Angela Strange: Legend of the Arc-Walker

by Mick Fraser

  Guin sat back, crossing her powerful legs. “And do you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know any of them enough. And I’ve trusted the wrong people before.”

  For a moment Guin remained silent, then she seemed to reach a decision. She stood up and approached Angela, towering over her and resting her hands on her shoulders. “There is a side to Drenno you have not yet seen,” she said softly. “I would tell you to pray that you never do, but I fear it is inevitable. You have yet to see what any of the Firebrands are truly capable of, Angela. But I assure you of this: were they evil and still possessing the skills and pasts that they do, I would have killed them long ago.”

  Angela half-smiled. “That’s not as much of a comfort as you think it is.”

  Guin nodded amicably “I imagine not. Now you should rest, Earthborn. You will be leaving here very soon.

  CHAPTER 31

  ~YOUR BLOOD KNOWS IT IS HOME~

  “SO,” SAID DRENNO bitterly, “to sum up – and please, stop me if I miss anything out here – the ruler of the Reach, who already tends not to count us among her favourite people, is aligned with an ancient, pissed off god who considers us mortals an affront to his very existence and intends to use you as a key to his prison, which is also a kind of galaxy-wide doomsday bomb?”

  Angela stared at him across the tabletop, across the feast Guin had laid out for them, across the flickering candelabras and platinum-rimmed decanters. She wasted a moment trying to think of a way to spin it positively, but gave up. What was she supposed to say? Besides which, after her meeting with Guin she was in no mood for anyone’s bullshit.

  “Yes,” she replied. “That’s the long and short of it.”

  “Outstanding. It was bad when we were on the run from a queen. Now there’s a god, too.”

  “Illumiel is no god,” said Guin from the doorway. “At least, no more than I am.”

  “Could you beat him?” Angela asked suddenly. Even as the words left her lips she regretted them.

  “Not even at my strongest. And I am far beyond my strongest.”

  Shimmer leaned forward. “You have faced him before.” It was not a question.

  “And I lost. I lived only because Warden Skye activated the Resonance Engine and obliterated the Hexen. In almost six-thousand years of life, that was the one and only time I have faced my mortality.”

  Drenno drained his drink in one swallow. “Well if even you’re afraid...”

  The Faraan slammed the butt of her scythe into the floor and the resounding thunk echoed in Angela’s skull. “I am not afraid, Human. I am wise. I know that when an enemy is unbeatable alone, you do not face him alone. I learned that the hard way.”

  “So? What? We work together? You may not remember, but we don’t play well with others. Least of all you. You won’t even let Gage off the ship—”

  “The Auton is a menace beyond compare,” the Faraan countered angrily.

  “She’s one of us!” Drenno snapped. “Dammit, Guin. She’s one of mine. That makes her one of yours. You talk about working together, well let’s start. You want us to take all the risk? Fine. That’s what we do. But don’t you dare pretend that you’re staying neutral for any reason other than that you’re afraid. You got beat, your pride took a knock, and now you’re hurting. Still. Well dry your fuckin’ eyes, Guin. We all took a Void-damned knock.”

  Shimmer rose. “How dare you?”

  Drenno drained a second glass. “Sit down, Shim!”

  “I will not.”

  “That’s an order!”

  Guin raised a placating hand towards the Ri’in. “Diathemelan, calm. He is angry, and grieving.”

  “You’re fucking right I am.”

  Guin turned her head on its side. “What would you have me do, Drenno?”

  “Something. Anything. Help us contain this device, whatever it is.”

  “That I cannot do.”

  “Cannot or will not?”

  “They are one in the same. I built this moon with my own two hands, and eleven million souls reside upon it. Each one is fleeing someone else’s war, and each one looks to me for protection. That thing you carry bleeds resonance. Evayne would find it, sooner or later. She would come here and demand it and I would have no choice but to refuse her, and her fleet would murder my people for spite. That I cannot allow.”

  “But we’re expendable, is that it?”

  Guin glared at Drenno. “You know that is not it. But the Shadowstar is nimble and fast, and she is crewed by the best. The safest hands are yours.”

  “And what if she catches us?" Angela said softly. "What then?”

  “Then you fight to the death. We all do. To prevent the rise of the Unavenged.”

  Shimmer sat down, calmer. “If Illumiel is not a god, then what is he?”

  Guin took her own high-backed chair at the head of the table. “As close to one as you ever want to see. The Hexen were evil incarnate, utterly ruthless and almost invulnerable. Illumiel will not come seeking peace. Only the annihilation of everything we know.”

  “Forgive me, Soul-Mother,” said Shimmer, “but what of the Heartbound? The Faraan High Council...”

  “Is gone. If they still live at all, they are a thousand years from here. I have not communed with them for centuries. For all I know they were pulled into a singularity and crushed to dust. I am the last Celestial in the Reach, Diathemelan. We are on our own.”

  Drenno stared down into his glass. “Anybody wants off, now’s the time.”

  Illith snorted. “Don't be ridiculous, Ellys.”

  “I’m deathly serious. The stakes have changed, and I don't have Rathe's finesse. I don't know what the hell I'm doing half the time.”

  “We're still here,” Six-Tails grunted.

  “That we are,” Dizzy agreed.

  “I don't want to lose anyone else. If we're doing this, we're all-in. And all-in means we might not get everyone out.”

  Illith stood up. “You're embarrassing yourself, Drenno. We didn't come this far on the edge of the blade to jump off now. Hope lies in the light, remember? But our destiny waits in the shadows.”

  “I can't ask that of you.”

  “You're not asking us a jekking thing,” the Silsir retorted. “We're not doing this for you, or for Angela. This is for the Reach. For everything.”

  “Illith is right,” Angela snapped, glancing towards Gaelan, who had remained silent. “This isn't about you. Let’s not forget who dragged who along for this mess.”

  “You want to back that down a notch?”

  She bit her tongue, trying to stay calm. “Look. I just meant we're all in this together, whether we like it or not.”

  He frowned. “That's not what you meant.”

  “Maybe,” Gaelan said, leaning over the table, “she meant stop whining and deal with it.”

  Dizzy clapped two hands and pointed a third at the Avellian. “Boom. Voice of reason.”

  “You are being a something of an infant, Drenno,” Shimmer told him in a deadpan tone. “I did not want to be the one to tell you.”

  Angela watched the Captain for signs of his earlier animosity, but he suddenly drained his drink and sighed. “Forget what I said. You're all fuckin’ fired.”

  Dizzy laughed and clapped him on the shoulder, and Guin rose as the good humour returned. Angela caught her eye and shivered.

  As Guin headed off through one door, Angela excused herself and left via the other. Right now she needed to not be around anyone. Her mind was swirling, throwing up images that hadn’t troubled her mind’s eye for over a decade. She had no idea where she was going, but had made it halfway down the corridor when she heard Gaelan behind her. She stopped but didn’t fully turn.

  “What did she show you?” the Avellian asked.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “I know what it’s like, to be given a ‘gift’ by the Seraph. She shows you things—”

  Angela turned. “I told you what she showed me.”

 
“That stuff about your destiny, the Iniir. I know. But there is more. You are not yourself.”

  “You don’t know a thing about me, Gaelan. Not a single god-damn thing. I don’t change colours when my mood shifts. I don’t walk around with it all on the outside. It’s not like any of you want or need me here anyway. This is your problem, and I’m stuck with it.”

  “That is unfair.”

  Angela closed on the other girl but the Avellian stood her ground. “Unfair? I’m not being fair? You people kidnapped me. Your dad kidnapped me. Took me from my home. Right when I was starting to feel something other than pain. Since then, I’ve seen a kind old man die for me, I was almost killed in a crash, I was almost eaten by a giant alien worm. And now you bring me here, where some... thing, knows things about my past that no one – no one, here or on Earth – could possibly know. But you’re right. I’m not being fair. I should be more accommodating.”

  Angela expected an angry retort but instead Gaelan reached up to softly touch her face. Her stomach turned with something cold, like fear, and she pushed the other girl’s hand away. “What? Now we’re friends?”

  “I don’t know,” Gaelan told her, blinking away tears. “I’ve never had a friend. All I know is you’re in pain. I can feel it – and it hurts me. So yes, I conjure that makes us friends. Whether you like it or not.”

  “Be careful, Gaelan,” Angela replied through gritted teeth. “Sooner or later, everyone who cares about me gets hurt. Everyone.” She swung away, trying to quieten her growing rage, and headed for the quarters Guin had assigned her. She felt Gaelan’s eyes on her a moment longer, before she turned the corner, found her room, and felt blissfully alone. She climbed onto the soft bed, dragged the pillow into her chest, held it as tightly as she could, and seethed until she slept.

  AFTER a night beneath the shelter of Seraph Guin’s hand-crafted sky, the crew of the Shadowstar prepared to depart Oraclus with renewed focus. For the first time since Rathe’s death, the crew had a true direction. It was better than flailing blindly in the dark. Standing in the lee of the high, arched dock-side doorway, she watched them all from afar as they made last-minute preparations. Drenno and Dizzy stood off to one side, heads bowed over some kind of tablet device as they no doubt plotted the next course; Shimmer, Gaelan and Gage – the Auton excused temporarily from the Seraph’s curfew – busied themselves loading supplies into crates, which were then carried to the Rivercutter by Illith and Six-Tails, their superior strength rendering them perfect for the heavy lifting. And Angela merely stood, quietly, wondering if they would accept her help even if she offered it.

  This dysfunctional family she now found herself a part of wasn’t so different from the gangs she’d crossed paths with during her childhood: a bunch of alpha dogs all attempting to work as a pack while still trying to howl the loudest. And yet, the crew of the Shadowstar operated with a synergy that shouldn’t have been possible.

  “You feel apart from them still, but it will pass.”

  The sound of the Seraph’s voice startled Angela from her daydream, and she half-turned to face the Faraan. She remembered her words to Gaelan the night before and swallowed down her guilt.

  “They’ve made me welcome,” she replied. “In their own way.”

  “That is not what I meant,” Guin told her. “Their words, their gifts, their smiles, their forced acceptance – these are not the tools of a welcome. When you become a cog as integral to their machine as Rathe Massai was, as each of them continues to be, then they will accept you. Then you will be truly welcome.”

  “And how do I that?”

  Guin smiled grimly down at her. “Only one crucible can forge such a bond: battle, when you fight beside them, for them, and they for you. Until then, you will continue to stand here, on the outside, un-thought-of and unneeded.”

  “I’m not afraid of a fight,” Angela told her defensively. “I never have been.”

  “You misunderstand my words, child, as you misunderstand your purpose. Brashness is not the same as courage. A willingness to fight is not the same as a reason to fight.”

  “My purpose...” Angela whispered, shivering. “You make it sound so... predetermined.”

  “Perhaps it is. My point remains valid. The Iniir designed you, indirectly. Your blood knows it is home, your soul recognises these stars, they call to it, and it to them. Your connection to the Reach is ingrained in you, deeper than you could ever imagine. In time, so shall be your connection to the Firebrands.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Trust me, Angela. After six-thousand years of fighting and surviving, I have an eye for these things. Now go, they are almost prepared.”

  Leaving Guin by the doorway, Angela wandered over to the stack of crates that Illith and Six-Tails were moving. Only three remained, and she took hold of the smallest one, cursing at the weight as she lifted it to her shoulders. As she turned for the boat, she glanced back towards the archway. Guin, half in shadow, nodded once before vanishing from sight.

  PART FOUR

  ~THE RELIQUARIES~

  AEGIS has kept peace in the Reach for almost 200 years, having once been a branch of the ill-fated Central Systems Military. It has been proven time and again that blanket law enforcement does not work, any more than would a primarily human organisation sticking its nose into another world's business.

  It is the decision of this Council, then, that AEGIS remains in space, focusing on inter-world law and the scourge presented by illegal Arkalian "menageries", memory dealers, and pirate fleets. AEGIS must leave individual worlds to govern their own laws, and dedicate themselves instead to the safety and integrity of the Reach as a whole.

  Extract of minutes taken during the 445th Assembly of Allied Systems.

  Quote accredited to Bay Elen'bay.

  CHAPTER 32

  ~RISE TOGETHER, FALL TOGETHER~

  THE LOW HUM of the Shadowstar's engines rumbled through Angela as she lay quietly in the dark of her chamber. She had slept fitfully, waking frequently to fix her eyes on the shadows above as her mind whirled back and forth through memories so painful she'd spent ten whole years learning to live with them.

  Guin had awoken something inside her, something deeply buried since a time of such pitch-black despair that Angela thought she would die just from the pain that ate her from the inside out.

  She never thought about her childhood, a life spent sleeping in shop doorways and under cardboard boxes. When other girls her age had been learning about make-up and playing with dolls, Angela had been pick-pocketing commuters on the Tube and fist-fighting boys twice her size just to keep them scared of her – because as long as they were scared of her, they didn't want her.

  The friends she had were down-and-outs, the dregs of humanity. She learned to read and write from a former teacher who'd lost his family, his mind and all his teeth. She learned to dance in the alley behind a nightclub where she used to go on a Saturday night to listen to the music. She was one of the Invisibles. That's what Emma called them. “Society don't see us, Angel,” she used to say. “And that makes us free as the birds.”

  Emma was wrong though. Angela didn't know it at the time, when she was only seven, but she learned it when Seb went out for cigarettes one day and didn't come back. Emma went out of her mind. She stopped begging, stopped bringing food from the shelters. After six days, Angela went out thieving and came back with a wallet full of twenties, ready to celebrate. That was the first time she saw a dead body. Emma had taken too much medicine. With nowhere else to go, Angela went to the shelter. Numb from the cold, the woman there had taken her in and called the police. From that day, Angela found herself in the fresh hell known as ‘the System’.

  She was fostered, time and again, and each time she ran away. Discipline, rules, bedtimes, what society considered normal. Restrictions, control, the comforts that made people soft. Angela reacted to it all with the same emotion, the only emotion that made her feel safe, the one that kept people at a distance, made her u
nlikable. From anger to anger she moved through that life, and every time the opportunity arose, she went back to what she knew.

  But it was different, and without Seb and Emma she found new ‘friends’. She found gangs, criminals, people who had uses for her, not all of them savoury. And she found Wacko. Warren Acton, a scumbag who took a liking to her, whose unwanted attention nevertheless kept her safe from other predators. He never touched her though, not until the day her life changed, the day she met Frank Strange.

  But it wasn't the memories Guin had stirred up that were making Angela cold to the bone now. It was the emotions that came with them, the sense-memories. The nights she had spent curled under an old blanket, shivering at the rain. The fear of being cornered and forced to fight, or caught and forced to run.

  Since departing Oraclus she had avoided the crew, especially Gaelan. The Avellian reacted to emotions in a strange way; it was as if they stained her temporarily, somehow left a mark on her, and her attempts to talk to Angela since their heated discussion in Guin’s palace had resulted in a shared melancholy that left them both uneasy. And more than that, there was something unspoken between them that Angela struggled to quantify, a bond neither was able to voice, born, she suspected, of common ground: both had lost family, both had been raised rough, both were prone to experience emotion in often painful bursts, instead of the usual ebb and flow. While the concept of friendship wasn't alien to Angela, it wasn't wholly familiar either, and whatever it was that Gaelan stirred inside her felt like an intruder, to be treated with suspicion, possibly caution.

  She rolled over, fingers searching the sheet until she found her wrist-reader. She tapped the rectangle of glass and it lit up. Angela was learning not to think of time in terms of the 24-hour system she had left behind. Day and night cycles out here were based on Orrenian time, Shimmer had explained, a day consisting of twenty-four sixty-turn hours, separated into six four-hour periods: sunrise, midsun, highsun, evensong, deepnight, lownight. It was currently the third hour of lownight, which Angela equated to 5am. She dropped the wrist-reader and groaned, sitting up. Illith had requested her presence at sunrise sharp.