Star Relic

by Clara Woods

  To her surprise, everyone listened and shuffled back down the corridor.

  Almost everyone. Cassius stayed back, regarding her with a serious glance. “Why are you all of a sudden so determined to discover the story behind the stone?” he asked quietly, after folding his big body into the copilot’s seat. “You seemed pretty eager to sell it until I mentioned Starwide Research’s involvement.”

  Lenah shrugged her shoulders. They might not be friends, at least not yet, but she’d come a long way from being scared of him to seeing him as an ally. While she didn’t want to tell him the truth, she didn’t want to lie either. Maybe he’d leave if she stayed quiet.

  “What’s your connection to Starwide Research, Lenah?” Like the only time before that he’d addressed her with her name and not as ‘captain’, ‘pilot’, or ‘rich girl’, it had an impact on Lenah. His tone sounded genuinely concerned, an impression she also got when she looked up into his green eyes.

  After a long minute, he slowly got up, as if sure he wouldn’t be getting an answer. For a half machine, he certainly was insightful.

  She stopped him when he was almost out of the hatch. “Wait, Cassius.”

  He turned, cocking an eyebrow at her.

  “Maybe I’ll tell you, if you do me one favor.”

  His white teeth showed when he grinned. “And what could that be?”

  “Teach me to fight. We have ten days, right? Why not use them for something beneficial?”

  26 Leveling Up

  “When fighting bigger, taller, and heavier opponents, you need to be quick.”

  They’d cleared a large chunk of the cargo hold and put up a makeshift arena. Cassius had first mocked her idea of wanting to fight with him, but then he’d come around. Now he was in full-on teacher mode, a sight Lenah wasn’t sure she should be happy or worried about.

  “It can look dangerous, but with the right technique you can outsmart anyone, no matter their size,” Cassius told Lenah, flexing both his arms, real and enhanced.

  Yeah, Lenah wasn’t looking forward to getting beaten up by that.

  “The biggest obstacle to overcome is that being small usually also means that your range is smaller. A taller opponent can reach you from a range where you can’t hit him back.” He stretched his metal arm out toward her, lifting her own arm up next to it with his other hand. She barely reached his wrist, while also getting a scary metal hand right up against her face. Lenah shifted uncomfortably. She wanted to fight, not get a lecture on her own shortcomings.

  “So tell me how I can get close,” she said, trying to circumvent his long arm.

  “One step at a time.” He moved his arm and took a step back. “First, you need to learn to scamper around like a frightened little rabbit.”

  “What? Isn’t that what I’m doing already?” Lenah asked.

  “It’ll give you technique.”

  “Frightened little rabbits have technique?”

  Cassius showed white teeth again as he grinned. Suddenly he jumped forward, closing the distance between them. At the last moment, Lenah managed to react and get out of his way. She moved her head sideways and felt the air whoosh by from his blow. Cassius changed direction, and she tried to jump backward, but wasn’t as fast as him. His fist connected with the skin of her cheek: not hurting, just barely touching it, but enough to freeze her.

  “Duck, jump, be unpredictable.” He stepped back and then came at her again. “Duck.”

  Lenah did, evading him a second before he would have hit her; then she scampered back, while he was already crowding her again. She ducked one more blow, then saw her chance, and took a dive at him with her fist aimed toward his gut. Before she ever reached him, she was hurtling through the air. To her embarrassment, she landed straight on her butt with a thump. She managed to roll to the side when he followed her.

  “Don’t try to outsmart me. Be more patient,” he whispered from right behind her ear. Lenah scurried away, but Cassius got hold of her arm, pulling her close again with little effort. The cold of his hand closed around her throat and applied just enough pressure to hold her there. He didn’t hurt her, but she was terrified. How many throats had that arm crushed already?

  He seemed to sense her panic, because he let go instantly, holding out the same arm to give her a lift. As if she didn’t weigh anything, he put her back on her feet, never breaking eye contact. “Never try to get an advantage where you don’t have one. You’re no match for my arm’s length. Use whatever means you have to surprise your adversary.”

  His gaze slowly dropped down along her body, stopping at her feet, and Lenah was pretty sure it wasn’t because he was appreciating her figure. Then it clicked. “I’m supposed to kick you, not punch you?”

  Instead of an answer, Cassius came at her again. Her heart was still racing from having a metal hand clenching her throat, but she was ready. She danced around him and pulled her head away when his blow came. She felt the wind, but it didn’t hit. Then she turned around and stepped in the other direction. All the time, he followed her, but let her lead the course of the fight. Then she saw her chance. He was going to try to hit her with his fist, which would open the side of his torso toward her. She stopped evading him and lifted her leg. One second later, she connected with the floor, the force of his blow felling her like a tree.

  “Don’t take the first opportunity. Wait for the right opportunity.” He held his hand out again, helping her up.

  They started once again.

  A couple of hours later, Lenah walked from the lav unit back to her cabin. Her whole body was aching, but at least she felt refreshed after cleaning off all the sweat. Cassius was a relentless teacher. While she didn’t enjoy being sprawled on the floor in front of him every few seconds, she appreciated that he wasn’t sugarcoating reality. She was no match for him: not just because she was all flesh and fragile bones and he wasn’t, but also for lack of practice. He’d drilled her to learn to recognize the right kind of openings. In the end, she had gotten a little bit better.

  Maybe. Not that she’d succeeded even once, or stood up to him for more than a few seconds.

  She walked through the hatch of the common room and found Uz preparing some terrible-smelling tea. “Ugh, what is that?”

  “It’s fermented Crazat tea from the Cassidian marches. Do you want to try some? It’s really reviving.”

  Lenah shook her head, recoiling from the smell and trying to stand as far away from it as possible while serving herself some water. “Where did you get that?”

  As far as Lenah knew, Uz hadn’t gotten a chance to shop around on Lunara Station. Before that, she’d been a hostage on this ship. That generally meant no access to anything. Maybe she’d secretly added it to the shopping list.

  “I found it in one of the closets. It’s a little past its due date, but still good.”

  “Oh.” Lenah wondered if the awful smell of old socks was due to the tea being old, or if that was part of its charm. She didn’t ask, though, not wanting to insult Uz, should the latter be the case.

  “You should really try it. It’ll pick you up after that fatiguing workout you did.” Without waiting for a further reply from Lenah, Uz got out another cup and held it out to her. Lenah took it hesitantly. Would Uz notice if she stood closer to the sink and poured the cup’s contents in there?

  “That was some good work you did back there in the cabin,” she said, instead of taking a sip. Lenah had checked it out earlier to find metal plating covering the molten and bent area the lasers had created when leaving Lunara Station. “We’d probably all be dead if it hadn’t been for you fixing the hull breaches. I want to thank you for that.”

  Uz nodded. “I like the challenge.” She took a sip from her cup, savoring the contents with a smile, and then gave Lenah an encouraging nod. Slowly, Lenah lifted the cup toward her mouth, trying not to breathe in the scent emanating from the steaming liquid.

  “I never had a place where they’d let me do these things. This ship didn’t
turn out to be so bad in the end.” Uz sat down at the table, patting it like a long-lost treasure.

  Lenah smiled, watching her take another long sip. Then, inwardly counting to three, she gulped some of the liquid into her own mouth. “Oh.”

  Uz grinned at her. “Good, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” After the smell had evaporated, Lenah’s taste buds had exploded with the refreshing tang of spring water, fresh flowers, and sweet cherry. An instant uplifting feeling went through her body. “Wow, how come this stuff isn’t famous?”

  “It is. Every Cassidian grows up with it, but I guess humans don’t like it. I gather your noses are irritated by the smell.”

  “Huh. Go figure,” Lenah murmured, taking another sip. “I feel as if I could go fight more rounds with Cassius right now.”

  Uz shot her a smile, taking another sip from her own cup.

  “Can I ask you a question, Uz?” Lenah said after a few moments of silence. When Uz nodded, she continued. “You remember how you said that I felt different to you the other day when we were in the common room?” Another nod, but Uz’s eyes became more guarded. “What did you mean by that?”

  “Nothing much, really. Without my gyrums, I have a hard time feeling things, but sometimes I get the impression that I still can. Typical phantom vertex.” Uz shrugged, suddenly seeming more interested in the wall behind Lenah than anything else.

  “Phantom vertex? Like phantom pain?” Lenah asked, intrigued by the revelation and wanting to know more about what Uz was sensing about her. Vertex was the Cassidians’ sixth sense that let them feel and manipulate the warp. In all her searching for more information about her own ability, Lenah had never discussed it with a Cassidian, a shortcoming she only now realized. What if they felt something about her with their vertex?

  Uz nodded. “Something like that, but it’s impossible. My vertex is as gone as my gyrums.”

  “But what if it’s not?”

  Uz slowly shook her head.

  “What if you’re right? What exactly did you feel?” Lenah insisted.

  “I don’t know. I sensed something ancient about you. But that’s impossible, you don’t look old at all.”

  That wasn’t what Lenah had expected, though she didn’t know what she’d been expecting. “Ancient?”

  “That’s all I can really say. It doesn’t make sense to you either?” Uz looked sharply at her for the first time, her large eyes searching Lenah’s face. For what? Wrinkles?

  “No, no it doesn’t.” They sat quietly for a few more minutes.

  “I’m tired. I’ll be in my cabin,” Lenah finally said, gulping down the last of her tea. Whatever Uz was sensing about her, it didn’t have anything to do with Lenah’s abilities. She was no step closer to figuring out what made her special. “Thanks for the drink, Uz.”

  “Yeah, Cassius sure did a number on you, didn’t he? Making you fall over and over,” Uz smiled, her tone gentle.

  “Don’t tell me you saw any of it!”

  “Oh, we all did. We were in the back of the cargo hold watching for a while.”

  “We? Does that mean everyone saw?”

  “Yeah,” Uz said. “We were worried and didn’t want to leave you alone with him.”

  “That’s cute. And embarrassing,” Lenah said in a weak voice. She got up and grabbed a meal bar from a nearby cupboard. “I think I’ll go lie down for a while. I must be more tired than I thought I was.”

  In truth, all she wanted was to be alone. A few days ago, she’d set out to discover her father’s involvement with suspicious people, planning to come back the same day and help him out of whatever mess he’d gotten into. But now, so much more seemed to be going on. Why was everyone hunting an ancient map? How had her father ended up involved? And what was the matter with his mage farms?

  Actually, Lenah had never seen one herself. The areas were restricted, due to the technology still being unstable, but she’d seen the models. The mages were all volunteers who got paid a salary and received a nice apartment. In exchange, they spent their days on the chairs Corinna Cheung’s company had developed. Their magic was extracted from their blood and stored on a special engineered crystal drive. So why would Starwide Research kidnap innocent people like Uz for experiments?

  Lenah was pacing in her cabin, unable to stop her train of thoughts, and unable to go to sleep like she had told Uz she would. There was only one way forward, though, and the more she thought about it, the more she knew it was the right course of action. She needed to know. And that started with the stone.

  27 The Stone’s Path

  Once again, everyone was squashed into the tight space of the cockpit and the corridor behind. Lenah had piloted them out of the warp bubble and onto the new 0, 0, 0 coordinates. Persia was sitting next to her with the stone. She had it propped up on the dashboard with her arms crossed before her, and was staring at it intently. Everyone else was looking at the stone too, then at each other. Nothing was happening.

  “Maybe you need to use it like the warp bubble?” Lenah finally suggested, shifting her back, which still hurt from her last training session with Cassius. They’d been training in the cargo hold every day and she was already getting better. And more and more sore, with his increasing demands. “You know, give it some of your body heat?”

  Persia nodded and picked up the stone. “What do we do if it doesn’t work?” she asked.

  “Still go sell it to the UPL or Starwide Research,” Cassius said.

  “Research it further,” Doctor Lund said at the same time.

  “Glad we’re so aligned,” Persia muttered. “It’s almost there. I can feel it.”

  “You can feel the stone too?” Uz asked from behind.

  Persia turned around at that, shooting her an annoyed look. “No, I meant that I can feel it almost at my body temperature.”

  “Ah.” Uz didn’t say anything further. Not for the first time, Lenah got the impression that Persia didn’t like the Cassidian. Was she still irked about their fight during the cleaning session on their first day? As somewhat-accepted captain, Lenah had considered talking to Persia about it, but had put it off. After all, who was she, apart from the only person who could fly this ship?

  Suddenly the small space was illuminated by bright light. Lenah heard several gasps, and thought one of them might have come from her. Lights of all colors made her blink hard, and she was struggling to keep her eyes open. Her hands shot to the controls, ready to move them away should something dangerous come out of it, but then she realized that the source of the light originated from the stone in Persia’s hands. When she averted her gaze to get a break from the brightness, she noticed it actually carried out into the space around them, illuminating everything in swirls of rainbow colors. They probably shone like a beacon, if anyone was around to look.

  “Wait a moment. Persia, can you move the stone? I think that’s letters or symbols,” Lenah finally said.

  Just at the edge of the illuminated space, Lenah could make out the sharp lines of something that looked like the letter ‘O,’ but with a curvy line on top. Persia adjusted the stone, turning it a few times until three symbols appeared.

  “Not letters. Could be more coordinates. Written in the ancient alphabet from the hard drive.” Doctor Lund’s voice sounded in awe. “I wonder how this is projected by a stone, what mechanism it could have...”

  They all stared at it for a few more minutes, but nothing else happened. Finally Persia put the stone back down onto the dashboard with a thump, and a short while later the light faded as the stone cooled down. The cabin lighting seemed dark after the brightness. No one spoke for a while, until the doctor cleared his throat and looked up from the notes he’d been taking.

  “Uz, let’s go transcribe those symbols. I think they might be more coordinates.”

  They shuffled out behind Cassius, who left after shooting Lenah an annoyed look. Not happy about not selling the stone right away, she assumed. Lenah was left sitting in the cockpit with P
ersia, who seemed uncharacteristically gloomy.

  “Everything all right?” Lenah asked the woman, who she felt was becoming a friend after these few intense days.

  Persia nodded, then shook her head. “I just wanted to get back at him, you know?” She finally looked at Lenah. “Never would it have occurred to me that I’d end up with some powerful artifact. My life as a stuntwoman will be over. I can never go back and pretend this didn’t happen.”

  She looked truly desperate, and Lenah wasn’t too sure what to say, mostly because she agreed with the woman. “This might sound harsh right now, but you wanted to get out of stunt acting anyway, didn’t you? That’s why you were on Astur trying to get into movies in the first place.”

  Persia nodded. “Sure, but that’s all I know. I always try and try, but end up with nothing again.” She motioned toward Lenah. “I don’t have a rich family or a great education.”

  “I’m not sure I have a family any longer, either. And my education serves nothing outside the corporate world. I was trained all my life to end up sitting on a board of directors.” Lenah left out the part about influencing people.

  Persia snorted. “Doesn’t sound too bad. Why did you throw it all away?”

  Lenah shrugged. “I always wanted to fly my own ship.” Then she turned around to make sure no one else was there to listen. “And because I already suspected my father was involved in something bad.”

  “Bad? You mean the farms?”

  “No, something criminal. I heard a rumor about a test subject passing away in a laboratory. And he’s been having shifty-looking people over, spending hours locked with them in his office. The only meetings he doesn’t allow me to attend.” Unfortunately, Lenah couldn’t influence her father’s mind either. She wasn’t sure why, but figured it could have something to do with them sharing the same blood. “The mage farms are — at least as far as I know — legal,” Lenah said.