“There is,” the Captain admitted. “I have actually looked into it a good bit, wondering those very same things.” She certainly seemed to have studied up on it, as she kept rattling off facts without having to reclaim her pad from Merlo’s grasp. “Their technology is advanced far beyond anything else in the cluster, way beyond the Kepo’s jump-drives or Altair’s greatest dreadnoughts. Supposedly, the children are taken care of by advanced, city-spanning artificial intelligences called Superintendents, and all of their needs are seen to.”
To Merlo, this was stranger than the Nygotha system by far. “Okay, so what happens when they grow up…” Merlo trailed off in mild shock as she read the answer in the passages highlighted on Branwen’s pad. “They... don’t? Seriously, what is up with this cluster?” Now engaged, she read further as the Captain took the opportunity to finish her meal in earnest and thump her carved drinking tankard down onto the table with a kind of symbolic finality. “Oh, okay, that makes a sort of sense. They’re maintained by some sort of advanced nanotechnology.” Not unlike her suit, then.
“Indeed, I am glad it makes sense to you, then.” The Captain smiled, gathering Merlo’s emptied plate up along with her own before the distracted woman could protest, and hustling them all off to the sink to start cleaning up. “A society comprised of eternal children, maintained by machines born from incomprehensible technology, that eschews almost any relations with the rest of the cluster? One wonders how that came about, and how it holds together. And if they are truly happy there, enshrined in unending play.”
It appeared to be something the Captain had thought over a bit. “Yeah, that doesn't sound very enticing, to be honest.” Merlo replied, eyes still buried in the datapad.
“Does it not?” Captain Branwen queried, methodically spraying clean, then drying dishes and reaching easily to those damned, too-high cabinets to slide the plates away, and finally thoroughly rinsing out her giant mug. “No pain, no sickness, no disease, no death. No worries about the future.” She paused for a moment, taking a thoughtful breath. “One theory, since both the Child and Superintendent are unforthcoming on their origins, is that with their level of technology, one could supposedly revert to youth. Perhaps after creation of such marvels, they decided to revert to a simple, carefree life.” She paused for a moment, with her back still turned to Merlo, her emotions shrouded. “When you get to my age, it perhaps sounds more appealing than it does at yours.”
Her eyes breaking from scouring the datapad to instead follow the Captain, Merlo could almost see it for a moment, a slight bend to the spine and weight to those otherwise strong shoulders that would indicate age, or at least weariness. But it was the voice that painted it most clearly of all, the sound of sights seen, but blemished with loss; something in that resonated deeper within Merlo than she could admit right now. So she shook her head and tried to change the subject. “I guess. I don’t really remember my childhood too much, just, um, pilot training and stuff.” She shifted with a bit of unease as the Captain turned to face her, a hint of a knowing gaze showing as she shifted toward a happier demeanor again.
Merlo frowned down at the pad in her grip. “It says here that visitors are not prevented from landing on the planet, but that sometimes ships that go there just... disappear. I don’t get it, if they’ve got tech like that, why not trade it? I figure everyone would be clamoring to get their hands on it.”
Branwen smiled again without the robust enthusiasm of before, instead seeming to warm to the conversation once more as they continued the discussion. “Why? If such stories are true, what would anyone have that they want? What trade could be made?”
Merlo grunted as the Captain came over and sat again, gathering her datapad collection but making no move to leave quite yet. Merlo folded her arms on the table, leaning her small frame onto it as she looked up at the Captain. Once again in the clear, ambient light where Merlo could see her face, relaxing casually in her chair at the head of the table, Branwen looked once more as if she were hardly a few years Merlo’s senior.
Dressed today in a simple brown tunic with white animal fur edges that draped comfortably from one shoulder, hair loose except for an intricate core braid of gold hanging long in the back, Merlo again noted how pretty she was, in her own undeniably strong and confident way. “So, any other cool or weird stuff you want to tell me this morning, Captain?”
Branwen smiled in response. “That begs the question of what you will find strange,” she said, putting the leather, straps and battered steel of her boots lazily onto the table with a careful tap of metal on metal. She slid the stack of datapads to the side and they dimmed, going on standby as she crossed her arms behind her head and relaxed. “We could talk about the Kepo.”
“Those odd, bipedal fox people with the tall ears? I’ve seen them all over the docks on Altair, and several other places. They kinda weird me out.”
“I figure they once felt similarly about us.” The Captain smiled gently. “I have dealt favorably with them several times now, since they deal so much in trade. I have never known one to be less than nice.”
Merlo frowned lightly, making a slight negative gesture with her head. She realized belatedly how, well, accidentally racist her statement had sounded. “No, I mean, I never really knew of any non-human, non-Arlesian species before. Now I know there’s the Kepo, and you’ve mentioned the Boshta before, but I’ve only actually seen Kepo in passing, for the most part. And I’ve never seen a Boshta.”
Branwen nodded with an air of quiet, casual reassurance. “Oh, indeed, I do understand. Remember, all such things were once quite foreign to me, as well. It took time for me to adapt, as it will with you.”
Merlo found herself smiling, and abruptly felt her cheeks flush lightly. It caught her off guard, and she moved to sweep wisps of her short cut hair away from her face to mask it. “Good to know.” Merlo was glad that Branwen showed no signs of noticing her embarrassment, at least. “What else did you have in mind?”
“Besides those things, we could speak of the crystals of Mizar, the vast riches of Elysian, the aberrant orbit of Eraki, or the wonders of the Zelturi Ringworld.” Branwen laughed, a rich, resonant sound rising from deeper in her chest and spilling out. “Myriad are the wonders of our cluster, I suppose.”
Merlo’s ears perked up at the last in the list. “Hey, tell me about the… ringworld, was it?”
“Altair discovered the jump to the Zelturi system… ahh, I simply cannot remember how long ago.” Branwen trailed off, sweeping her feet off of the table and reaching out to rifle through her datapads, which glimmered back to life from standby at her bidding. “Mr. Leonard, care to help me out with this?”
The Captain glanced up with hopeful eyes toward the outline of the com, and it obligingly began to emit Mr. Leonard’s voice. “Unlike Nygotha, the ringworld in the Zelturi system was discovered within the last century, as Altair has been making efforts to use fast-traveling ships to investigate physically nearby systems, instead of simply seeking out new slip connections from which to add to the cluster,” He said. “They discovered a system that had been, up until then, almost unnoticed via unmanned probes. They had noted it previously as anomalous, but upon investigation, found a system comprised solely of the ringworld, set in place around a small, long sequence orange dwarf star. It was completely abandoned when they found it, and though Altair has made many tried extensively, they have never found any trace of who, or indeed what, created it.”
Merlot used Branwen’s captured datapad to pull up an Exonet image of the system in question, and stared for a moment. “A real ringworld, huh? That thing’s gotta be huge.”
“Oh, yes, Miss Merlo.” She sighed vaguely to herself, somewhat amused but resigned to Mr. Leonard’s continued use of the honorific. “Altairan scientists and astrologers point to the lack of other planetoids in the system and theorize that all other matter in the system was consumed in its construction, and probably much more extrasolar material as well. Estimates put its ma
ximum ‘carrying capacity,’ if you will, at around the volume of 137 standard masses, assuming I remember correctly.”
Mr. Leonard’s words stumbled a bit at the end, as if to signal that he was worried about being incorrect, or maybe putting people off by being too knowledgeable. Merlo had known people like that before. Or maybe it was just from speaking too quickly; he’d really picked up some surprising momentum there as he had gotten engaged in laying all of the information out.
“Wow. How do you even know all this stuff, Mr. Leonard?” Merlo asked the com the question with absent curiosity as she paged through the Exonet’s comprehensive articles on the matter.
“I… well, um…”
“Mr. Leonard comes from a rather excellent education,” Captain Branwen said, smoothly stepping in to help him out as he faltered on the personal details.
“Yes. Just that, Miss Merlo.” He seemed relieved to not have to try to talk about himself, which was fine; Merlo had another curiosity building at the moment.
“Heh, that’s pretty much what I thought,” Merlo said, still looking down at the pad, but having changed articles despite her honest interest in the ringworld. “I was actually curious about something else, if I may, Captain?” She looked up and across the table at the only other person physically in the room. “What about Fade?”
“Hmmm,” Branwen supplied, leaning back again and tracing her fingers in a thoughtful arc across the fair skin of her cheek and down the line of her strong jaw. “There is indeed a lot I could say about Fade, having lived there all my life up until recently.”
Merlo shrugged. “Tell me anything, really; what’s it like?” Curiosity was pretty plain in the reflective silver disks of her eyes, having gotten the better of her finally on the subject. “I know it’s… um, not very advanced there.” She’d accidentally referred to Fade technology as “primitive” before in the Captain’s presence. Later, she’d realized that was probably somewhat offensive, so she was trying to avoid doing so again. As of yet, she hadn’t seen the Captain angry, or even upset. Something told her she had little desire to.
Branwen laughed, the room echoing slightly with her mirth. “Well, I am uncertain whether you would know much of which I speak; you seem unfamiliar with many things I would consider quite basic.” Merlo nodded; they had mutually come to that conclusion in previous conversations. “How does one describe their home in a worthy way?” She queried in return with a sense of open honesty.
“I could say that it is beautiful, picturesque; but that is vague. I could say that the people who call it home are a hardy sort, very distrustful of those from the outside. But perhaps that gives the wrong impression, as when I say such, I speak also of myself.” As Branwen continued speaking, Merlo bobbed her head in a nod, figuring she could understand the sentiment.
“I could say that it is cold, that we live castles of stone, prized wholesale from the very grasp of the earth. But that would speak more of my home and Realm than, say, the manors of rich woods and clothes of flowing elegance common to my neighbors in southern Stormhaven. The question, for me, is not so easy as it first appears.” Branwen paused to draw in a breath, obviously taking that moment to sort her thoughts.
“Perhaps, I could best say that Fade is a place of natural beauty, where technology is near negligible by your standards and the magic of the Fade itself shimmers through the air beneath Fera and Vola, our sisters in the sky. That the air is crisp and clear, and when you breathe it in, it reminds you that you are still alive. Where things perhaps seem simple, yet contain many mysteries that veil their true depths to those that do not know how to seek, how to question. It is a place with less law and more rule of adventure, of courage, of making your way with one’s own will. Perhaps that is the best way I could describe Fade to someone who has never laid eyes or set foot upon her.” The passion in Branwen’s impromptu speech simmered in her eyes like the ripples of a heatwave, shimmering the the soulful depths of purple-tinged blues.
The Captain made a gesture of seeming helplessness, offering her open hands as if to indicate something, while her eyelids dropped momentarily, drawing a curtain over the raw emotion contained therein. When she opened them again a moment later, a tint of sadness tinged her vibrant orbs, toning down the other emotions. “Perhaps, I will think upon the question some more, at length. My description was... poetic, perhaps, but I harbor doubts that it was the explanation you were seeking.”
She smiled with a soft amusement at Merlo, who glanced down for a moment to consider her feelings, nebulous as they were. She felt moved, but found it difficult to truly relate; had she ever felt so powerfully about any place, even about her own home, now so far away as to feel unreachable? That train of thought even caused mild swirls of guilt to rise from where they had lain dormant within. “No, Captain, that was actually pretty good,” she said after a moment, wanting to give voice to something appreciative before the silence began to hang empty in the air. “Thanks.”
Merlo looked back up at her Captain, wondering once again why, if she cared so much for Fade, she was out here instead of back there. When she’d mentioned at ports that her Captain was from Fade, people had outright laughed to the point of crying at the “joke.”
Apparently, people from Fade didn’t do space travel; it was unheard of there. Her internal turmoil was rearing its head, though, and that discomfort pushed her to stand, seeking something that would busy her hands and distract her instead. “Hey, I feel the bathroom and the cargo bay calling,” she offered by way of excuse. The Captain nodded understandingly in return. “Then I need to drop off some of the locations into the nav- so I’ll see you later, huh?” She patted the datapad secured at the small of her back indicatively and nodded with a crisp efficiency as she took quick strides out the open doorway and down the hall.
CHAPTER FOUR
One Piece of Steel
Branwen
Branwen drove her blade home into the meat of an extended arm, deep into the man’s bicep. She didn’t twist it as she pulled it free, as she normally would have, leaving a clean stab wound. She was nonetheless rewarded with a wild, surprised cry of pain, and she responded by driving one of her heavy plated boots into the man’s sternum with enough force to send him sprawling awkwardly into one of his fellows.
As she and Merlo fought under the shade of the sparse trees surrounding them, instincts crouched in the back of her mind, screaming at her that she mustn’t go easy on these people; those that didn’t fight for their lives with everything they had usually wound up dead. But as she looked around at the dirt smeared faces of the men and women crowding her, brandishing their improvised and poorly maintained weapons, she reached deep inside and found the killer’s place in her soul missing. She didn’t have the heart to end them, not now; not anymore.
“Captain!” Merlo cried out, and with hardly a glance, Branwen spun to parry aside some sort of foreign farming utensil as it reached, somewhat timidly, for her exposed side. It was the first time she’d been in battle alongside her pilot; she had to admit that she was impressed by the girl’s skill. The brutal acrobatics of Merlo’s unarmed style seemed backed up by amazingly superior strength and speed, but was just barely enough to keep her ahead of the enemy’s advantage of numbers and reach.
It was pretty clear to Branwen, who was well practiced at studying her foes in or out of combat, that these people weren’t hardened killers. It was etched into their eyes, into the lines of desperation carved into their lean faces, into the moments of hesitation where their hands shook instead of surging forward for a killing blow. They looked like simple people, perhaps farmers or laborers, not soldiers, and they wanted her cargo, not her head; a load of medicinal supplies on a little four-wheeled auto transport destined for a town toward the outer reaches of Pireida’s habitable area.
Unfortunately for them, neither of those things were theirs to take. A heavy piece of crudely-fashioned wood, somewhere between a staff and a club, came flying in from Branwen’s side, threatening
to strike her temple and likely rob her of her consciousness. Since the gleaming blade of her curved, single edged sabre was busy elsewhere, her other hand whipped fluidly behind her back and produced another hand axe, a sleek piece of solid, curved metal with barely a grip.
She’d picked those axes up from a Kepo trader during her first trading run in space, and they served her as well now as any ever had, sinking deep into the looming wood of the incoming weapon, driving it downward and away from her head. She swept the blow low and pivoted with it, taking the impact to the meat of her thigh instead. Her axe got stuck, wedged tightly into her opponent’s length of barely-shaped timber, but she shrugged the hit off and let go of her axe.
She had more axes, and she’d had worse bruises. As that foe backed away, Branwen reached under her coat for another weapon.
Overall though, the fight was not going well. Over a dozen opponents still held their feet, due mostly to Branwen’s sense of reluctance and the non-lethal orientation of Merlo’s combat ability. She grabbed another axe out of the compact holster at the small of her back with a practical flourish, reversing it so that when she sent it spinning out into the crowd, the blunt side smashed headlong into the bridge of a woman’s nose, instead of the much more worrisome end.
That foe fell, dazed and rolling on the dirt and undergrowth of their surroundings, but was immediately replaced with another. Definitely not good. Unlike in stories, in real fights, people did not commonly survive odds of six or more against one. The group milled about for the length of a breath, but didn't give the defending duo enough time to expel it before they rushed them again, seeming to draw courage from one another and attacking as a clustered mob.
Destiny Abounds (Starlight Saga Book 1) Page 5
