by Rey Balor
Ranger balked. Olena thought she had finally succeeded in silencing her, when the woman spoke in a rush. “What about the trial, princess? If someone finds me, I’ll have had time to compose a sweet song about all your little secrets. ‘Oh, Olena, how it broke my heart the way her spica fell apart. He screamed their names, and he burned in the flames.’ It’s a work in progress.”
In a sudden motion, Olena reached forward and gripped onto Ranger’s jaw tightly. Where her fingers rested, the ghosts of her imprints seemed to dimly glow, and the pair were locked in a battle neither were willing to acknowledge. From leagues away in time and space, a thought echoed: not all wars happened with the clanging of weapons and the exertion of muscles, half of them took place in the pause between breaths.
“Shut your mouth.” Olena squeezed her grip. Hops rushed beside the women and put his hand on Olena’s arm, whispering something she didn’t hear. It didn’t matter. Her hold loosened, and she grabbed onto Ranger’s binds once more. Hops stood behind the prisoner, pushing her along, and together, they began to drag the woman towards the tree.
“Does that anger you? You’ve proven to be nothing but a disappointment, so I suppose the sentiment is mutual,” Ranger pressed. She tried digging her heels into the ground, but with Olena and Hops working together, she couldn’t hold them up. “Do you understand how frustrating it is to watch a woman like you claw her way to respect, only to have her be so boring? I thought you would entertain me with your wiles; I thought you would seduce me with your power. At this point, being tied to a tree would be incredible! Do you know how much knowledge trees possess? Certainly, they’re not good conversational partners, but you have to admit, there’s something in the idea… It’s better than you, I know that much!”
They reached the tall willow. Clumps of moss and dying leaves hung from its branches, forming a natural camouflage. Olena pushed Ranger against it none too gently, digging through her bag to fetch more rope and handing it off to Hops to secure her. There was trust in the gesture, and he did not miss it. Ranger didn’t miss it either, but she kept her gaze fixed on Olena. With unblinking eyes and bits of moss stuck in her hair, Olena thought she looked feral.
“Giving me silence as an answer? I’ve dealt with harder things with this. Torture was a childhood game to me, Khalsa! You really shouldn’t be afraid to imagine crueler methods if you’re to be a good leader.” Ranger squirmed as Hops adjusted the ropes, and for the first time since the trial, Olena parted from her. The absence only made her squirm more, and Olena felt her hatred grow as she yelled and yelled and yelled. “That is what you want, isn’t it? To be a good leader? Oh, you think I’m some sort of chained-folk or what have you, but you’re absolutely ready for people to bow for you! To chain them up! Come on, Olena!”
The faster she talked, the more certain Olena was onto something, and when she loosened the restraints instead of tightening them, it was Hops’s turn to trust her. She loosened the ropes so that they might have been tied by someone inexperienced, someone who had not spent their lives trapping and hunting, someone like Hops. It was a desperate plan that went against the trial’s decision, but if she had been taught one thing by King, it was that leaders followed their beliefs. Olena could pretend to be certain enough in this that it would work.
“If I had known you were into tying people up, we could have been friends!” Ranger’s calls were getting progressively more desperate, and her careful charade began to crumble. Olena did not hear those words; she heard only the way her spica’s name sounded leaving the scout’s throat. Her decision was resolute. As Ranger had dared to threaten the Erie-folk, there was no pity from Olena.
“Come on, you can’t just leave me! Princess! Khalsa! Olena!”
Hops had eyes wide enough that he reminded her of the children that joined her for their first hunt. The lot of them were brats, but come the first kill, they were stunned into silence. The pupils of their eyes were blown wide with fear and excitement, but they also contained that thirst for knowledge that comes with watching another work. It was a sign of respect, and it was only after they walked far enough away that Olena gave Hops a sign back.
“We aren’t leaving her to die.”
“Thank goodness,” he exhaled immediately, and color seemed to return to his cheeks.
“If she’s as good as she says, she’ll be out of those ropes in the next hour, and all we have to do is follow her back, see where she goes. At the end of this, I’m going to put an arrow in her, but until then, we stay quiet.” Her hand found the wound Ranger had left and dark remnants of blood came away onto her hand. It throbbed, and she was having trouble ignoring it. Grimacing, she took a seat. “Have you ever tracked a tracker before, Hops? It’s a different sort of game, and not one I intend to lose. You shut up and follow my lead, step for step.”
He was focused solely on her wound, and she almost laughed at his expression. The poor man was horrified, but he didn’t stare for too long. He pulled off his apron, tearing the ties from it, and ripped the edge of his shirt carefully. That fabric was beautiful and shiny and no doubt expensive, and he meant to use it as a makeshift bandage for her as if it was nothing. She let out a gasp, but he was too focused to notice. Gently, he moved her hand aside to tend to the puncture. He cleaned away the blood with the inside of his apron and secured the makeshift bandage with the apron ties.
“That’ll do.” He nodded at his work. “And follow you, got it. First and most importantly, you need rest. I’ll wake you when she’s made it out.”
Trust was falling asleep with him watching over.
“Aye, that sounds good.”
Chapter 21: The Space Station
“From this mode of life, we reap a harvest of liberty.”
Death’s Lament, 15.56
Pat did not hesitate to smash the radio when the other Light Bringers failed to answer her repeated calls. She smashed her last line to another life, to her old life, when she threw it against the wall of the shuttle. Even with it cracked, she was not satisfied. She picked it up again and threw it against the other wall. Again and again, she repeated her process of destruction, until the radio laid in heaps across the floor.
In the uneven gravity of the small station, Pat could feel the density in her bones withering. There was both weakness and strength in the recognition of what was occurring, and she curled up both to accept such an inevitability and to rebel against it in the only way she knew how — a passive retort. An hour passed, and she sat up abruptly. With shaking hands, she crawled around the room to gather the pieces of the radio and tried to rewire it, but the machine retained its useless state. There was no one to blame for that but herself.
In all her quest for answers, she had never believed the others would see things differently. Hadn’t Nikola cautioned her time and time again to listen to the signs? The station would always give subtle warnings if something was wrong, just as the people within would always demonstrate frustrations before things boiled over. All one had to do was look past themselves — a skill that she apparently had not quite mastered. She remained on the floor, thinking how right Nik had been. Had the others planned for this long? Had they shot her strange looks because they had known? Could she have stopped them?
Staring out the window of the shuttle, she almost longed for something unusual to pass her by and ignite her quest of discovery once more. But the red-haired woman in her dreams did not appear in her line of sight, and with a cry, she realized just how alone she was. One, two, three — her tears hit the cold ground beneath her, accomplishing nothing.
All the knowledge of the world could not rule out her loneliness. Although logic tried to reassure her of the fact that this was just one moment in an infinite string of moments, it didn’t help. She needed to feel sorry for herself. The only people she had ever known had all turned on her because they were frightened, and it left her with a sour taste in her mouth. What children! What stupid, stupid children they were! Her tears broke into sobs.
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sp; She wanted them shamed. She wanted them hurt. She wanted them crying as she was. Snot ran from her nose, but she didn’t wipe it away. What did it matter? There was no one here! No one at all! Hysterical laughter bubbled from her, and she let that loose too. No one would chastise her or tell her to do any different. She could cry or spit or laugh or cuss or die, and none of the others would know or care or understand in the slightest. That would show them, wouldn’t it? They expected her to finish the job of the Light Bringers, and how funny it would be if she didn’t, if she failed. It would serve them all right.
But then she thought of Nikola, of Marie, of the red-haired woman, and of the ghosts. If she failed, what would it truly accomplish? Nothing. If she succeeded, however… If she went to the earth, taught them right, and flew back to the cosmos to conquer her old station, wouldn’t that be something? Wouldn’t that show how stupid they had been? They would have to change her name to Caesar.
When she finally stood again, she felt cleansed. They wanted to ship her off to the earth, then fine, she would fulfil that duty. She would do it her way and on her time. There was work to be done and a job to be completed. It was pure pettiness that guided her now, but it was proving far more motivating than curiosity. Oh, she’d ruin them all, that much she promised now. She brushed her nose on the sleeve of her suit and left the remains of her radio on the floor.
Finding her way to the captain’s chair in the command room, she quickly looked over the controls. Rows of switches, buttons, and computer screens blinked different colors. Three yokes stuck out from the console, each to control various movements of the shuttle. She ran her hands over all of it.
“Of course, it’s more complicated than anything you’ve ever seen or dealt with, Pat. What’d you expect?” Muttering to herself significantly helped. “Alright, all you gotta do is get it to go, Pat. It’s automatic from there. You were trained on the five main different forms of operations. This isn’t so much different. Look, the coordinates are already inputted. Just go, and you’ll be golden — or bright red, depending on if you burn up in the atmosphere.”
The entire system felt foreign, but the patience Nikola warned her about hung at the forefront of her mind. Pushing random buttons was the fastest way to get herself killed; giving random commands was the fastest way to accidentally demolish her home station. As upset as she was, she didn’t want them dead.56 She typed a command into the system, and it came alive with her touch, waking from a hibernation of years that she could not begin to place a number to. Inhaling heavily, she began.
Ten minutes passed, and she had dug deeply enough into the system files that she could unlock the last log of the last captain. Hand of devotion, spirit of Death, I’ve made it, it read. YR. 5Q73. I, alone. She thought of the man she had seen on the recording and made the same star across her chest that she had seen him make.
Thirty minutes passed, and she had files of information regarding the ship’s purpose. Centuries ago, it had been an asteroid harvester. It had been refurbished in order to guide the holy people of earth to the stars. What wasted potential! Pat clicked her tongue and moved on.
Fifty minutes, and she had just enough confidence, just enough understanding of the system, and just enough spitefulness left in her to set her sights on the rising station of her home. The minutes continued to tick onward, and her fingers were held above the keys, ready to type in the command to launch to earth. She could not help but notice every detail about the faraway station. It was an oddly beautiful sight — one she had never glimpsed from the outside. It shone as it grew closer, illuminated by the star that was both so near and so far. The loneliness threatened to return, as loneliness always did in the face of something beautiful.
“Here we go.”
Her entire ship was alive now, and when she typed the command, it roared in its gratitude for life. Machines hummed, and she hummed with them, squeezing her eyes shut as it moved away from her home and closer to the planet. The entire shuttle shook with the weight of a world. Her teeth clamped together, and her hands squeezed around the controls. All thoughts left her. She bumped against the chair. The front of the pod tipped into the atmosphere. Fire glowed outside. Fire glowed inside. Orange turned to red turned to white, and her pod heated up to temperatures that would burn her away, if only she stepped outside. Her stomach lurched. Terror won over curiosity, and she wished, not for the last time, that another sat beside her. Shared terror was intimate.
Impact with the ground in one minute…
She squinted, hitting several more buttons, but she was unable to tell if it worked. She clutched onto her seat, hoping science would save her when no others could. There were moments that one defined, and then there were moments that defined themselves. In this case, she could do nothing but wait as the moment shaped itself with little help from her. No warnings sounded from inside the small vessel, but lights flashed all around her, visible even behind closed lids. Forcing deep breaths into her lungs, she wondered how long it could possibly take to reach the ground. Surely, this was going on longer than a minute. How big was this planet? From above, it seemed as small as a marble.
50 seconds…
At some point, the pressure was too much, and the body she had counted on to get her this far faded as she lost consciousness. Five seconds passed, ten seconds passed, fifteen seconds passed… She awoke with a start, still diving to the surface. Bright colors licked the sides of her vessel, created from the heat of reentry, and she clenched her teeth tighter in hopes the iron cage around her would hold. Even the fall of the seraphim had not been so graceful, although they had once been deemed light bringers too.
Twenty seconds…
She couldn’t breathe. No, no, the shuttle was slowing. It worked! The parachutes deployed, and just before she felt the first touch of the pod on soil, engines fired to further slow her descent.
Five seconds…
Please, please. The shuttle skimmed the ground, jolting as the fire around her turned black with mud. She tasted blood in her mouth. Must have bitten my tongue, she thought, dizzy.
One second…
The shuttle no longer shook.
There were moments in one’s life that could easily be defined as soul-changing, even as one experienced them. Time simultaneously slowed and sped up in these moments, for they remained separate from it as mind raced and body sang out. Sometimes, the mind listened; other times, it was as hard to please as the world itself. Pat recognized this moment as such now. Rarely did she feel her age, but she was so small in the captain’s chair that it was difficult to forget she was a child by mere earth standards.
Was she on the planet? Had she made it? Smoke fizzled around the shuttle, but the shuttle didn’t move. Nothing moved. The lights on the console blinked, and she could breathe again. She wasn’t dead, and that was the first step.
Earth — a frontier forgotten about for as long as her station had existed. It had been pushed to the background of the Light Bringers’ minds, for what good did it do them to connect themselves to a planet they would not spend much time on? It was meant to give them purpose in a station that ran on purpose, but it never felt real. It was a place to be saved, no more. Now, it was so blindingly clear, so blindingly before her. She found herself longing for a home that had never been hers.
The ground outside was not comprised of the sparse, rationed dirt they had to craft so carefully in the depths of space. This was not something that lacked life. This teemed with organisms that both fueled themselves and others in a never ending, cyclical process. A cyclical process she was now a part of. Her heart beat unsteadily at the thought of it, and she unlatched the door that separated herself from this new land.
It was the smell that hit her first, and Pat faltered. There was nothing in her history that would prepare her for its crispness. She gagged on it; she wanted more of it. Her station had been quiet, but this world was alive in every sense. Animal cries, air moving, her own station, her! Everything cried. Everything made noise
. Her first step left a print in the mud, and she wanted to sing a praise that there was such a thing. Mud! Actual, slimy mud! It didn’t matter that she felt heavy on this planet, nor did it matter she was covered in bruises that would remain in the coming days. The purpose Nikola had given them all pulsed within her, and she understood — understood why it was so important to return and guide these individuals to better lives. The earth was a mine of prosperity.
She felt like a predator; she felt like a god.
Unzipping her suit, Pat retrieved her notebook and pencil. Finally, she was able to jot down everything that struck her — well, not quite everything, as that would involve her sitting for hours. Instead, she wrote the immediate senses: the brown of the ground, the green of the distant hills, the gray of the sky, the scent of the wind — wind! That was wind! She took a seat beside her shuttle and sketched as quickly as her hand could keep pace with her thoughts. For every doodle, she included a lengthy description, although her handwriting was nearly illegible from the frantic speed she wrote.
In the distance, a great structure loomed, but even before that, she could see the beginning of a small town. The coordinates had led her precisely where they were meant to, straight into the heart of the Land of Opportunity. Already, she could see the failings of their architecture, the lacking of their crops. She buzzed with excitement, and she finally understood what it was to be a member of the human race. To be human was to thirst with the need to help others in the same way she would want to be assisted. Their lives would be better, and although she would die far faster than any of them,57 there would be others to assist these primitive groups. Hopefully, those others would come soon.
