The hunched man shuffles in, opens his metal case, and shifts through handheld devices and stainless-steel instruments.
“Indeed.” The Emissary, in a mask of gray rock beneath a dark hood, enters on silent feet. “The Northrite have protected the Patriarch to the best of our abilities, but he may have met an untimely end by visiting the drifting moon of Jasilix. We’ve recently launched an investigation.”
The doctor, nearly the same height sitting or standing because of his hunched back, assesses readouts on his equipment. His face contorts. He grunts, shifts, and prods the body. “No injection sites under the finger or toenails. No other external cuts, bites, or abrasions other than bed sores. Nothing to explain his death.” His demeanor is suspicious. He turns to the Messiah like a duck trying to pivot on webbed feet that do not bend correctly. “Your pathologists will perform a complete autopsy and toxin screen of all tissues? Rule out internal trauma and murder by a Sculptor?”
The Messiah nods.
The doctor shuffles past Nyranna.
“The Manipulator’s disgraced the Patriarch’s deathbed,” Breman says as he enters behind the Emissary. He elbows past Nyranna, whispering under his breath, “You should be beaten and jettisoned to the penal planet like garbage, you and all your disgusting kind.”
“Not like the other bodies reported to be popping up around the galaxy,” the doctor says, pausing in front of Breman.
What bodies?
The doctor continues, “No hemorrhaging from the Patriarch’s orifices, no infection of his skin, lungs, brain, or liver. No vomiting or erythema. No horizontal or vertical transmission to suggest a virus. Not like those grisly murders, along with the ritual slaying of women. I saw one a bit ago, but the information hasn’t been released by the authorities.” He stops and blinks his squinty eyes a few times, focusing on Nyranna. “In fact, all of the ritual victims were women that fit a similar description. Tall, average build, long and straight dark brown hair. Pretty. They all look like you.”
Nyranna feels her tendons tug at her skeleton in surprise.
A scream sounds from the governing chamber.
Sweavers race away from their positions on pounding boots. The councilmembers follow, Nyranna behind them.
Another body lies over the bench before the Messiah, a dagger hilt lying on the audience floor, a hilt with a black blade of shadow that is vibrating and evaporating quickly. The weapon of a Paladin Elemiscist.
The other councilmembers stand over the Messiah, who is clutching their forearm, a red stain soaking through their cloak. Seven sweavers surround the body of an intruder, which is riddled with holes and bulges in the chest, neck, and right leg—the work of pulser rounds.
“They’re right here in this very chamber!” Breman motions to his sweavers to secure all entry points and speaks into a comm to relay orders. “The work of Uden. The Manipulator bitch’s master.”
“No.” The Messiah stands as an attendant and the doctor move to look at his arm, but the Messiah will not let them unwrap it here. It may reveal their skin, gender, identity. “We cannot lay blame on Uden without sufficient evidence. Visiting ambassadors, alert your Royal Mothers and Fathers at once. Let them know the Grand Patriarch is dead and that there’s been an assassination attempt in his own palace, an attempt on one of his councilmembers.”
The ambassadors pull their Elemiscists close, and hushed conversations rise to the domed ceiling like buzzing insects. Suspicion permeates the air, becoming a growing humidity.
Breman picks up the dagger that is now only a hilt and places it in an antigravity locking container. “Manipulator. Of course it was. My council, this attack against our leaders and the death of the Patriarch are nothing short of war. In such circumstances, you must claim the power of the Patriarch granted to you by the War Times Act.”
“We must enact a state of emergency to prevent all-out war in the galaxy,” the Herald says. The Emissary nods, then the Savior. The Redeemer in their mask of leather and wood follows suit.
They all look to the Messiah.
With a nod of capitulation, the Messiah says, “We’re forced into this position, but we’ll not wage war. We only keep the peace during this attempted seizing of power.”
“All wartime laws will come into immediate effect,” the Redeemer says through the bars over their open mouth.
The Messiah steps down to the audience hall and paces. “We’ll raise the armies of the galaxy and unite them until we find out who’s responsible, until justice has been served and peace and prosperity returned.”
What fucking lies. As if they don’t want to claim this power, as if they are being forced into it.
All the inhuman eyes of the councilmembers settle on Nyranna.
They believe that Uden and I are the culprits.
Nyranna’s persecutors, the Royal Father of Uden and her Elemiscist overseer, lack empathy, but would they kill their own diplomat in the Staggenmoire castle, contract with the Moonriders to murder all the natives along with him? She must tell others, maybe other Elemiscists, what’s just transpired.
Fear blossoms in Nyranna’s chest like the beating heart sun as she strides out of the chamber. Thoughts of the mysterious council and their actions jumble together in a fury of suspicion. She sees the entire planet of Grendermane as a twisting puzzle composed of blocks of mobile crust and magma, competing with itself for dominance. She will not be their pawn and use her power for their desires until she’s crippled or dead. Someone else must gain control of the galaxy, turn the tides on these councilmembers as well as Uden. Someone willing to put Elemiscists first.
Amidst the commotion of racing attendants, sweavers, and everyone else in the palace, Nyranna arrives outside the personal chamber wing for the Northrite. Ten sweavers surround the entrance.
She will not be able to sneak inside.
If she could assassinate a Northrite member, will that help free herself and other Elemiscists? If she does nothing, war and the continued oppression of Elemiscists seems as inevitable as her current servitude. Will it be worth it if others die as collateral damage? There are no innocents. Even common people play a role in Elemiscist control, watch, do nothing to address the inequality. If it will advance her cause and the cause of her people …
The sense of a massive tide rising all around her and gathering power curtails Nyranna’s thoughts; the galaxy of processing neurons in her brain pressurizes.
She finds her antigravity water container, turns her back on the sweavers, and opens it.
I wish I could direct you to go after the Messiah, but you must choose your own victim.
Nyranna watches as one iridescent black leg of a spider reaches out of the opening. It climbs up onto the rim. She flicks the spider off into the corner of the hallway, replaces the lid, and rushes away.
Elion
Elion cracks his knuckles and taps his foot while he sits, waiting to discuss the unwritten details of the contract he accepted. The atrium of the Northrite’s palace surrounds him.
A female greeter in a maroon dress glides up to him and holds out a v-rim for entertainment.
Elion would rather be entertained by her. Voluptuous. Graceful. Blue hair. Not the prettiest face, but he will make do.
“What occupies your mind in this place?” Elion winks.
The woman’s eyes narrow as he takes the v-rim, his fingers brushing against hers. She holds her nose respectfully high, pulls away, and turns.
“If that beating sun doesn’t end up taking you out, can I?” Elion asks.
She hesitates.
Not even a chuckle? “Take you out, I mean? Later?”
She stiffens and paces away.
Elion glowers. “How did that bubbly personality of yours get you a career here?”
Another woman waiting on an antigravity chair across the way is staring at him. Platinum hair, dark skin.
Elion grins. “How about you? Do you have plans after this?”
The woman quickly averts her gaze
. She gathers a few objects into a bag, walks away, and takes another seat on the far side of the atrium.
Probably the only women I’ll get along with here are in a brothel. “All I—”
A sweaver taps Elion on the shoulder and motions to an open doorway at the back end of the atrium. The sweaver leads Elion across the way.
After confiscating all of Elion’s gear, including his guns, Elion is allowed to enter the cramped room, alone. The door closes without a sound.
Not even permitted an audience with the Northrite. I expected too much.
Metal walls surround Elion. A metal desk. No flourishes, no decorations.
Elion yawns and stretches. The wound on his side has healed, leaving only a tight sensation in the surrounding muscle. He cracks his knuckles and paces as he waits.
Memories of delivering the spines to the split-open mountain drift through his head. Something felt off about that. Mysterious. He knows better than to start asking questions.
Then memories of the dead woman in his bed return, her lifeless eyes staring into his. Blood on his hands, images on her body.
He needs a drink.
A sweaver enters, and the door closes behind him, shutting out sound, shutting out the entire galaxy. A man in jangling epaulettes and medals. He blinks each eye separately, freakishly, and sits on an antigravity chair across from the desk. The police commissioner of the Northrite, Breman, although he probably won’t identify himself.
“Sit,” the man says, his expression firm, irritated.
Elion, not wanting to seem intimidated, slowly sinks into his chair. If he can’t accept the details that are about to be laid out, or wants to back out of the contract, or if he fails, he’s as good as dead.
“You’re here for one reason,” Breman says, “to gather evidence. You do not work for the Northrite. Have never worked for the Northrite. You’re an independent third party. Any payments, no matter how large, are reimbursements only and will come through the Pearl. You work only for the Pearl. Understand?”
Elion nods and suppresses a smirk of realization. The Pearl is the Northrite’s bastard child.
Then something agitates in Elion’s empty stomach. This type of talk is not atypical for one of these clandestine contracts, but Breman regurgitated those words as if he’s spoken them ten times today. Is this still an interview? If so, who are Elion’s competitors?
“You fly covert?” This isn’t a question. This is why Elion’s here.
Elion folds his arms. “Just tell me the details. I know how this works. I’m good at getting these kinds of things done.”
A vein bulges from Breman’s neck as the strappy cords there jump out against his skin. His jaw is set.
The ghost girl in Elion’s head whispers in a quiet voice, “Good at it when you aren’t inebriated.”
Breman clears his throat with a loud grumble. “A new inhabitable planet’s been discovered, and humans already live there, in a medieval castle structure. Just recently the castle was destroyed along with its occupants, purportedly by hired Moonriders. We’re already investigating those leads.
“But new information suggests that the incursion with the Moonrider ships may have been a cover for an assassination plot. A plot that could be traced back to some organization of power and influence.”
“So, the Moonriders didn’t act alone. Nothing new.”
“There was an object of interest in that castle as well, a kind of pearl. As large as a human head, black and—”
“So you want me, an independent third party, not a sweaver, to sneak in, as the North—I mean, the Majestic Space Pearl—doesn’t have legal authorization from the natives?”
Breman does not acknowledge any of it.
Elion continues, “To secure-encrypt evidence for the galaxy archives. Evidence against the assassin and their organization. Locate this pearl jewel, unrelated to the Majestic Space Pearl, or find out what happened to it. If it’s not already crushed pearl fragments. Then, if I can, subdue and bring in the assassin.”
“Locate the king’s body—we have reason to believe he was poisoned before the attack. Gather evidence about the poisoning. Leave the crime of the Moonriders’ raid to us.”
Elion stands and eyes the door.
Breman continues, “Uden may have grown impatient or fouled the secret negotiations they were having with Staggenmoire.”
The door to the room opens.
Breman motions for Elion to leave. “There will be a Strider waiting for you at your ship. More details of the planet will be sent to your v-rim.”
Elion exits, but Breman doesn’t leave with him.
A woman sits outside in the atrium, waiting impatiently.
Elion feels his thoughts over the interaction with Breman dissipate into ribbons of insignificant events. He stares at the woman, unable to keep walking. Dark brown hair as shiny as rivers of stars, without a wave or curl. Beautiful. The warmth of some tender emotion blossoms inside him. He knows her from somewhere, doesn’t he? He can feel some kind of connection.
She approaches. Coming for him? Or on her way somewhere?
Elion tries to think of something to say, but his mouth becomes a barren, noiseless cavern, unable to cultivate a single word. Or is it his mind that becomes empty?
She passes by, then glances back.
Elion’s last chance.
Then she’s gone. On her way to the Northrite’s chamber.
***
Elion creeps through drenching rain and the shadows of piled stones, the remnants of the castle of Staggenmoire.
A Strider with a classified Star Map, containing the confidential coordinates of Staggenmoire, Strode Elion and his stealth cruiser to a landmass here. Strode them and arrived in the dead of night. From there, Elion navigated his ship across a sea, using only night vision guidance, scattering a pack of what looked like giant cats climbing on a cliff face before landing against the vertical rock with clinger landing gear, just below the plateau.
The Strider would be impatiently waiting for his return.
The Sky Sea floats overhead, appearing like a twilight sky. A vast darkness. A hint of blue.
Elion searches for the body of the dead king of Staggenmoire, wondering why, or if, the Northrite really care about such a backward civilization.
Rain plummets and slaps Elion’s head and shoulders.
Fucking raindrops the size of my balls … well, actually much bigger, the size I’d liked my balls to be.
Elion glances into one of the many wooden caskets lined up under tent and burlap roofs. A crushed woman … and a coffin birth—the fetus expelled by the mother’s body as intra-abdominal gases increased pressure after her death.
“How disturbing,” the ghost girl floating beside him says. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Expelled from the empty blackness of her mother’s box into the box of death, instead of the great world of light and noise. Little girl didn’t know how lucky she was.”
“Don’t be morbid with the innocent.”
“I never pity the dead. They no longer suffer.”
Elion avoids the spheres of torchlight ringing the foundations and steps onto a stone walk that was once the ground level of the many-floored and turreted castle. His movements are slow and delayed. He can take no chances, given his orders.
Images of the woman he saw at the Northrite’s palace take shape in his mind.
“Stop picturing her,” the ghost girl says, a scowl and unblinking eyes on her translucent face, skin like milk, like white glass. “You become obsessed far too quickly.”
Elion grumbles. What does the little girl know of love? It’s complicated, too complicated.
A black-side comm calls out from his v-rim. There are several random reports he’s not interested in or knows nothing about, occurrences on other planets. Then: “New restricted information about another murder. Probably an interplanetary serial killer. Another dead woman, this time on Jasilix in the port city, murdered in ritua
l fashion, again with strange images … a black sun dripping black blood on her forehead and dead people and glacial roses on her chest and belly.”
Cold like a blade scratches along Elion’s spine, sending chills through the conduit of his ribs. Elion stumbles over a broken stone and crouches in the shadows as if taking a respite from the pounding raindrops. The comm chatters on with headline black-side news.
The description was identical to that dead woman in his bed. And he stopped at the port city in Jasilix for a night just before delivering the spines, took a breather, had a few drinks. He blacked out and woke in his ship and thought nothing of it. Now he vaguely recalls talking to some girl at a bar and walking out with her.
Thoughts swim through Elion’s mind like darting fish bouncing off the sides of an aquarium. Glacial roses grew frequently on the horrid planet where he was born, beautiful but always associated with death. Did the dripping black sun and the corpses have something to do with him? The sun seems vaguely familiar, as if part of something he can’t bring into focus.
Elion wonders if when he blacks out, he becomes some monster that needs blood to survive or thrive. A memory plants itself in his head: his mother reprimanding him in the morning for something he couldn’t remember doing during the night.
“Sleepwalking.” The ghost tugs her green cloak tightly about her, as if to stave off the cold and wet. “That’s what they called it then, although you had a lot of activity for someone who was supposed to be sleeping.”
Elion remembers. Supposedly they would find him standing in a daze out on the front walk mumbling about blinking stars or needles or fire or insects … anything, really. Their small food stores would be ravaged when his family was poor and starving to death on that desolate planet outside the cluster. Or his bedroom door would have a new dent in it, or a table overturned, or their shoes and boots all missing, never to be found.
“I remember not remembering things, if that makes sense,” Elion says.
The girl nods.
Who am I? “Am I a monster?”
The comm repeats the day’s intel. Elion does not motion to turn it off. More segments catch his attention: “Three other random men and one woman died in the past few days of what appeared to be radiation poisoning or an organ liquifying virus. The authorities are still unsure, as no radiation alarms were set off, there’s no evidence of a contagion spreading, and no atypical viruses or bacteria have been isolated from the bodies.”
The Forgotten Sky Page 17
