Bender of Worlds

by Isaac Hooke

  According to Tane’s chip, Sigma was the name of an immense gas giant in the system, and Sigma 231 was one of its many moons. There weren’t two hundred and thirty one of them, but Tane’s chip told him the colony’s founders thought it had a nice ring to it.

  The gas giant was currently too far away for its light to show up on any of the external cameras in the Umbra, but the Red Grizzly was already experiencing the effects of its intense gravity. The cockpit shuddered around Tane as the conflicting forces of inertia, gravity, and thrust vied for dominance over the vessel. At least, that was the only explanation Tane had for the shaking.

  “I’m going to have to activate our energy shields,” Nebb said. “Our armor isn’t enough to protect us from the blue-shifted radiation that giant is emitting.”

  “Will we be safe on the moon’s surface?” Tane asked Lyra. “There won’t be any satellites here to generate a magnetosphere… at least according to the rules you told me about the Umbra.” According to Lyra, while human cities were duplicated in the Umbra, minus life, deep space never contained copies of human-built structures: no starships, no stations, no orbital defense platforms. So without satellites to generate a magnetosphere, the moon’s surface would be entirely unprotected from the gas giant’s intense radiation emissions.

  “There is still a magnetosphere,” Lyra replied weakly. “The founders chose Sigma 231 because the moon is a natural geodynamo.”

  “Geodynamo?” As the question reached his lips, the answer formed in his mind, thanks to his chip. A geodynamo was a planet or moon that contained molten iron in its outer core. Heat escaping from the inner core drove convection currents through the molten iron, which in turn induced an electric current and thus a magnetic field. Since the magnetosphere was a natural feature of the moon, and thus not provided by human-made satellites, the celestial body would deflect radiation even in the Umbra. “Never mind. Got it.”

  “We’re still going to suit up, of course,” Lyra said.

  “Don’t want to risk a microcrillia infection…” Tane said.

  “Exactly,” Lyra agreed. She closed her eyes, resting.

  After what happened to Sinive, Tane didn’t blame Lyra for wanting to suit up. He wasn’t sure if there was anything he hated more in this universe than microcrillia. Well, except maybe the larger crillia. Speaking of which...

  “How’s our hull?” Tane asked Nebb. “Any crillia attached?”

  “Unfortunately, there are quite a few, yes,” Nebb said. “I don’t know if your Volur friends told you or not, but we took a lot of damage to the hull getting here, with the integrity of some sections down below ten percent.”

  “They didn’t… what happened?”

  “Your Volur friends chose a rift that had a couple of dwellers lying in wait on the other side,” Nebb said. “They were trigger happy, to say the least. Anyway, with the damage we got, there were a whole lot of places for crillia to make a foothold. We got breaches on a few decks already. Nothing critical, mind you, but we’re going to have to make some repairs after we land. So it’s probably a good idea that you wanted to go planet-side after all.”

  “So I’m not taking a shuttle all the way down after all...” Tane said.

  “Nope,” Nebb said. “I’ll be landing and delivering you and your Volur friends personally, then making repairs. You’ll still take the shuttle after we land, of course, just not all the way from orbit.”

  “Fine by me,” Tane said. “I’ll wait until the Red Grizzly is fully repaired before taking the Volur back with me to our universe. Just in case.”

  “What, you think Sinive and I can’t take care of ourselves?” Nebb said. “We were doing just fine the two years before you came along. In fact, we were doing just great. And you ruined everything.”

  “You’re talking about the hit to your digital wallet I made?” Tane said. “After I revealed you were hiding your true income from Sinive?”

  “Nope,” Nebb said. “I was paying her. Just not enough. But hey, no one’s perfect. And the ruin I’m actually talking about is how you made everyone in our galaxy want to hunt me down.”

  “Ah,” Tane said. “Sorry about that.”

  “Nah, it’s my fault,” Nebb said. “I don’t know how to say no to a contract, especially when that contract is offered by a Volur promising big bucks. Unfortunately, turns out that the Volur doesn’t actually have all the money she promised me, at least at the moment.” He glanced at Lyra. “She keeps saying she has some investments coming due. Well, I’m waiting on those investments… especially since she’s a hundred K in the hole right now. And I’m not even counting danger pay, or the future loss in business that comes with being a wanted man.”

  “If you look into forgiving that debt, the Bender of Worlds would certainly be grateful,” Tane said.

  “Ha!” Nebb said. “So you’re the Bender of Worlds when it’s convenient for you. That’s right, I’ve been listening in on your conversations with my crew. You’ve admitted you don’t really think you’re the Arse Bender or whatever, but oh-ho, when talking to me, suddenly there you are again, Bending Worlds like there’s no tomorrow.”

  Tane shrugged.

  “Yeah, I got you good, and you know it!” Nebb told him. When Tane didn’t respond, he cleared his throat, and then continued: “Now, as I was saying, Sinive and I can take care of ourselves. You go on and teleport yourself back to our universe whenever you want, I’ll take care of Sinive. I’ll get us back the traditional way. By rift.”

  “Okay.” Tane said. “But tell me something: just how often do you visit the Umbra?”

  “This is the third time,” Nebb said. “Including the last time I took you here.”

  “Okay, so once on your own, and twice with me,” Tane told him. “I wouldn’t exactly call you an experienced Umbral explorer. So like I said, I’m going to wait until you’re safely in orbit, and then I’ll return to our universe. But not before then.”

  Nebb shrugged. “Suit yourself. I don’t really care either way.” Though his words were obviously meant to be nonchalant, Tane thought he sensed relief in the man’s voice. Nebb definitely wasn’t as confident as he seemed. How could he be? This was the Umbra.

  “I’m going with them,” Sinive said, her voice coming over the cockpit intercom. Tane hadn’t been aware she was listening. “At least until they reach the black lens. I assume that’s where you’re going, Tane? One of those inter-dimensional lenses?”

  Tane hadn’t actually revealed that particular bit of information to Nebb, and he thought the smuggler was going to gloat about it, but instead Nebb glanced upward and said: “No no no. I’ll need you to help repair the ship.”

  “You have more than enough repair drones,” Sinive said.

  “Then you’ll help me shoot the crillia off the hull,” Nebb said.

  “Again, that’s something you can easily handle yourself,” Sinive said.

  “But who’s going to watch my back?” Nebb said.

  “You have Positron,” she said. “Look, I’m not going to be gone long. Once I’ve seen them to the lens, I’ll take the shuttle back to the ship.”

  “What if I have to leave in a hurry?” Nebb pressed. “Without you to jump me, I’ll be stranded in the system.”

  “Like I told you, I’ll have the shuttle nearby,” Sinive said. “Shouldn’t be a problem to get back to you in a hurry.”

  “The shuttle…” Tane said. He glanced at Nebb. “Kind of makes me wonder why you didn’t send the Grizzly Cub to retrieve us the last time Sinive and I were stranded on a moon in the Umbra, with kraals closing in on all sides.”

  “Hey, I tried to send the shuttle,” Nebb said. “But you morons kept moving, and then that dweller ship decided to show up, ruining everything.”

  “Ah,” Tane said. He supposed he couldn’t blame him. Nebb wouldn’t have wanted to stick around very long when that dweller ship appeared.

  The final half hour to the moon passed without incident.

  “I’m
decelerating to enter the upper atmosphere,” Nebb said.

  Lyra sat up in her seat slightly and rubbed her eyes.

  “How are you?” Jed asked.

  “I think I’m going to need another boost,” she replied.

  Jed held out his hand, and Lyra evidently used her shapist skills to drain him of stamina, because he slumped a moment later while she in turn sat straighter. Jed returned to the bulkhead and leaned heavily against it.

  Lyra glanced at Tane. “The threads are growing strong again.”

  Tane glanced at his body. The dark, translucent filaments were readily visible once more, emerging from his joints. Each thread curved downward, passing through the deck toward the planet.

  “I feel the Essences,” Tane said. “The White. The Dark. Lurking beyond the edge of perception. White, the cold stellar wind impatient to scrape across my bones. Dark, the flames of chaos eager to scorch my core to a crisp.”

  “Poetic,” Lyra said. She turned to address Nebb: “Get us as close as possible to these coordinates.” She would be relaying the universal spherical coordinates Tane had given her earlier, which he had sourced from the memories of Tiberius. Unlike many other measurement techniques created by humans, coordinate systems hadn’t changed much in the past thousand years, thankfully: why break ten centuries worth of planetary maps by tinkering with something that worked extremely well, after all? That didn’t necessarily mean the object Tane sought would still exist at those coordinates, of course.

  Lyra had tried to get Tane to give her the coordinates of all the other lenses throughout the galaxy, but he had steadfastly refused.

  “But if something happens to you, we’ll lose the locations of the other lenses,” Lyra had told him.

  “If something happens to me, you won’t be able to use them anyway,” Tane had replied. She hadn’t pressed the issue.

  Nebb glanced at Lyra.

  “Mmm,” the smuggler said, eyes defocusing. “Those coords are right inside Durahepte, second most populous city of Sigma 231. I see why you had me fly to this hemisphere.” He paused. “That’s actually perfect. Looks like there’s a shipyard within two blocks. I’ll land at the yard, commence repairs, and meanwhile you take the shuttle to your destination.”

  “Are you detecting any kraals down there?” Lyra asked.

  “Nope,” Nebb answered. “Most of the kraals seem to be restricted to the larger city, Matahepte, far away to the south.”

  “Good,” Lyra said.

  “Grizz, I want our least damaged side oriented toward the planet during reentry,” Nebb said.

  “That would be the aft quarter,” Grizz said. “I’ve already rotated it toward the planet. I’m surprised you’d even have to ask.”

  “Hey, you know me, I always double-check,” Nebb said.

  “I should mention,” Grizz continued. “The aft quarters are also where the least amount of crillia are attached. So we won’t be burning off very many of them.”

  “I wasn’t expecting to burn any off,” Nebb said. “I’ll do a plasma rifle tour of the hull once we’ve landed, then set the repair drones to work.”

  Tane watched the nose cam feed during the descent. The half-dome of the moon ate up the sky to the right, growing bigger by the second as the Red Grizzly continued to decelerate and fall into the gravity well. The display abruptly filled with orange—the flames of reentry.

  “Heat shields on aft quarter are holding,” Grizz said.

  Nebb nodded slowly. His hand remained on the manual control joystick, no doubt ready to reverse course if the situation warranted it.

  The orange receded, replaced by a blur of white and gray. Then the clouds parted, revealing the lush landscape below. Sigma 231 was a jungle colony, judging from the flora that ranged across the surface.

  The Red Grizzly swooped low over the planet, bringing out the canopy in vivid detail. Well, as much detail as could be achieved in the Umbra at any rate, given that everything looked relatively insubstantial. The trees were all blue-tinted, with vast, sprawling leaves. He was reminded a little of the shape required to form an Essence Missile, though he supposed anything treelike would evoke Branchworks these days, even the hydroponic farm where he grew up.

  The farm… he thought of his parents. It seemed like he hadn’t heard from them in so long. He missed them, and felt the urge to send them a message. Unfortunately, there was no way to do so at the moment. Not in the Umbra.

  He stared at those blurry-edged trees passing by below. They would be green in his universe, not the darkish blue that they appeared here. No doubt the plants were sourced from the same genetically-engineered seeds most terraformers used when populating candidate planets and moons. The land-based flora would be responsible for about ten percent of the oxygen piped into the air, while the phytoplankton injected into the oceans covered the final ninety percent.

  The jungle quickly gave way to a sprawling city. From Tane’s vantage point high in the air aboard the Red Grizzly, he could see the vast circular wall that surrounded the city, hemming it off from the jungle. According to his chip, that wall could create an energy field to protect the inhabitants when one of the moon’s intense storm systems kicked in. Tane’s homeworld, Galtede Serpentis, had similar problems with sandstorms, and Kalindor city on that planet had an almost identical energy wall system. The hydroponic farm where he was raised had no such protections, however, and while growing up Tane often had to help the maintenance robots clear away the sand dunes after a storm passed.

  The buildings below were in the baroque style of the Septa Five, the original colonists of the moon according to Tane’s chip. The neighborhoods on the outskirts contained the same basic silo-like buildings laid out in grid fashion. Most of those silos were low to mid-rise apartment buildings. Some had fancy wing adornments jutting from the top, presumably a nod to the genetically engineered bird species the founders had introduced to the planet. Well, they were more dragons than birds, but hey, semantics. None of those birds would be present in the Umbra, of course.

  At the base of the buildings were different shops where citizens could order various goods and have them delivered by robot or drone—the exterior of the silos were lined with balconies designed to provide easy access for drone drop offs. Every room had one. Motionless vehicles resided in the streets, their positions based on whatever locations they had in Tane’s universe when the dark snapshot was taken.

  Most of the buildings had extravagant frescoes and carvings depicting various scenes straight out of the colony’s history. Several seemed fixated on one event: the discovery of the moon, with variations on the theme of an astronaut gazing through a faceplate onto the dark hemisphere of Sigma 231. Sometimes the astronaut was male, others female. Sometimes you couldn’t make out the face. There were supposed to be even more amazing digital augmentations to go along with those buildings, but of course Tane couldn’t see those in the Umbra.

  The blurry low- and mid-rise buildings gave way to residential skyscrapers: larger cylinders topped by landing pads containing flyers. Circular holes in the middle of some buildings were designed out of respect to the avian dragons, whose migratory routes passed straight through the city. Tane didn’t think any sort of creature would take advantage of the cutouts, but his chip had recordings of dragons passing straight through them. Go figure. He wondered what would happen if one of the giant birds decided to follow its migratory route when a storm was incoming, and the bird slammed into the city’s active energy field. The residents would probably be eating fried chicken for the next month.

  Nestled in between the cylindrical skyscrapers were other buildings and zones meant to break up the monotony: extravagant arches and stadiums, sprawling chariot grounds, open air theaters, and parks lined with intricate monuments. The place definitely had a baroque feel to it.

  On top of the bigger skyscrapers Tane picked out shipyards. The Red Grizzly would be heading toward one of them.

  He couldn’t suppress a premonition of doom as he
stared down at those ghostly buildings. The Red Grizzly was here because of him. Tane had led Lyra, Sinive and the others to this moon because of a memory that might not even be accurate. What if he was leading his friends into a trap? Or what if the object he sought wasn’t even there anymore?

  Well, he consoled himself with the knowledge that Nebb needed to land anyway to clear the hull of crillia, and effect repairs.

  Still, try as he might, Tane couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen.

  It didn’t help that Tane had come here for slightly different reasons than what he’d told Lyra. Oh sure, there was a lens here that would lead back to his own universe. But there was also something else. Something… darker.

  He’d have to let both Volur know the truth before debarking. He wondered if Lyra and Jed would let him go through with it. He wasn’t sure, but he was prepared to fight if he had to. He needed to come here. What that memory promised him was too important to give up.

  “You might as well head down to the shuttle bay and suit up,” Nebb said.

  Tane went to the ship’s jumpsuit closet to change. He didn’t take any of the spacesuits on the rack, of course, as he had a better spacesuit in his inventory. That particular suit was still wrapped into a tight bundle so it used only one slot. He retrieved it from his storage pouch and opened up the binding cord, which was a carbon fiber cable sourced from a spool inside the suit’s own utility belt.

  Older suits required cooling and ventilation undergarments and the like, but this was a more modern model, so he didn’t even have to undress: he simply pulled the assemblies over his existing attire.

  After he was fully suited, he glanced through the faceplate at the jumpjet unit inside the spacesuit closet. It was still a bit heavy for his tastes, and only had enough charges for twenty jumps. Then again, he could amp up the servomotor output of the spacesuit to compensate for the weight.