“I didn’t. It should have taken me fifteen or sixteen minutes at a flat-out run. We had maybe twenty minutes left before the attack started. It would have been enough time. Except I was going too fast to see that the trail was trapped. I still don’t know exactly what happened. I triggered something. A wire or a pressure switch. The explosive was something we call a shredder. Directed explosion that throws a lot of shrapnel into the air.”
He pointed to his ruined face and then to his neck and chest. “It was too much damage for my medi-bots to handle quickly. That’s why the scars are so bad.”
“When I found him, he was still unconscious and had lost a lot of blood. I cleaned up what I could and waited for the nanotech to fix the rest.” Xaber scrubbed a hand over his face before adding, “By then, he was the only family I had left. I was not going to lose him, too.”
“They attacked the camp.” It wasn’t a question, but he answered it anyway.
“They did. Xaber saw it happen.”
“Everyone did. Even the ones in orbit. It was like a beam of white fire streaked down from the heavens and burned away part of the planet,” Xaber said.
“They took out your camp with a plasma cannon in orbit? I thought that was against the rules? Isn’t that a war crime?”
“Not when the target was a cyborg encampment. You can’t use weapons like that against a sentient race, but back then, we were still classified as equipment. The handful of human techs and leaders that were killed weren’t enough to merit more than some fines and a strongly worded warning,” Xaber said.
Tix nodded thoughtfully but didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then, she let her gaze lock with his. “Mace. I have a question.”
“Ask it.”
“Why do you blame yourself for what happened?” Then she turned to look at Xaber. “Xaber, same question.”
“What do you mean, why? If I hadn’t gotten injured, I could have made it back in time to warn them.”
“And if I hadn’t accidentally tripped the alarms inside the camp, we both could have made it back,” Xaber stated.
She leaned forward in her chair, her free hand curled into a fist where it rested on the table. “To do what, exactly? At best,they would have had what, four minutes? And that’s if nothing slowed you down. Like checking in before being allowed back into camp. And relaying the information to whoever was in charge. Did you even know where to find your batch-siblings? Comms were jammed. Right?”
It was obvious. Wasn’t it? “We could have warned them somehow. Made sure they got clear of the blast area.”
“How far would they have had to run? If you’d gotten back, cleared the perimeter, and somehow made contact. What would have been the minimum safe distance?”
Her questions made him angry, and he didn’t understand why. While he glared at Tix, Xaber answered her question.
“Based on the damage we saw afterward? At least a klick from the edge of camp.”
“And could any of you have run that far in less than two minutes? Because that’s about how long you’d have to get clear.”
“We could have done something!” Mace snapped.
“If you’d made it back to the camp, the only thing you could have done was die there with your batch-sisters.”
He wanted her to be wrong. The more he thought about it, the harder it was to argue. Even though he and Xaber had both agreed that things would have been different if they’d found a way to get back to camp. Except they’d never talked about why they hadn’t accomplished that. Had his brother been blaming himself all this time?
“You both feel guilty because you weren’t there when it happened. Right?”
He nodded. So did Xaber.
Tix gave them both an understanding smile. “That’s called survivor’s guilt.”
Xaber grunted and banged the table with his fist. “I hate that you might be right about this.”
“Iamright. You told me that both of you have scars on your psyche because of everything you survived. You made it. They didn’t. You’ve been alone, the two of you against the galaxy, ever since.”
She covered Xaber’s fist with her free hand. “You’ve never talked to anyone else about this. Have you? You don’t even interact with other cyborgs much. You keep to yourselves because you don’t trust anyone else to have your back.”
“We trust you,” Mace said. And it was the truth.
Her eyes glimmered, and her smile faltered for a second. “Thank you. I’m honored to have your trust. Truly. I wish I could help you both with this, but I don’t think I can. My scars come from different experiences. I know about survivor’s guilt because that’s something Javid, one of my fathers, had to deal with.”
