The Forgotten Sky

by R. M. Schultz

  Zacarias is silent as he turns and slinks away.

  “Get me my fucking reactor,” Drumeth shouts, “or don’t ever expect to be welcome on the Pearl.”

  Spectators start to file out of the stands and climb into shuttles waiting at the exit points.

  “Whoa, look at that little byonum,” Drumeth says, using a derogatory term for Seeva.

  Seeva pretends to walk a tightrope on the runner between rows of seats, adding a bit of swish to her hips, feeling the thickness of her backside pop out of the slits in her pants.

  “I’d like to fuck the brains out of that little dark girl, if we pretend she had any,” Drumeth says. “Looks like she could be sixteen, but she’s dressed like she wants it in every orifice.”

  Now I use my body as a weapon.

  Seeva glances back and winks.

  “Rettinger, grab her and bring her in the with others.” Drumeth’s golden alloy suit disappears into a shuttle as black as space. Ten black suits follow him.

  “Miss,” the bodyguard in the red suit and platinum tie says, a plump little Elemiscist type in glass robes hovering behind him. “Would you come with me? The Supreme Emperor wishes to see more of you.”

  The icicle sensation in Seeva’s gut jabs into her side. This is what she wanted, but it’s not without cost, without fear.

  Seeva nods and follows him into a shuttle with several other women. They are flown over the city to a courtyard atop an open landing on a middle story of the Prime Casino. They land and are ushered out as twenty black suits start to search and scan them for hidden items, weapons, or drugs.

  Bodies dangle from gallows at the corners of this sprawling piazza, open to the sky. The groaning creak of ropes pulled taut sound as bodies sway in a light wind.

  Something coils inside Seeva’s spine.

  “The Supreme Emperor will come when he’s ready.” Rettinger paces before the fifteen women, his hands clasped behind his back, his Elemiscist ten strides behind him. “The luckiest of you will get to spend the night, or at least the next hour with him. You need to hand over any v-rims, tablets, viewers, and other recording devices before he arrives. Also, no weapons, drugs, or anything that could endanger him.”

  Seeva dumps a few of her devices into an antigravity bin and flicks her v-rim off her brow, feeling the tiny blade of a hidden sonic scalpel beat against her thigh as if it has a life of its own, as if it’s waiting to be discovered.

  A woman in line shouts, tugging against the tightening grip of a black suit.

  “Ten grams of injectable blue haze,” the black suit says. “She was trying to hide it. A junkie. Or wanted to get him high, get him addicted.”

  “String her up.” Rettinger marches to a gallows pole with an overhead box.

  The icicles inside Seeva lengthen and press against her insides. What chance would she have of getting to the Emperor with a sonic scalpel?

  Black suits drag the woman as she screams and thrashes. Up to a ledge. They force her mouth open and drop a filament down her throat, her screams becoming gags and rattling coughs.

  Rettinger hits a button on a handheld device. There’s a snap of springs; prongs thrust out of the filament into the flesh around the base of her trachea. The woman retches but expels only air.

  The box overhead whirrs like thrusters on a ship—fans starting to wind up. The floor drops from beneath the woman, and the fans blast a gust of flesh-bursting wind like a hurricane from a noninhabitable planet.

  The woman falls, thrust downward at flight velocity, hits the end of the line with a sickening jerk. Her trachea extrudes out of her mouth with part of her lungs. So does her heart. The heart is still beating. Beating furiously. But it slows quickly and comes to a final, prolonged squeeze that is more of a twitch.

  Everything is silent: the people, the piazza, the Pearl, all of space. Then the whining creaking of taut rope resumes. The artificial planet spins again.

  The icicles inside Seeva dig deeper and seem to puncture organs. She won’t survive this attempt at the Emperor. Maybe she needs a better plan. Maybe it’s hopeless.

  Seeva backpedals and trips, disguising the tossing aside of her sonic blade in a flailing of limbs. She yells in feigned surprise—a cover for the sound of her blade hitting stone far away—as she collides with the ground.

  Seeva climbs to her feet and becomes reticent and shy, hiding her body.

  Another more brazen girl is chosen.

  Seeva and the others are escorted out of the casino.

  Rynn

  Rynn dreams.

  She sits in a chair opposite Prabel, who sips from a stained-glass cup of pink and aquamarine, a dangling feather his mixer. Liquid as red as blood climbs up the hollow quill of the feather like ink and has also stained Prabel’s upper lip.

  A warm breeze comforts Rynn, rising from under her feet.

  She looks down, and she’s no longer sitting but standing, giant shears in her hand, her dad’s dead body lying at her feet, his head cut open to expose his brain, to expose his last secrets and memories.

  Rynn tries to scream, to drop the shears, but the shadowy figure rears up before her now. A masked face in silver and gold floats behind it. Tiny lights float and swirl around them like glow flies.

  I will not be frightened in the make-believe.

  Rynn reaches out and snatches a floating bubble of light, entrapping it in her palm. Images explode in her mind: a sun, red liquid threading down its sphere. A fiery pulsation.

  She trembles.

  These lights are memory drops … How her dad once referred to her necklace.

  The shadowy creature studies her a long moment, pondering, then turns and opens something behind it, almost a door but less solid, more reflective. Like a mirror. The creature waves her to step through, to follow.

  A feeling of curiosity radiates through Rynn’s skull. An implanted feeling, like in a previous dream with the creature. It’s communicating with her without sound, explaining its thoughts.

  This Forgeron wants to show me something … as if someone else lurks behind the one in the silver and gold mask, as if there’s a hidden mask amongst even the Northrite council. One who rules the creature, who rules them all. And it’s not the obvious one.

  Rynn steps through the portal.

  She wakes upon an antigravity mattress of air inside a room of stone. She sits up, her vision foggy. The room tilts. She closes her eye to steady herself. Another morning weakness, a dizzy spell. It should pass, but the episodes are getting worse.

  Prabel’s Strider brought them to some moon—Jasilix—drifting with an entire system, to sell the sacs Rynn gathered, although Prabel mentioned he had many friends here and planned to stay for a spell. However long that meant.

  Rynn wishes for everything to slow down, to stop, for a storm of normalcy to engulf her life. Where’s her dad now? Could he be a voice outside, the footsteps in an adjoining chamber, lying in the bunker, hiking the mountains, long dead?

  Rynn’s blood seems to dry inside her heart, to flake and peel away in regret.

  Where’s her mom? Rynn will likely never find her in an entire galaxy, not with only a name and a picture.

  Several minutes roll past. Rynn feels strong enough to stand. She hears voices beyond an ancient wooden doorway with iron braces.

  “No.” Prabel’s voice is distinct. “A Strider brought us here, but I have no one else that would be of use to you.” He bangs on Rynn’s door.

  A muffled voice replies.

  Rynn opens the door. She will not be shy this time, will not have this merchant sell her to someone else.

  “Sure, if you buy the entire load,” Prabel says.

  “Why not her?” A gaunt woman in a gray and royal blue alloy suit says as she studies Rynn from behind Prabel. The woman’s posture makes it seem like a steel rod has been rammed through her spine. “Oh, she has only one eye. Won’t ever have much control of the elements.”

  Not much control of the elements … What does that mean? T
hat I’m too damaged?

  Prabel nods, the feathers on his cap fluttering as he introduces Officer Teschner. “Rynn’s taken an apprenticeship with me, and as you can see, she would be of very little use to the Frontiersmen.”

  Just because of my missing eye?

  “Right now we’re looking for anyone who’s interested, anyone who’s curious,” another woman says and coughs so loud Rynn thinks she hears her lungs rattle, a moisture deep within like a stream or lagoon. This woman creeps forward as if hiding below her hunched back and streaked gray and white hair, as out of place in appearance in her alloy suit as a soldier would be with a cane. “Your stay here is allowed at my order, Prabel. There’s much to be done: everything from keeping watch, to housekeeping, to caring for Frontiersmen. Who can say what anyone can help with until they do?”

  Prabel forces a kind smile. “Officer Lyveen, yes, Rynn will continue to work for me, but she’s a free person, she can have other interests along our route. You may show her what it’s like to be a recruit. If you must.”

  Rynn feels as if she’s some livestock animal with horns and a bad eye being discussed at auction, the discussion to decide if she’s worth being bought or just sent to slaughter. She wonders if she’d rather work with these women, with the Frontiersmen, over Prabel. It would be helpful to learn what they do, if she’d have a better chance of locating her mom with them.

  “My dad taught me a lot about astronomy,” Rynn says timidly.

  Teschner’s face is stone; Rynn cannot imagine her smiling.

  Lyveen says, “You may come and go as you please in the common buildings here, Rynn, as long as you don’t get in the way. Same as everyone else. I’ll assign you a recruit, and you can spend a shift with her. See how we do things.” She coughs, her lungs toiling, berated by her ribs.

  Teschner nods to Prabel—who hides a scowl—pivots on a heel, and marches out. Lyveen shuffles after her, coughing.

  Prabel shakes his head. “She’s always been a crotchety old bat. Just don’t trust her and listen to promises of grandeur or discovery. These Frontiersmen have been here for centuries and haven’t learned or accomplished anything of value.”

  Rynn steps past Prabel. “I’d like some air.”

  She steps outside. Wind knifes through her suit, biting with a cold edge. She shivers.

  The two sarcophagi, as Rynn’s come to refer to them in her head, stand upright beside the doorway of the old building she and the merchant are staying in, almost too bulky to fit inside. The merchant’s covered antigravity carts crowd around a narrow walk. Silver liquid trickles down rock cliffsides in scattered runnels. People in suits of gray and blue walk, jog, or stroll up and down winding switchbacks, all headed somewhere.

  So many people.

  Flakes of snow drift in the air. One tall man brushes past her, then another, and a group of three vivacious women. One bumps her but does not say anything.

  Rynn lowers her head and walks on. It seems so crowded, so compact, suffocating. The cliffs and people and their bodies and breaths seem to press in on her, inciting claustrophobia. She’s surrounded by the madness of some society hyped up on accelerants. She attempts to picture the open mountains she hiked with her dad. Her breathing quickens; her heart pounds. She steps under the lintel of a stone archway.

  The interior is dark. Only slanted rays of sunlight lean in through a high window. Stone floors laced with dirt. No furniture, no people.

  Rynn forces a few deep breaths. This is what it’s like with a group. She’s not sure she likes it. Maybe sticking with Prabel on long, lonely voyages is her idea of freedom. Maybe she’s too much like her dad.

  The sunlight catches something on the far wall. An old mural, probably millennia old, showing waterfalls of silver. A huge planet floats on the horizon of the painting’s viewpoint, and another moon, so close … a moon Rynn didn’t see on the v-rim astronomy maps. Surrounding planets and systems are painted around the walls.

  “I thought I was the only one who came to this old place,” someone says from the doorway. Their voice is deep and soft, comforting like a fire in the hearth on a summer’s night, started just to watch its flames dance, to feel its gentle touch of warmth.

  Rynn glances over her shoulder. A young man: dark hair, casual demeanor, amiable, handsome in a whimsical sort of way.

  “I love these old paintings,” he says. “They remind me of a fairy tale, like that planet that was recently discovered where people live in quieter times, below a sea in the atmosphere.”

  Rynn’s eye narrows. That was her favorite story of her dad’s.

  “What happened to your eye?” he asks.

  Rynn’s hands immediately cover her eyepatch of red leather and the blue jewel. That is all anyone asks her anymore.

  That’s all they see.

  She walks toward the entrance, veering around this man. “I ran into a mortar wasp nest. Got stung right in the eye.”

  “I’m Jaycken.” He steps sideways, blocking her exit. “Did you come with the visiting merchant?”

  Rynn backpedals and her hands start to shake, to tremble. She sees her dad again, coming at her through the doorway of her room. Was this Jaycken like him? Would he trap her inside, take her other eye?

  The color drains from Jaycken’s face. “You okay?”

  Rynn nods, too quickly. She shouldn’t reveal too much of her fear or he may sense it, may take advantage of it. “I-I’ve just been so tired in the mornings lately.”

  Jaycken relaxes and backs away from the exit. “Are there really mummies inside the merchant’s sarcophagi? One of my colleagues swore they saw the lid move once and thought they heard something coming from inside.”

  The exit calls to Rynn, offering her the chance to get away unscathed. She ducks under Jaycken’s outstretched arm and runs out into the cold.

  Jaycken

  Jaycken stares into the screen of the gold cannon telescope on Jasilix. He sees nothing but flying debris at the previous location of a planet, a planet reported to have been destroyed by the black mass now termed the Ruin by some famous first-ranked Strider-Whisperer amalgam.

  After Jaycken repositions the telescope via finger movements registering on his v-rim, the sun of the outer system they visited becomes centered and focuses.

  Still beating red. Like a signal calling to him, challenging him to conquer it or uncover its mysteries.

  Jaycken folds his arms and sighs. He will rise to this calling, he has to; he just isn’t sure how at the moment.

  Maybe it’ll come to me when the time’s right. Right after it actually explodes.

  A previous dream with a giant figure in black floats into Jaycken’s mind, its fingers unfurling to reveal something red … A vision of Osivia the Strider plummeting to her death and smashing against rock replays over it, as it has for weeks now.

  The Frontiersmen who didn’t turn and run at the sight of the accident haven’t talked much about it, probably chalking it up to an early death from utilizing the power of the elements. Those who ran in fear lost control of their stabilized skeletons and now live in infirmary beds, external skeletal fixators—metal contraptions of bars and circles—attempting to heal femurs and tibias with up to thirty fractures per bone, attempting to restore centimeters of lost height.

  Did the Frontiersmen give up completely on the mists of Iopenia, or are other teams still attempting to solve that mystery? Teschner and Marwyn must want to find whatever is hidden in there.

  I should pretend Osivia’s death hasn’t affected me either. I need to appear strong. And I’m having the time of my life right here tonight looking into this telescope for hours on end.

  Kiesen is supposed to be here too, sharing the night shift, but Kiesen’s been missing everything lately: his studies, conditioning, mental training—hiding or sleeping in or playing odd games that he entertains himself with.

  A wave of disappointment rises inside Jaycken. Kiesen’s supposed to really be trying here, this time. He wanted to be a Frontie
rsman, to help the galaxy. His absence probably isn’t related to emotional trauma; he’s always been like this, absent from work, doing his own thing. Nonchalant. Uninterested. Maybe it’s for the best. The elements can’t harm him if he doesn’t utilize their power.

  Studying the elements isn’t fun, memorizing and imagining the atomic structure and how to visualize the release of subatomic particles, imagining capturing and then harnessing that intangible but unequivocally real energy. Gamma rays, Compton versus Raleigh scatter affecting electrons, neutrinos, anti-neutrinos, tachyons. A cyclone of terms swirl in Jaycken’s mind like leaves in harsh wind.

  How can anyone make theoretical particles interact with other particles inside a human body? Like some mad scientist wizard.

  Jaycken shivers and wraps his arms around himself. Fall has regrettably faded to the deep of winter, and even the gold cannon chamber is numbingly cold. At this altitude, will meters of snow fall in the next few months, mercury-tainted snow?

  An image of his dad, Ost, one of the greatest living intragalactic business executives, wanders into his head. A great businessman but a shitty father. He never spent more time with his sons than a single dinner a month, usually one meal every few months. And their stepmother, Jasmonae, seemed to develop more of an affinity for the family friend, Jennily, than for either of her stepsons.

  Do either Ost or Jasmonae miss him or Kiesen? Are they proud of them for choosing to help the galaxy or disappointed?

  Thoughts of Ost and Jasmonae flying around planets take shape. They dump marcs into accounts all over the galaxy.

  A soft pang, a hint of emotion, lands in Jaycken’s gut. Would his father even care if it was months before they saw each other again? Years?

  Jaycken wonders what else he should be keeping a telescopic eye on and virtually sweeps the focal point of the gold cannon across the sky. It settles on the dead zone, the void just beyond Jasilix and the other drifters.

  Purple and white swirls from the closest neighboring galaxy are revealed in intricate detail, but not down to the level of planets or systems. Tens or even hundreds of thousands of light years away.