“You are not only preparing them for their future duties, Qeya,” Mother always said. “You are preparing them to follow your rule one day.” Mother took her role as Orona very heavily. It was not something she was born to do because she didn’t have the necessary skills. These only passed through siblings of the most ancient line. Father’s sister should have been on this ship with us, training me in the ancient way. She had raised me long before my mother took an active interest in my life. She was the true Orona, but because she was gone—along with her chance of having any children—I am our people’s only chance.
I was done for the day. Time to report to father before our final meal, another of my brothers’ neglected duties I had been conned into performing. After that came the joyous task of putting thirty-one children to bed.
Arvex was being prepped to lead the rebellion we planned on staging in a few years. He still had nightmares every night of the night we escaped aboard Datura 3. He had been responsible for taking care of the royal children then, of getting us safely on board. Not every child made it. Most fell to the scythe blade and Arvex had been too young and inexperienced to fight back. He put on a game face for the others now but I knew better. It was easier for me to give the nightly reports to mother and father because they only questioned me about my abilities and whether my sixth sense, the key to our success, had come in yet.
I dashed through my sectioned quarters on my way up and snatched the pad from the foot of my bed. I pressed my finger to the cool clear square surface of the nearby door lock. Only mine and Arvex’s rooms had access to the lifts on deck two, and they opened for our finger signature alone. It slid open with a graceful swish. Stepping aboard so the door could shut behind me, I waited for the lift to recognize my voice signature.
“Top deck.”
Before the light dimmed, I felt the familiar twist in my gut that told me I was traveling fast in a ship already soaring through the heavens. Before I was old enough to make these reports and mother and father still visited us on our deck, I had been deathly afraid of the lift. It reminded me too much of the same lift that took us off our beautiful home world to above.
I hated the beyond as much as I loved looking at it. All throughout my childhood, I had imagined what it would be like to settle on one of those worlds, to find something new and fresh again. What would it be like to find a place whose surface you did not already know every inch of?
When the lift opened again, it was on a world vastly different to the one I had ascended from. Top deck was divided into two sections. Nearest to me and against the inner walls of the ship were the quarters of the adults who had been the elite of our society. Navigation was opposite me, at the front central area of first deck. The half-stack daises each adult stood or sat behind continuously flashed with blinking lights and markings in our tongue. Once I heard they had been covered with markings only a miner could understand. But this too changed when we claimed Datura 3 for our own.
Each station faced the crescent wall overlooking the heavens, and the quickest death if penetrated. Made entirely of a synthetic filmy liquid that was harder than our strongest metals and another miner secret, the barrier allowed us to look out on the rush of stars.
In their mated pairs, the adults moved with fluid grace from station to station, tapping the glowing lights occasionally, passing on orders to down below through the hollow shell-like tubes linked to speakers on the miner and children’s decks. In my opinion, it didn’t get any more impersonal than that: interacting with our parents through the tiny speaker holes, their voices barking with the metallic clang of the crude technology.
The only reason I enjoyed coming to top deck was the view. If you stood at the edge of the deck, close enough to touch the deceptively pliable window, you could pretend you were there in the heavens. Some nights I dreamed about it, floating aimlessly as the black vacuum sucked the air from my lungs and hardened my essence.
Communications were running swimmingly between Pioneer and Datura 3. I could hear Hanea’s older brother Tamn’s voice and felt the familiar old tingle up my spine. Tamn and I had been close ever since we were born and marked for joining. All royal children were marked at birth with their true mate. It was never something we questioned. We were never raised to love so it never occurred to us to want anything different. From the time of my infancy I had been marked for Tamn and growing up it was hard not to swoon at the sight of his well-developed arms and chest, his sculpted jaw and opalescent gills perfectly spaced down his neck. In the palace he treated me like a little sister, sending me occasional gifts on my naming day or whenever he could get away with it. I longed and pined for him in a way that was simply not done between a royal couple and was more akin to the rumored passions of the barbaric miners.
Orona noticed this first and cautioned me to quash the emotion, to burn it with fire and keep it locked away until the proper time. Things changed when I developed breasts and a wide set of hips. For the first time since I’d known him, his gills flared in my presence, a sure sign of his discomfort, followed by a thick intensity channeled through his silver gaze. The distance between us was turning from something awkward to pulse pounding. So I didn’t know how I felt about the joining now.
I could almost see the way his thick brows drew together as I listened to the tail end of his report.
“Air is fine to breathe, no toxins that our scanners have picked up. Feels lighter too, not so much pull as the last hostile world. No sign of life but plenty of water and land. We can’t see anything beyond this mountain range. Miners are going to check it out.”
“Fresh, Tamn,” Father nodded, pressed tight to his shell-shaped communicator. “You are a go for sending them ahead. Eye your backs. Just because you have not spotted any life doesn’t mean it hasn’t spotted you.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Qeya!” Mother floated over to me, a vision of the palace waterfalls caught in her silver robes. I never saw the practicality of dressing like we were still holding court. Father often reminded me we held to traditions because they were all we had left. Her pale-blue tinted hands held either side of my face in proper greeting. I lifted mine to press her cheeks, enjoying the warm tingle that speared through my fingertips. Our hands were our most sensitive skins besides our feet. The reasons why are lost to us now, something not even the ancients thought to record for our knowledge.
Slowly, we lowered our hands back to our sides and I snatched my keypad off its hook on my tool belt. Mother hated that I wore something so closely resembling miner clothes. But they made a lot more sense to me than wide leggings and flowing tunics on a ship that often slipped past environmental controls.
Her thick lips pursed, she knitted her brow at my movements that were not quite graceful enough. I ignored this and got right down to business. “First and second years are swimming along to their next layers. But Jymee, Kahne and Bruv need to be logged for misconduct.”
“Logged? Why is this?” Mother hated when we had to involve the adults in our discipline.
I shrugged. “Arvex couldn’t do it today.”
“Whyever not?” Her clear inner eyelids slid across her large blue orbs in a tick similar to mine.
“You’ll have to ask him. It is not my job to discipline.”
She was already distracted though, and turned to follow a sudden commotion on deck. I turned with her just as she held her hand out. “Father and I shall discuss it.” This was her way of saying she had had enough contact with her only daughter for today and it was time for me to go back to my cage.
Don’t think my ears are clogged. I felt a bond with my mother and father just like the rest of us did. Our inner minds carried their memories after all. The moment we were born, they passed their essence down to the next generation. So we were all a part of each other, understood each other. Some nights in my dreams I remembered these past lives, remembered a light fluid world of undersea palaces and caves below the earth. Other nights I saw things that frightened me, war
and blood spilled with my own hands. Because of my unbroken line the memories were stronger than they were for the others. The memory of leaders is the most difficult to live with because we make the choices that others do not have to.
As we age, it is expected of us to reach beyond our personal problems to concentrate on a higher thinking. Close relationships are something only the young could afford in my world. Mother and Father were simply beyond such relationships now.
Fading into the background, I too followed the source of the commotion. The main lift to first deck had direct access to navigation, yet I rarely saw anyone ascend from it. But who else should step off it now than two filthy miners.
II: DAMAGED
I hid behind a nearby narrow arch, a more fluid part of the framework of the bridge. I knew if Mother realized I was still here I’d be sent away in a heartbeat. Pulsing blue and yellow lights danced beneath my fingertips. I could feel the energy trickle into my fingertips and rush down my arms.
“What business have you here?” my father’s younger brother and father of the twins called out. His naturally ruddy skin turned violently red and only my father’s stronger arm could hold him back.
Like our relationships, there were some prejudices that had not evolved out of our system. But I was young, and the miners held a degree of fascination with me because they were different. History claimed they were a lesser species we had conquered long ago. But who knows? The winning side always gets to tell the final tell.
Wryly, I admitted Mother may be right on one point. Their clothes did resemble my skintight jumpsuit, except there was much more breathing space to their grease and plasma-stained clothes. It was rumored they spent so much time around the essence of other worlds it stained their skin a permanent murky indistinct color. Having only spent time at a distance from them, it wasn’t until now that I learned the truth.
Their skin was much darker than ours, so dark that the whites of their eyes and teeth stood out on their faces, as did the tattoos spiraling over their necks, skulls and arms. Otherwise they stood only barely shorter than our tallest. Besides their hairless heads I discerned little other difference. The older of the two lifted his strong chin. His features were smaller and widely spaced but more focused than ours. The younger had a face like cut stone, all edges and scars and tensely coiled control.
In a sudden flicker of movement, the younger miner’s green orbs shifted focus, flashed across the room and instantly fastened onto my hiding place. I froze, heart pounding in my chest, gills on the sides of my neck stretching in effort to gulp down more synthetic air. I heard the argument distantly. Sound rushed to catch up to me the moment the miner held back his elder. But his eyes darted to me one last daring moment and his lips twitched into a knowing smirk.
Voices rushed and piled on top of each other. Bits of their argument fell over my conscience.
“You leaking royals should keep to what you know and leave the metal thinking to us!” the old miner shouted. He stiffened when his friend hissed something in a strange language in his ear.
“Can you stand any more of these insults, brother?” My father’s younger brother was still grinding out his words. Then to the miner he barked, “How dare you come up here uninvited and demanding answers! We give the orders, miner. Not you.” The others began to talk over one another in agreement.
Mother’s voice consumed the room in a rakish wave. “Enough! We cannot resolve this by arguing any further. The Pioneer is out exploring the hostile world as we speak and we mustn’t break communications. Whether you agree with our decision to remain in position above or not.”
The old miner growled, “You’ll leave us sitting wreen out here! I’m telling you what we heard below and our ears ain’t clogged with memories of home world.”
I winced. That was a low blow but the old-timer had a point. They had once made their livelihood on the nearby gas worlds that bordered ours. They knew the heavens made no sounds unless it had something to do with the mysterious black holes. Our ears were too water-clogged, too weak to hear it, they said.
Father sighed wearily, holding his brother off once again. “We have scoped this entire sector, Brien, and come up with nothing. The idea that there is some hidden intelligent race out there making more black spaces is pure lunacy!”
The miner shook off his young friend with a shiver of worn muscle. “Fine, have it your way, Navigator! But do not be expecting us to ignore our inner essence. We carry our own legends of what awaits there on the edge. I tell you, there be something sinister watching us. We felt it come good as we heard it. This new world the shuttle be visiting tried to warn us. And being we all sail together, I chose to warn you.”
It was frightening how frigid my father’s emotions had become, here in the coldest nether regions; frightening to see our elders standing together motionless, unmoved by the words of a man twice their ages.
In my young mind I wondered, why should the miners not be better attuned to the stars? Why should they not know their own ship? But I watched in disbelief as my mother gave a silent signal and the royals returned to their stations.
“Call on the Pioneer and request a status report of their findings.” Mother gave out orders and father turned to the intruders.
“We have nothing from our scans of the region that would lead me to believe your inkling, Brien.”
The old miner drew himself up, grasped the tools at his belt with every intention of sharing his mind. But again the younger one with fewer tattoos pulled at his friend. Clearly he was moving the older miner away from the lunacy of the royals before relations were strained any further.
I frowned and slipped back into my own lift, confused at what I had just witnessed. From the shadows, I saw the younger miner meet my eye one last time before their door slid shut and they faded in shower of lights.
Moments pass through life that are impossible to take back, stepping stones that may lead you on a path you were meant to take. And sometimes a stepping stone breaks loose and you plunge into the river instead. This was one of those moments.
Glancing at the keypad fastened to the inner lift wall, I hesitated only a moment before pressing the wrong button. Shutting my eyes, I wondered what my punishment for this would be and then squashed the idea out of my head. Though I would never admit it to them, the twins had a point about taking risks. What else was life worth living in the end?
“Fourth deck…” I spoke once the lift was cloaked from all detection. And then I was plummeting down faster and farther than I had ever gone before. Third deck at least was some intermediary area between the two coexisting cultures. No one ever went to fourth deck, not even my parents.
The lift door opened with a rusty hiss and a thick film coated the air. Scents of the essence we stole from gas worlds clung to every crevice. Here the lights were dimmer for eyes more accustomed to darkness. The deck was eerily silent, save the constant clank, hiss and grind of gears and metalwork ahead. Rather than smooth opalescent illusions of Daturan palaces, here the walls were crudely cut and wreathed in pipes and wires and grime.
Breathing shallowly, I felt my second translucent eyelids shield from a potentially hazardous environment. I shivered from the cold and trod as softly as my boots would allow. I saw nothing of the tattooed intruders as I’d half expected I would, and wondered if anyone used this particular entrance anymore.
For the first time, the thought crossed my mind: was this what Datura 3 had looked like before we appropriated it?
Hands braced out to the walls on either side of my small frame as I tried to watch my step and keep balance. Mother continually agonized over my imperfections. For our people, I was not nearly tall enough, more hardened curves than slender grace. My features were not common to the southern islands either, too much like my great-mother’s northwestern blood. There in the coldest waters, our distant relatives lived by the old ways still. Because of her, my skin was pale, my hair a bright and deep bloody red instead of black or gold or white.
Born into a position that demanded much attention as it was, it did not help matters that I couldn’t blend in with the crowd even if I’d wanted to.
For what happened next, I blame on said genetics.
A figure reached from the shadows behind, dragged me backwards and against a taller muscle-hardened frame. I struggled, reaching desperately for the retractable scythe hiding in my belt. As if he already knew my weaknesses, he pinned me so I was half-molded into him and the nearest wall. It hurt.
After waiting a few tense moments for me to calm down, he rasped against my ear. “Took you long enough to get down here. Wondered how long you’d need to work up the nerve.” And even though I had only heard his voice from a distance once before and speaking in a different tongue, I knew instantly that the miner had found me first.
“Think you have more nerve, do you? So important you are, helping your friend show the royals who’s in charge, huh?” I pressed him because I was uncomfortable, angry at being caught and excited beyond all account. After all, this was the most stirring event to have happened to me since the last pirate ship we crossed.
Instead of backing off the younger miner held me even tighter. “That’s right. Since none of you show any sense.”
“Is this really necessary?” I tried to wedge some space between us with my elbow.
He laughed with low disdain. “Bothers you to be held by a filthy miner, doesn’t it?”
Ignoring him I tried a different approach and relaxed my muscles. “Not as much as it bothers me that you just grabbed me without even trying to warn me first. If you’re trying to undo ages of prejudice, maybe you should start by acting civil.”
Qeya (Heaven's Edge Novellas Book 1) Page 2
