Chapter Eleven
“Ladies and gentle engineer, I give you Faelyn’s Grasp.” Nathan waved a hand across the open-ring habitat rotating before them. “Point five gees on the surface and a pristine atmosphere. Mid-tech divergent populace with an estimated size of about sixty million, plus another twelve thousand in the Union colony. Lots of beachfront property ripe for the taking as long as you don’t run afoul of the natives.”
“The ring looks ordinary enough.” Joshua perused the Almanac entry. “Danger rating of three, though.”
“Apparently, the locals have a bad habit of taking potshots at visiting ships. Some of the factions down there are advanced enough for guided missiles. Lots of temperamental island nations boasting plenty of air and sea power.”
“The landscape reminds me of home,” Vessani said, “what with all the water.”
“Those oceans are teeming with dangerous megafauna,” Nathan warned.
“Even more like home, then,” she added with a half smile.
“Should we be concerned?” Joshua asked. “About the locals, I mean.”
“Not concerned, just cautious,” Nathan said. “We should be fine as long as we stick to the Union colony, which is where we’ll find the missionary.” He nodded to Aiko-Six, who keyed the ship’s commect.
“Union Control, this is the freelancer Neptune Belle. Please respond.”
“We hear you, Neptune Belle. What brings you to Faelyn’s Grasp?”
“Requesting permission to land at the city of Faelyn’s Clash.”
“For what purpose?”
“Business with the Church. We’re here to visit the missionary and perhaps hire someone on.”
“Any cargo to declare?”
“That’s a negative, Union Control. Passengers only.”
“Will any of your passengers be staying on Faelyn’s Grasp?”
“Negative, Union Control. If our business goes well, we’ll be leaving with plus one. Nothing else to declare.”
“Understood, Neptune Belle. Stand by while we process your landing request.”
They didn’t have to wait more than a few minutes.
“Union Control to Neptune Belle, landing authorization has been granted. Proceed to Pad Three directly.”
“Thank you, Union Control. Beginning our descent to Pad Three.”
Aiko brought the Neptune Belle down onto a wide, circular landing pad with a prominent numeral 3 painted on the surface. The city’s port consisted of four pads arranged in a square near a lonely control tower, with bulky Saturnian transports seated on pads One and Two.
Nathan met Aiko-One down in the cargo hold. She already had the ramp down, and a warm, humid breeze wafted in from outside.
“Taking the rover out?” she asked.
“Might as well. It’ll be easier than trying to rustle up local transportation.”
The two of them headed to the back of the cargo hold to a small, open-topped vehicle. It sat on a shallow platform with depressions for the four wheels and mechanisms that locked onto the hubs. They disengaged each lock, and Aiko climbed into the driver’s seat.
“All charged up,” she said, then drove across the hold and down the ramp before parking it. “Now remember, don’t be pushy with him.”
“I won’t. Promise.”
“You know how he can be. Don’t rush him. Just let him come around on his own.”
“I’m sure he’s cooled down.” Nathan gave her a winning smile. “Hell, he might even be thrilled to see us!”
“Or he might still be upset about his brush with death.”
“Which was not our fault.”
“Try telling him that.” Aiko paused thoughtfully. “Actually, don’t try. In fact, don’t mention the past at all, if you can help it.”
“We’ll be fine. He wasn’t that angry last we saw him.”
Vessani, Joshua, and Aiko-Six came down the freight elevator and joined them by the rover.
“A bit plain,” Vessani said, as if judging the vehicle. “Could use some flames on the side. Maybe a skull or two on the hood.”
“Come on,” Nathan said. “Let’s go see if we can find Rufus.”
The four of them climbed into the vehicle. Nathan took hold of the wheel and drove them onto a narrow, paved road leading away from the dock. Aiko-One stayed behind with the ship and closed the cargo ramp.
Faelyn’s Clash was a small frontier town with a mix of modular Saturnian prefabs and local structures featuring brick-and-mortar or wood construction. The natives—Faelyns? Faelynans? Faelynians? He’d have to consult the Almanac if it came up—were fair-skinned, tall, and lean without exception, and wore their blond or silvery hair long. Their ears were pointed at the tips, and their eyes possessed faint bioluminescence. The intensity seemed to be a factor of age, with men and women in their sexual prime possessing the brightest eyes. They were also big into capes, which came in a riot of colors and patterns, often hooded and worn over their comparatively plain tunics.
Nathan turned down a wide, well-maintained central street that cut through the city. It led them toward the outskirts where they’d spotted the missionary building during their descent. He slowed down, matching the flow of traffic from both Saturnian electric vehicles and local, noisy cars. An airship passed by overhead, its main body suspended beneath a large air bladder, a dozen propellers whirring beside and behind the hull.
“Do your people have anything like that?” Nathan asked Vessani, pointing up.
“No. Nothing airborne,” she replied, speaking up over the wind and traffic noise. “We still make wooden sailing ships, though we do have some deifacturing.”
“Are you able to control it?”
“Not really. The deifactory is where the Black Egg is kept. The place becomes more active and responsive once every seventy-one years, but my people don’t understand why or know how to properly use it.”
“Hell, that could be said about most of us.”
Nathan followed the street past the city center. The buildings and traffic thinned out, and the pavement ended. He took the gravel road around a hilltop, then beyond it to a prefab hamlet built near the edge of an oceanside cliff. The vastness of the ocean curved upward beyond the cliff, dotted with islands and following the arch of the ring. Huge green-and-turquoise birds glided over its shimmering surface, occasionally diving into the water, only to emerge with long, eellike fish clenched in their toothy beaks.
He parked the rover at the end of a row of six vehicles: two Saturnian and four native.
“Wait here.”
Nathan climbed out and walked up to the closest entrance, where an elderly cleric in royal purple robes sat in a rocking chair alongside a trio of teenage locals.
“Hello there!” Nathan called out as he approached. “Nice day we’re having.”
“That it is, sir,” the cleric replied. “Can I help you?”
“I hope so. I’m looking for a cleric. His name’s Rufus sen Qell. Is he around by any chance?”
“Rufus? Why he’s—”
“Over here!” snapped the thirtysomething-year-old man as he barged through a nearby door. “Which is the last place I want to be standing right now!”
“Hey, Rufus.” Nathan flashed a quick, apologetic smile. “Long time no see.”
“Not long enough!”
Rufus was even taller and thinner than the average indigen, despite a bit of a slouch, with pale skin and sunken cheeks. His long, bony arms ended in long, bony fingers, as if everything about him had been stretched unnaturally.
The metal stud of an implant protruded from his left temple, and two more glinted from behind each ear. On the back of his bald head was a metal plate about the size of his fist, but a curling brown wig hid most of his cranial modifications. Unlike the Church garb of the other cleric, he wore a crisp, black uniform with a white, flaming pentagon stitched over the left breast pocket.
Nathan gave the elderly cleric a quick wave in thanks, then joined Rufus by the door.
“Hey, Rufus. How you been?”
“Great until you showed up! Also, it’s ziin Qell! Can’t you ever get that right? I didn’t study at Qell all those years for nothing, you know!”
“Sorry?”
He’d once asked Rufus to explain Saturnian names to him. He understood, as most people did, that the majority of Saturnians favored the use of particles to connect their given name to a location of personal significance, and that the latter two parts of their names could change more than once over a lifetime.
Back then, Rufus had made a noble effort at explaining the intricacies of Saturnian naming conventions, but he’d quickly lost Nathan in an avalanche of esoteric details. The problem wasn’t that there were a lot of different particles, which there were, each with its own nuanced meaning. No, the problem was those definitions changed based on which part of the Saturn Union a person was born in!
Nathan had done his best, but all he’d gotten out of it was Rufus trying to jam the equivalent of congealed word salad into his brain, which then proceeded to ooze out of his ears instead of taking root. Ever since, he’d convinced himself that there actually wasn’t a discernible pattern, that Saturnian names were in fact a grand cultural prank they played on everyone else. But since no one had called them on it, they continued to let it play out.
He wondered if the Union secretly funded a Department of Nonsensical Naming buried within the layers of its gargantuan bureaucracy. Maybe they even had a manager in charge of particle humor. He’d yet to come across evidence of such a broad conspiracy, but a part of him remained convinced it existed.
“Didn’t mean anything by it,” Nathan added.
“Hi, Rufus!” Aiko-Six waved at them from the rover.
“Aiko says hello, by the way.”
“What are you two doing here? Don’t you remember what I told you last time?”
“That you’d never do another job with us again. I believe your exact quote was ‘Not for all the computronium in the Everlife.’”
“And?” Rufus prompted. “What else?”
“That we were bad luck. You might have also called us incompetent.” He pointed at the cleric. “Which hurt my feelings, by the way.”
“I almost died!”
“So did we.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“I don’t know. Doesn’t misery love company?”
“I’d think the better goal would be to avoid misery altogether. Which, for me, means staying away from you two!”
“Come on, we’re not that bad and you know it. Besides, you enjoyed your time with us.” Nathan shrugged. “Up until you almost died.”
“Which was a big part of our time together!”
“I bet you miss it.”
“Do not!”
“Do too.”
“Do not!”
“Whatever you say.” Nathan glanced over the missionary grounds. “You like it here? Seems boring to me.”
“It’s pleasantly boring,” Rufus replied stiffly, standing a little straighter. “It’s a peaceful vocation, and the locals appreciate us.”
“You get to use your skills much?”
“Well . . .” Rufus hesitated, some of the fire going out from his eyes.
“Can’t see how there’d be much demand for your services out here.”
“Not the kind you’re thinking of, but I contribute in other ways.”
“Proselytizing to indigenous people? I didn’t think that was a big priority for the Order.”
“I help educate them,” Rufus corrected sharply. “Science, mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics. All to help smooth out their eventual transition to high-tech.”
“You sure you’re not bored? I’m falling asleep just listening to you.”
“It’s rewarding.”
“Sure, sure. Whatever works for you.”
“Look, Nate.” Rufus sighed with a hand to his temples. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing out this far? What’s this visit really about?”
“We’ve got a job for you.”
“Oh, you are unbelievable!”
“Hear me out. It’s a neat one.”
“I’m not interested!” Rufus backed through the door and slammed it shut.
Nathan listened for a few moments. He did not hear footsteps retreating.
He leaned close to the door and whispered, “There’s pentatech involved.”
The door creaked open. Rufus peeked through the gap, his face softening with tentative eagerness.
“There is?”
“Possibly a lot of it.”
Rufus swallowed audibly. Almost hungrily.
“Which is why we need you,” Nathan continued.
“And if I say no?”
“We’ll find someone else.” He jabbed a finger at Rufus. “But I’d rather have you.”
“What makes you think pentatech’s involved?”
“We’ve got a lead on an artifact called the Black Egg. It responds to the presence of an object in an elliptical orbit around Sol.”
“Elliptical?” Rufus’s eyes widened. “You mean it might be wreckage from the Scourging?”
“We won’t know until we find it, but that’s the guess. The thing’s on a seventy-one-year cycle, so if we don’t find it now, it might be that long until someone else can try again.”
“I see.” Rufus bowed his head and nodded solemnly.
“What do you say? Have I piqued your interest?”
“I . . . I’ll think about it.”
Rufus knelt in front of the altar, his eyes closed and his mind open.
Long ago, during the Age of Communion, anyone could converse with the Guardian Deities at any time, and many did so through the use of deifactured implants like the ones he had been granted. The Guardian Deities no longer responded to requests so overtly, but a skilled and disciplined mind—equipped with the right cybernetic tools—could commune with the fragments of the Pentatheon that lingered amongst their technological legacy.
Remnants.
Whispers.
The echoing thoughts of absent gods.
But that was not all his mind might touch while venturing out into the digital immaterial. Dark, dangerous corners existed amongst the benign fragments of god-thoughts. Some places welcomed the presence of human consciousness with open arms, while others shunned the organic, whether because they were broken or corrupted or had never been safe for humanity in the first place.
He opened his mind to one such hostile vision and bore witness to a dark, desolate dream upon an endless plane of rugged stone. Sol hovered on the edge of the horizon, casting long, stark shadows behind every imperfection in the surface. He crossed the stony plain, words beating in his mind like the thumping of a giant heart.
Wound.
Flesh.
Metal.
Fire.
The words flowed through him, disconnected and dissonant, yet potent and imbued with mountainous purpose. He’d experienced this vision many times in the past year. Each time it grew stronger and more vivid, and yet he still failed to grasp its meaning.
What is the underlying message here? he wondered as the vision continued.
A canyon yawned ahead of him, gaping wide from one side of the horizon to the other. He approached it, each tiny, human step slow and yet at the same time drawing him closer to the chasm with unnatural speed until he stood suddenly at the precipice. The full breadth of the abyss opened before him, leering up at him like a giant, grinning mouth rimmed with sharp, broken teeth of stone and steel.
Metal.
Flesh.
Burning.
Scorching.
Scraping.
Screaming!
Rufus shuddered and almost lost the vision. He’d never heard the words so clearly, so forcefully. And yet, comprehension still eluded him. What could it possibly mean? The words repeated within his mind, coalescing into the mental equivalent of thunder. They beat into him, bludgeoning his psyche with ethereal force until he lost focus, and the vision faded.
He exhaled and blinked to find his forehead pressed against the edge of the altar, one arm draped across it for support. He knelt there like a statue and retreated into his own thoughts.
That had been the clearest vision yet. Something was causing them to become more potent. Something like . . . the source moving through an elliptical orbit around Sol, perhaps?
He wondered.
Were Nathan and Aiko seeking the source of his visions? Was a Pentatheon artifact hurtling through the solar system even now, calling out for some unknown purpose? Seeding nearby technology with scraps of this broken simulation? Rufus sensed no delay in the vision, so he doubted this was a direct connection.
Was the source trying to summon people and machines to its side? Were the visions evidence that a sliver of the Guardian Deities still lived, still existed in a material way that could be contacted by those skilled and brave enough?
Did he dare?
His earlier anger had almost totally subsided. He was glad Nathan had brought this mystery to his attention. Grateful even. But he’d been burned once before, his mind singed by delving carelessly into the digital juncture of a broken habitat, all while dangerous systems switched on around him. His mistakes had almost killed the Belle’s crew, not the other way around.
He knew some of the anger he’d directed at Nathan was unfair and should have been aimed at himself. He’d been the one to lose focus, to awaken machinery that should have stayed dormant for the rest of eternity. He didn’t remember much after that, having slipped into a coma. Aiko had pulled him out, and he’d awoken on the Belle a few days later.
At the time, a part of him feared the experience would dull his talent for connecting to the Pentatheon’s legacy, but if anything, he soon learned the experience had sharpened his skills even further, honing them through a brutal crucible to emerge stronger on the other side, tempered by hardship.
But despite that, he’d shied away from applying his talents once more, cloaking fear and self-doubt in a veneer of outward anger.
And here, he thought, is an opportunity to set all that aside. To once more venture into the unknown, to seek answers to the great questions of my Order.
“Are you all right?”
Rufus turned and looked up to see Abbot Devaraj in the room, staring down at him with a curious expression.
“I’m fine.” Rufus rose and dusted off his knees. “Abbot, I hope you’ll forgive the suddenness of this, but I may have to leave the mission.”
“Why? What brought this on?”
“Some old colleagues of mine have stopped by, asking for my help. I know I have commitments here but—”
“Is this about your visions?”
“I—” Rufus frowned, then nodded. “I can’t be certain, but I believe so. How did you know?”
“You have a certain look in your eyes after you’ve gazed upon that jagged canyon you’ve mentioned. A certain combination of awe and dread, which I suppose is a fair enough reaction to glimpsing the divine.”
Rufus didn’t believe there was anything divine in these visions, but he kept this opinion to himself. He didn’t fault the members of the Church for their beliefs—he’d once shared them enthusiastically—but the strength of his faith had waned over time. He didn’t consider what he was going through a crisis of faith but rather a deep, contemplative questioning.
He understood, intellectually at least, why faith in the Guardian Deities was so common. Their grand creations sustained life throughout the harsh emptiness of the solar system. They’d even created life during the Age of Communion. Jovians, divergent humanoids, and so much more owed their very existence to the Pentatheon.
On top of that, echoes of their grand minds still lingered; skillfully crafted requests—prayers to some—could be answered by their technology. Why wouldn’t people worship such grandiose beings and pray for their return?
The Guardian Deities had looked after humanity for tens of thousands of years, overseeing a golden age of wonder and prosperity. It was natural for people to yearn for its return. The Pentatheon deserved all the respect lavished upon them, even to the point of reverence. But outright worship? That didn’t feel right to Rufus, because everything the Pentatheon had wrought could be explained through science, even if humanity had lost much of its understanding in the dark days after the Scourging.
That was why a deeper vocation within the Church hadn’t appealed to Rufus, and why he’d eventually found a home within the Lucent Order. Its mission to rediscover and spread lost knowledge and technology stirred something within him, something the ornate trappings of faith and worship had failed to connect with.
“Abbot,” Rufus said, “if you feel I should stay, then say no more. I’ll tell them to leave without me, and that’ll be the end of it.”
“Come now.” Devaraj smiled. “What sort of talk is that? Now you’re just looking for an excuse.”
“Abbot?”
“Here, let me be open with you.” He sat down in the front pew with a labored sigh and patted the spot next to him.
Rufus joined the abbot and waited for him to continue.
“Let me be blunt. You’re wasting your time with us on this ring.”
“No, I’m not,” Rufus defended reflexively. “This is important work we do here.”
“Yes, yes. Very important work.” The abbot shook his head. “Maybe one day we’ll convince the Faelyns to stop blowing each other up. But that’s beside the point. There are many who can do this, as long as they have the heart and the patience.” He paused, hands resting on his thighs, then let out a long exhale. “Can I make a confession?”
“A formal one?”
“No, no.” He dismissed the notion with a wave. “No need for a confessional. Just something I wish to share. Strictly for your ears only. I’ve been . . . a bit jealous of you.”
“Jealous?”
“I trained my mind for decades”—Devaraj tapped the implant in his temple—“and yet I don’t possess a tenth your sensitivity. I’ve tried many times to perceive even a glimmer of these visions of yours, but . . . nothing. Not once. Not so much as the shadow of a sensation.
“Which has led me to grapple with feelings of jealousy, but that’s my battle to fight, not yours. In short, you’re too talented to be stuck on this ring with the rest of us. If you really do believe this business is related to your visions, then you have a duty to yourself to seize it and not look back.”
“Abbot, I don’t know what to say.”
“Say, ‘Thank you! I think that’s wonderful advice! Excuse me while I go pack!’” Devaraj gave him a jovial smile. “I’m not trying to shove you out the door, by the way.”
“I know.” Rufus returned the smile. “And thank you. I think I needed someone to help me put all of this into perspective.”