a minute I was going to lose you," the man said.

"Luven?"

Dav's tongue felt thick, as if his mind wasn't fully in control of his body. He tried again to rise, but Luven pressed him back down.

"Just lie still, all right." Luven pulled an emergency blanket across his chest. The materiel settled across Dav's body, micro-sensors quickly identifying the areas where heat was needed and sending energy to them. "You've got a shattered knee-cap, and at least one cracked rib. I put a dampener on the back of your neck, so try not to shake it off, okay? It won't completely kill the pain, but it should help. Frankly, you're lucky to be alive."

"Where am I?"

"Inside one of the old habs," Luven said. "You managed to eject before your ship went dead. I pulled the escape pod in here."

"Inside?" Dav realized how stupid he sounded. He took a deep breath. The air tasted stale and slightly metallic and was bitterly cold. "I'm inside?"

"Yeah, imagine that. Some of these old tubes still hold atmosphere." The smile on Luven's face faded. "We're waiting for the pilot of the ship you attacked to arrive."

"She's coming here?" Dav said, shocked at the idea. The chamber around him seemed to fall into sharper focus, the distant, curving walls rimed with frost. An army of dead trees stood in silent ranks, circling the abandoned habitat, their stark, denuded limbs reaching upward in eternal surrender. Narrow slits ran the length of the chamber, the skylights filled with the perpetual night of the Trans-Uranian orbit they kept. A wash of vertigo swept through him, his sense of up and down skewed by the weak gravity. To focus, he took a better look at his old friend.

Luven didn't seem a day older than the last time they had parted. How long ago was that, Dav wondered? A century at least. His hair was still thick and blond, his skin taut except for the laugh lines around his deep blue eyes. Dav had trouble reconciling the face he saw with what he knew to be the truth. Though his own body was practically immortal, rendered impervious to sickness by the hyper-virus that infected his tissue and stimulated the clusters of stem-cells, he knew all too well that he had aged during the intervening decades. The virus, meant to shield and repair his cells from the constant barrage of cosmic radiation he flew through, would eventually repair even the worst injury, but even it could not completely halt the flow of time. Luven, on the other hand, seemed to have simply stopped aging altogether.

"Where have you been?" Dav managed to ask. Above him, Luven gave a quick shake of the head, then glanced away as if expecting someone.

"I'll tell you all about it later, all right." Luven forced another smile, but even as groggy as he was, Dav saw the worry behind the mask. "Right now, we need to worry about getting you out of here."

An icy breeze whispered around him, so cold Dav felt his skin burn with its touch. Somewhere nearby he heard a rumbling, tortured cacophony of metal on metal. Above him, Luven's expression darkened, and for just a moment he saw the years etched on his old friend's face. Dav bit back the pain, understanding all too well what he had just heard, the sound of massive airlock doors sliding apart. Whoever the Queen of Titan's pilot was, she was inside the sepulchral habitat with them.

Panic flooded through him. Fighting back a wave of agony, Dav heaved himself to a sitting position. The pain in his leg and side struck him full on, so violent he gagged, the contents of his stomach threatening to explode out his throat. A pulsing tingle ran down the back of his neck, past his shoulder blades, and immediately the pain ebbed back to a tolerable level. Out of habit, he reached up and felt the dampener clamped around the base of his skull. Gently, Luven pulled his hand away from the compact device.

"Don't play with that," Luven warned. "It's already at max. Just lie still, okay?"

"No." Dav tried to stand, but the effort was beyond him. "I need to get up."

"You'll be all right. Let me handle things," Luven said.

Dav stared at him. Something about the remark struck him odd, but his mind felt too muzzy to get around it. Now the grinding noise reversed. With a heavy bang the doors slid back together. Dav heard footsteps, barely audible above the thudding in his chest. Biting down the pain, he scooted around on his haunches, desperate to spot his enemy before she arrived. The lightweight blanket fell off him and crinkled around his legs. He ignored the frigid air that rushed against him, his attention focused on the figure strolling toward them.

The woman took her time, as if she was playing with him, savoring the moment. She was short, heavy thermal clothing hiding her figure. A faint mist swirled in her wake where the airlock had disturbed the habitat's atmosphere. He tried to touch her mind, forgetting that without his ship the complex sensor array that had fed his nerves no longer existed. Even without the enhancements, he felt the strange sense of being doubled.

"You have to get me out of here." Dav struggled to stay calm. "Please. If you ever were my friend, get me out of here."

"I will," Luven said. "But right now, the best thing is to wait. Let me talk to her."

"No!" Again, he tried to rise, but couldn't. "If you can't get me out, then for the love of the gods, kill me now. Don't let her take me."

"Dav..."

"Listen to me." He swallowed, fighting down another wave of nausea. "I know you never believed in Dark Twins, but you have to now. She is my dark half. I can feel it. Don't let her take me prisoner. Help me."

"Dav, you don't understand..."

"No!" Dav cut him off. "You're the one who doesn't understand."

With that, he thrust his hand to his hip. Better, he decided, to die fighting than to live in shame. Pain raced up his leg as his hand reached his holster.

It was empty.

"I'm sorry," Luven said. Dav twisted around until he could see his friend's face. The regret in Luven's deep blue eyes seemed genuine. With a single, graceful movement, he rose to his feet. In his hand lay a pistol. Dav recognized it as his own.

"Why?" he croaked.

The sad, almost wistful smile played across Luven's face again. "Because I don't want her to kill you." He sighed, then added quietly, "Dav, she's my wife."

The world seemed to fade, the color leaching from the frost-rimed walls. Dav felt himself slipping toward unconsciousness as the implications sank in. He had been betrayed, handed over to the creature he had sought all his life by the only real friend he ever had. Despite the nerve dampener, pain throbbed in his side with each gulping breath he drew.

"Damn you," he said through mounting agony. "Damn you to hell."

"I can understand how you feel..." Luven began.

"What could you possibly understand? You said it yourself, you don't believe in twins."

"I didn't then." Luven said. "But, I'm beginning to."

Dav stared at him, still not fully understanding. He made a futile grab for the pistol, but Luven backed easily away. Keeping his distance, the other man sank down to his heels.

"I tried to warn you," Luven said. "I've been following you for days just to keep this from happening, but you wouldn't listen."

"Listen? Listen to what?" Dav nodded toward the pilot crossing the empty expanse between them. "That woman is a scavenger. She is destroying our heritage."

"Destroying it?" Luven laughed bitterly. "Dav, she is our heritage. Do you think the people that lived here simply vanished? That they just opened up the airlock doors and let themselves be sucked out into vacuum? They left. They abandoned this solar system for other stars."

"You're lying."

"No. I'm telling you the truth you need to hear. Our civilization is dying. Hell, it's dead already. All we do, everything we were taught, is wrong. We're supposed to guard a bunch of ruins against what? Scavengers? Entropy? Let it go. Once you've seen what's beyond the heliopause, you'll understand. The people who created all this," Luven waved his arm to take in the frozen habitat, "found a better way. They developed Bender technology so powerful they can move entire cities between stars. Light-speed is nothing to them. They spend their whole lives brushing against it while we sit out here like chained dogs growling at shadows."

A sudden insight struck Dav, the implications so plain he felt ashamed for having missed it earlier. If what Luven said was true, small wonder he hadn't aged. If the civilization he had encountered beyond the edge of the solar system actually traveled at speeds approaching the light barrier, time would have slowed for them. And, he thought sourly, it explained how he had been so easily defeated by the Queen of Titan. A ship that could bend space deeply enough could literally vanish from one location only to appear in another in the wink of an eye.

Suddenly he felt weak, barely able to keep himself upright. The edge of his vision dimmed as the woman stepped into view.

"This is the one you told me about?" she asked quietly, an odd, lilting accent stretching her vowels into exotic shapes. She was short, her head barely clearing Luven's shoulder, but moved with a confidence that had nothing to do with her physical size. Loose curls of russet hair framed an attractive face, her nose narrow and straight, her hazel eyes direct. She snuggled against him, slipping under his arm, her gaze never breaking away from where Dav lay. "What do we do now?"

"That," Luven said evenly, "is up to him."

Dav frowned. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Don't you understand? We came back for you. Come with us. Come see what the universe truly has to offer."

"With her?" Dav recoiled. "Never! I told you, she's my Dark Half."

"No, Dav." Luven slipped away from the woman he had called his wife and knelt down in front of him. "She isn't your psychic twin. I am."

Dav gaped at him, unable to speak. Luven smiled sadly, then continued.

"I couldn't admit it when we were younger. Maybe that's why I refused to believe in the entire notion. You were my friend and I loved you. How could I even think of killing you?"

"You..." Dav stammered. The cold air wormed into him, stealing the heat from his body. He began to shiver, his lips trembling. As much as he wanted to toss aside what Luven was telling him, he couldn't. One look in his friend's eyes confirmed it. "You are my dark half?"

"No." Luven shook his head slightly. "You're mine. But it doesn't matter anymore. Come with us."

The last of Dav's reserves fled. All the years he had been spent pursuing the darkness he had sworn to destroy, only to discover he was himself the shadow. With a flash, it came clear, the lie that had been his life collapsing into dust. Luven leaned closer, so near the fog from his breath curled between them.

"Will you come?" Luven asked hopefully.

For a moment, he almost said yes.

Instead, Dav made a final, furtive grab for the pistol in Luven's hand. Startled, Luven fell back, but not before Dav had managed to steal the weapon. Adrenaline exploded in his blood, instinct sharpened by a lifetime of training, and before he could permit himself to question what he was doing, Dav pointed the heavy barrel at Luven's chest and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened. Too late he realized the chamber was empty, the charging cartridge removed. Numbness swept through him as the pistol slipped from his grip and clattered to the icy floor. A heartbeat later, Dav fell beside it, his equilibrium shattered as the pain once more took him.

"We need to go," the woman said softly.

"I know." Again, Luven sighed. Gently as a father tucking in a child at bedtime, he spread the blanket around Dav's prone form, then made certain the controls were set to high. To Dav, he said, "I'll get word to Charon that you're here. They'll send a ship. I'll make sure that they do." He paused. "Won't you reconsider? Come with us."

Luven stretched out his arm and clasped him on the shoulder, but Dav flinched away. Luven bit down on his lower lip, a pained expression on his face. His eyes closed. When he opened them again, tears glistened in the wan light Slowly, ponderously, Luven stood up and rejoined the woman.

"You'll be all right until rescue comes," he said. "Hang on until then."

"You're not going to kill me?" Dav asked through chattering teeth, amazed that Luven would leave his shadowed half alive and unresolved.

"Kill you?" Bitter laughter tore out Luven's throat. "I love you. Good-by, Dav. Be well."

Luven took the woman's hand in his and together they walked back toward the airlock and the ancient freighter waiting beyond it. Dav listened to them go, heard the doors rumble open and then close again. Exhausted and broken, he shivered beneath the blanket, letting the thin warmth shield him from the frigid air. Nothing, he knew, could shield him from the cold he felt inside, the knowledge of what had happened eating away at his soul, voracious as a cancer.

"Good-by, Luven," he whispered. He shut his eyes and tried not to think about the tears snaking down his own cheeks to the cold, dead floor he lay on.