Ty rubbed his arm, probably feeling like it was his fault that we’d jumped blind into this mess. Maybe he’d be attaching another metal band to his bicep later. I hoped not. I’d wanted to try locating my dad just as badly as he had.
“Next time, you have my word, we’ll be ready. I’ll get you ready. And we’ll face whatever is out there together.”
I clasped his hand. “Can’t wait.”
But that was a lie.
I’d seen my future, staring down at a burning planet.
What could bring me to that?
Part Three
Denza (I Half Belong Here)
19
I stood with my hands pressed against the wall that I’d flipped to transparent mode, staring down at the approaching planet. The Eastwood coasted between two low-hanging moons, the satellites glowing orange from the rising sun. The ocean came into view—rippling and wide, dotted everywhere with islands. Those little havens were all connected by a spider’s web of high-speed rail lines. As we got closer, I could see trains zipping between islands, the swaying tops of trees, people paddling boats down the coastline. I felt a drop in my stomach like an elevator going down too fast as the Eastwood slowed its descent. That was real gravity grabbing hold of me for the first time in weeks.
This was Denza. Not one of Aela’s tutorial memories either. The real thing.
My first sunrise on another world.
“Pretty dope,” I said to myself. I was alone on the Eastwood’s viewing deck. I’d gotten out of my cabin early, my trusty Earther backpack slung over my shoulder, hyped to explore a new planet.
I heard a small laugh behind me and turned to find Melian watching me with her hands clasped behind her back. “You’re going to leave nose smudges on the wall, getting that close,” she said.
I didn’t step back, but I did buff the sleeve of my uniform against the wall-screen. “First alien planet,” I said. “I’m kind of geeking out.”
She came to stand next to me. “It’s nice to come home.”
After the incident with the Etherazi, I’d spent a few days recovering in the sick bay and then in my cabin. My advanced half-human metabolism stomped all over a little vacuum-caused frostbite, and I was back on my feet in a few days. The official narrative, which had come down from Captain Reno, was that in an act of foolish bravery I’d distracted the Etherazi long enough for her to scare it away in her Battle-Anchor. The rest of my crewmates weren’t stupid—well, maybe Hiram was—and surely knew there was more to the story, but with all the senior members of the crew behind it, they had no choice but to accept it.
Melian, I thought, accepted it more readily than some of the others. She’d been looking at me with starry eyes for the rest of our trip to Denza. I didn’t mind. It was nice to be the hero for once, instead of the lurking new kid with a dangerous secret. I mean, I still had dangerous secrets, but the heroism was fresh.
“That’s Primclef down there,” Melian said, “the world capital.”
She pointed at the huge island we were gliding toward. Primclef was essentially a giant crater, mountainous on all sides except for what the locals called Keyhole Cove at the north end. Most of the important government buildings were housed directly in hollowed-out portions of the mountain ring; these included the Serpo Institute, the Denzan Senate, and the state-owned mining company that regulated the production of ultonate. These mountainside locales were connected by walkways, systems of elevators, and of course ample docking for skiffs ready to ferry passengers from one side of the island to the other. Down below, crater-side, as they called it, were the tightly packed Denzan neighborhoods. In all my travels on Earth, I’d never actually been to New York City, but that’s what crater-side reminded me of with its regimented grid of city blocks and crowded streets, minus all the pollution, honking horns, and general chaos. The city was crisscrossed by a light rail system, some of the tracks disappearing into the mountains to zip passengers to other islands. There was precision to every bit of Primclef’s design that satisfied something in me, a mathematical logic that scratched a mental itch.
“The mountain is a source of ultonate, so all the important buildings are housed in its caverns, since the metal repels Etherazi temporal attacks,” Melian explained, an eager tour guide. “That little gap to the north—”
“Keyhole Cove,” I said. “I know all this.”
“You do?”
“Sure. It was all covered in that guide you made for me.”
Melian’s eyelids fluttered. “You actually read all that?”
“Like three times,” I told her.
“Oh.” Melian hugged herself, trying not to look too happy. I really had pored over her guide while I was bedridden, eager to know everything I could about Denza. “Well, then I guess I’ll just say welcome to your new home, Syd.”
I didn’t expect it, but her words gave me a chill, made me feel at once hopeful and overwhelmed. Finally, I was in a place that I didn’t need to run from.
Ten minutes later, the Eastwood docked in a mountainside shipyard, and the entire crew piled toward the exit ramp. After a few weeks in space, everyone was eager to stretch their legs and breathe some fresh air. As the exit ramp lowered, I found myself standing next to Darcy. She already had her hood pulled up to hide her face.
“Here,” she said, shoving a wad of fabric into my chest.
It was a black winter hat. I raised an eyebrow. “What’s this for?”
“Your head,” she said. “Hide your hair. Unless you like getting stared at.”
Contrary to what my uncle told me, the golden glow hadn’t faded from my hair. I still looked like my head had been dipped in liquid metal, although some of my old color was coming back at the roots. My mom would’ve hated this look. Impossible to fly under the radar. I knew Darcy liked to hide her hybrid nature and thought the Denzans looked down on her, but I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. I stuck the hat in my back pocket.
“Thanks,” I said. “But I’m going to see how it goes.”
Darcy rolled her eyes. “Suit yourself.”
The ramp lowered, and the entire crew exited onto the busy spaceport. The building was like a honeycomb carved into the side of the mountain, ships buzzing in and out from all angles. Most of the vessels were the little skiffs like my uncle had flown back on Earth. I did catch sight of some other massive Serpo starships like the Eastwood, with teams of cadets making repairs or running drills. I glimpsed what must have been a Panalaxan freighter wobble into a berth, the ship looking more like an uprooted oak tree than something capable of spaceflight.
As we disembarked, Zara immediately disappeared into the crowd. H’Jossu, meanwhile, bounded ahead, his snout tipped back to breathe in the salt-sweet air. I found myself doing the same, filling my lungs with my first big breath of Denza. I was really here.
Tycius put a hand on my shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get you settled.”
“Good call,” I said. “I have no idea where I’m going.”
My uncle led me along the crowded walkway, Denzans all around us. Most of them were too busy with their own lives to give me a second glance, but I definitely caught a few looks. We hadn’t gone far when I noticed a group of Denzans that were definitely staring at us. One of them held a blown-up picture of Earth surrounded by the darkness of space, like a satellite photo. My home planet looked lonely floating out in the Vastness.
Before I could ask my uncle what their deal was, the Denzans came toward us.
“Check it out, Darcy.” I heard Hiram cackle behind me. “It’s your mom’s best friends.”
Oh, so these were the Merciful Rampart. The group of Denzans that thought humanity should stick to Earth, the ones who Arkell used to roll with. They didn’t look like much. I’d been expecting scarred terrorists with missing fingers and eye patches, but this group looked like a bunch of middle-aged academics.
The leader stopped in Reno’s way, and she let him, sighing deeply.
“Marie Reno, we appreciate all humanity h
as done for Denza,” the guy said, in what sounded like a pretty well-trod bit. “But it is unnatural for your kind to stay. You have not yet earned your place in the stars. You should return to Earth, where you belong.”
“Thank you for your opinion, sir,” Captain Reno replied patiently. “I’ll take it under consideration.”
“And eat shit, buddy,” Hiram added, which earned him a dirty look from the captain.
The handful of protestors seemed to take all this like it was part of a routine, and I wondered how many confrontations they’d had just like this one with humans entering the spaceport. I’d built the Merciful Rampart up in my head since I first heard about them, but they didn’t seem all that threatening.
Except then the lead one glanced at me and I saw the way his mouth curled back and his nostrils flared, an unmistakable look of cold disgust. I almost reached for that hat in my back pocket.
“Arkell!” one of the protestors shouted. “How do you live with yourself?”
Our chief engineer brought up the back of our crew, dragging behind him a tote full of tools and spare parts. He hadn’t said a word to me since our confrontation in the canteen. In fact, he hadn’t really spoken to anyone except maybe Batzian, and then only to harangue the Denzan on how behind he was on his assignments (which Batzian actually wasn’t, but he never stood up for himself). Just as she’d promised, Captain Reno had kept Arkell in line.
Arkell grimaced in response to the protestor. “With great difficulty,” he muttered, then veered away from our group.
Everyone had places to go and people to see, so our crew gradually broke up as we made our way first through the spaceport and then along a series of mountainside walkways. Eventually, it was just my uncle and Aela walking with me. I didn’t pay much attention to the route through the mazelike paths and stairwells—I could learn that later—I was more interested in the view. Whenever we were on an outdoor walkway, I couldn’t help but stare at the partial eclipse, the choppy purple ocean, the thousands of Denzans going about their daily lives on similar paths on the other side of the crater. I was like a tourist, gawping at everything.
“Wonderful,” Aela remarked. “To see you experience this for the first time, Syd, is the highlight of my day. So far, at least. It’s early. Still, very good.”
I smiled at the wisp, and the magenta cloud behind the faceplate formed a curlicue in response.
“Here we are,” Tycius said. “The institute.”
I knew we were getting close by the number of cadets I’d seen walking around with uniforms identical to mine except for the different ship insignias stitched into the shoulders. Most of the other ISVs had symbols involving stars, or flowers, or geometric designs. Reno was the only captain to have chosen a weapon.
The institute itself was built into the rock face: six stories of classrooms and dorms, with a cavernous entrance flanked by benches and gardens. The whole thing gave off very Greek vibes to me—open and welcoming, with Denzans and a smattering of other extraterrestrials hanging around engaged in deep discussions.
We passed through the arched entrance, the air inside cool and welcoming. Back on Earth, in my days as a town-hopping fugitive, I’d slouched drowsily into a bunch of different schools. I knew the routine, and it wasn’t any different at the Serpo Institute. As soon as you walked through the doors, it felt like everyone in the hallway was staring at the new kid. The thing was, that was mostly in your head. Maybe you caught some looks, but most kids had too much of their own shit on their minds to care about some rando.
The big difference at the Serpo Institute was that the dozens of faces all belonged to aliens.
Oh, and I was pretty sure they were actually staring at me. Half-humans were a pretty rare thing. Especially ones with heads of glowing golden hair.
Tycius led us down a hallway of classrooms. They were spacious and furnished with high-backed chairs that looked like seats from the fancy movie theaters back home, the ones with recliners. In front of each chair was a pedestal-mounted touch screen. The stations were arranged in a semicircle around a central lectern.
“Is it very different from your Earth classrooms?” Aela asked.
“Uh, yeah, a little different,” I said. “A lot of places I went to school, we had to share desks because some rich dickhead didn’t want to pay taxes.”
Aela shrugged. “Sharing is nice, though.”
We rode a glass-walled elevator up to the dorms. The view was, of course, amazing. It was the time of day the Denzans called Playful Dawn, when the early morning sun rose, then hid behind one of Denza’s moons, and then peeked back out again. The sky was rippling orange and purple, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
The elevator let us out in a curved hallway with dozens of doors on either side. My uncle checked his tablet.
“Forty-two,” he said, pointing. “Your room’s over here.”
The lock on my dorm was biometric, so I had to stand there for a few seconds scanning my palm before it would let me in.
“I’m right down the hall,” Aela said. “Our whole crew is on this floor, actually. Except for Hiram and Darcy. They’re from Primclef, so they live off campus. Stop by if you want to hang out later.”
“I will,” I replied. “Your room is the one without any furniture, right?”
“Or windows!” Aela replied cheerily, then paced down the hallway to do whatever wisps do in their spare time.
My room’s door finally clicked open, revealing a space not so different from the one on the Eastwood. A double bed, desk, bookshelf (empty), closet (stocked with spare uniforms), vid-screen (blank), and private bathroom. My window looked out on the ocean, the frothy waves and glowing reefs, three moons currently visible like pearls in the sky.
Tycius glanced at his tablet again, which was lit up with notifications. “It seems like I’ve got ten years’ worth of meetings today.” He sighed. “Are you okay if I leave you?”
“I’m good, Uncle,” I replied. “If I need help, I’ll track down Aela or one of the others.”
Ty nodded and patted me on the shoulder. “Welcome to Denza, Syd.”
Once I was alone in my room, I think I spent a good hour just staring out at the ocean and watching the moons slowly inch across the sky. Eventually, I decided I should double-check my schedule of classes. Like a true dork, I was planning to look for the rooms today so I wouldn’t be late tomorrow.
In addition to the required math and science courses that were tailored to an Earthling of my experience (remedial, it turned out), I’d signed up for some electives:
INTRODUCTION TO WAYSCOPES (Instructor Coreyunus). RESTRICTION: DENZANS ONLY. If I was going to take another crack at using my dad’s cosmological tether, I needed to make sure I could properly use a Wayscope without frying my brain. I figured since I was half-Denzan, I didn’t have to worry about the restriction.
DENZAN HISTORY: THE ETHERAZI INCURSION (Instructor Rafe Butler). My mom had told me to track down Rafe Butler, another one of the First Twelve, so I’d made sure to sign up for his lecture. I was sure he was related to Hiram, but I’d never bothered to ask. Personal conversations with Hiram were nonstarters.
ARTIFACTS OF THE LOST PEOPLE (Instructor Theoretician Vanceval). My dad had been one of Vanceval’s students, and old Vanceval had personally requested I take his class. Of course, if the Lost People my dad had gone searching for were really some universe-conquering masters like the gold Etherazi (aka Goldy, as I was now calling him in my brain to make him less terrifying) said, then I wanted to know as much about them as possible. Before I fulfilled my destiny of blowing up their world. But I was trying pretty hard not to think about that.
And, finally, I decided to take a chance with my last elective.
I STALK YOU (Instructor Zara den Jetten). It was no wonder Zara’s class didn’t have any sign-ups. The course description was the same as the title, and there was no set time or location. Something brought Zara and me together in a distant future where I could grow a beard and
we blew up a planet. Taking her bizarre class seemed like the only way to get to know her.
I’d also entered my own class into the registry of hundreds of seminars taught by Serpo staff and students. I had titled it Kick-Ass Earth Sci-Fi, but some smug Denzan in the institute’s registration office had edited into this:
INTERGALACTIC POSSIBILITIES THROUGH THE LENS OF PRIMITIVE FICTION (Instructor Sydney Chambers). In this course, you will read fiction created by humans and attempt to discover meaning and value in the words of an unevolved species.
They didn’t make it sound very good, but that didn’t stop H’Jossu from signing up.
I figured once I’d prepared for tomorrow, I could spend the rest of my day exploring. I called up the list of hot spots Melian had made for me, which also included helpful instructions on how to get to each one from the dorms. Maybe I’d go check out Keyhole Cove, the neighborhood around the beach.
I soon found myself on one of the institute’s open-air walkways overlooking the city. I kept glancing down at my tablet and still got turned around trying to navigate all the different paths. I also just kept staring out at the city, letting all that sprawling alien architecture fizz across my mind.
From behind, a pair of strong hands clasped my shoulders, squeezing hard.
“Don’t jump!” Hiram bellowed in my ear. “The institute isn’t that bad!”
Hiram and Darcy stood behind me. The big doofus bellylaughed at his own stupid joke while Darcy rolled her eyes and tugged at the strings of her hood.
“Uh, hey, guys,” I said, rubbing my shoulders where Hiram had dug his fingers in.
“What’re you doing?” Darcy asked me.
I shrugged. “Just getting a handle on things, I guess. Taking in the sights.”
“His Earther mind is probably blown,” Hiram said. “He’s been—what, living in a house made of mud, feeling sick every day, riding a big orange tank to his prison-school. And now he’s free!”
“We call them buses.”
“Buses!” Hiram laughed. “Fucking Earth. They crack me up back there.”
Ashfall Legacy Page 17
