Page 20 of Interstellar Love Song (Villains in Space #3)

ZIGGY

As much as I appreciated Ondor being open with me—not just about their own experiences but our shared history—I was relieved when they excused themselves to consult with their fellow bonded Stellarians.

I should have known, however, that Dr. Micah wouldn’t let me off so easily.

“Are you okay, Zig?” my unbilled therapist asked the instant Ondor star hopped away. “I know you’re processing the newest intel but… Why didn’t you tell me you were so worried about me dying?”

I kept my gaze locked on the towering rack of bottles before me, even if I knew my mate could peer into my soul regardless.

Because he’s the other half of mine.

“You witnessed what I saw in my dre—my vision.” I begrudgingly corrected myself. “But you didn’t experience how it felt to have our stellar collision connection abruptly severed. ”

Micah nodded, exuding calm for my sake. “When I died, you mean?”

“Yes,” I rasped on a shaky breath. “I’ve never known pain like I did at that moment. It felt like death—like living death, because I was somehow expected to go on without you.”

“Oh, Space Daddy…” Micah pulled me into his arms, holding me close. “We don’t have to worry about that now, remember? Your core being inside me means I’ll live as long as you do.”

That won’t matter against a Planet Eater.

I knew worrying about things beyond my control would only make my anxiety worsen, so I focused on his words to help soothe the dread I couldn’t seem to shake.

Unfortunately, my stellar collision was dealing with existential crises of his own. “Fuck. That also means my family will die way before me, huh?” he sadly murmured. “Everyone except the space dads, Theo, and the twins.”

I shouldn’t tell him…

But he prefers having all the facts.

“They were on Stellaria in my vision,” I whispered into his hair while soothingly rubbing his biceps. “All of them. Not just Honnor and Bron but Theo. Andre, and Gabriel.”

Micah pushed away from me. “What do you mean? Why would they be there?”

“Earth was destroyed…” I haltingly began. “So Theo and the twins escaped to Stellaria. When whatever attacked, they stayed by your side, lending you their power to help maintain the shield. ”

The shield that fell anyway.

“Why would the Planet Eater come for Earth?!” Micah gasped, no longer calm and collected and apparently deciding who the culprit was. “If weaker species are the target, supes wouldn’t qualify as that…” he trailed off. “What about the rest of my— our— family? Did they make it off the planet?”

I reached for him this time, deeply regretting causing his distress.

“I don’t know, sunshine. An oxygen-filled safe house was created for Earth’s refugees, but I didn’t receive confirmation for who escaped.

The twins and Theo most likely evacuated everyone they could, and I imagine Zion would ensure that included Daisy and Baltasar?—”

“Before staying behind to defend his home,” Micah sighed, sounding defeated. “Because that’s what heroes do.”

“That’s exactly what you did too, sunshine,” I pointed out.

For Stellaria.

“And you, Zig,” he shot back. “I know you don’t see it that way, but I’ve watched you stand up for your people multiple times. That’s also what heroes do.”

I exhaled forcefully and turned to face the wall of bottles again. “And now I’m expected to somehow utilize a ridiculous power I didn’t know I possessed to save my people from a hypothetical end at the hands of a planet devouring entity.”

And if I fail…

“You won’t fail,” Micah stated, laughing when I squinted at him suspiciously. “I’m not reading your mind, I just know you. C’mon, baby. Embrace your witchy bitch ish.”

Ridiculous !

As much as I wanted to reject the notion, I couldn’t deny I’d truly felt a pull earlier—to the collective well, if Ondor’s claims were to be believed.

Very well.

I can do this.

I can embrace my witchy bitch… ish.

“The setup looks similar to the heliocentric model we saw at The Knowledge, just flattened,” Micah murmured, tapping the side of his glasses to record the placement. “And with way more species.”

Wonderful.

I sighed and continued to stare at the bottles, waiting for an intuitive nudge of some kind to tell me where to focus.

Nothing.

After a few minutes, Micah conjured up the baby sling and relieved me of Pedro, presumably so I could better concentrate, but I still received no signs from the universe.

With nothing else to go on, I decided to start with the lone bottle at the top of the kingdom—the supposedly extinct progenitors of our kind.

The Markarians.

Adjusting the gravitational pull in my core, I floated upwards to retrieve the bottle before carefully transporting it to the wooden crate for inspection.

Remember, Ziggy, it’s not about what you see.

It’s about what you feel .

Gross.

Perhaps it helped to have a singular bottle to focus on, but the longer I stared into the seemingly empty vessel, the heavier my eyelids became.

“Micah…” I slurred, my Earthling tongue feeling too large for my mouth. “Are you doing this to me?”

Not that I’d usually complain.

“No, Space Daddy.” My stellar collision’s smooth voice was in my ear, followed by Pedro’s chitter, telling me they’d moved closer. “But I’m here.”

Something about that reminder allowed me to fully surrender to this unfamiliar experience—to let the memories of countless ancestors wash over me.

Pulling me under…

I expected to see a volatile, primordial planet containing gas and dust from when the galaxies were formed. Instead, I saw nothing but?—

“What do you see?”

Anyone else interrupting would have annoyed me, but Micah’s insatiable curiosity was one of the things I loved most about him.

“Come in and see for yourself.”

Yes, I was the one tapped into the collective well, but there was no reason not to share my mind’s eye with my stellar collision .

We’re a team after all.

I opened our mental connection and waited for Commander Babygirl to scientifically lead the way.

“I can’t see anything…”

It was a fair observation. At first glance, we appeared to be floating in the vast emptiness of space, surrounded by nothing but twinkling stars.

But something was out there with us.

Once again, I sensed a familiar presence, only this time, it wasn’t accompanied by the feeling of being hunted. If anything it felt indifferent to my existence.

Focused on its task.

Before I could wonder if the reason I knew that was because this bottle contained an actual Markarian’s memories, one star among millions began glowing brighter than the rest. White light flashed, tinged with royal blue and gold, as a celestial body increased in size with every pulse until it filled the visual plane—dangerously close.

Despite experiencing this distant memory as a pair of visiting observers, I flinched. Stellarians were unaffected by the basic fire and ice found on most planets, but the extreme temperatures in space were not something I felt comfortable testing.

“Perhaps we should go ? —”

“Wait, Zig! I… I think we’re witnessing the beginning of a universe. ”

“The Big Bang?”

“No. A Big Bounce.”

I racked my brain for what the difference was, but was quickly shown exactly what Micah meant.

Just before the flare reached our vantage point, the star collapsed in on itself, swallowing every particle of light it had produced, until nothing was left where it once existed but darkness.

Is that… a black hole?

Before I could ask my resident scientist to confirm, the absence of light somehow exploded outward in a blindingly bright, dust and gas-filled supernova.

But doesn’t that usually occur before a black hole forms?

“What do you think we’re witnessing here, Micah?”

“I-I’m not sure…”

The hint of hesitation coming from my normally confident space explorer had me debating whether I should pull us out of this memory, but then something even more unexpected happened.

The supernova paused in its expansion before abruptly sending pairs—or more—of multi-colored spiral clusters shooting off in various directions.

“I think we’re witnessing the birth of multiple galaxies, Zig… Like, a stellar nursery on a massive scale. ”

A stellar nursery usually only produced individual stars, but what we were seeing seemed almost reminiscent of how Stellarians were made.

Perhaps how all original species on the Caelestis tree were created…

The instant this light show concluded, the supernova—or whatever it was—was violently sucked inward, disappearing into the darkness for good. For a moment it appeared to re-emerge on the other side before the entire panorama rippled then smoothed over, erasing it from sight.

What in Stellaria’s name…?

“ZIG! That was… We just saw gravitational waves! And I think that was an actual white hole on the other side of… whatever that was. I can’t wait to share this with ? —”

*CAREFUL, GAIAN*

*YOUR CAELESTIS ORIGINS WILL NOT SPARE YOU FROM BEING RETURNED TO THE STARS—AS I DID WITH MY CREATOR*

What?!

Before I could intervene with threats of my own, the omnipresent voice spoke again.

*WE WILL NO LONGER TOLERATE THE UNNATURAL COALESCENCE THAT HAS WEAKENED MY OFFSPRING*

We are done here .

I quickly yanked us both from the cursed memory, but not before whoever was speaking had the last word.

*AND THE WEAK SHALL INHERIT NOTHING…*

Fuck.

The instant I blinked back to reality, I frantically reached for Micah, fully intending to star hop the three of us straight home—Trol puke be damned—but he expertly danced out of range.

“That was incredible!” my mate exclaimed, as if his life hadn’t just been threatened by a progenitor-killing entity communicating through an ancient memory.

I think I’m the one who’s going to puke…

My fearless scientist looked positively ecstatic. “Holy shit! That was like Einstein’s theory of relativity finally catching up with solid proof of quantum gravity. That was 6D hyperspace, baby, and it’s sentient!”

“Micah,” I slowly approached, subtly unleashing tendrils to capture him and get us the fuck away from here. “Whatever that was knew what you were, and it intends to return you to the stars.”

My bad bitch stellar collision crossed his arms, his exuberant expression morphing into pure sass. “I’d like to see ‘em try. I’m goddamn Exo-Tech and I’m a… Markarian’s worst nightmare.”

Oh, no.

I was about to point out that I suspected we’d just witnessed the extinction of the last Markarian—by one of its creations, no less—when the entire mountain we were under began to shudder and shake.

This is not good.

Pedro decided that was the moment to leap from the baby sling and begin scaling the wall of Caelestis lineage bottles. When I extended my tendrils to capture the Trol, they also somehow evaded my efforts.

A talent they inherited from Micah, no doubt.

Ondor reappeared, in the company of the other fully-armored—and presumably, fully bonded—Stellarians who’d greeted us in the valley.

“What happened?!” they bellowed, rightfully assuming we were to blame for the ensuing chaos. “Did the Planet Eater make contact with you as well?”

Wait.

“A Planet Eater is who you’ve been receiving visions from?!” I shouted, realizing that was who must have sent me mine as well. “Does this mean they are connected to the collective well as part of the Caelestis kingdom?”

My fellow Stellarians cocked their heads, and I realized this was yet another example of me being the last to know extremely important intel about my own heritage.

Fuck. Everyone.

Nultek’s offhand comments at The Knowledge now made sense—praising a Stellarian and Eki showing up to research our family tree together, “given the circumstances,” utilizing their facility to “make things right. ”

The interim king hadn’t been referring to Stellaria’s attack on Kaalanesea, but the current, larger-scale destruction of helpless planets.

Planets full of so-called “weakened offspring.”

Another Stellarian removed their helmet, revealing themselves to also be residing inside a Vririte. “The Planet Eater has repeatedly told us that if we share the existence of stellar collisions with the greater population, there will be dire consequences.”

Micah looked ready to argue but I shot him an apologetic look and held up my hand for silence. I then projected my thoughts toward the Markarian’s bottle, guessing— hoping —the collective well was the Planet Eater’s primary vehicle of communication.

“I will not tell a soul.”

The shaking abruptly stopped.

Well.

Fuck.

I suppose we can remove Leeloo and the Eki from the suspect list now.

Pedro chittered from high above, drawing everyone’s attention to where they were precariously perched on a bottle near the top.

Sigh.

“Aww… look at our baby!” Micah cooed, taking his usual excessive amount of photos to mark the occasion .

I allowed it, as always, but especially because Pedro’s cuteness was sufficiently distracting him from diving back into the collective well to pick a fight with a Planet Eater.

Small mercies.

Ondor stepped forward. “Now you see why we have not shared certain aspects of our heritage with Stellaria. We did not fight for our planet’s freedom only to lose it now.”

“This isn’t freedom,” Micah interjected and my heart sank, knowing he was correct. “You’re still under someone else’s control, playing by their rules.”

Rules that don’t make any sense…

“What do you propose we do?” Ondor addressed both my mate and me—not with anger but despair.

They need our help!

Micah glanced my way and smiled knowingly, blasting me with unconditional support, forcing me to accept the inevitable.

Sigh.

It looks like I need to be a hero.

“I don’t know yet,” I replied honestly, gazing up at the wall of potential clues before me. “But I promise, we will find a way for Stellaria to be free.”