The Forgotten Sky

by R. M. Schultz

  “The galaxy is depending on us.” Marwyn’s eyes and face darken.

  “Our scientists say with three or four gees they’d probably be okay,” Ethanial replies and smiles at Jaycken as he strides past with Teschner and Marwyn. “At five, human bones break with normal activity.”

  Five gees? What uninhabitable planet did they plan on visiting?

  The Frontiersmen soldiers clomp down the steps onto the plateau and drop their bars, leaning over and heaving for breath.

  “Frontiersmen.” Teschner folds her arms over her chest, her voice smoldering as she glares at them. “You’re letting your colleagues down.”

  The soldiers stand erect, their chests still heaving, plumes of mist expelling around them, mingling into a single cloud of indignity.

  “Radiation levels on the burned planet of Iopenia have increased,” Teschner continues, “not enough that a short recon mission should cause you any lasting effects, but for reasons unknown to our gold cannon research brothers and sisters, the gravity of the planet’s increased by a factor of five. Without control of the elements to stabilize your skeleton, or rovers that we don’t have and cannot Stride to Iopenia, you’ll be crushed. We own no suits that can offset such gravity, and no supply can be manufactured before we need to move. You’re all failing.”

  Kiesen struts up beside Jaycken, flops down, and snickers as if this is all entertainment.

  Ethanial smiles at the soldiers as he tugs at his black mustache. “I’ve been where you are, being pushed, reprimanded. You’re all capable of street magician levels of control. That’s all we need. Stabilize your bones. Envision it, make it happen. We realize most who feel the elements cannot become Elemiscists even with proper training and mentoring. We’re not asking you to. We’re not asking you to Stride us to Iopenia, or Beguile adversaries, or solidify your Will and become a Sculptor. We have our Elemiscists for that. But we do need you to investigate the system in question.”

  “We weren’t selective enough in our recent recruitment,” Teschner says to the undersecretary. “The Frontiersmen grew lax over the past century. We won’t be ready in time.”

  Marwyn nods, a short, abrupt drop of his chin. “Push them.”

  “Pick up the bars.” Teschner admonishes each of the twenty soldiers with a look of disappointment. “Concentrate and stabilize yourselves. Now. Go.”

  The soldiers are off again, stumbling up the steps.

  A few pull ahead, seeming to not feel the fatigue or the altitude like the others. Most falter; some drag their feet up each step.

  A burning spark flickers inside Jaycken as he watches those few reach the top, carrying loads that no man should be able to, much less be able to climb while carrying. These soldiers are giving their lives, sacrificing their wellbeing for the galaxy, for others they have never met. Some are succeeding. Others are failing, barely able to move.

  How much reciprocal damage will each soldier receive from harnessing this power? Slyth said it would be different for everyone, based on their abilities and how adroitly they controlled the elements. He warned Jaycken that if any recruit passed black streaks in their urine or feces to have them seek the aid of one of the medical staff. Such black streaking indicates acute irreparable injury and if left unchecked can lead to brain damage and seizures.

  Slyth also said a trial will eventually be needed for each Frontiersmen and Elemiscist to realize their full potential, to determine if they are one of the rare wielders of the elements. Even though they will all still die from it.

  The awe Jaycken feels about the possibility of controlling some type of intangible power dwindles inside him like a dying flame.

  Is it worth the cost of bodily destruction?

  Only a few soldiers reach the top of the stairs, too few for a full team to be sent to Iopenia.

  The statue and empty plinth in the plateau seem to enlarge, to draw Jaycken’s attention.

  Iriad, the man who founded the military of the mind. A man whose control of the power of the six elements has been nearly unmatched to this day. Only three Phantoms—a wielder of the power to manipulate time by speeding it up or slowing it down in relation to their own body—have ever arisen in history, and only one was a Frontiersmen. The Sentinel of the Frontiersmen.

  Jaycken wonders if there will ever be a second Sentinel. Wonders if he could somehow become that Sentinel, but the thought, the dream is absurd. He would be laughed at, mocked, belittled if others knew, even for a moment, that he thought he could accomplish this, reaching the pinnacle of the Frontiersmen. Or he’d be reprimand for arrogance.

  The beating sun is now the biggest mystery of the galaxy, and if Jaycken can solve it, he will certainly rise far in the Frontiersmen ranks.

  This is Jaycken’s chance to do something for the galaxy, what he enlisted for.

  Will I be so much worse than the soldiers here, make a fool of myself? It’s not like I haven’t done that before.

  Jaycken stands.

  A few discarded bars lie in a heap on the plateau.

  Jaycken closes his eyes and feels for the elements in the air around him, in the stone, the snow, the wood, in his blood.

  He jogs over to a bar, takes a few quick breaths, and heaves. The bar settles onto his shoulders. Not too heavy.

  Then, with the bar in place, it somehow, magically perhaps, becomes a crushing weight, making his back and knees feel as if they will snap. He feels small, weak as he turns to the steps.

  Teschner says, “Recruit, you’re in no position to attempt this.”

  Ethanial rushes up to him. “Jaycken, do not attempt this. You could end up with many broken bones. Not all recruits are here to be soldiers. Many Frontiersmen perform research or theorize ways to Stride to neighboring galaxies, in case ours is ever threatened. That is the path for you.”

  My path? Because you’re my dad’s friend and wish to protect me? Those other options don’t sound like they will involve solving the riddle of the beating sun, the quickest and surest route to becoming a full Frontiersmen.

  Marwyn watches silently.

  Jaycken takes his first step, his legs shaking, trembling violently. Surely his tibias would snap under more weight, under the vastness of five g. He lunges forward onto a step and almost falls.

  Not as strong as I like to think.

  “Do it, Jaycken!” Kiesen says, only a step or two behind him. “Imagine it like Slyth says. Feel the invisible waves of decay. Harvest them with your bones.”

  Jaycken’s back foot feels a bit lighter. Something warm blossoms in the marrow of his skeleton, seeps outward, and rolls through his muscles, tendons, and ligaments.

  He steps again. And again.

  The bar seems to have fallen from his back, but the pressure on his skin is still there.

  Jaycken moves faster and faster. Jogging now, catching up with the slowest soldiers.

  Something’s happened. He cannot explain it, but his confidence boosts, a sensation he’s known: rigging the mizzenmast, dreaming of the stars, seeing himself as a knight inside his steed of metal and fire.

  Jaycken climbs two steps at a time and pushes around Frontiersmen soldiers, smiling. He glances back.

  Kiesen and Nadiri are invigorated, following him, sharing a bar of their own, slow but gaining on the other soldiers. Bruan struggles, unable to climb the stairs.

  Marwyn grins from the plateau below and says to Ethanial and Teschner, “We need to find and train a second Sentinel, or we will not succeed in facing what’s brewing within as well as outside our galaxy.”

  Seeva

  Beyond Seeva’s cruiser, in the distance, a blue and brown planet, Haredon, is suspended in the void. Yellow clouds swirl over the bright circle bracketed by the vast emptiness of space.

  Seeva cannot let the last hermadore calf die as she chases the poacher across the galaxy. She must find the calf a caretaker, and the only people she trusts live on Silvergarden.

  A line of orange lights flow away from the planet in a dance like l
ightning doves searching for mates amidst the swamps of Seeva’s home planet. Sad. Meandering. But with purpose.

  The lights are ships leaving Haredon, a civilization that’s given up hope for this galaxy, seeking a kinder one where they can live alone. It’s too late for them here. They are setting off for the impossible voyage to the closest neighboring galaxy, the waxen galaxy, close to a hundred thousand light years away, hoping family generations so distant they cannot even be fathomed will find something there, something missing in the hearts of man here.

  Seeva needs them now. She needs them here. It’s not time to give up and look elsewhere. There’s still something worth saving.

  The pressing weight of gloom mantles Seeva’s shoulders and brow, the emotional state no stranger to her. She’s been through recurring traumatic stress as long as she can remember and just pushes on as best she can.

  She feels as if she can hear Ori’s heartbeat from his perch on the control panel, his beautiful eyes closed in sleep. She feels the female hermadore’s thumping cardiac contractions from the cargo bay, the calf sleeping after devouring rhiciopores to her heart’s content. The calf will survive now, taken from her home before the heat seared her, before the beating sun exploded. The calf will never be shown how to find the legendary cavern system of the hermadores, to avoid the daytime. The entire herd is gone.

  Between her ship’s location and the blue and brown planet, Haredon, a massive cloud of twinkling lights, like a sandstorm in space, swarms the void. Nayaks and skoalers. Then a swath of floating debris flows across her view, a river of space litter, the waste of some passing ship, some careless facility: mounds of food, dirty clothing, empty vials and bins, a pale body.

  Seeva’s stomach contents seem to stop churning and settle into a thick tar.

  One organization immediately pops into her mind: the Majestic Space Pearl.

  She maneuvers through the floating river of garbage as deep and as thick as water.

  Haredon reemerges with its departing ships. Seeva doesn’t know them, but the sight makes the coiling sadness inside her constrict around her throat and squeeze, a lump she can’t swallow. Memories flash in her mind: sounds, images, fragments of stories. She strokes Ori’s soft feathers to distract herself and glances off.

  Beyond Haredon floats Silvergarden, a platinum-colored planet with green bodies of water. Seeva’s new home. So much nicer than her birth home. She sets course to land there, her tainted thoughts heading to the past like a tunneling bore train plowing into dark territory, unable to be derailed.

  Seeva blossomed into adolescence in a convent of female orphans. She was assigned primary work with the herd of cattle, dairy cats, and fjord ponies and learned to care for and to understand animals, to ride horses. She also helped bring in the harvest on antigravity sleds, bushels of sagefoil grains that would last them through the winter. A girl, Athiera, who was her paired sled handler, was tall, much taller than Seeva, and lean. They spent four seasons together when Seeva was not alone with her animals, working, reading, laughing, crying, learning of the religion of the capricious gods of the seasons. Her best friend. They shared secrets, at first innocently brushing up against each other when they worked. Fingers lingered too long when they handed each other something. But others were always around, always watching. When that last winter came, cold and foreboding, Athiera became a grown woman, old enough to leave for the city on the coast and find her own life, maybe start a family. Seeva dreamed of finding her again in two years, dreamed of finding Athiera happy but waiting for her. Seeva hugged her that last night they spent together, when they stayed up until dawn sitting on her bed, reminiscing. Seeva lingered in her arms a moment, not wanting her to go, and kissed her, at first a peck on the cheek, then a short pause and a kiss on the lips.

  Another girl in the room, who should have been sleeping, shouted in surprise and asked what they were doing.

  Seeva and Athiera both gave some stuttering answer before the girl ran off and told the Mother, who came at them with the fury of the gods. Both of them were cast out in disgust, cast out separately. That was when Seeva wandered alone to the city and met a dapper old man outside a chateau. This man promised to care for her.

  Those memories adhere to the vessels of her mind like venomous black leeches.

  “Seeva,” a familiar voice says.

  Seeva awakes with a jerk, on Silvergarden, mentally absent during the navigation and landing and having finally passed out from exhaustion.

  Quintanilla is climbing into her ship, a woman a decade older than Seeva, in her early fifties but much taller, her graying dreadlocks bouncing against her cheeks, her body all hips. “You look like you did the time I first saw you. Jumpy.”

  Precht, a bald, younger man with a head so shiny it reflects stars, follows Quintanilla.

  Quintanilla whispers to him, “The first time I tapped her shoulder she punched me in the throat.” Her voice rises in volume. “Seeva, you need the three Ms: a meal, a massage, and a man. In that order.”

  “And the quiet of Silvergarden,” Precht adds.

  Seeva groans as she stands. Ori stirs the air, his wing tips flapping against her cheeks like butterfly kisses. “I brought something else back this time.”

  “Oh, no.” Quintanilla rubs her forehead. “More proia pets?”

  “No, something bigger.” Seeva opens the cargo bay in the rear, and the hermadore peeks her three eyes out beyond the pressure door and bulkhead, bellowing her sonorous call and ringing the air, the walls, and Seeva’s ears.

  The smell of dung and acidic urine wafts out like a smack on the nose.

  “For fuck sake, Seeva.” Precht presses his stubby hands to his ears. He wobbles, wrinkling his nostrils. “You can’t bring all the wildlife of the planet back with you. That’s a damn hermadore. It’ll grow as big as your entire ship.”

  “I had no choice.” Seeva pushes past them. “And this one’s a runt with no mother’s milk. She won’t get big. Send a caretaker. Right now. I need to see Timberlace.”

  “Was it that bad out there?” Quintanilla asks, following.

  “Worse.”

  They speak of Climice, of the beating sun, of Silvergarden, of the past, and of the future as they exit the enclosed station, pass at ease guards who mingle like friends and cross a field of crops as high as their thighs. They continue beyond tiered fruit fields filled with green water a meter deep.

  The coral is everywhere, all around them, shimmering. Silver coral that grows on land like trees, with branches like the many-limbed cacti of other worlds. Most of the coral trees create small copses as if alders or aspens, but forests of it linger in the distance. Shrubs of it are scattered about the plains. Hundreds of species of birds and creatures with small hands, glider wings, and fur leap about the overhead branches, throwing melodies around like shiny balls. In the distance, air barges carry groups of travelers in the wind, above the height of the coral.

  So damn hospitable and comfortable.

  A dirt street leads into the forest, drawing Seeva on, between rows of towering coral, up steps, to a turreted palace of reflective silver, flags overhead whipping in a dry wind. Animals squeak, chirr, and twitter in the canopy.

  “Seeva,” a lady in a dress of lavender buds says. She leans against the silver bole of a coral-tree, a smile on her lips, her hair the color of the trees. Several Silvergarde soldiers, men and women, wander the vicinity. “Did you find who or what was poaching Climice’s wildlife?”

  Seeva bows her head. “We have a lot to discuss, my Lady Timberlace.”

  “Walk with me.” Timberlace turns and steps into the forest as if entering her bedroom.

  Seeva follows, but her friends remain behind, outside the palace, outside the forest. “Someone wiped out the last herd of hermadores.”

  Timberlace falls silent, contemplating as she weaves around spiny trunks, her head downcast.

  “That new planet, Staggenmoire,” Seeva says, “the one with the medieval people. They were sup
posedly bribed with warships. They might act like barbarians with that newfound power.”

  “Don’t let your prejudices judge guilt,” Timberlace says. “We were the first to attempt contact with the people of Staggenmoire, a planet rich in minerals and resources already mined from much of the galaxy. A planet rich in the elements. The natives probably believed we were invaders, and as soon as we stepped out of our ships, conflict occurred: arrows, crossbow bolts, mounted knights charging. So we immediately re-boarded and departed. The visit was a mistake, and we intended to design a much more detailed plan of how to greet Staggenmoire’s people, but Uden somehow discovered their location as well. Uden slipped in quietly before the Northrite learned of the planet, offering gifts of weaponry in return for mining rights.

  “The natives of Staggenmoire had no ships or Striders prior to its discovery, so they couldn’t even leave their planet until very recently. As far as Silvergarden intelligence knows, the natives have yet to do so.”

  “I have the trajectory of the poacher’s departing ship,” Seeva says. “They flew past Silvergarden. My best guess: a small planet on the edge of the cluster, one full of fissured black deserts and whitewashed houses of the poor. There are no other planets of interest near the trajectory.”

  “I know of it. People who can afford hermadore spines do not live there, and trajectories often change outside a gravity well. They can change anywhere along a ship’s path.”

  Timberlace treats her like a child.

  “Locate the kingpin first, Seeva, the person funding the poacher. The poacher comes second. If there’s no kingpin, there will be no poachers.”

  Seeva rolls her eyes.

  “What report do you bring of the beating sun that all the galaxy’s talking about?” Timberlace asks.

  “I saw it with my own eyes. Terrifying. The sun may drive the wildlife of Climice to extinction before the poachers.”