by Rey Balor
She could sense it, that spark of a fight, and she breathed life into it with a harsh half-grin.
“These royals are greedy. You see, we learned that the hard way, little man. Power’s an addiction; they get a taste for it, and they need more. Only when they get more, they reach for even more still. On and on, it tumbles away from them, until they look at the whole of the earth and decide it’s not enough. They need the cosmos too. Oh, they’ll say it’s for the good of all people, but they won’t tell you the cost.” She snorted, bitterness gleaming through. “Anyone who comes in with the notion of uncovering just what all that progress means is immediately labeled as something sick, in need of fixing. ‘Oh, if we just show them the right way to live life, we’ll make these savages better still,’ and if those poor bastards can’t find the right way, they find death.
So what do they call us, Hops? What do they get the world to name us?”
Intelligence sparked in the blue of his gaze, and his voice was quiet as he responded one word, that dark word that haunted her, that gave life to her, that named her as she was: “Wolfling.”
“Aye, what else?”
“Extremists. Betrayers. Heathens. Take your pick, there are plenty others.”
“They label us as grotesque things, and they make us easy to hate.” She was grinning fully now, and it was the snaggle-toothed smirk of a wolf seeing the brilliant light of a full moon for the first time. The expression was half-mad and half-focus. “Only what do they do if we aren’t so easy to hate — if people like what we’re saying, maybe even more than what those who prance and parade in their castles have to say?”
Olena was building the story. They could both sense it, but it had to come to an end at some point. She turned from him and plucked another short, dull knife from her ensemble, throwing it toward the nearest tree. It did not impale itself as the other one had but hit hilt first, tumbling to the ground. She scowled after it, as if it was the weapon’s fault and not her own. It made her next words easier.
“I think they mean to exterminate us. Three times we’ve tried rebelling against them, and twice, we failed. This time will be our last one, whatever happens — peace, war, or something in between.” Walking over, she plucked up her knife, returning it to place. “My brother marches for peace, but he fails to see what’ll happen. They’ll keep the very thing we’re offering to themselves: freedom. It’s my destiny to kill the stars, little man, and in doing so, I’m returning freedom to all those who want it enough to reach for it. What do you have to say to that?”
“I don’t want violence,” he said.
“Violence is already here,” she interrupted.
“Please, just… Just listen.”
“Maybe talk louder then.”
“I don’t want violence,” he started again, a reprimanding expression settling on his face. “I told Illias that I won’t stand in your way though. I understand what it is you’re attempting to do here, but I’ve done more than I should. I want to go home, but they’ve burned that. I want to protect my people from harm, but I don’t know where to start. With that, I’m honestly afraid of what to say — there’s nothing easy about this.”
Olena slapped him hard on the back, and they both knew it was the only sign of camaraderie he would gain from the woman that day. She couldn’t seem to determine if she actually liked the man or not, but wars were not won based on fondness — and she made no mistake that this was a war and had been for longer than even her mother could tell her. “That’s part of the fun. If it were easy, it wouldn’t make it worth it.”
Chapter 18: The Space Station
“A world in motion is doomed to stay as such.”
Death’s Lament, 54.11
The suit was small for Pat’s stout form, which only served to make the moment more uncomfortable than it already was. It squeezed her, rubbing her raw. Inward lining poked her harshly, and her small journal had been shoved against her chest, creating an even tighter fit. She fidgeted instead of standing proudly, awkwardly conscious of the others looming on the opposite side of the glass. They were grouped next to one another like a pile of space junk brought together by gravity, and they watched, faces pressed against the glass, as Pat began to float in the newly depressurized room. The discomfort of her suit was forgotten as her feet left the ground.
The group chirped, not with gossip but with whispered worries, as she struggled to gain control of her movements. Calm thoughts, calm thoughts, she mentally chanted, mouthing the most important rules of floating again and again: just keep breathing, just keep moving, just keep living. Adjusting her helmet, she nodded once in Isaac’s direction. She continued to remind herself to pull air into her lungs and that she would survive this. Of course, she would! There were no other options.
From the side where the others stood, she could hear an alarm ringing shrilly in preparation, and as suddenly as it started, it ended with the barrier between her and space opening. Space was eager in its own right, and it tugged her from the safety of the station as soon as it could. She clung hard to her helmet with the nagging fear it would be ripped from her as she twirled, trying to hold onto every piece of information regarding spacewalks that she had been given in her life. The line attached at her hip was at war with the vacuum around her, and her eyes fastened shut with the dizziness of it all.
They were each trained on floating rules, for when there were only a handful of individuals present in the station, they each had to know how to do every job in case of the worst.50 Just because she was trained on it, just because she had floated once years ago in practice, and just because the title of captain had a nice ring with her name, they had chosen her for this mission now — a decision she was quite convinced would result in her joining the very ghosts who haunted her.
When she finally peeked through her eyelids, she had to marvel at everything around her. It wasn’t just the planet or the sight of the station she had spent her whole existence on; everywhere she looked, there was eternity, and the fear she carried faded. She could begin to understand why so many came to die out among the stars. They wanted to become the stars. In their simplistic viewpoint of the world, these strange rituals were the only way. She would teach them better than this, of that she was certain. A smile overcame her, and the faint sound of laughter bubbled in her chest.
“Pat? Pat, are you alright?” Isaac’s voice popped loudly in the intercom of the helmet, focusing Pat once more. How easy it would be to become lost in her loneliness up here, to forget the world she had come from and the world she was going to — to simply be.
“The suit may be old, but it still works. Can you give me some slack on the line, Isaac?” Immediately, her tether to the station loosened, and she was free to float without restriction. “And Isaac? Can you tell Johannes to stop worrying? I can hear him breathing from here.”
The boy did not chuckle as she expected, but it hardly mattered to Pat. It wasn’t her fault that he couldn’t take a joke. She grabbed hold of the line to steady herself and began to drag herself down the length of the station. Hand over hand, she gripped onto the small indentations in the metal. Nik had once told her the makeshift ladder was built years ago along the station for this very purpose. All the while, she kept her eyes on the goal in question: the small escape pod that would carry her to the Atlantis — the craft that would return them home, the very craft that had been brought to space by those on the ground. It was a cyclical process; give and take and give and take.
It was impossible to tell that, beneath her heavy space suit, her hand shook as she finally pulled herself inside the pod.
The pod was cramped and cold, but she had prepared for this. She had not prepared for how washed out it appeared — all colors had been bleached away decades ago, and the scattered books were yellowed beyond understanding. The instruments screamed with disuse the instant she closed the door to lock herself inside, but the computer screen flickered dimly as it came to life once more, casting a dozen shadows behind her.
She sat in the only space she could fit, forcing air into her lungs as she sought to regain her balance in the vehicle.
“I made it!” She announced to the others on the radio. Mutters she couldn’t understand responded, and she fiddled with the radio attached to her suit, hoping it hadn’t been damaged in the walk.
Focus, she reminded herself. Worry later, idiot.
It took a moment to orientate the pod to the shuttle that was her goal, but the moment gave her the time she needed to program the machines. She punched in the calculated orbital speed and path of both the shuttle and space station and waited. Calm thoughts, calm thoughts, she continued to repeat. Soon, the vessel would grow nearer, and she would be reminded of her own flesh and blood form as her pod launched towards it. Metal beast against metal beast, there was only one way for it to end.
“One shot, right?”
The radio finally crackled with a response she understood.
“Right.”
It was good that it was her, she supposed. It had to be, if she was to board the small craft and search for the very answers that had been denied to her. Marie warned her of so many things, but even she understood the importance of naming Pat captain — even Nik, from his place in the ring of ghosts, understood it. Pat was curious more than cautious, and as she watched the shuttle, that craft that would be her future home for however briefly, move closer, there was no anxiety and certainly no fear. There was thrill, there was joy, there was blood rushing to her cheeks in an unsettling longing.
“I’m in position,” she stated. She clutched the controls in preparation, for even if it would be the computers that did the majority of the work, it gave her a semblance of comfort to hold onto something.
One shot, and she would be launching beside the Atlantis and attaching her pod to it. One shot, and she would be slipping inside, rerouting the computers to be under her command. One shot, and she would commandeer the vessel the Light Bringers would need to travel to the surface, to better the structure of the earth’s society, and to accomplish the very task they were birthed for.
No pressure, she couldn’t help but think.
The controls began to sound, signaling it was time. With a roar that only she could hear, her little haven detached itself from the main station and hurled toward the foreign ship. Thrusters sounded, nausea spread in the pit of Pat’s stomach, and her one shot sped forward with no amount of control of her own. The only thing she could do was close her eyes and swear she would make it to the other side.
An hour later, she had accomplished exactly that. Her forebearers had been geniuses; it was the only way to explain how the technology worked so smoothly. Even as she crawled into the craft, lungs heaving and stomach threatening to spill everything she had eaten that morning, she recognized that those now-dead men and women were the reason their society had advanced. It made the pain of bruises and sickness through her body worth the effort.
The instant the doors slid shut behind her and gravity pulled her to the ground, air hissed into the room, and she threw off her helmet with gratitude for it. The air tasted differently here, but it hardly mattered when it was so sweet. Heart hammering against her chest and limbs flushed with adrenaline, she could do little more than lay on the ground, breathing and heaving and shaking and sweating. She stared at the white light above her, beaming with brief contentment even as the blinding ceiling caused spots in her vision.
There was work to be done, however, and it quickly began to call to her in the same way unanswered questions did.51 Her arms stretched out to either side of her with palms against the cool ground, and she forced herself to stand once more, turning her sights to the new place before her — the first new place she had ever been.
The first thing Pat noticed was the darkness of the craft. All of the light fixtures had been set to low, and blackness coated the walls as if to assure they would remain that way. The second thing she noticed was how archaic the design was. Her station was old, but its curves were graceful to ensure it could stay in orbit. Here, the walls were sharp, with wires hanging down and every inch utilized for some purpose. It looked chaotic, and Pat’s disdain for it only grew as she stepped from the chamber into the rest of the craft.
The third thing she noticed was the smell. The difference in the air became more apparent as the scent of staleness settled around her. Her tongue went numb with it, and before she traveled any further, she rushed back to grab her helmet.
Regardless, she did not need to appreciate the design of the ship to get what she came for. She rested her hand against one of the smooth tubes of the wall to guide her, and as she began to calm, her overwhelmed senses could finally take in the quiet buzz of her radio. With silence from those in her home, she was left with nothing more than the coolness of the walls to keep her grounded. The ship whirred in time with the radio’s static, and she had to hum to block out the noise. It hurt her ears, sending a deep vibration that she felt behind her eyes. It was the sound of emptiness, even more so than the sounds of the cosmos outside.
Her hums grew louder as she entered the hallway, picking a direction with only the slim hope it would be the right one. The craft was not large enough to warrant such a worry, as it split off into three main directions. Each way held a certain purpose — mission, recreation, and study — but she would only be here for one revolution around the earth. Ninety minutes. Her mysteries needed to be solved by then, and how could she accomplish such a thing, lost in wonder? Although, looking at the design of the ship, she was lost in wonder. However ancient, however convoluted the design was, deviation from the norm was cause for a certain wonder in itself. This was not just different; this was another world, another era.
Her footsteps echoed, the first sound in the pod since it had been brought past the warm embrace of earth’s atmosphere and its previous captain abandoned it for an embrace of their own. Her fingertips continued to brush along the crowded walls as she walked, keeping her focus steady even as her heart threatened to soar far beyond the confines of the ship. She was looking for a command room like the one she had left behind: a room with great windows and endless mechanics decorating the area. The first room she came across was as near to opposite of that as one could get.
The door along the wall slid open before she noticed it existed at all, and she stood in the entranceway, staring within the darkened depths for several seconds before entering. There was a pile of blankets, long since crumbled on the ground, and pages scattered beside them in an indecipherable script. She knelt down to pick a few up anyways, examining the strange lettering before a slight whisper of movement caused her to raise her head in alarm.
“Hello?” Her voice sounded small, absorbed almost immediately by the ship. There was a question to her tone that a child might carry, afraid in an unknown place yet so unwilling to show such fear; it contained a pure naivety. With it, came an unspoken follow-up: is that you, ghosts?
Tucking the papers into her space suit beside her journal, she left the empty chamber and continued on her quest to find the command room. Her footsteps were laced with something new: they carried the promise that she no longer walked the length of the hallway alone. Something moved along with her — and whether that something was as alive as she was, with neurons firing and emotion pulsating around them like a second skin, or nothing more than a memory, she could not say.
As she neared the next doorway, a soft buzzing sound joined in the array of noises around her. Its faint, steady hum helped her not get distracted. It was not the beating center of the ship she finally located but the greenhouse — shattered, dying, and moist, yet the edges of life still clung to it as the sprinklers overhead buzzed with lack of water to give its ward.
“Now, this is what I’m talking about!” She pressed her microphone on her suit, radio signals shooting back toward her home at the speed of light. “This must be one of the newest ships. We really lucked out on this one, pals. The plants are all dead, but I’d still say it was salvageable. Might be o
ptimistic, of course, but… Something about this place is making me optimistic. Not the point, I know. Over.”
Her radio continued its silence.
Knowing she would spend far too much time among the browned, brittle branches of unrecognizable vegetables still attempting to grow, she did not enter the room but moved past it instead. None of the other Light Bringers responded to her message, and she frowned at the lack of reply. Even still, the radio weighed on her with the sheer force of nothingness.
The hallway continued to curve, breaking off into several more paths, each with a dozen doors that begged to be explored. At the end of the curve, she could see her goal, however, and her focus was nearly blinding. There it was; it had to be. The tick, tick, tick of an imaginary clock was beginning to annoy her. Not enough time, never enough time! Her steps bounced louder than ever as her walk became a run, and the doors slid open, as if having waited for her for a very long time.
There were the windows, as she had hoped. Seamless, the barrier to the outside world wrapped all around her, and she froze to marvel it. How alike to her home it was, yet it did not fill her with the same sense of humility. While the windows existed as she had imagined, nothing else did. The mechanics she understood were absent, but cutting through the middle of the room, a large plaque curved to match the shape of the far wall. She hoped for something that would tell her names, give her dates, and turn the world below into a concrete subject. What else would be worthy of such a spot at the command room’s center?
Only by approaching it did she see it was not a plaque but a dark screen, and as she neared, it lit up. The sudden brightness caused her to jump in place, and as soon as the blurred image became clearer, she chuckled nervously at her own jittery reaction.
A man stared past her on the screen, and he adjusted the camera to focus on himself before clearing his throat. He closed his eyes for several long moments with every breath, making a strange symbol across his chest each time he repeated the process. The ritual was as archaic as the ship, and she leaned forward, enthralled by his image all the same.
