Starchild- Exile, page 3
Sometimes it felt frustrating to reach dead end after dead end.
Especially when she’d rather be talking with someone.
Anyone really.
Of course, only one person was around right now. Only one person was ever around.
Only he was napping.
Still, she almost—
But then she didn’t. Because she wanted to be good. For Nak.
The reactor kept humming.
And then she—
But she didn’t. This wasn’t the best time.
Though that was the problem: It was never a good time. He was always grumpy.
And then the words just came out, basically on their own: “Hey, after the Chorloak job, you said I could get repainted.”
The chair squeaked as he squirmed and groaned. “I can’t believe you want to lose your faces.”
“We could get them professionally done.”
“You don’t like my drawing?”
“Well, I might feel comfortable if a professional did it.”
“Ouch, Cup.”
“I’m sorry, Nak, but you don’t practice drawing very often. That’s all. Or you could get me a body like you promised.”
“I never said that.”
“Yes you did. On 435:95:1701, you said maybe I could get a body sometime.”
“I said maybe.”
“Well, maybe yes?”
“I’m not sure you really want a body.”
“All right, give me your body and you can stay here on the ship.”
“You’d change your mind on the first cycle. Bodies are always needing maintenance and repairs and fuel. They’re a hassle.”
“Maintenance is what I’m best at. Besides, PKBs are getting pretty advanced.”
“PKBs?”
“Physiological Kinesthetic Bioforms.”
“I know what they are, Cup.” He sat back up. “How do you know about them?”
Her tone slowed and her pitch raised as she began to tread more lightly. “The Coralains were talking about them while they were aboard.”
“I’ve got to be more careful with your mics.”
“PKBs work almost like real bodies. You could get me one of those.”
“They’re expensive.”
“We can afford it—trust me.”
“We?”
“It’s a team effort.”
“I seem to remember you telling me not to take the Borson job.”
“Well, it was kinda dangerous…”
She imagined him furrowing his brow, as if struggling to heft a distant memory. “In fact, I seem to recall you doing that on just about every job we’ve been on.”
“Ah ha. You just said we!”
“All right: we. You’re very helpful, Cupcake. But I can take care of the books.”
“Only you don’t. I was making sure they stay in order.”
“Having the books in order is only going to cause trouble.”
“I shouldn’t have brought it up. I just wanted you to know we could afford a body. In fact, we could easily afford two of the Biopack X.9s.”
“We don’t need two.”
“You know a cyborg would be stronger than you at peak performance?”
“I don’t want one.”
“Why not?” She waded through the silence. “Nak, why not?”
“I just don’t.”
“But give me a reason.”
He sighed. “The Mapuk say a person’s soul is fused into his atoms. If I became a cyborg, I’d lose a portion of that soul.” He was probably thinking of Taiberos.
“You’ve got to spend your half on something.”
“My half?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, Cupcake. Remember: I’m the captain.”
He stood up from his leather recliner and groaned as he stretched, head tilted back, his body becoming the shape of a T holding a mask on one side. She knew what he looked like too. His powerful blue eyes were those of an exiled prince, doomed to wander as an outcast. With broad shoulders, he stood nearly a head taller than the average man—a man built to shape the galaxy rather than speak about it. She loved that about him. And she envied it.
Right now, he seemed in a more somber mood. She imagined him curled forward, deflated, taking the dread mask in both hands and staring deeply into its menacing smile, as if battling it, will against will.
Maybe he was talking to the mask when he said, “Time to figure out how exactly we’re going to rescue this girl.”
“Do you think you’re going to fall in love with her?”
“Cup, I told you we’re not talking about my love life. And, no, I’m not going to fall in love with her.”
“Why not?”
She heard what might’ve been a shrug. “It’s a job.” He started for the door.
“Do you think I could ever love?”
He stopped and turned halfway back toward CPC4K3. “I guess that’s up to you.”
“What do you mean?”
He shook his head. “You just choose to love someone.”
“How?”
“Wow, Cup. I think your AE might be broken.”
“What? Why?”
“You shouldn’t be showing this much emotion.”
“I think yours is broken. Just tell me.”
“When you love someone, you put their needs over your own. You sacrifice for them. So you can choose to sacrifice or you can choose to not. That choice is love.”
“That’s what I do for you, Nak!”
“I guess so.”
“I’ve sacrificed getting a body so that we can keep The Spirit safe.”
“That’s right.”
“So I guess I do love you.”
He cleared his throat and stepped toward the door, his boots clinking against the metal floor.
“Nak, do you love anyone?”
He pulled on his dread mask, transforming his aspect into a monster, and reached for the door controls.
“Just one person.”
3. Skyreacher
“The mysterious man in the mask approaches.”
As Nak stepped down the hallway, he straightened his leather jacket. He looked good wearing it. His body temperature was usually too high to feel comfortable in it, but after sitting in the engine room that long, his core was finally cold enough.
Ribbons of green plants lined the walls, growing from a trough at his elbow height and illuminated by constant white radiation. As he passed, he said to the man who’d just spoken to him, “Shut up, Dray. You’re just jealous.” The PSD had made it illegal to wear a mask unless you needed one to breathe, a stupid law he liked breaking. His mask had a practical purpose as well.
“Of course. Those are Shadowlyss goggles. Any kid would be,” said Dray, who was far from being a kid.
Nak turned his dread mask to look directly at Dray. “What the ████ happened to you?”
Dray had on some strange makeup that in combination with his beard made him look unrecognizable from his former persona as Lord Admiral. “We hope to keep our masks on the whole time, but this was a slight precaution. Otherwise, this face is quite recognizable.” He was also wearing a full suit of redhelm armor. The helmet sat in his lap.
“So’s this one. Benton did that to you?”
“He’s good, isn’t he?”
“He sure knows how to ██████ someone’s face.” Nak continued toward the cockpit.
Dray wasn’t quite as big as Nak, but almost. And although he was older by a good twenty-five percents, he’d aged well, maybe thanks to some secret from Orban. His red armor was a huge step down from his former rank. He’d let his gray hair grow out long and wild. His beard was neatly trimmed, his demeanor kind, yet stern, and he acted like he cared. That made Nak feel grateful, confused, and wary all at once.
Dray’s dossier said he started in the PSD as an enlisted pilot. Over time, he advanced through the ranks of officers, becoming a venerated, decorated figure. He became the youngest Lord Admiral in history. Then he defected, which made him infamous. The dossier had no details as to why, though there were some wild rumors. Nak admired the daring it must’ve taken to betray his own countrymen.
Dray took a seat next to Nak, and together they stared out the windscreen at the mesmerizing pattern created by the storm of infraspace, as they traveled as only a Bloody Wing could.
The pattern was a strange tunnel of writhing light. Nak had once seen something that reminded him of it. He’d gotten beaten up pretty bad on Feath. Almost lost The Spirit then too. While cleaning himself up, his blood dripped into the basin, and for half a sequel it looked exactly like infraspace, the way the red liquid partly congealed, drawing together to form strings, while also spreading outward, getting thinner and turning the water pink. Infraspace was like that but over and over again, like they were driving into that drop of his own blood. But instead of red, it was a lot of colors, forming a strange, swirling network. Even though he’d seen so much of it, he still felt he could barely comprehend it, much less describe it, but the wonder never seemed to wear off.
“I can’t imagine what it must be like having one of these ships,” said Dray. “Who do you think you are?”
Nak’s voice was slightly muffled through the mask: “A damn good pilot or you wouldn’t have hired me.”
Dray wasn’t Nak’s friend. Nak didn’t have friends—too great a liability. But Dray was about as close to being a friend as one could get. He was an almost-friend. That meant a lot in Nak’s paradigm. Plus they were both from Terron Prime.
Of course, he had Cup, but he felt embarrassed to think of her as anything but a piece of hardware. Still, she was nice to talk to sometimes.
Nak tapped three different buttons on the instrument panel, verifying the data he already knew.
“Hey, Skyreacher,” said Dray. “How long till we touch down?”
Nak glanced at Dray again over his shoulder. “Half an iso.”
The wings of the ship jittered, and Dray looked questioningly at the tentacles writhing outside. “So how does your ship work?”
“Ha ha.” It didn’t seem like a question any serious person would ask.
“What?” Dray responded in all seriousness.
“You mean the surge drive?”
“Yes.”
“It’s alien technology.”
“I know that. Are you telling me you haven’t learned anything about it since you got it?”
“Nope.”
“Come on.” Dray seemed to have a more casual tone around Nak than elsewhere. That also said something about their almost-friendship.
“It breaks the rules of physics. At least the ones we know.”
“Go on.”
“Let’s say I flew in a long arc, curving from Toar to Sible. Then I turned around and flew back across the same space but with less of an arc. I’d get back faster, right?”
“Yes, but not because you flew faster. A straighter trajectory means you covered less distance.”
“Exactly. Most ships can sail in a straight line—that’s the fastest they can go: curve of zero. But The Spirit can sail in negative arcs.”
“Negative arcs?”
“Yeah. Even shorter than straight lines.” Nak said it with much more confidence than he felt. He’d studied enough to realize how much was still a mystery and maybe always would be. Photoss technology seemed far beyond mortal comprehension. For example, according to natural law, if you traveled immensely fast, you’d experience a short amount of time while the rest of the galaxy experienced a long time, so the traveler might experience a few sequels while a whole lifetime passed for everyone standing still. But for some reason, flying in a Bloody Wing reversed that. The traveler experienced several isochrons, while almost no time passed for others. A surge drive reversed the time dilation, directly contradicting nature’s laws. Or else the whole galaxy was doing the traveling while the ship stood still. Whatever was going on, it made no sense. Still Nak liked to pretend he accepted it.
“But that’s impossible,” said Dray.
“Only in four dimensions.”
“And how’d you learn this?”
“I just made it up.”
Dray shook his head, grinning, perhaps unsure whether Nak had been joking all along.
And that was right where Nak wanted him.
Dray pulled a hand over his gray beard. “You have a computer on this ship?”
An image of Cup popped into Nak’s mind, but he just glimpsed over at Dray and didn’t reply. He didn’t like to talk about the ship’s hardware.
“Where do you keep it?”
“Put away,” said Nak.
“I don’t think you ever told me what you did before you got your hands on The Spirit.”
“I navigated a spice freighter at Skalkurian.”
“And now you do odd jobs and data runs?”
“Some data runs. They’re good money but less exciting than the sort of thing you guys hired me for.”
At first Dray gave no reply, so they sat in silence, listening to the hum of the surge drive. It played one note that pulsed in a high pitched warble, so quickly that it almost seemed stable. The sound of steady airflow accompanied it, like the ship was constantly exhaling its mechanical breath.
Nak checked the stats again, making sure everything was in order.
Dray cleared his throat. “You going to tell me how you got it this time?”
Nak turned his mask toward Dray, and its exposed teeth made a threatening snarl. “My ship? No.”
“And apparently I didn’t talk you out of your mask either.”
“Trusting people isn’t a luxury I can afford with this ship.” Letting Dray be an almost-friend was already pushing it.
“Maybe you should consider giving it up.”
“The Spirit? ████ no. Are you kidding?”
Nak’s ship, The Spirit of the Storm, blasted silently through the empty cavern of space. The edges of the wings ruffled up and down, in the shape of a solid wave or a shimmering angel. Its sheen cloaked it in black night like the backdrop of the stars.
“You have one of the galaxy’s most prized possessions,” said Dray. “I don’t envy you.”
“Why not?”
“You see what owning it is doing to you, don’t you?”
“Giving me freedom?”
“The opposite. Having a ship this valuable isolates you from everyone. And isolation is exactly what a prison is.”
“Fortresses isolate too, you know.”
“Not from loved ones.”
“You’re trying to talk me down before you start making offers?”
Dray had a gentleness to his voice—a calm. An earnestness too, like he meant what he said. “I’m saying this as a friend.”
In his head, Nak corrected the phrase to almost-friend. “You were invited aboard as a client, not a guest lecturer.” His dread mask peered forward through the windscreen.
He knew the history of the Bloody Wings.
And he knew the consequences of his actions.
* * *
Nak learned the story from his dad.
The last time he told it stood out in particular, for obvious reasons.
They’d been lying on their backs on a stretchy frod tarp that smelled of grease and atmosfuel, looking up at the starry night of Terron Prime during one of the long summers. You could only see a slice of the sky because of the tall buildings all around, but the black expanse had enchanted him even as a tiny kid.
“Dad, tell me about Captain Skyreacher’s first flight and Aion Zero.”
“You gotta pick one.”
“Can’t you do the whole thing?”
“You need to go to bed.”
“Just tell it fast.”
“Mmm.”
Even now, the history enchanted Nak. It felt like the stuff of legends, a thing to reverence. It also happened to be true.
“A long, long time ago, when the Photoss Galaxy was very young—”
“How long again?”
“Over nineteen aions ago—nineteen whole human lifetimes.”
“That’s a lot.”
“In that ancient time, two nations went to war on a planet called Rime. The miina were these beast-like animals with six legs and sharp teeth.”
“And you’ve seen one in real life!”
“Yes, I have.”
“Awesome.”
“In the end, the miina massacred the Toshi humans.”
“And it was the bloodiest thing you’ve ever seen.”
“Who’s telling this story?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, it was very bloody. Gruesome. It would’ve made you sick to your stomach to see it. They eventually wiped out the humans down to the last man, and that last man was just a boy.”
Nak grinned.
“With his family and friends dead, the boy had no home. So he ran for his life into the wilderness, and there he learned to survive alone.”
“And learned how to make fire.”
“I’m not telling that part. Then one cycle he stumbled upon an abandoned alien colony, with ruins and broken temples, but no one was around, but whoever lived there had left behind a spacecraft, The Elizaan, the first of the Bloody Wings.”
“And Jethers probably found the bones of a dead pilot inside.”
“Yes, probably.”
“A Photoss?”
“Yeah, I’d like to think so, but no one knows.”
“I wish we did.” Nak remembered how the tarp had stretched beneath his elbow.
“It took tons of smarts and maybe a miracle for the boy to get the ship’s drives running. When he did, The Elizaan came alive. With the atmosdrive, he flew it shooting up into the sky all alone, with the thrusters shaking and pressing at his back. And he grit his teeth because he could hardly take the g-force. It was the first time anyone had ever done that. Then with the zentisal drive, he traveled through space to the planet where the ship was created, Solace, Rime’s sister. It was where the alien colonists had come from. Jethers found the remains of an ancient civilization, the ones who created The Elizaan. Their technology had advanced far beyond what we still can understand. But the aliens had vanished.”
“I wish we could find out where!”
“You need to lie down. Thanks, Nak. Anyway, as the boy grew up, he sort of made a new home there on Solace. But he felt pretty lonely still, so he returned to Rime and made friends with some miina outlaws and brought them back with him.”
