Empty Between the Stars (The Songs of Old Sol Book 1)

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘Modd, your Word is my hope. Transform your sands and let this servant partake of the heavenly table of supramolecular scale assembly.’

  Simenon moaned. Not from the agony of his sucking chest wound. The grains of Martian sand began to heat up, burning into his wound like acid. ‘Hold him down!’ I yelled.

  Warriors rushed forward, seizing Simenon’s limbs and pinning him to the ground. Mozart laid both hands on the boy’s shoulders, a metal press. Simenon’s low moans rose into screams. Steam rose from his wound, boiling blood. Sand glowed like furnace ash, brighter and brighter until his wound flared into a sun. The warriors wailed in fear and awe, but still they held the young man tight as he thrashed. They feared me now, even as they were blinded by His Light. Far more than they feared this poor possessed lad. They weren’t wrong to.

  The rust in the sand transformed into nanorobotic healing systems, converting Simenon’s flesh into copies of itself. Duplicating. Spreading. Not only his blood boiled. The pair of crossbow bolts embedded in the lad’s chest crumbled away, their matter subsumed. Transfigured. Modd’s spirit, the god’s very essence, entered Simenon, and how His holy touch burned. Simenon was being stitched apart and stuck back together from the inside out. What part of that transaction feels like gentle healing? God’s touch should be shrunk from, even as it cures.

  Eventually, the lad stopped screaming and fell silent, only the occasional palsy of his body to show he still lived. The level of pain caused him to pass out. I wiped his brow, drenched with sweat. I didn’t need to inspect Simenon further. My life as a surgeon lay many existences behind me, but I already knew the lad’s diagnosis after being touched by the Hand of Modd. Not a pre-cancerous cell left mutated. The short sight I’d noted while watching Simenon read, corrected. Even that slight early bald patch would start growing back.

  Our warrior escort moved well back, regarding me with an apprehensive mixture of awe, respect, horror, and fear. I heard muttered whispers of ‘prophet’ and ‘sorcerer’ being exchanged. Some of the gentler terms, no doubt. Less kind words would be hissed well out of my “malevolent” earshot.

  ‘Well, now you’ve gone and done it,’ said Mozart.

  I shrugged. How could I of all people not understand the holy compact of Modd’s scriptures? Whenever someone calls on Modd to save another’s life, they’re responsible for that life forever.

  ‘Cabin boy,’ sighed Mozart. ‘Just what we bleeding needed.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Networks.

  With our previous driver dead, one of the convoy’s warriors took command of our wagon. He perched on his seat with all the grace of a gorilla squatting on a rock. With the warrior’s horse tied to our wagon’s rear, it trotted behind us as we jolted forward. I urged the fellow to ride gently, Simenon lying in the back still unconscious and recovering. But the roads were what they were. Unpaved and rough. Simenon woke up by the time we were in sight of the Blez plantation. He remembered little of how he had been rendered unconscious or the injuries which had preceded them. He presumed he’d received a glancing blow to the skull knocking him out. I didn’t tell the lad of my intervention with Modd on his behalf. No doubt one of the convoy’s fighters would whisper in his ear in due course. It’s always easier to requite an injury than a service. Gratitude is a burden, but revenge may be found to pay.

  The plantation at Grodar finally hove into view. Grodar, like the capital, appeared a mixture of ancient architecture and newer but more primitive buildings. The ancient a series of hundred-foot-high domes based on geodesic polyhedrons formed of lattice-shell graphite. Their lattice held hundreds of ruby-coloured panels made of diamond-hard carbon mixed with armoured-film glass substrate. I had seen similar structures across a dozen colony worlds. Almost indestructible and relatively cheap and quick to throw together if you owned a working fab. The town’s newer buildings were roundhouses with reciprocal frame roofs covered by wooden tiles. Although technically of a more ancient design than Frente’s Tudor-style buildings, the single storey roundhouses appeared more sympathetic to their environment. Like an ecologically designed hamlet. Beyond the buildings stretched acres of cultivated vegetation, neat lines of it, buildings and plantation sealed off by a metal fence thirty feet high. Watch towers protected the barrier.

  Mozart scanned the place, looking perplexed. ‘I’m reading a charge; that’s a bleeding electric fence! How do the scroats keep it powered?’

  I scratched my chin. ‘Yes, a good question.’

  Simenon pointed to large red mushrooms interspersed along the fence’s length, twenty feet tall growths with caps that resembled upside-down jellyfish. They had been encouraged along the fence like pole beans on a trellis. ‘Those are Volt-of-the-Wood, Master Roxley. They store power from storms and use it to fry animals that eat their flesh. I have never heard of Volt-of-the-Wood being used in such a manner, though.’

  So, not harnessed for their properties inside the capital, but tapped out here? Interesting.

  ‘What do you know of the people who live in the plantations and farms, laddie?’

  ‘The farmers who keep to the darks aren’t like us. They’re called majyos. The forest has changed them and made their blood weird. They rarely visit the capital.’ Simenon sounded glad for it. Beyond us, the gates into the plantation opened inward. Simenon pointed towards the opening. ‘Look, there they are. See what I mean, Master Roxley. Even you must be careful around them. A curse from a majyo is enough to fell you inside a week.’

  I saw what he meant. The women in question were tall with athletic builds poorly concealed by ankle-length white linen tunics. They looked like the fittest people I had seen since landing on the moon. None of them wore low-light goggles like those in the convoy. But then, they didn’t need to. My m-brain fed me the name of the fungal growth colonizing the vitreous fluid inside the women’s eyes … Caeruleum Videre. Their eyes glowed a soft blue from the symbiotic organism allowing them to see in the murk as clear as day. Fungal growths were also cultivated across their arms and legs; luminous sapphire tattoos of knots, circles, and swirls. Not that the growers needed to appear more intimidating to their enemies, in my estimation. I noted it was women pulling open the gates. No males.

  ‘Where are the men, laddie?’

  ‘Only one boy is born in the dark for every hundred girls,’ whispered Simenon. ‘It’s said they kidnap Ferals when they need extra mates. Or city folk, if they’re desperate enough to risk the Watch’s guns.’

  ‘Well, well,’ I hummed. ‘The kind of majyo I enjoy to see, lusts down from her ample height towards me.’

  I didn’t tell Simenon that such a bizarre ratio of male to female births was often an unintended byproduct of hardened gene edits. Someone had read the writing on the wall here and started planning ahead many centuries earlier. I dare say the unexpected male shortage had thrown a spoke in their works. I suspected Grodar’s allegiance to the House of Blez supplied the shortfall, willing or otherwise. Our convoy passed inside the plantation gates to find out.

  As I clambered down from the wagon a woman emerged from the airlock door of one of the domes. She wore her dark hair long, braided and arranged on top of her head. She might have been one of Lady Blez’s cousins in looks, beauty and commanding airs. Except she obviously spurned sun-lamps; not flattering the pallid skin natural to a world of night. By contrast to Alice, this woman’s arms glowed with a knotted armband design tattoo.

  ‘You are William Roxley?’

  I bowed towards her. ‘That I am.’

  ‘Ajola Hara. Plantation Mistress.’

  The woman beckoned me inside her dome, an invitation that didn’t include Mozart or Simenon. I made a subtle finger gesture towards Moz, indicating I didn’t require his fists. At least, not yet. Ajola Hara had obviously received advance news of my arrival.

  ‘You have a radio that can talk to the capital, Mistress Hara?’ I asked as the dome’s door sealed behind me. Electrically powered, the same as the fence, I noted.


  ‘We are not complete savages, Goodman Roxley. We keep a receiving station here, as does the Lady Blez inside her palace.’

  ‘What about the Ferals in the forest beyond your fence?’

  Ajola snorted. ‘Those poor Ferals? Of course not. The spare parts to maintain our receiving station travelled almost as far as you. Anything as valuable as radio components were stripped and scavenged from the Ferals’ abandoned cites generations before my birth. The Four Families each keep a receiving station to communicate with their plantations and mines. As does the port, I believe. But you will know more about the landing fields.’

  ‘As warm a welcome as I have received on any Humanitum world.’

  ‘That, I doubt. Don’t hope for a warmer welcome here, goodman. I resent the implication that anyone in Grodar was involved with Lord Blez’s poisoning. We are a productive plantation. We harvest almost all the Blez spore-spice for auction. It is not assassins we produce here.’

  ‘This fine operation wasn’t always a plantation, was it?’

  ‘Grodar was an astrobiology station, once,’ said Ajola. ‘One of a handful created to study the local ecosystem and study how our race could exploit it. Our ancestors were scienceers.’

  ‘Little difference between the husbandry of the forest and a scienceer’s studies, at the end of the day.’

  ‘Our civilization has reached the end of days and passed beyond it. Only our learnings will save us.’

  ‘How addictive certain spore-spices prove…? Certainly, useful for keeping a trickle of trade with the outside universe.’

  ‘Far more useful than that. Hexator’s forests demonstrate incredible cooperative mechanisms,’ said Ajola Hara. ‘This wilderness might appear random to you, but it’s perfectly balanced. In any square mile, you will find Flora uniquely specialized to benefit its local community. Angel’s Wings which trap aerial predators inside a poisonous net. Bearded Redgill which sprays burrowing grazers that try to attack roots. Bog Bell which acts like a water butt, conserving rainfall for the soldier vegetation. Each organism plays a role as specific as any of Hexator’s guilds.’

  ‘But the ecosystem possesses no sentience?’

  ‘Not as we understand it. But such complexity. The forests maintain their own economic system with ledgers as detailed as any banking house. Mycelium root systems barter materials between each other. Minerals, nutrients, water, you name it. A stock of nitrogen can pass a thousand miles across the world before reaching the recipient that requested it.’

  ‘What’s to stop a nitrogen-starved rival hijacking nutrients en route?’

  ‘Bad actors in the forests are punished with embargoes by the mycelium network. No more nutrients, ever. Swindling leads to an evolutionary dead end.’

  ‘Admirable,’ I noted. ‘Would that the Ferals out in the forest learned such lessons.’

  ‘The Ferals rarely bother Grodar, at least in an overtly hostile way. They believe we’re witches.’

  I sympathized with their worldview. ‘The Ferals’ sonar masks are surprisingly sophisticated.’

  ‘Much may be lacking on Hexator, but not yet our race’s ingenuity. Sadly, the Ferals still mourn their dead cities and lost lives – they view the forest as something to fight and conquer. If we are to survive inside our home’s complex ecosystem we must find ways to embrace it. To meld with our world.’

  And was Ajola Hara guiding the savages beyond her fence with the plantation’s radio receiving station, I wondered? A goddess to replace the deities the Ferals had lost, preaching to the fallen masses?

  ***

  Ajola Hara tolerated my poking around the plantation, seeking out what I could. Although I noted there was always someone hovering in the background set to watch me. Never easy talking to people while they’re aware there’s a set of eyes watching and ears listening. The newer parts of the town were easy to access, but the older areas – its geodesic domes – were tightly regulated. Well, witches need to keep their cauldrons and spells private, or the entire world would learn their secrets. Simenon, I ordered to rest in the roundhouse quarters assigned to us. He wasn’t happy with that, but he was too weak to be of use to me. Never easy, playing the part of the born-again. I remember being saved by a fellow trader on an unlicensed habitat around Gamma Cassiopeiae after both my legs had been blown off by a land-mine. It took me six months to recover and I had never slept more fully than during that time.

  And, to be honest, I feared our majyo friends might further weaken Simenon with their seductions. My m-brain was in overdrive cooperating with my glands to produce counter-agents to the pheromones laced around the town’s public areas. It was a wonder the Blez warriors had any energy left to load wagons with the season’s harvest. Well, at least they were doing their bit to widen the gene pool in Grodar. The convoy’s female warrior cohort appeared royally pissed by proceedings, but the gene-hack ratio out here had rendered any contribution they had to make superfluous.

  I heard a snuffling from outside our door. One of the plantation’s stray bloodhounds had taken a liking to us and appointed itself house sentry. That meant, I suppose, Simenon had fed the dog at some point when my back was turned. The scent hound was the perfect breed for Hexator’s dark-side. Darkness was no problem when you had an acute sense of smell. One of our convoy’s warriors told me that the majyos’ hounds were bewitched and could sense the future; barking at threats days before they appeared. It was theoretically possible, I suppose. Dogs’ psychic abilities could be gene-edited easier than humans, without the inherent mental disorders.

  Mozart returned to our quarters later in the evening. He had been talking to locals while stacking wagons. The robot shut the door to the room with Simeon’s cot, the lad still snoring gently.

  ‘You’ve managed to resist the majyos’ attentions, then, Moz?’

  ‘I’m not their type, doc. How about you?’

  ‘Maybe seven hundred years ago.’

  ‘I meant what’ve you bleeding managed to find out from the birds?’

  ‘I know. You’re far too easy to tease, my steel chum. I made discreet inquiries about procuring the combination of spore-spices used to try to poison Lord Blez. The spores grown on this plantation are available at an obscene price from some of the more criminally-minded majyos, but the real trick is procuring Red Crescent.’

  ‘That’s the spore-spice from the Seltin plantation?’

  ‘Indeed. A substantial donation to the local black market supplied me with a source. There’s a hermit called Dumitru Bai who lives in the forest between the Seltin and Blez plantations. He was the product of a cross-plantation dalliance. The fellow now operates as a poacher and intermediary between both plantations.’

  ‘A bloke? You’d think he’d be in the same demand as the muscle-heads who rode into this dive with us.’

  ‘Goodman Bai was exiled from the Blez plantation for his severe antisocial tendencies. I fear the majyo gene edits are also producing elevated autistic tendencies among their small male cohort.’

  Mozart sighed. ‘Bloody amateurs.’

  ‘Sadly, not amateur enough, or our job here would be a lot easier. I have a map marked with Dumitru Bai’s hermit lair. I intend to sneak out and meet him. Let’s see if a little coinage can’t loosen his tongue enough to finger who he supplied for Blez’s failed poisoning.’

  ‘You mean we’re sneaking out to meet him…’

  ‘Our absence might be missed by Mistress Hara. I need a little Fake William in our hut to satisfy the pair of blue-eyed falcons hovering in the road outside, pretending to make small-talk while keeping their beadies fixed on our doorway.’

  ‘This is some right pony,’ complained Moz. ‘Do you know how boring it is pretending to be you and talking to myself?’

  ‘Almost as boring as it is actually being me?’

  A small holo-projector popped out of Mozart’s chest. ‘Small men enjoy big talk,’ he said in an eerily perfect imitation of my voice.

  I lifted the night-vision goggles off m
y forehead and left them on our small table. I also unbelted the revolver I had been given. The pistol wasn’t my weapon. I was the weapon. ‘That’s the spirit. You might want to send your bugs out, too. See what you can see. But be careful – there are hidden depths to these majyo. If they’re actively involved in this affair we could be in trouble.’

  Moz formed Hologram-me in the centre of the room, practicing walking him behind the cracks in the shutters. ‘Could be, you berk?’

  ‘Could-a, would-a, should-a.’ I slipped to my room in the back of the hut and found the square Mozart had cut in the wall. Before I bent down to remove our escape hatch, I slipped on my gloves, unrolled my face mask from its collar and spoke the trigger word to activate my clothes for stealth. My slightly shabby and rather foreign-looking Humanitum trader’s robes were considerably more expensive than they seemed. Good active camouflage customizes itself to the local environment. Mine could also defeat most sensors including light, sound, magnetic fields, humidity, moisture, vibration, temperature, pressure, electrical fields, and motion. Gravity sensors, not so much; but if I was up against an adversary capable of fielding them, I’d be better off wearing a combat model hard-suit even stronger than my friend Moz. As a bonus, my clothes were indistinguishable from wool, silk, leather and natural fabrics; right up until their tricky little molecules started rearranging themselves.

  I slipped outside, less noticeable than a vagrant begging on the steps of a national bank. I listened to Mozart conversing with Fake William before refitting the panel to the roundhouse’s rear. I hoped Hologram-me wouldn’t wake Simenon up with his simulated chatter. My m-brain protested about being made to suppress the chemical lust-soup in the air outside at the same time as enhancing my sight into its mixed infrared and ultraviolet spectral range. Lazy beast. That’s the trouble with modern existence. What with brain augments, software agents and divine avatars running off your gods’ strata, it’s hard to know where the you in your consciousness begins and ends. I certainly didn’t feel like listening to part of me complain to the rest of myself. Moaning was what Mozart was for. Among his other uses.