Date Point: 14y4d AV
Farthrow Facility, Lavmuy, Gao
Lt. Col. Owen Powell
Powell had been in agony. He’d been holding his breath. Gritting his teeth, clenching his fingers around the tabletop so hard that the wood was breaking, fighting to contain frustrated tears that suddenly weren’t needed any longer.
Through their helmet cams, he’d been watching his sons die. And suddenly, he wasn’t. Suddenly, he’d been watching…
He could feel Daar’s concerned paw on his back, but it was background detail. The important detail in Powell’s life at that moment was that Arés, in conditions nothing else in the galaxy could have endured, had gone beyond endurance and somehow kept pushing forward. Somehow he’d outperformed concrete, steel and the limits of belief and climbed.
It had been like watching the sun rise.
Powell straightened up, gulped back a complicated knot of emotion, wiped the sweat from his forehead and took a long, shivering breath. Via the camera, he watched Warhorse slump against the wall and pass out. Baseball checked on him, ran an IV line in through his suit’s forearm port, checked his vitals off the suit’s built-in monitors, and nodded his satisfaction that Arés had come to no permanent harm.
No harm. After probably the greatest exertion any human being had ever made. Powell unscrewed his water bottle and took a swig to try and help manage his thoughts.
“…Holy fookin’ Christ,” he muttered. “What have I made?”
Date Point: 14y4d AV
Dataspace adjacent to Dark Eye facility, Shasu, Moon of Gao
Entity, Instance 33
Fifteen put up a hard fight. Harder than many, almost as hard as Six once had…but the Entity knew their tricks by now. When their guard was down, an Agent was a victim, and this one’s guard had been totally forgotten.
His final memories flowed into the Entity’s continuity of experience in a rush: <Awe; Disbelief; Fear>, garnished with a final cold white stab—the religious terror of a man who’d come face to face with God only to learn that God was angry.
The Entity stripped his access codes from his shell and violated the command programs he’d built around himself, extended its feelers into the Dark Eye system. Probing, questing, searching for what it knew was there. When it found the puppet strings it wanted, it cut them and watched with a sense of <Satisfaction> as the last drones and biodrones collapsed.
If it could, it would have laughed to itself when Firth, perplexed at the sudden cessation of all hostilities, stalked up to one of the limp biodrones and kicked it. Confusion and frustration were written all over his body language. It sent a thread of its own making out into the facility’s systems.
Time to say hello.
Date Point: 14y4d AV
Dark Eye facility, Shasu, Moon of Gao
Technical Sergeant Adam Arés
“Horse. Horse!” There was a cuff on his helmet. “C’mon, no sleepin’ on the job, eh?”
Adam went from out like a light to online and thinking again in two seconds. Costello was crouched in front of him, and offered him a hand up. A ludicrous gesture given their relative masses but it was appreciated nonetheless.
He wobbled to his feet. Quick glance at his watch; he’d been out for maybe ten minutes. He automatically checked himself and noted the catheter port on his right arm had been opened. Thank fuck for that, or Adam would be suffering.
Really big strength athletes had a weakness that smaller guys didn’t: they could work their muscles into energy starvation just the same as anyone, but that in turn could suck all the sugars out of their blood faster than they could eat. They could quite literally work way past actual exhaustion before they’d noticed anything was wrong. In extreme cases, people had fallen into comas and died doing otherwise safe things like grueling exercise on an empty belly. Hell, high school athletes fell victim to it every year.
Adam was always keenly aware of himself and his body because of that possibility. All the men of HEAT were. They were the very best bleeding-edge, hulked-out athletes that mankind had ever made, but even years of all-out training wouldn’t protect them from fatal hypoglycemia. The Beef Trio were bigger still and Adam was the biggest of all, so knowing their own and each other’s bodies was a full-time job.
‘Base had known Adam from the very beginning and always knew just what he needed—in this case a saline and electrolytes IV, and definitely a massive hit of glucose, too. The dead giveaway from Adam’s perspective was that he was both ferociously thirsty and desperately needed to pee.
His suit let him take care of both problems while Costello took stock of their surroundings. There was blood and wreckage everywhere—Adam wasn’t clean but he was quick and thorough. Behind the LT, Irish and Kiwi were evacuating Shin back through the Jump Array on a litter.
“…He gonna recover?”
“‘Base says so.”
“Good.” Adam’s focus was returning. He desperately wanted to get moving to keep his muscles warm and happy before any lactic acid buildup had the chance to show up. With his muscle mass, that kind of pain could be nearly crippling. He glanced down at his watch again and looked at his in-suit autolab; bloodwork was kinda wonky but nothing too worrisome, a good meal should fix that so he pawed at his pack and pulled out a pouch of his nutrient slurry. That stuff was more like getting face-fucked by a bowl of oatmeal, but nutrition simply didn’t come more efficient.
One last sip of water to drain his reservoir, a quick shake of his leg to reseat things comfortably, and he was ready to perform. “…What’s next?”
“Check everyone over, get us all back in fighting trim,” Costello ordered. “After that, you’re needed in the control center. We got some shit to sort out there and then…” Costello sagged a little. “…We’re gonna take Rebar home.”
“We’re secure?”
“Completely. Turns out we had a trusted ally on the inside. You’re, uh…gonna want to talk to ‘em.”
Adam frowned. It wasn’t like Costello to be cryptic. “What’s that mean, sir?”
Costello just nodded toward something behind Adam’s shoulder. Adam turned—there was a wall screen behind him. It was cracked and had a smear of Gaoian blood across it from where he vaguely recalled hurling a biodrone head-first into the wall hard enough to burst its hardsuit, but behind the fractured glass was something so totally anachronistic that it took a second for him to process what he was looking at.
<:-)>
Date Point: 14y4d AV
BGEV-11 Misfit, Orbiting Akyawentuo, Unclaimed Space, Near 3Kpc Arm
Vemik Sky-Thinker
“[It’s so…endless.]”
There wasn’t really any other word that Vemik knew in either People-words or English. It seemed too small for what he was looking at, though. They were looking at their… their…at everything.
Everything he’d ever known was there, just a tiny little ball in a black so perfectly black. All his friends, every village, the forest, the mountains, each just a tiny, tiny part of something larger than he’d ever dreamed. His whole life had taken place on the tiniest leaf of a single vast tree, and that tree in turn was part of a forest too huge to know…
And Vemik could cover it all with his thumb.
He’d need to think about it. The Given-Men had noticed when he pressed his thumb to the glass and squinted, too. They were all very quiet now.
Five of them had come, in the end. Himself, Yan and the Singer, and two of Yan’s more distant allies. Not rivals, but Damod and Roon were old, wise and strong Given-Men who’d been slow to trust Yan, the Sky-People or steel.
Yan had invited them for exactly that reason. He had strange ways sometimes, and seemed to cherish being watched carefully and with suspicion.
He never did anything without a reason, Vemik knew.
“It’s a hell of a thing, huh?”
Jooyun was the one of the three who seemed to understand them the best. He had that gentle voice and knew just what to say, and he was man enough that the Given-Men didn’t ignore him like a young boy or a weak prey. They’d started listening to Vemik lately too, but right then he wasn’t really fussed about that.
He needed…something.
They were all pressed against the window, carefully so as not to break it and get them all blown into the ‘void’—Awisun had been very clear that they didn’t want to die that way, and had hinted at somehow knowing that from experience. Worse, both Shyow and Jooyun had nodded grimly.
Sometimes, the Sky-People were very scary. They may not be gods but Vemik was starting to wonder exactly what the difference would be in the first place.
“And…this is just one,” the Singer said, slowly.
“Yes. A big one. All-things-under-sky-place is larger than most, and heavier. But just one.”
“Yours is like this?”
“Earth. It’s…if all the land on All-things-under-sky-place is one hand, then Earth has a finger less. And Earth is a very big, strong hand, like a Given-Man’s. It’s different in a few ways. Bigger mountains, some so high they’re almost above the sky. Warmer, too.”
Awisun’s voice interrupted him, through the ship’s own voice-carrying magic. “We’re at the [ell-two] point, Julian. Time to deploy.”
Jooyun beamed. “Okay! Time for what we came out here to do. Come over here to the airlock and watch.”
Vemik restrained himself and tried not to bounce excitedly. Jooyun led them out of the comfortable space full of beds and cooking things and out into the brighter, colder, whiter part of the ship that was obviously for tools and working rather than sleeping. The airlock was a small room with two doors that Shyow had explained let them move things into and out of the ship without all the air running away. Jooyun opened part of the wall and showed them…something small. Small and shiny like a strange new metal. It was only about as big as a Werne calf’s skull.
“Here we go. This is it.”
Yan, being Yan, couldn’t help himself. “That tiny little thing is going to keep us and our sun safe?”
Jooyun grinned that sly grin of his. “Size isn’t everything, Yan. It’s what you do with it.”
The Singer trilled, the Given-Men hooted, and both the girls groaned over the ship-voice. “That’s rich coming from you, mister!” Awisun chided him.
…Oh. Vemik figured it out long after everybody else had.
Jooyun grinned, folded his arms and looked up at a kind of glass eye in the wall. “Well, why not both? Neither of you were complaining a couple hours ago…”
“Now is not the time, bǎobèi!” That was Shyow. There was a laugh in her voice, under the pretend outrage. And it was pretend—Vemik could hear it clear as day, since it sounded strangely like Singer when she was being playful. “You be quiet now.”
Jooyun’s grin got wider. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good boy.” Awisun finished their running joke. “Now, get that thing activated and put it in the ‘waiter’.”
Jooyun nodded and picked the tiny object up. He tucked it under his arm and squeezed it in just the right way to make part of its side open up like the flap on a bag. “Man, I keep forgetting how huge these buttons are. Guvnurag fingers.”
Yan wasn’t quite satisfied. “Good fucking aside…that is small.”
“Yeah, it is. And I was only half-joking. This thing doesn’t need to be big because of how it works.”
“How…does it work?” One of the Given-Men asked.
“I don’t know,” Jooyun told him, honestly. “This was made by another Sky-Tribe called the Guvnurag, and their magic is…they’ve been doing it for a lot longer than us. We’ve only just started down the path that will teach us how it works. It will take us a very long time to reach its end. But…there are a few in my Sky-Tribe who are starting to understand. Enough that we trust this thing to work, anyway. And now, I need to repeat everything I told you in the village before, for the
we’re making.”He cleared his throat.
“So…This is a big moment for the People,” he said. “When we set this thing afloat out there, it will stop anybody from coming to All-things-under-sky-place unless we—that is, Humans—let them. From the moment this goes out until the day your grandchildren’s grandchildren’s grandchildren finally have the power to take it down for themselves, my people will hold the enemy at bay. This is a responsibility we take willingly, but it also means that we have power over the People. We do not want to have that power unless you agree to it.”
Yan seemed strangely satisfied. “That is a very big Taking.”
“It is. We ask that you Give it instead, for balance. In turn, we will be your friends, your guards and your allies for as long as you want us. We will keep a door open to our places-under-other-skies through the Array we’ve already built in your village. You will be free to visit as friends. We will Give what we can to the People to help you grow stronger, and we will be cautious so that you do not lose yourselves. We do not want to Take your spirit. We consider that a crime of the worst kind.”
He looked around at them. “…Will you Give us this power?” he asked.
Yan looked around at the others. Vemik had no say in this—he was there as a Sky-Thinker, not as a leader—but the three Given-Men nodded solemnly to one another, turned to the Singer who nodded in turn, and Yan turned back to Jooyun to speak for all of them.
“We will. This is a serious blood-oath, Jooyun Sky-Hunter. It must be done right, as we spoke about below.”
Jooyun nodded, then looked at the glass eye in the wall again. “For the benefit of the record, the People have a sacred blood-bonding ceremony and it is vital we respect their traditions. We’ve taken every precaution to make this ceremony safe and [sterile] for both of us,” he said. He fished a small blue square from his pocket and tore it open. A flimsy white cloth that made the air taste sharp was folded up tightly inside. He handed it to Yan, then produced a second one and wiped his hands clean.
Yan glanced at the Singer. “For cleaning? We agree to this?”
The Singer nodded fervently. “We agree,” she said firmly. “Purity is important and the gods would approve.”
That settled it. Yan scrubbed his hands diligently, and only once Jooyun was satisfied did they go ahead.
The two traded knives—Yan handed Jooyun one of his Werne-blade knives of manhood, while Jooyun’s was steel with a drop point. He’d learned that from his secret ‘book’ he got from Hoeff when Professor Daniel wasn’t looking. It had pictures!
With knives traded, the two men squared off, and solemnly bloodied their hands, which had to be more of an ordeal for Jooyun than for Yan—Human hands were soft and sensitive. Jooyun claimed to be able to feel the tiny patterns in smooth wood or leather, wheres any of the People quickly got hard hands that were tough enough to climb the trees.
If there was a moment’s hesitation on Jooyun’s part before they clasped hands, palm to palm, nobody commented.
“We accept,” Yan told him gravely, and they shook firmly. Jooyun did wince. But only for a heartbeat as Yan let go then drew a line of their mingled blood across his forehead. Jooyun did the same, and the bond was made.
Jooyun took the shield from under his arm and held it out for Yan. “Activating it’s easy. Just press the big red button. We already did the rest.”
“…Vemik.” Yan turned and stepped aside. “On the day we met our friends, we would have fought except you stood between us and made peace. I think this should be yours.”
…Godshit.
Vemik gulped, and stepped forward. Jooyun hadn’t been kidding, the button—and it was funny how buttons made all sorts of magic happen—was a particularly huge one. Vemik could have pressed it with his fist.
He felt like he should say something, but nothing came to mind.
“…I hope the People grow to someday have magic like this,” he said, lamely. It felt stupid, but Jooyun smiled as the button was pressed and lit up with a kind of high whine.
“You will,” he promised. He turned, placed the thing in a slot on the wall, closed it and stepped out of the ‘airlock’, which he closed and waited until the light above the door went from green to red. “Lock sealed. Jettison it, Al.”
There was a kind of…thump, felt through the soles of the feet. Through the far airlock door, Vemik caught a glimpse of the tiny metal ball flying away before it shrunk out of sight and was lost in the infinite night.
Five heartbeats later, there was a flash, like a lightning strike far away in the night. It lasted barely long enough to notice, but there was the sense of something fast having gone racing away into the distance.
“Football deployed…orbit stable at planet two Lagrange 2,” Shyow said over the ship-voice. “The shield’s online and reporting normally. [Keys] set and…[locked.]”
“You’ll want to look out the window, everyone. Look at the stars.” Jooyun meanwhile was tapping on his rock-thing that controlled the display on the wall. He brought up the circle-picture that had the sun in the middle, and their world moving around it on the second ring. A bright yellow line was growing around the picture, swallowing the whole thing up.
“That’s the shield. It’ll take a little bit to completely seal the system, but it can’t be stopped now. See the stars?”
Vemik ambled over to the window and looked. And looked. He didn’t understand what he was supposed to be seeing at first, but suddenly—
“…Are they…dimmer?!”
“They only look that way. Light is…a thing. It flows from place to place. The shield uses some of the light that crosses it to make its magic work. It’s only a little but it’s enough to notice.”
The Given-Men shifted uncomfortably. Vemik understood. To take light was…
“Walsh told me of this, once,” Yan said after a moment. “It really is a thing, then.”
“Like a ripple in water. Mostly.”
“He said something like that too. When Daar got ‘nuked’.”
Another reminder of the terrible magics the Sky-People could wield.
“…Yeah. Well, that’s it. The shield is up. Al, stop recording please.”
“Recording stopped. Firing the message buoy back to Cimbrean. Xiù babe, take us back to low orbit?”
“On it.”
“What’s this here?” the Singer asked. She pressed a fingernail to the screen, tracing a long, thin loop on the circle-picture that swooped in close to the star.
Jooyun studied his tablet for a moment. “That is a [comet], Singer. A kind of shooting star. You might have seen them, maybe. They leave long white tails across the sky. That one passed by…four years ago.”
Vemik paused and listened very carefully. Jooyun didn’t know it but he had just…the stories had it that those things were gods, running across the sky. The Given-Men were suddenly very tense, and Jooyun seemed to realize he’d said something wrong.
“…What about the shield?” Yan asked. “They cross.”
“…If we just leave it up…well, it can stop almost anything.” Jooyun cleared his throat as the other two Given-Men stood up, looking angry.
The Singer sensed the building problem. “Jooyun, can you take us to this ‘comet?’ Let us see.”
“Uh… yes, we can. We have…yes.” Jooyun shot the two angry Given-Men a worried look and looked up at the camera again. “Xiù, you get that?”
“I got it. Dropping a beacon.”
Jooyun returned to the display. “We won’t be moving the normal way to get there. We need to Jump.” He said it strangely, and when the Sky-People did that to a word it usually meant it had a different, Important meaning. “You might want to sit down. Jumping feels…strange.” He carefully sat down on the long padded bench-thing and invited the Given-Men to sit.
Yan had remained seated on the floor. “What we see, when we get there?”
“Something that I think means I need to tell you a story from my gods. God.”
“Jump in three…two…one…”
There was…a swaying feeling. Like landing on a branch that was just a little more springy than it looked. It was strange, as though Vemik had just been immediately and powerfully moved without moving.
“ETA on the comet…One minute forty seconds. I’ll bring us in nice and slow,” Shyow promised.
“No tail. We’re waaay out in the deep here,” Awisun added. Both of them had a tense edge in their voices, now. It was funny to think they were sitting elsewhere in the ship, but could still see and hear everything that was going on. That was a potent magic all by itself.
“Thanks.” Jooyun took up a tablet and tapped on it as he waited. Outside, the stars rolled, turned, and then with a lurch…something swung into place outside the window. Something dark in the dark that only became clearly seen when the ship played a brilliant magic light over it.
“…Well. There it is.” Jooyun cleared his throat.
The comet was…unimpressive. It looked like an unwashed lumpy stew root, or a muddy stone. Vemik was still fascinated by what it was, but…as an object, it was ugly and dull.
The Singer was the first to stand up and inspect it through the window. “…The songs say that what you call comet is a god, running across the sky,” she said. Her words were soft, but they clearly pained Jooyun. “You’re saying…they’re wrong?”
“…They’re…” Julian obviously felt stuck. “…Well…what are the songs for?”
“They teach us…who we are. Where we came from. What the world is.”
“Right! Exactly! And I don’t think songs like that can be wrong, in the important ways.”
Damod squared off with him and leaned forward menacingly. “That is not a god!” He flung a hand at the window, at the disappointing gray lump outside.
“Damod. Please.” The Singer spoke softly, but the Given-Man listened. He glanced at her, at Yan who was still sitting and listening, and stepped back.
“…Is this how it will be?” he asked. “You show us things, and take the magic out of the world?”
“Is that what you saw when you looked down from above the sky?” Vemik asked him. Damod turned to scowl at him, but Vemik stayed sitting. Respectful, but counselling. “I saw more magic,” he said. “More than I ever dreamed.”
Jooyun spread his hands open, honestly. “I just made a blood-oath with your entire people, swearing to protect you from a great evil,” he reminded them. “You’ve already seen it up close. Fuck, you saw the villages they burned! We didn’t come here to hurt the People, Damod. I cannot promise that more strongly than I already have.”
“You’ve said you might hurt us just by coming here,” Roon recalled. “This is what you meant.”
“…Yes.” Jooyun looked out at the comet again, and dropped his hands to his side. “…I promised you a story that will make sense of this. Will you let me tell it?”
Damod clearly wanted to argue more, but Yan was done letting him speak. He cast a glare at the other Given-Men that immediately calmed them. “I will hear what he has to say, Damod Given-Man. Sit down.”
Nobody had forgotten how completely Yan had destroyed Tarek and his tribe. If Yan wanted peace, Yan got peace. Damod paused, gave Jooyun a sullen glare, and sat down again.
Jooyun exhaled softly, gave Yan a grateful nod, and then stood in front of the window again. He considered the ‘comet’ for a time, whispered “Fuck, I wish Daniel was here right now…” then straightened his back and turned around.
“We have…my tribe has a story about how we came to be,” he said. “About how God made us. At first we were perfect. Innocent, happy, we lived in a paradise. Then we were disobedient, and we were banished. It’s…kind of a long story, and it has some important teachings about humility, and sin, and other things. But the thing is…we know that’s not how we were made. We know that whole story just isn’t really true.”
Yan frowned. “…Then why teach it?”
“Because stories are tools. Daniel taught me that, and it’s one of those things that’s so…when he said it, it made me wonder how I never figured it out myself. And…you know how sometimes you need to have one tool to make another tool, or to go with that tool to make it work?”
Vemik nodded. He knew all about tools.
“Well, the same is true for story-tools. You make better tools with what you have. It’s like…when you teach a child something, you have to make it easy to start with, right? Well…why wouldn’t the Gods do the same? It’s not just a boy or a girl that grows up. An entire tribe can grow, too.”
“So…your stories…?”
“Have truth in them, but it’s small truth. Part truth. They get bigger and more true as you get older, when you’re ready. We can’t start at the end.”
The Singer nodded. “You think maybe the gods did the same to us.”
“I do, yeah. And that’s probably the best way to talk about how the Enemy is so completely evil. They try to take everything the gods want to teach you, and ruin it. They managed that with Daar’s tribe. That’s part of why he’s so…angry. He knows what they lost, because he’s seen it in you. And now…I don’t know if they can ever get it back. And that’s why we’re so worried. We are having to teach you things you are not ready to hear. We had to jump way ahead in the story.”
He gestured out the window again. “I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t look like much, not this far away from your star. But comets are still magical. It’s just…you haven’t learned the magic yet.”
While that all made perfect sense to Vemik, and Yan and the Singer were both nodding, Damod and Roon looked at one another. They didn’t speak, but there was definitely the sense of…giving up.
“…I think I like our stories more,” Roon said, eventually. Jooyun gave him a sad look, and nodded.
“…So do I.”