Thus the Starfly Vanish

by Brian S. Wheeler

  Wilson’s voice broke Naomi’s revelry as it snapped in her ear. “Captain, our breathing tanks are going to run low soon. Have you found anything that might give us the least indication of a path to the starfly home?”

  “Not that I can tell. I could try to grab something else, but I’m afraid it would vanish before we might carry it back aboard the “Retribution.”

  “There’s no need to bring anything back,” Ray answered. “The ship’s computer has detected a slight trail, a kind of resonance, or ripple, left in that floating egg’s wake. The ‘Retribution’ might be able to follow it.”

  “Any way of knowing how far that trail floats through the stars?” Wilson asked.

  Ray didn’t have to respond. She instead let silence speak the answer everyone knew. The powerful computers aboard the “Retribution” held no equation capable of calculating how many more months, years or eons may pass while Naomi and her crew slumbered in cold dreams and waited for the slight chance that their ship might actually find the starfly home. Wilson was foolish for asking what distance might still separate them from their purpose, for asking how long they would need to wait before facing a chance to enact the revenge Earth craved. Yet Naomi couldn’t fault him. All of them had sacrificed natural lifetimes too feed their hearts’ appetite for vengeance. How much had all of them lost so that they might sleep eons in the middle of so many stars?

  Naomi floated next to Wilson as they departed the starfly craft and slowly drifted across the vacuum to reach the waiting scoutstar. They wasted no time before reclining back into their sleeping pods. They shared no meal, threw no celebration, engaged in no small banter in means of bonding together as a crew. All of them devoted themselves to reaching an alien world, and time spent outside their travel’s cold dreams would only tax the ship’s power when none of them owned an inclination concerning how much more time would pass while they drifted in that ship. So they said nearly nothing to one another before settling back into their dreams.

  Just before her eyes closed and she fell back into sleep, Naomi thought of those objects her hands had clasped for a few fleeting seconds – and for a moment her heart considered what it meant that her enemy knew how to shape such beautiful things.

  * * * * *

  The first dreams a sleeper experienced upon entering the cold sleep tended to be restless. Naomi found the same nightmares waiting for her after slipping into the sleeping pod that had haunted her since riding her rocket into the heavens. Gunfire whistled past her ears. Rounds of artillery shook the ground. Fire singed her skin and curled her hair as buildings blazed around her. She ran through such madness, unknowing whether she sprinted towards the enemy in attack or if she retreated in panic. Direction was meaningless to her amid such mayhem. Naomi answered only to an instinct that screamed for her to run.

  Something might wink in the corner of her eye, and she might turn just in time to catch a glimpse of long, wavering tendrils grabbing a comrade soldier. Yet before she might raise her weapon, that enemy vanished with a blink and taking one more fellow soldier along into the nothing.

  Thus the starfly fought without any apparent weapons. Bullets and bombs were useless against invaders who refused to occupy any space and time long enough to feel the hurt humanity knew to deliver.

  Yet the armies of the Earth still unleashed their weapons. The armies of the Earth would not suffer defeat without giving freedom to their fury, regardless if any of their weapons ever struck the intended target. The armies of the Earth possessed too much pride. So the armies fired blindly and did more harm to themselves than they did to the starfly.

  Indigo and turquoise colors shimmered in the corner of Naomi’s eye just before the ground exploded and threw her into the air. She turned within her sleeping pod. The ship’s computers registered the pace of her speeding heart. Within her dreams, the anguish she felt to learn her leg was lost returned to her. Those memories of the battle she had tried to wage against the starfly so often replayed, and Naomi always desperately fought her way through such visions searching to claim the trophy the battlefield always denied her. The dreams visited her so often, and yet she never learned why the starfly relented in the end, why they vanished when victory seemed guaranteed them.

  But her dreams shifted into something new after visiting that strange, egg-shaped craft of the starfly and holding those pulsating objects found within. Naomi often found herself strolling through bright, white halls filled with blazing paintings of incredible color. The halls held many corners, and after turning them Naomi stepped into curved chambers filled with elegant sculptures in mediums both recognized and unknown. Most of the shapes were alien and abstract, but a handful were well known to her, as if pulled from her mind – the shape of one of the sisters from her childhood parochial school folding her hands in prayer, the stalking form of a pet cat Naomi possessed as a girl, a dollhouse modeled on the childhood home she had shared with two sisters and three brothers.

  With time, the gallery visited her more often than the battlefield. She smiled while she drifted to consider the alien artwork carried to her sleep. Naomi had all the time she required to slowly consider each alien relic. She was in complete control of where she travelled in her visions, and she gave no thought to the stars that passed along the hull of her scoutstar, nor did she think of the others who composed her crew. Naomi studied each piece she passed in the hall, until each object grew more and more alien, so that Naomi sensed that the alien race she vowed to kill crafted those increasingly strange shapes.

  The starfly were her enemy. Yet pleasure still filled Naomi’s heart as she regarded the pieces of that dream gallery, and she was thankful that such alien artwork delivered serenity to her dreams.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 5 – A Painful Price for Permanence

  No matter the pain, Frequency El could resist the beauty of that crystalline skyline no better than the remainder of its kind.

  The starfly winked in and out of the phase. The shift pulled at Frequency El’s wings at the same instance when the golden spires of crystal pulled at Frequency El’s wings. The science behind Frequency El’s crystal medium and the magic of Frequency Ang’s art provided an anchor for the starfly kind. That crystal city of spires provided a place where the starfly could gather, gave them a constant point in the cosmos where the starfly could share. Yet that golden skyline also delivered a cruel pain.

  “The horns must be destroyed,” Frequency El’s wings beat slowly.

  Frequency’s Ang’s tendrils fell limply towards the ground. “We only need a little more time. Our forms might still adjust to the pressures pulling upon us.”

  “And what if we cannot adjust to such stress? What if we wait too long so that our wings break, torn between the pressures exerted by the shift and the horns? Would you take such a risk so that your skyline can stand a little longer?”

  “Isn’t it beautiful? Hasn’t the crystal given us a miracle? Hasn’t the crystal given us a chance to no longer be alone?”

  “It gives us an anchor, but what good will that do us if it pulls us apart?” Frequency El’s vibration pulsed weakly. “How many will perish while the crystal spires stand a little longer?”

  Their wings strained as they looked upon the crystalline spires. Their features were blurred, for clarity couldn’t be found as the shift called them to another plane while the golden horn-like towers gripped them to remain. Chimes filled the air, music struck between the interplay of two forces pulling upon one another, with the starfly caught between.

  Frequency El considered the hurt felt in every starfly wing unfair and cruel. The wonderful crystal had promised such potential. It was supposed to elevate the starfly civilization onto a new pinnacle. The crystal was supposed to give them fellowship and love, concepts that for so such a long time went unnamed in the language of those aliens who winked so randomly throughout that expansive cosmos filled with stars.

  And the starfly civilization enjoyed that stability the crystal gifted
them for a brief turn in their existence. Yet time passed, and the golden horns multiplied and grew as the starfly continued to build upon their masterpiece, until the pull exerted by that crystal rivaled the influence of the shift. The pressures magnified until pain throbbed through the starfly and forced them to consider destroying their golden skyline before the currents and eddies formed between the shift and the crystal tore them to pieces.

  “We must destroy them.” Frequency El’s tendrils strained to lift and point at the golden spires.

  “Wait only a little longer. Their beauty deserves at least that.”

  Frequency El hesitated. “Perhaps it does. All the same, you must prepare yourself to tear all those spires of crystal down.”

  “I will, if it comes to that,” promised Frequency Ang.

  Frequency El feared that promise wouldn’t hold.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 6 – The Enemy Is Found

  “It looks like a tiny star,” Wilson observed.

  “Or like a glowing, golden marble.”

  Naomi peered at the instruments winking in holographic light amid the navigation deck of the “Retribution.” The orb growing beyond their observation window was no star, but it appeared to glow as if casting its own illumination into space. It was a planet, a relatively small one compared to Naomi’s native world. Naomi adjusted the ship’s delicate scanners, but failed to coax anything but static returning from the alien orb that quickly expanded in the window.

  Wilson watched Naomi toy with dials and gauges. “What are you looking for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Ray grinned. “It has to be the starfly homeworld. Why else would the computer wake us from the sleeping pods?”

  Wilson nodded. “The ship must’ve followed the trail we picked up at that golden egg. The ship must’ve floated the length of that scent while we dreamed.”

  “Perhaps,” Naomi whispered, “perhaps.”

  Try as she might, Naomi could coax no readable signal from the ship’s scanners concerning the planet. That orb would keep its secrets until Naomi and her crew descended from their scoutstar for closer inspection. The protocols into which Naomi quickly threw her attention prevented her thoughts from drifting into her imagination. She inspected everyone’s exosuit. She insured that every tool and weapon gathered for excursion was in good, working order. She ran all the diagnostic checks on the exploratory mule, so that the vehicle’s tracks wouldn’t snap to strand them on a small rock flung so far into space. Preparation demanded Naomi’s full concentration, so that she could be sure that some defect in breathing tanks or on descent pod heating tiles didn’t doom them as they dropped to that waiting, golden world.

  The scoutstar’s computers took control of the descent pod after hurling that capsule towards the planet. There were no controls for Naomi to manipulate, for their ship’s computers controlled the rate of speed and angle of descent. She had no commands to growl at Wilson or Ray as they silently sat in the exploratory mule. There were no further duties to distract Naomi from conjecture. How many more years, how many centuries, might’ve passed as they floated through the stars searching for that chance to counterattack the starfly? Did the nations of Earth remain unified in their purpose to exterminate that alien race? Had those nations evolved beyond the concept of territorial borders, and did humanity share a common language? Or had humanity waited too long to feel the satisfaction of revenge, so that humanity’s penchant to find enemies among friends once more reared its terrible face? Did humanity again unleash its weapons upon itself, so that perhaps nothing more but a burned husk remained of that world upon which woman and man had risen?

  The descent capsule bounced and rumbled through the waiting planet’s atmosphere, wrenching Naomi’s thoughts back to the present. She felt the capsule jerk as it deployed the parachute to slow its fall from the stars. Then, the capsule set softly upon the ground, with the tedium of secondary equipment inspections and mule preparations again filling her mind before Naomi pulled a lever to open the escape pod’s portal with a hiss.

  Naomi and her crew winced as a golden sky bathed them in light.

  “Looks peaceful enough,” commented Wilson.

  Naomi lifted a glove hand before any of her crew stepped out of the capsule. “Doesn’t mean the starfly aren’t out there. If you’re lucky, you might get a peek of a starfly before it grips you and takes you away.”

  “Away to where?” asked Ray.

  Naomi didn’t answer. She didn’t believe guesses were worth the expenditure of oxygen.

  The capsule deposited them upon an elevated plateau where a range of gray, featureless mountains rose like haggard teeth at their backs. The ground in front of them descended into a lowland filled with narrow spires that scratched at the sky. The shapes shared similar forms, but no single spire shared the same proportion, size or symmetry. Each rose as a different spine upon that land, and yet they stood together as a beautiful whole. Golden light pulsed from the heart of each horn, and Naomi realized that the spires were the source of that world’s golden sky.

  “It’s incredible,” Wilson whispered.

  “It’s as exotic as anything I dreamed while I slept and floated through the stars,” added Ray.

  Naomi shook her head. “Don’t let yourselves be mesmerized by the sight of it. Don’t let your concentration wonder. Better scan the environment, Ray.”

  Ray unfolded a metal tripod and topped it with a box of blinking lights. It took only a few breaths until the lights on the box chimed and winked. Naomi stared at the lights, wishing she could translate the binary language the scanner communicated to Ray, wishing for not the first time she might’ve been afforded the opportunity to enroll in Star Point before the battle she waged against he starfly forever turned her into a soldier. She doubted the scanner would detect the presence of any starfly, but she couldn’t dispel the feeling that the equipment would shrill at any moment just as the alien enemy winked into existence and grabbed at them.

  “You’re not going to believe it, Captain.”

  “Believe what, Ray?”

  Ray suddenly removed her helmet. “The atmosphere’s sweet for our lungs. It’s almost just like home, only there’s a little more oxygen in the mix, so we’ll have to be careful we don’t start a fire. There’s only a slight chill on the wind, as if it’s an autumn day back home. Even the pressure is perfect. We don’t need our helmets at all.”

  Wilson and Ray moved quickly as they prepared the navigational mule, and the crew was soon rolling down the gentle slope descending into that valley filled with spires. The horns stretched higher and higher as their mule crossed into that strange landscape of gold.

  Wilson slowed the mule to a stop and turned his attention away from the road to stare upwards towards the peaks of those spires.

  “Do any of you hear that?”

  Ray nodded. “I hear it too.”

  “What is it?” Naomi asked.

  Wilson grinned. “It sounds like wind chimes, like the ones that sang on my grandmother’s front porch. I can’t remember the last time I listened to wind chimes.”

  “Incredible,” Ray sighed.

  Naomi’s heart raced. Many on Earth claimed to have heard harps the day when the starfly descended from the stars and draped their net over the world. Was that melody on the wind enough to tell her that they had indeed found the starfly’s home?

  Naomi growled at her crew. “We didn’t travel all this way to listen to the wind. Remember what we came for. Remember why we’ve slept for so long.”

  Wilson said nothing else as he directed the mule forward. Though her crew smiled at the sight of those alien spires rising all around them, and though they grinned for the melody that toned on the wind, Naomi felt frightened. She couldn’t enjoy the breeze that golden sky proffered, and so she securely fastened her helmet over her head and darkened its visor to shroud her face. She didn’t want to give Ray or Wilson the chance to recognize the fear in her gray eyes, and she wanted t
o be wearing all the armor she could manage for that moment when the starfly flashed into view and wrapped their tendrils around her and her crew.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 7 – Exodus of the Starfly

  “It’s too late for that. There was a time when the horns could still be destroyed, but that time is gone.”

  Frequency Shol’s form was dark as Frequency El spoke. Frequency El wondered if Frequency Shol could anymore move his tendrils, wondered how much longer that companion might survive if Frequency Shol continued to be pulled by both the crystal and the shift. Frequency El wondered when Frequency Shol might perish as had Frequency Ang.

  Frequency Ang no longer winked upon any plane. Frequency Ang created a masterpiece when he shaped that skyline of crystal, and yet the crystal rewarded that friend with only sickness and sorrow. The golden horns gave Frequency El’s kind an anchor, but the horns also gave death. Too much time passed, and so little could be done to save those winking creatures from the torment they felt when trapped between currents tearing them apart.