by A. R. Knight
“You don’t want me to go?” Viera says later, as we’re back down in Marilo sharing large glasses of wine.
The city’s turned itself out in celebration. Nobody cares to consider that the Vincere could turn and attack us just like the Sevora did. Instead, the streets are full of people in drunken revelry. Runners riding the great white Fassoths have been dispatched to every corner of the mountains, and those Solare and Charre tribesmen who wish it are making ready, between dances and songs, to return to their homelands.
I’m watching a band of them right now from our balcony in Marilo’s capitol building, a band of several dozen; Warriors, children, priests and more. Solare preparing to see if anything’s left of their home. They’re taking weapons too - nobody’s assuming the last Sevora on the planet died on that mountainside today.
“I can’t let you go,” I say, taking another sip. The wine’s acidic, harsh and stressed, but still welcome. “Not alone.”
“So you don’t trust me.”
We’re sitting in soft woven chairs, and mine crinkles as I lean back in it and toss Viera a smile. “I don’t trust you to keep your hands off your pistols.”
“Did that fine when I was staying with your tribe.”
That takes me back, briefly. Avril’s already sent scouts to see if my parents, if my home village still stands, but I’m not clinging to it. They never appeared in the mountains, and the Sevora struck first at the jungles and plains.
“We didn’t threaten you,” I say. “These things, you saw what happened on Cobalt. They’ll try to bend you, break you. They’ll want humans to accept them as masters.”
“So?” Viera nods at the bouncing happiness over the edge. “If that’s what we get, does it matter?”
“Dalachite, the Amigga on Cobalt? It was making copies of us. And you know what’s on the other side of these mountains - evidence that the Amigga made us, and tried to destroy us. What’s to say they won’t again when it’s convenient?”
“Do you think we could stop them if we wanted to?”
There’s the truth I’ve kept from telling myself. No. No we could not win a war against those Oratus or their army they call the Vincere.
“That’s why I have to go,” I say, and now that the words are out, it’s obvious. “You and I are the only ones that know the truth. We have to present ourselves as equals, we have to guarantee our future.”
“You’re going to fight for your people by leaving them again?” Viera laughs, but it’s a sad sound. “You’re the only Empress I’ve known who spends all her time avoiding her domain.”
Not because I want to.
Avril doesn’t object to the plan, and I wonder if it’s because, again, I’m handing her all the power she wants. The Lunare, now, have every advantage over the other tribes and while Avril says she’s not going to embark on an immediate chain of conquests, I’m not sure I believe her.
I came back to my people and found them ruined once, and the next time I might find them gone entirely.
There’s one more person I need to talk to before the morning: Vee, an Oratus that we found when we returned to Earth, trapped in the desolate remnants of the Amigga base that led, I think, to the human species.
Vee’s been taking turns during the night, preferring the cold dark to the bright day, and his presence up there, I’ve heard, has saved countless lives. Even so, I’m nervous opening the door to the squat building whose highest floor, at one point a series of apartments, has been given over to him.
Vee’s already awake by the time we get to him, standing ready.
“T’Oli, you want to explain?” I offer to the Ooblot, who joined Viera and I after our glass of wine.
“Oh no, I think you’ll do a far better job,” T’Oli says. “I have no gravity for these sorts of things.”
I sigh, but T’Oli’s right.
“What things?” Vee hisses.
“The Vincere are here,” I say.
“So that’s why it’s so loud today,” Vee nods towards the small windows.
They have no glass, so the sounds of happy drums and celebration bleed through. Probably quite the change from the dead quiet, doomed atmosphere that’s hovered over the city before now.
“They want Viera and I to leave with them,” I say, after describing the Sevora’s destruction. “I thought you might want to come too?”
Vee takes a long moment. Closes his eyes.
“I lost my pair in the attack on the base,” Vee says finally. “The Vincere left me down there. I assume they believe I’m dead. I had nothing to live for until you found me and gave me a purpose.”
The Oratus takes a long stride towards me and sets its right foreclaw on my shoulder. It should be comforting - I know Vee’s not threatening me - but the sheer strength even in that one limb forces me to suppress a twitch.
“I have friends here now, the ones I’ve been fighting with,” Vee says. “And as you say, there may yet be Sevora on this world, in the jungle.”
“You want to stay here?” Viera blurts. “Really?”
Vee laughs, a rumbling, hissing thing. “Is that so surprising?”
“Frankly, yeah.”
“I understand,” I say, shaking my head at Viera. “Tomorrow, I won’t tell them. They’ll never know you survived.”
Vee gives me a nod of thanks, then looks over at the Ooblot. “What of you, T’Oli? Are you staying, or going with the human?”
“Oh, I’d prefer to leave,” T’Oli says. “Humans are awfully fragile, and after I’ve gone through this much trouble keeping Kaishi alive, I want her to stay that way.”
“It’s not easy,” Viera mutters.
“Hey,” I say to them both. “I could order you both to stay here, you know.”
“We wouldn’t listen,” Viera replies.
I know they wouldn’t, and I’m glad.
The next morning comes faster than I’d like, especially with the results of several more wine glasses dancing in my skull. Viera’s in even worse shape, and she spends most of the walk to the rope ladders with her eyes shut, hands pressed to her head.
“Why do you humans consume things so obviously harmful to yourselves?” T’Oli says, oozing along with us.
“Because we have to listen to you,” Viera says.
I don’t bother to say anything, because, really, I don’t want any more noise. Not even my own voice. Every sound brings with it another knock of my headache.
Climbing the rope ladder, though, does some magic to make me feel better. Maybe it’s the exertion, or the requirement to focus my unwilling body on a life-or-death task. Hitting the mountainside, with its blistering chill air, banishes the remnants of the hangover, and I face the brightening sky with steady face.
The dozen warriors we stationed up here - because Avril refused to trust all the threats were gone, and I agreed - wave at us, but don’t approach. I return the gesture, and I’m not offended they’re not coming over - there’s a shuttle swooping down towards our section of the cliff, and the open doors show the emerald Oratus is waiting. Nobody would want to get any closer to that if they don’t have to.
The emerald Oratus jumps out of the shuttle, which stays hovering about a meter off the rock. With its claws, the Oratus helps us board, lifting first me, with T’Oli riding on my back, and then Viera into the craft.
The inside, like the first Vincere shuttle I rode in, gives its own definition to the words ‘sparse’. There’s simply nothing in the back save netting, though I notice the shuttle seems far taller on the inside, with a series of bars stretched across the top. The cockpit on this one is situated to our right, at the rear, where a pair of Flaum sit in tight quarters above the engines. To the left, the translucent view shows the shrinking mountain as the shuttle begins to withdraw.
“This is all you need?” the Oratus asks, staring at our small packs.
“We haven’t been in one place long enough to gather possessions,” I say, though I bring my hands to the emerald necklace. This
time, I want to keep it, and I figure a little sign of royalty won’t be a bad thing when I show up in front of the Chorus.
The Oratus nods. “We keep nothing for ourselves, either, except those weapons we deem most fit for our abilities.” There’s a pause as the Oratus sucks in some air, and Viera settles into a section of the hanging netting. “My name is Lan, and I welcome you, ambassador of humanity, to the Vincere.”
I gather there’s supposed to be something ceremonial in the sentiment, but right now I’m leaning against some draping black net as I leave my home far too soon, and I can’t quite get there. So I ask a question instead.
“You know Sax?”
By the way Lan twitches, I know I’ve surprised the Oratus.
“We served together,” Lan says, slow. “For a time, until he became a traitor to the Vincere and to his race.”
“That doesn’t sound like Sax.” What I remember of the Oratus is his dedication to the mission, to the destruction of any threat. “He did everything he could to keep us alive.”
Those words prompt more questions, and the rest of the shuttle ride is spent swapping stories of the Oratus, first of Sax, then Bas, and finally of the four of them, the last being Gar, who’s waiting for us on the lead cruiser in the Vincere fleet above Earth.
If there’s one thing I get from the conversation, it’s that Lan isn’t quite the soulless machine she makes the Oratus out to be. Regret and confusion permeate her memories as she tells them, and I sympathize; every night I turn over the time with Ignos - the Sevora - in my mind, wondering whether anything it did was out of concern for me or humanity, or whether it was all in self-interest. Whether the Sevora could care about me or my people.
Nunilite is the cruiser’s name, supposedly, so Lan tells it, because that’s also the name of the Amigga who discovered and designed leaping technology. As for why this specific ship gets the noble name, that’s because of the giant bulb built on the front end of the cruiser. It’s visible from the shuttle as we approach, largely because its bright copper shading sticks out from the bright-white of the rest of the hull.
“Leaping sends a ship through folds in space-time,” Lan says, and the excited hiss in her voice tells me she prefers this to the sad discussion of her former partners. “This technology inverts the science.” At my vacant look - Viera’s asleep and who knows what T’Oli’s thinking - Lan pauses for a moment, then tries again. “Rather than pushing a ship through a wrinkle in the universe to move from one place to another, the Nunilite can create a new fold between two points. It can bring them together.”
“Why?”
Lan stares at me. I must have said something dumb. The Oratus opens her mouth to explain, then shuts it.
“Perhaps it’s better if you don’t know,” Lan says. “You’re not yet on our side, after all.”
If Lan’s expecting me to push the issue, to pester her about what sort of cosmic miracle the Nunilite can unleash on the universe, she’s disappointed. Right now, I’m looking at Viera and feeling awfully jealous about her trip to the world of dreams, and with a simple statement I tell Lan I’m going to the same place.
The Oratus says she’ll wake us when we arrive, but I’m already asleep before she finishes the sentence.
I’ve now landed on three places apart from Earth - Cobalt, a nightmarish space station where an Amigga tried to turn my species into carbon clones for its own ends, Vimelia, the Sevora homeworld where two factions tried to use my friends and I to inflame a war or end it, and now the Nunilite, which becomes my first glimpse of the Vincere in their element.
The shuttle doors open and Lan is the first one out, her emerald frame serving as a guide in the bright lights of the docking bay. Unlike some of the others I’ve seen, though, this bay is empty of other ships. It’s not large, either, with deep black floors, steel-slat walls, and a cross-section of Flaum and Whelk soldiers waiting for us to exit.
What’s more surprising is the amount of artillery present for our arrival. Miners aim in our general direction, and at least two of the Flaum are encased in larger... suits that give them longer limbs and larger cannons through metal extensions.
“Is this a threat?” I ask Viera as we slowly exit the shuttle.
“Maybe they think we’re the danger.”
“You’re an unknown,” Lan hisses as she steps back from us to remove any chance she gets hit by a stray shot. “The Vincere do not like to take unnecessary risks.”
“That’s right, we might just go crazy and blow up your ship right here,” Viera says, shaking her head as she does it, a motion that stop as soon as all those miners snap to attention and the low whine of charging weapons fills the bay.
“I would not make jokes.” Lan nods towards the docking bay’s only exit, a thick clay-red door that appears very much shut.
“Touchy,” Viera whispers to me as we follow Lan towards the door.
“The Vincere have never been known for their cheer,” T’Oli states from my back, where the Ooblot’s adopted its customary perch. “Some say you have to murder your sense of humor to join.”
“We save our laughter for the battlefield,” Lan says without turning back. “Where we mock our enemies as they fall.”
“Remind me not to invite them to our next party,” I say to Viera.
Beyond the red door, which opens only after we’ve been scanned and Viera’s had her pistols and sword confiscated, there’s one of what I gather to be many, many hallways. It’s a wide one, and full of shuffling troops, floating platforms covered in crates, and the occasional buzzing drone shooting by above our heads.
Messages ordering individuals, squads, or other nouns I don’t know echo overhead, and nobody bothers paying us any attention. At first, given our reception, I’d have thought we’d be the stars of the ship, but Lan informs us that as we’ve been cleared, we’re no longer worthy of note.
“Where are we going?” I ask Lan as we keep walking and I lose myself in the maze.
“We’re taking the long way to the bridge,” Lan replies.
“Why the long way?” Viera asks.
“So you understand the scope of the ship, and your place within it.”
I could choose to take the words as a threat, but our slow pace and the endless activity around us give me a chance to mull them over. We’re on a military vessel, part of the so-called ‘Vincere’, and Lan’s told us the point of coming with them will be to present humanity to the Chorus as a species worth having in the galaxy. Around us, Flaum and Whelk, along with scattered few of other species whose names I don’t know - stick-like ones with tiny limbs, and large, lumbering things that look like living rock - yet all of them defer to Lan’s presence. They move out of her way, don’t meet her eyes, and generally act like my own guards do around me.
Where would humans fall in that hierarchy? Lan’s words seem to say we’d be right in that same mix, clustered among the species meant to serve and support the Oratus and their force. Assist the Amigga in any way they desired.
“Just what place is that?” Viera asks the question as I reach the conclusion.
Lan hisses a laugh. “Whatever place is chosen for you. The Chorus sets the galaxy’s purpose, and the bounds of the lives within it.”
The cruiser’s bridge is unlike anything I’ve seen before - the triple-wide doors open onto a raised platform that splits a broad, silver-blue pit in which dozens of Flaum and other species work at various stations. Overseeing all of them, at the end of the platform, is rust-colored Oratus whose scales are so scarred as to make me wince at all the pain it has to have felt.
Beyond the leader, as the rust-colored Oratus, by its straight-edged stance and slow panning gaze, makes clear that it is, sits a vast transparent shield showing, in its lower right corner, the soft blue edge of Earth. Coming into view dead ahead is the bulk of Nomis, her gray surface looking pocked and dark from this distance.
Lan leads the three of us out onto the platform, then bids us to stop about halfway to the end w
hile she continues on.
“Maybe our species isn’t good enough to go all the way,” Viera says.
“We’ve been discounted before,” I reply. “We proved them wrong.”
“Undoubtedly, your past results will be indicative of future success!” T’Oli says, though only through the quietest of tapping talk.
“Are you being sarcastic?” Viera says the words to the Ooblot on my back.
“Yes.” T’Oli shifts up onto my shoulders, so its less like a pack now and more like a cloak. “The odds of a species with your level of technology making an appreciable mark on the galaxy are slim.”
“Yeah, well, you’re a living puddle. So there.”
I can’t quite suppress a laugh, which causes a smile to spread across my face when Lan and the rust Oratus stomp up and stand over me.
“Lan tells me your name is Kaishi,” the rust Oratus says. “I am Kolas. Welcome to my ship, my fleet, and our galaxy.”
I don’t know what the protocol is here - if this were, say, a leader of a Solare tribe back home I would bow. However, I’m also an Empress. I’m here representing all of humanity. And our species should bow to none.
So I give Kolas a nod instead, and hope that’s sufficient. When I look back up at the Oratus, I notice Kolas has steel-colored eyes, an unnatural blue-gray shade that seems as hard as the metal. Its mouth is full of sharp teeth, though many of these are jagged or broken.
“You’re an ugly one,” Viera says from behind me. “Lan here’s saying that we’re low down on the species pecking order. Thing is, I don’t know how we can be beneath something like you, seeing as you’re all beat up and broken.”
I close my eyes tight. Sigh. Hope that Viera’s words don’t get us eviscerated right there, right then.
Instead of death whistling towards me, though, what I get is a loud hissing laugh. Kolas, when I open my eyes, is nodding, still laughing, towards Viera.
“What is your name, little human?” Kolas says. “Your bravery does your species credit.”
