Firewyrm

by Erik Schubach

  In the earpieces of the goggles, a song called We Didn't Start the Fire, by a musician named Billy Joel started blasting. Myra's cat ears twitched, then she made a motion in the air and the music blasted in the cabin. After a few bars, she asked, “What is this?”

  I supplied, “I was recently introduced to the anthropological music archives, late twentieth century...”

  She nodded, and bobbed to the beat, then pointed up as she rotated us on the Y-axis and I gasped at the breathtaking sight before me. I mean, I knew what the Leviathan looked like, I've seen thousands of pictures, models, holographs and the like, and could see parts of her in the roof of the world, but actually seeing her from space...

  Mother, anticipating me, lowered the volume so I could appreciate the sight. Stretching off into the distance, I could see the counter-rotating stacks of the habitat rings, almost incomprehensible in scope, as light from the nebula we were flying past danced along the hull of the Leviathan like diamonds glittering in pools along her hull. The stacks were spaced evenly along the trunk of the ship, with a bulging sphere in the middle, the core or heart of the Worldship that held a seven-mile diameter asteroid inside of it which we mined for resources.

  Myra reached over and gently closed my mouth which had been hanging open. I whispered in awe, “She's beautiful.”

  Mother chirped out, sounding almost bashful, “Thank you, Knith.”

  Catching the ship AI's slip up, emoting around someone other than me and Graz, my ex looked at me then the console, brows pinched as she asked, “Mother?”

  Mother responded, sounding tinny and mechanical again, “Yes Commander Udriel? Awaiting input.”

  Myra narrowed her eyes in a very catlike manner then sighed and addressed me, “I live for this sight. It reminds me every time I see it, just how small we are in the grand scheme of the world. It tells me there have to be gods in the heavens to have created the Leviathan.”

  I nodded, unable to tear my eyes from the sight, “I've never seen her like this...” This was our world, taking in the sheer scope of her made me realize the impossible undertaking our ancestors had embarked upon to save all the races of the old world, solid ground, open air, sky. Myra was right, we were all small in comparison to what was achieved to save twelve million souls from a world that was slowly being swallowed by an expanding sun.

  It didn't matter who we were, Fae, shifters, Elves, Minotaurs, Vampires, and even my non-magical race, or nulls... Humans. The Leviathan was the monument to the world we left behind and served as the only world many of us short-lived species have ever known. And her beauty was beyond compare.

  Then Myra was firing thrusters again sending us hurtling down toward the Alpha-Stack. The song was finishing just as we were docking at an airlock near the emergency. I noted a blemish on the hull a few dozen yards away, like the rippling diamond Skin had been charred. I assumed it was a micro-meteorite strike, nothing the Leviathan couldn't take.

  Once the outer airlock doors cycled, Myra stayed behind, saying, “I've got to get back in front of the world, there's a hole in coverage since I peeled out to ferry your ass here.” Then she added, “Be safe... a fire isn't anything to take chances with, Knith.”

  Then she added before I could thank her, “Surprisingly, it wasn't unpleasant... seeing you again.”

  I sighed. It was my fault we broke up. She had already got her commission as a pilot in Ready Fleet when we were finishing college. She wanted me to follow her, but I always thought the Brigade was my calling. Since the two services are always butting heads, she didn't think it would work between us if I joined the Enforcers.

  As much as I thought I loved her, I knew I had to follow my heart as well, or I wouldn't be happy and that would poison our relationship. She gave me an ultimatum, her or the Brigade... I chose, she left.

  Nodding, my eyes widened. “Oh, here, these are yours.” I started to take off the goggles and flight jacket and she looped my hands with her tail.

  She shrugged. “No, that's alright, they always looked better on you.” Then she turned away and hit the door controls as she said, “Godspeed.”

  I turned back and gave her a sad smile through the window, placing a hand on it and mouthed, “Godspeed,” to her back as she headed back to the cockpit.

  Turning back to the inner doors and cycling them, I walked into chaos and smoke. Even all the way back here in Bulkhead J? I yelled above the klaxons. “Mother?”

  “The closest I could route your gear is a tube port fifty yards counter-rotation,” she said.

  I nodded and called out as I ran that way, “Thanks.” Then shouted at the panicking citizens as I ran past, “Get to safety, go down-ring to C, and emergency personnel will take care of you.”

  This isn't the first time I've witnessed this, there have been emergencies before, nothing as severe as fire, but some people, when they panic, they run deep into the bulkheads, toward the Skin instead of the safety of the open rings, or heading to a safe ring until the emergency is resolved.

  They taught us about this in the academy, it is the fight or flight instinct that is deeply ingrained into some species. Long ago, before mankind rose to power on Earth, some races would go to ground, some literally, burrowing tunnels to get away from predators. The problem here is that that instinct could get them killed in instances like this.

  I looked over to a Faun who was huddling against the bulkhead with a family of Satyrs. I needed to get to their rational minds. I crouched at the group and took the Faun's soft furred hand and placed another hand on the male Satyr's shoulder. “I need you to head counter-rotation to the next cross corridor and head out to the... hey... look at me!”

  Their eyes snapped up at the forceful command, I made sure I had their attention as I said, “I need you to be brave for me, ok? I need you to get out to the open Ring, get to a spoke and head down-ring. I need you to be brave for the other Fauns and Satyrs out there who are afraid and confused. You need to bring them with you... it will be safe down in the C-Ring until we can get this fire contained.”

  I looked at them hopefully. “Can you do that for me? Help me get the others to safety?”

  They looked apprehensive as they slowly stood, first the Faun then the Satyr nodded, letting their brains override their instinct. Then they huddled together and loped off toward the next cross corridor. Good.

  We reached the tube station and I gave my voice authorization to open and just as I opened the pill-shaped capsule to retrieve my armor and weapons, a streak of light burst out of it, leaving a sparkling trail of dust.

  The Sprite who was my unwanted roommate, along with her, or his family, buzzed around until it landed on my shoulder. Pronouns were always hard for me with tri-sex species like Sprites. We agreed since she had no preference, to use female pronouns since she had cute femininity to her androgyny.

  She blurted, “Wooo! Now that was a rush! I gotta do that again. Have you ever ridden in one of those things? They're insanely fast! Well, of course, you haven't, you bigs can't fit. Too bad...”

  I put a finger over her face, then once she stopped, and buzzed her wings in agitation, I asked, “Graz, what are you doing here? There's a fire. It's dangerous.”

  She crossed her arms. “What? And it's fine that you go rushing into it? Come on, we're partners. Someone's gotta watch your back or my family loses its posh quarters.”

  Rolling my eyes I said over the klaxons that I was getting so used to I could barely hear them now, “Heaven forbid you lose my quarters where you're crashing. At least we know you have your priorities straight.”

  “Well, I do sort of worry about you too, Shade. You're ok, you know, for a big null and all. Someone has to have your back.”

  I offered, “Mother has my back.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Hey, you big tin can, shush, we're talkin' here.”

  “Knith, if you place her back in the tube, I can route her out to hard vacuum.”

 
Graz flipped off the nearest observation camera and I held up my hands. “Ladies! Please, there's a fire. You can squabble later.”

  I looked around and sighed, watching people dashing around in the smoke-filled corridor and I stripped then donned my armor and helmet, feeling much better with the reassuring weight of it and the weapons at my side. I quickly stuffed my other stuff back in the transport container and Mother sent it zipping back off to my quarters.

  I said to Graz as she tucked herself into my hair at my cheek, “Seriously, why are you here? You could get hurt.”

  She shrugged and said, “Mother told me about the fire and how you were just running straight to it.” She shrugged again and I sighed.

  “Well, hang on then, no doubt things are going to get rough. First responders haven't even reached bulkhead J, so we're early to the party.”

  Then I was running as fast as I could toward the hotspot on the map being projected in my peripheral by the suit's heads up display. Calling out with the suit's amplifier, “Make a hole, Brigade!” Blue and amber lights of Enforcer pursuit flashed on my shoulders.

  Chapter 2 – Bad Reputation

  I burst out into the open ring, first responders were arriving from all directions as the Leviathan's automated fire suppression systems were valiantly holding back a raging inferno from the edges of the forest.

  “Report,” I asked Mother.

  She said, a touch of confusion in her tone, “Something seems to be feeding the flames, self oxygenating, and I can barely keep them from spreading farther. There's a lot of structural damage inside the bulkheads... wait... it seems to be moving like it is alive. It's about to burst out of Bulkhead A.”

  I looked around and saw the re-breathers being unloaded from a fire suppression team that was arriving. Mother sighed. “You still haven't reviewed the specs on your new armor, have you Knith?”

  “Umm... maybe.”

  “Here, allow me.”

  My visor shot up and I held my arm up when I felt the nano-panels of the armor reconfiguring It became beefier with what looked like rough, black refractory coating on it. I heard the air inside the helmet being evacuated, but before I could panic, I could breathe again... smoke-free air and Mother was in my head saying, “This is thermal ablative mode, it can withstand up to twelve hundred degrees and will give you thirty minutes of breathable air in fire or toxic environments. You really should look over the specifications to...”

  I muttered, “I know, I know. Can you save the lecture until later... mom? Get me to the fire marshal then we have to get to whatever is moving around before it breaches the bulkhead.”

  A light pinged on the map. Great, I had offended her, now she wasn't talking to me. I almost jumped when Graz asked from right beside my ear, “Who you talkin' to, Knith? You know one of the first signs of insanity is speaking to yourself.”

  I exhaled. I had already forgotten she was there, now she was sealed inside my helmet. “Just zip it Graz.” Then I added, “And Mother when you decide you're talking to me again, pipe it through the internal speakers so the bug doesn't think I'm crazy.”

  “The bug?!”

  I slapped my helmet. “Zip it!” She made a zipping motion over her lips in my peripheral vision.

  Then she unzipped them to say, “You don't gotta be so...” She quickly zipped her lips again when I threatened to slap the helmet again.

  The whole time this was going on, my eyes were on the ship's schematics that Mother was feeding me. She was highlighting the damaged areas, and it was frightening, whatever kind of fire this was, was burning hot enough to melt through multiple bulkheads that were thick enough to take a moderate meteorite strike.

  I reached the fire marshal, who was shouting out orders. I called out, “Knith Shade, Enforcer. What can I do?”

  The Minotaur woman looked me up and down and pointed back. “Crowd control! Other Enforcers are arriving now. Get those lookie-loos down-ring. Damn vacuum sucking idiots.” She growled as she was looking at the readouts on a pad in front of her, “Oh space me now.” Then she was yelling, “Containment, get the gods be damned magi-tech Pyre-Suits sent up here now. This monster of a fire will melt our normal MTFS gear. Get suppression teams on the perimeter and in the bulkheads to contain this beast until we can detonate a cryo-core in the heart of it.”

  At a thought, Mother was providing me with the specs on the MTFS gear. Their suits could only protect them up to eight hundred degrees. The Pyre-Suits could handle almost eighteen hundred. And the fire's core was burning around eleven hundred.

  I placed a hand on the fire marshal's flank and she turned back toward me, her hooves clopping and tail swishing in agitation as she hissed out, “I don't have time for this, the bulkhead is on the verge of collapse, you stupid null! Every second counts.”

  Ignoring the insult I told her, “I can get a cryo-core in there for you. My suit can handle the heat, twelve hundred degree threshold.”

  She started to argue, “Enforcer's armor is no...”

  I held a hand up. “I can do it. This is experimental armor, nothing like the standard issue. I can get in there before your Pyre-Suits get here. As you said, every second counts.”

  I looked at the fire crew start to work, some spraying water or firing oxygen inhibitor or foam grenades to try to starve the fire, while others with magic started slinging waves of super-chilled frost into the middle of the visible flames. They were a well-oiled machine.

  The woman made a huffing sound in her throat then looked at me. “A charge weighs almost three hundred pounds, you're...”

  I nodded, hearing the unspoken 'human'. “I can handle it.” Even without my armor, I could probably drag it into place, I was a little stronger, a little faster than normal humans. But my armor, like my old standard-issue armor, had servos built in to make me as strong as many of the other races on the world. “Just tell me what to do.”

  I lowered my visor and almost coughed when I breathed in the smoke again, I let her see the determination in my eyes. Then she nodded once and paused when an announcement came out over coms that Queen Titania of the Summer Court was sending some of her people down to help mitigate the fire.

  Fire was the domain of the Summer Court, just as ice was the domain of the Winter Court. The Greater Fae of her court could likely contain the fire ten times better than the containment crews here could.

  All the crews seemed to relax a little at the news. At least this thing would be contained for sure before the forest caught if the Seelie were coming. They usually stayed well clear of anything on the world that didn't affect them directly, so I wonder why they were coming to our aid this time.

  I listened intently to the fire marshal, who introduced herself as Hanalee, as she gave me instructions on where to place the charge. And once I activated it, I had sixty seconds to get clear. It didn't have a remote trigger, just in case a clump of stray cosmic radiation triggered it, so a timer it was.

  The commander of the Alpha-Ring Battalion was approaching us, calling out my name, telling me to stand down. I said quickly to Hanalee, “Gotta get going. Be back in a flash.” I grabbed the cryo-charge, hesitated, and with the aid of my armor's servos, went jogging straight into the fire before the angry-looking elvish commander could reach me.

  Ok, not my most well thought out plan. Even in this new armor, I could feel the heat seeping in, but it wasn't anything I couldn't take. I slowed after a few steps and furrowed my brow as the flames seemed to move around me but not hit the armor.

  Graz said, “This isn't the time to lock up, Shade.”

  And Mother prompted me, “Knith?”

  I said, “Look at this...” I reached into the flames and the swirling chaos seemed to part to flow around my arm instead of engulfing it. “It's acting like... no...”

  Mother sounded curious when she prompted, “Like what?”

  It sounded silly but I shrugged and said, “Like magic. You know how it has a problem sticking to
me.”

  Graz said, “Well you saw it with your own eyes earlier, did you see any glow?” They were two of the four people who knew I could feel and see magic.

  I shook my head. “The fire was so bright, I wouldn't have noticed. But this...” I stepped into a gout of flame and it swirled out of my way. “Isn't natural.”

  Mother voiced my concern. “A spell? Sabotage?”

  I shook my head then plodded forward, following the flashing coordinates on the map, the center of the blaze... and it was moving. “Nobody would be that foolish, they'd have to know it would be found out that the fire was intentional, and the punishment for sabotage of the world is spacing to suck hard vacuum.”

  I didn't have time to ponder it as the center of the fire was again moving up against the Bulkhead A wall. I lugged the drum-like charge along, my armor compensating for my uneven footing, keeping me upright as I slogged across ceramic deck plates that were glowing red hot.

  How was it moving?

  I asked, “Mother, I know the techs have been playing around with adapting Magic Resonance Scan tech into Brigade armor...”

  “On it... it is not as precise as a dedicated unit but. Hmm... curious.”

  It still unnerved me a little how... alive she sounded to me. I've surmised that she had become self-aware in the thousands of years the Leviathan has been flying through space to our destination, but she is afraid to let anyone know, especially the Greater Fae who could switch her off at a moment's notice and have her reset to default settings, making her just a run of the mill AI again.

  I prompted, “Care to share with the class? It's getting uncomfortably warm in here.”

  Graz made an unzipping motion then offered, “Are you crazy? This feels great in here, like a Fae hothouse.”

  I flicked my eyes toward her and she scrunched her head to her shoulders like she was afraid any sudden movement would set me off as she rezipped her lips.

  Static filled com traffic assaulted my ears. Someone was yelling at me it seems. I'm sure it was the commander. What could be messing with coms? The channels are boosted by journeyman lesser Fae, we could fly through the residual radiation belts from an ancient supernova and still have coms. Wait... I could still communicate with Mother just fine. Was the minx purposefully introducing static?