by TJ Berry
“Hidden,” said the dryad, taking nearly half a minute to articulate the single word. Someone was hiding in the forest.
“Who?” asked Gary.
“Red shadows,” said the dryad.
“I’ll have someone fly out to your forest and look for the shadows,” he said, pulling a flat rock onto his lap and making a note of it in chalk.
“Is there anything else?” he asked, hoping to the gods there was not.
“War,” she said. The sibilant sounds were menacing through the rasp of her peeling birch bark.
“What about war?” he asked, leaning forward in his seat.
“Coming.” The dryad turned, stress-shedding leaves in her wake.
“Wait,” called Gary. “War with who? What’s coming?”
The next petitioner saw the door open and thudded inside for his turn. The dryad moved past him, ignoring Gary’s questions.A blemmye, wet and stinking, planted himself in the front of the room. He was completely nude, pale and doughy. The face set into his squared-off chest squinted at Gary.
“What can I help you with?” asked Gary, feeling like the counter staff at a human restaurant.
The blemmye opened his mouth and a low dirge-like song came out. Gary jumped out of his chair. The ‘Song of the Blemmye’ foretold death. He tried not to hear it, but the song reverberated throughout his head, getting lodged in the panic centers of his brain. He tried to work within the bounds of logic, but unicorns were by nature quite superstitious. He curled up in his chair with his hands over his ears.
Findae came roaring out of the hallway at a full gallop. He reared up on his hind legs in front of the blemmye, who stopped his song and raised his arms defensively.
“Begone, woeful creature,” shouted Findae, coming down hard on wooden floor. The boards under his hooves let out cracking noises, but held solidly.
The blemmye raised his hands in surrender and backed out of the room, mumbling about hospitality and how he was just trying to do his job.
Findae circled back around to Gary.
“I hate blemmye,” he said, nostrils flaring.
“I thought caring for the beings under my care meant caring for them,” said Gary bitterly.
“Not the blemmye,” said Findae. “They’re bad luck and bad omens.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Points of Light
Gary rode a hippogriff along the edge of his kingdom. There were times he wished that he could gallop like the rest of his family, but when faced with the speed and freedom of flying like this and his maneuverability in zero G, he wondered if perhaps he didn’t get the better end of the deal.
Getting onto a hippogriff had been a negotiation. They were sapient, like most other Bala, but not the brightest creatures in the panoply of Bala beings. He’d made his request clear, but the hippogriff had hedged, asking for something incomprehensible in its own staccato language. He’d caught the words “daughter” and “mate” and hoped to Unamip that he hadn’t just agreed to marry this hippogriff’s daughter in exchange for a lift.
The coastline of the continent where they’d gathered was lined with sharp cliffs that dropped off into the freshwater ocean. They were still trying to find enough water and food here to sustain all of the remaining Bala in the universe, which by his estimation should have numbered approximately two million. They hadn’t gathered more than ten thousand into the settlement so far. Gary hoped the rest were scattered around the planet in safe locations. It distressed him to think that this was all there was.
Gary was exhausted. He didn’t really have time for an excursion, but he’d justified it as a land survey and told his father he was looking for a suitable spot for the centaurs to live away from everyone else. Findae had protested that one of the underlings could do that menial task. But Gary went anyway.
He closed his eyes to the stinging wind, allowing the hippogriff the latitude to soar where it wished. He didn’t plan on returning for at least an hour. It would be the only quiet time he’d had in six weeks. And really, when he thought about it, it was actually the only peaceful time alone he’d had in over a decade.
Before his adventure with Jenny Perata, he’d been incarcerated in the Quag for ten years. And before his prison time he’d been her captive aboard his own stoneship, the Jaggery. It was way back at Copernica Citadel that he’d last had an actual life with safety and friendship and no flashbacks that assaulted him in the middle of his day and left him shaking and sweating and breathing hard.
He thought about Jenny and wondered if she’d made it out of Fort J alive. Last he’d seen her, she had been heading off to buy a long haul ship in order to come find the Bala after they’d moved, especially her dryad wife Kaila. Without an FTL drive, the trip here would take hundreds of years – if she even knew where to search in the first place. It was possible that Jenny would someday find the right planet and reunite with her wife, but more likely she was gone for good.
He didn’t know quite how to feel about that. There was a time in his life when he would have torn that woman’s head off without thinking twice. But that was before the Quag and before he’d had ten years of thinking about how they’d both been dear friends to Cheryl Anne Bryant before she died. He remembered her horror when she’d discovered her best friend dead, and the anguish that had visited her face again when the Pymmie had made her relive the moment for their benefit.
There were plenty of Reasoners who had done terrible things and felt awful about it – not everyone was a remorseless cog in the machine. He’d been apologized to plenty of times by the people who had hurt him. What was different this time is that Jenny kept attempting to make things right. He didn’t know what it looked like to make amends for torture and genocide, or if such a thing was even possible. But she had saved his life and protected the Bala all the while knowing it meant relegating the love of her life to a planet so far away that it would take six lifetimes to reach it. That was, at least, a start.
The hippogriff dove low over the islands off the coast, avoiding the three asteroids that hovered there. They were immense stoneships, as large as a stadium. Unicorns and dwarves had carved them into tunnels and rooms filled with flora and fauna. They were living ecosystems, but, more than that, they were distinct and sentient organisms with self-awareness and temperaments.
Five stoneships had survived the Reason and were transported to this new planet by the Pymmie. Most of the time they flitted between the surface and the third moon in the system. The seemed to like their newfound freedom, which is more than Gary could say for the Bala themselves.
The hippogriff kept the islands in sight but gave the stoneships a wide berth. They were known for batting around flying things when in a playful mood. Gary wondered what they were doing down here, just waiting. Someone would have had to call them down out of the sky. These particular ships would only have answered to a few Bala – their captains and their unicorn builders.
Far down below, nearly blocked from view by the ships themselves, he thought he saw his father on the largest island with the coloring of his father. Suddenly the stoneships took off, soaring straight up and sending a blast of air across Gary and the hippogriff. They tumbled for a moment, Gary clinging to the hippogriff’s fur and hoping they wouldn’t plummet into the sea. He couldn’t stand to break another bone today.
The sky crackled with a sound like thunder as each of the three stoneships broke the sound barrier. Gary could have sworn they were racing. He looked down as the hippogriff righted itself. The creature on the island was gone. He wondered if his father had gone into orbit. He felt a pang of jealousy. There was nothing he wanted more than to get back into openspace.
It occurred to him that though openspace wasn’t an option without commandeering a stoneship against his father’s wishes, he could always look into nullspace. It was the place from where stoneships and other Bala drew their power. Even some trained humans were able to capture energy from the null. Unicorns had the ability to look into that dimension and
see all creatures who used its energy. Bala were easy to spot. Humans were dimmer and more difficult to see, but those with the ability to use nullspace energy, like Jenny, were just as bright as Bala.
The hippogriff flew in lazy circles along the coastline and back out to sea, enjoying the warm pink sunshine. Gary rested his head on the hippogriff’s back and dropped into the null.
At first nothing happened and stiff hippogriff feathers dug into his cheek. Then he spotted a cluster of shining beings scattered beneath him. It was the Bala in the village. Farther away there was a second concentrated glimmer, smaller than the settlement – another gathering of Bala far to the south.
He expanded his awareness to the blackness beyond. There weren’t many beings of any kind in this part of space. Just an expanse of nothingness. Gary went further. There were pockets of life here and there, but none that felt or looked human. It wasn’t until he reached all the way back to Jaisalmer that he finally spotted the bright light of humans channeling nullspace energy.
They were the group that trained on Fort J. They felt like younger cadets who were too inexperienced to put onto starships. Without any unicorn horn there was nowhere for then to go.
Jenny would be somewhere around here. He widened his perception to the space around Jaisalmer. It was dark and absent of Bala lights. The humans there glowed with a kind of dim-bulb lack of intensity. He searched in the same general area of Reasonspace, zooming in on other lights to see who they were. Most bright spots were necromancers stuck on various ships limping back home to Jaisalmer at sublight speeds. He swept his gaze in all directions. Then he found her.
He couldn’t see her physical form but her energy signature felt so much like her that he nearly said hello out of reflex. She was on a ship with other humans. She shone like a lighthouse among their firefly lights.
Looking at the positions and the number of people on board, this was not the small pioneer craft she’d purchased before leaving Jaisalmer after the apocalypse had started. This was a large ship. There were people spread out in a cylinder shape, which meant an old Earth generation ship. Those were always trouble.
He watched her for a moment, certain that the brightness of her energy had waned a bit in the time that he’d scanned through the rest of the people near her. It happened again; her light dimmed enough to be noticeable.
There was no one near her who might be attacking and sapping her strength. Perhaps she was ill and the generation ship had rescued her. Though there were no other humans at her side. No one else on the ship seemed to notice her distress. It darkened again. This time enough that he instinctively tried to call out to her. She wouldn’t be able to hear – communication across the null was something that only unicorns could do. And only full unicorns at that.
She had to be with pirates. No one else would capture a perfectly good pilot, stick her in a room alone, and let her die. And pirates would likely be roaming Reasonspace now that the government was collapsing. It would be chaos. This far across the galaxy there was nothing he could do, but it still upset him to see Jenny’s light becoming darker than the humans around her. She was in real trouble.
He tried to push against the null to have some effect on the energy around her, but nothing happened. It would take an incredibly skilled necromancer to pull that off. It was ironic, because necromancy was traditionally used to mean communication with the dead. The Reason panicked when they encountered the Bala for the first time, allowing front-line soldiers to name the creatures that they saw. Most of the first group were from a country called the United States of America, with just a handful from India. The Reason ended up with a slew of European fairytale names tacked onto creatures that predated Earth’s Stone Age.
Necromancer was a misnomer as well, but the grunts had already used the term “wizard” for a grey bearded sect of elfin monks that reminded them of stories and films from their childhoods. Someone picked necromancer – even though they did nothing with the dead – and the name stuck.
Jenny continued to struggle alone. Her light was nearly out. Gary reached out again, trying to do anything that would nudge energy back into her, but he wasn’t experienced with manipulating the null. Power slipped through his grasp like smoke. Frustration welled up and he called out her name. Her light flickered for a second, then went dim. It was almost as if she’d heard him for that one fleeing moment. He tried again, but there was nothing. Gary wasn’t sure, but he thought he had just watched Jenny Perata die.
Gary’s head snapped up off the hippogriff’s back. He felt sick. His thoughts about Jenny were complex, but it was still upsetting to watch someone’s light go out. They were back over the coastline. The hippogriff had decided that the ride was over and was taking them down at the unicorn fortress.
Gary dismounted and went inside. He stepped inside the door and saw a dwarf in the dim light. Boges looked up at him, surprised, her hand reaching up for the doorknob. She was less than half his height, with hair and beard the color of a fiery Earth sunset, and pale spacer skin that had just begun to freckle from living planetside for six weeks.
“Hello Boges,” he said, still groggy, as if he’d just awakened from a nightmare that still lingered.
“You don’t look well,” said Boges, stopping to talk with him for the first time in weeks. He debated whether or not to tell her. He missed their long talks on the Jaggery.
“Jenny,” he said.
“What about her?” asked Boges, pretending not to care.
“I was in the null–” said Gary.
“Looking for Jenny,” finished Boges.
“Yes,” answered Gary, a bit sheepishly. There was nothing technically wrong with seeking out an old friend to check on their welfare, but Boges had seen the damage that Jenny had wrought firsthand. Boges was too kind to allow even a flash of judgment to cross her face.
“And? Did you find her?” she asked.
“I did, but I don’t think she’s well. I think she’s in dire circumstances,” he said.
“She’s always in some kind of trouble,” said Boges. “No, more than that. Her light faded until I could no longer see it. I think she’s injured. Perhaps gravely so.”
Boges pursed her lips and wrapped one braid around her thick finger.
“There’s nothing you can do for her from here. I’d advise letting her go and perhaps not looking in on her again. Watching humans die around you is a depressing pastime for an immortal,” she said.
She was right. When you lived long enough, you managed to outlive all of your mortal friends. Their lives went by in ever-faster flashes that, once over, seemed almost unreal. Years seemed to go by like days, slotting themselves into the ever-expanding tapestry of his memories. His childhood seemed like a lifetime ago. And in human years it would have been.
A frown flickered across Boges face. “Don’t go back there. None of us need to go back there,” she warned.
“I’m not,” he lied. “I haven’t seen you around in a while.”
“I’ve been working on a few special projects,” she said.
“For my father,” finished Gary.
Boges didn’t answer.
“What is he doing with the stoneships,” asked Gary.
Boges’ eyes searched the wall. If they’d been in the Jaggery, that’s where the dwarf door would have been. She was looking for an escape from the conversation.
“It’s complicated,” she said finally, finding nowhere to run.
“Is it so complicated that you can’t tell one of your oldest friends?” asked Gary.
Boges shook her head.
“Whatever it is, I can help,” he said, reaching to tug on her braids, like he had so many times before. She pulled away before he could catch her and slipped out the front door, calling back to him softly.
“You can’t stop the future, Gary.”
CHAPTER FIVE
FTL Kilonova
When the asshole Will Penny walked onto the bridge and sat down in the captain’s chair, the
actual captain, Lakshmi Singh, stepped in front of him, arms crossed. He blinked up at her and lifted his hand to wave her away from the viewscreen. Lakshmi felt her lunch turn over in her stomach. Lentils, the good kind, tucked into the freezer from when her mother had last visited.
“You’re in my chair,” she said. Her voice came out smaller than she intended, but it still echoed off the shiny steel walls of the FTL Kilonova’s brand new bridge.
“You must be mistaken,” said the old man. His eyes flicked up to the blue dastaar wrapped tightly around her hair. She tensed for the next comment, because there was always a next comment from men like this. “Colonel Wenck gave me this ship,” he said.
Lakshmi pursed her lips. She knew that Wenck had promised this man the rank of captain, but after years of being his regimental administrative officer, she’d seen him promise the same ship to three different people on the same day, then hand over the mess for her to clean up. This time, though, she’d cleaned it up with a twist. She’d put her own name down on the paperwork as captain. With the computer systems down and the confusion and rioting after the apocalypse, no one was going to notice for a good long time, and she planned to be long gone by then.
Laskhmi reached past Will Penny’s bony elbow to tap a touchscreen on the arm of the captain’s chair. The crew manifest appeared on the viewscreen, superimposed over a live feed of Chaatrapati Shivaji Station. At the top, next to the title of captain, was her name.
“As you can see, you’ve been given the rank of first officer,” she hadn’t dared place him any lower than that, “which is quite a feat given that this is your first day in the Reason Space Force. In fact, it seems to be your first day anywhere.” She gave flashed him a knowing look. Having some dirt in your back pocket was always the first line of defense with old spacers who thought they were entitled to ownership of everything in the galaxy just because they had a dick. This guy, Will Penny by his word, didn’t show up in any of the personnel records she could find in Reason HQ. She knew him only from the day he’d walked into Colonel Wenck’s office claiming to have a piece of unicorn horn that he was willing to trade for a ship.
