THE REFORGED TRILOGY: BOOK 3 — HAMMER OF TIME
Chapter 5: Sunjarrah
“The journey begins not when you step onto one of our ships, but the moment you book your flight.”
– Xos, Silverstar Cruises representative (103 PA)
“Not that I am displeased to have you so close, but you must miss your Raptor,” Maeve said. She sat on top of an orange plastic crate, legs folded beneath her.
Logan shrugged. “It was only a ship. But we might all be missing its weapons before long. Why doesn’t the Blue Phoenix have any?”
“This is a cargo ship,” Maeve pointed out. The spear Panna had repaired lay across her lap. She inspected the glass blade for nicks or smudges. “The work here does not often call for violence.”
Logan stood next to another crate with his Talon-9 scattered in pieces across the top. He picked up a rough cloth pad and scrubbed at the contacts inside where the battery connected to the weapon.
“I only hunted you for a year, dove,” Logan said. “I couldn’t have been the first dangerous thing that Tiberius ever encountered. I’ve heard he was the one who got the original sample of phenno from the Nnyth hive.”
“He was. Duaal and I accompanied him,” Maeve answered. She could find nothing wrong with her spear and set it down, then slid off her crate. “Tiberius hired me as a guide to take him out to the Tower. All he had were outdated maps from a survey many years ago. But the White Kingdom had a long history of respect for the Nnyth. They taught us to use the Waygates. None know their operation better than the wasps of the Tower.”
“So you knew the way. Useful bit of data,” Logan said. “And you negotiated with the Nnyth to get some of their secretions?”
Maeve didn’t look at Logan. Her face was hot.
“No. We… took it,” she admitted. “And fought one of the Nnyth to get away with what we had stolen.”
There was a cold, heavy weight against Maeve’s shoulder, just above her right wing, and she lifted her head. Logan had set down his gun and rested his metal hand on her back. He didn’t stroke or squeeze, unable to trust his indelicate cybernetics not to hurt the small Arcadian woman.
“That was a long time ago,” Logan said.
Maeve guessed that was meant to be reassuring. Logan wasn’t good at comfort, but that he would even try made Maeve’s heart flutter. Infiltrating the Nnyth Tower with Tiberius and Duaal really wasn’t so long ago, Maeve knew — not even by human standards — but she had been a different woman then, and Logan Coldhand a different man…
The hunter pulled Maeve into his arms and kissed her. She held Logan close, raking her fingers down the hard muscles of his back.
“Hey, Glass,” called a loud voice. “Are you down here? Do you know where Shimmer put the–?”
Maeve leapt back from Logan, blushing furiously. Gripper filled the narrow catwalk above with his rough brown bulk, and his wide mouth hung open.
“Great Green, I…!” he gasped, grabbing at the front of his oversized shirt. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ll just um…”
“What’s going on?” asked another voice. “Move over!”
“It’s nothing, Silver!” Gripper announced far too loudly. “We should go away. Like right now.”
“Come down here,” Logan said.
Sighing, Gripper slunk down the stairs. Xia followed him with curiosity on her silver face. Logan returned his attention to the impromptu tabletop and began reassembling his Talon-9.
“What do you need?” Maeve asked.
“Duaal says he ordered up some more keline,” Xia said. “But it’s not up in the medbay.”
Maeve nodded. “I believe I saw it recently.”
She flew up over a stack of water barrels and searched the other side until she found the box that Xia needed. It was too heavy to fly with, but Gripper tucked it easily under one long arm and carried it back to Xia.
“Got it, Silver,” he announced proudly.
“Thanks,” Xia told him. “Can you take that up to the medbay for me?”
Gripper climbed the stairs and then vanished deeper into the Blue Phoenix. Maeve looked at Xia.
“Do you think you will need it?” she asked.
“I used gallons of keline when Coldhand was chasing you,” Xia said. She glanced sidelong at Logan.
“The medical expenses were considerable,” he agreed.
“They are going to be much worse when the Devourers attack an inhabited Alliance planet,” Maeve said. She leaned against the water barrels. The plastic net covering them was rough between her wings. “Far beyond payment…”
“We’re not going to let that happen,” Xia answered. “We should be on Sunjarrah tonight.”
Xia left and Maeve heard the Ixthian retreat back up the stairs, probably to her medbay. Logan waited in silence as Maeve stared at the scarred and stained fibersteel floor.
Thousands of knights hadn’t been able to stop the Devourers in Arcadia. Duaal cast them from Prianus, but hadn’t been able to kill them. Logan had managed to kill a few Devourers, but it had cost him his ship. What could Maeve possibly do against the monsters? She had banished them from the White Kingdom a hundred years before. That had been different, though Maeve wasn’t quite sure how or why…
Footsteps interrupted Maeve’s worries and Panna came down the stairs.
“Can I have a minute?” she asked.
“Do you need something from the bay, too?” Maeve asked.
“What? Um, no. I… I wanted to talk to you about Mir,” Panna said. “About the Arcadians there.”
Again? Maeve shoved her hands into her pockets and realized that she was clenching her teeth.
“I am sorry for their plight,” Maeve told Panna. “And I have tried to pay the price for my part in it. But that only caused more harm. Not only to myself, but to everyone on this ship. There is nothing more I can do to make amends for the White Kingdom’s fall.”
“That’s… not what I mean,” Panna answered, shaking her head. She drew a deep breath. “The Arcadians need a queen. They need leadership, Your Highness. They need you.”
“No,” Maeve said louder than she intended to. “I am no queen! That is Xartasia’s right, not mine.”
“And look at what she’s doing with it!” Panna argued. “Xartasia worked with the Nihilists, who killed hundreds of people or more. She taught Gavriel Euvo magic that he used to terrorize Duaal and torture you! She helped Gavriel summon the Devourers, then betrayed him and took them for herself!”
“I am not arguing in favor of my cousin’s crimes,” Maeve said, shaking her head. “I know that we must stop her.”
“The Arcadians want a queen. Right now, they have only one choice for that. You would be a much better queen than Xartasia!” Panna’s green eyes were bright with fear and passion. She must have been nerving herself up for hours for this confrontation. “You should be queen!”
“The crown is Xartasia’s by Cavain’s divine right,” Maeve said. “I am as much a criminal to our people as she is… even if my crimes against the White Kingdom were unintentional. I have no place on the throne!”
“But–!” Panna began.
“No,” Maeve said as firmly as she could.
Panna bit her trembling lower lip, then turned on her heels and retreated back upstairs. When she was gone, Logan replaced his assembled laser in its hip holster. The metal hissed quietly against aged and scarred leather. Logan’s expression was neutral, but even with Panna gone, the conversation had made Maeve uncomfortable and she found herself wishing Logan hadn’t heard it.
“You do not wish me to be a queen, do you?” Maeve asked, only half joking. She wanted — needed — him to agree.
Logan secured his Talon in the holster with a worn strap and turned back to Maeve.
“No,” he said. “Your royalty doesn’t particularly matter to me. It seems to bother you, though. Especially Panna’s attention.”
Maeve nodded, but didn’t know what else to say to that. Logan was right. He usually was about her. Maeve spun her spear between her hands. The glass flashed brightly under the sunlights that illuminated Gripper’s hanging garden. When she stopped, Logan ran one of his metal fingers up the blade’s shining edge and the spear shivered slightly in Maeve’s hands. Logan withdrew his cybernetic hand to inspect a new hairline score in the metal.
“Still sharp,” he said, nodding. “Does Arcadian glass ever lose its edge?”
“Not really,” Maeve answered. “It takes many, many years for a glass blade to dull. Unless it is broken, of course.”
Logan nodded and Maeve frowned at him.
“Are you telling me I am still a useful blade?” she asked suspiciously. “That time and deeds have not diminished Cavain’s blood within me?”
The Prian hunter’s handsome face was hard, but Maeve swore that there was a faint twinkle in his ice-blue eyes. “I was only asking about the spear. Would it matter if I were making a point? You’ve made your feelings on the throne quite clear. In any case, our focus needs to be finding Xartasia. And surviving that encounter.”
It always came back to that. Maeve drew a deep breath against the panic tightening her throat. The sour taste was stale, old.
“We must find her on Sunjarrah,” she agreed.
“I know,” Logan said. They all knew.
A bout of sparring with the much larger Prian eased some of Maeve’s tension, but not by much. Logan was a skilled fighter and even mock battle against her hunter stirred bittersweet memories of his year as her adversary. After several rounds, the ship’s intercom finally clicked on.
“We’re about to drop out of FTL and should be arriving in high orbit of Sunjarrah in about two hours,” Duaal announced. “Logan, can you come up here and lend a hand? I need to run a scan when we come out, but I can’t juggle that and fly the Blue Phoenix at the same time.”
Logan pulled his shirt back on over sweaty skin and hurried out of the cargo bay while Maeve combed fingers through her black hair. She retrieved her spear and made her way back toward her room while the Blue Phoenix vibrated all around her as it slowed.
But Maeve stopped outside the medical bay. Xia steadied herself on the counter as the ship shivered again.
“Almost there,” she said.
Maeve walked carefully to the single small window, unable to use her wings for balance in the tight confines, and looked outside. The stars were haloed in shattered rainbows and then even those vanished suddenly as the Blue Phoenix slowed to sub-light speeds.
They were on the edge of the Sunjarrah system, a pair of large white-gold stars smeared dark across their equators by the inner asteroid belt.
“What is that?” Maeve asked, pointing.
Xia came over to look over her shoulder. “Where?”
“There,” Maeve said. “Just above the asteroid belt, on the edge of the suns’ glow.”
Xia squinted her compound eyes. “I… don’t see anything.”
Maeve looked again, but could find no sign of the pale flashes of light she had seen before. She shook her head, dismissing the issue and then waved a short goodbye to Xia. Impatient and unsure what else to do, Maeve replaced her spear in her room and then went up to the cockpit. Duaal sat in Tiberius’ worn and hawk-shredded old seat, flying the Blue Phoenix toward the paired suns. Logan was in the copilot’s chair, fingers moving quickly over the sensor controls. Both men glanced back over their shoulders at Maeve and then returned to work.
“Anything out there?” Duaal asked.
Logan raised a wheat-colored eyebrow. “Plenty. There are thousands of ships in the system.”
“One of those must be here for Xartasia,” Maeve said. “To pick up the Arcadians.”
“We won’t be able to tell which one with any of these readings. These are mostly atmospheric sensors and densitometers,” Logan said. “We need to land and get more information from the Arcadians. If Xartasia is here to pick them up, they should be able to tell us when and where.”
The flight to Sunjarrah was as quiet as a prowling cat. When they finally arrived, the Blue Phoenix circled to the daylight side of the planet, a mottled brown and blue sphere with irregular patches of polar ice that gleamed pink in the sunlight. Knotted traceries of green and purple auroras glowed like a crown above the ice.
“Land in New Hennor,” Panna said. She was crowded into the corridor outside the cockpit with Maeve and Gripper. “That’s where most of the Arcadians on Sunjarrah live.”
Panna’s knowledge of the fairies was impressive. She might not have grown up in the White Kingdom, but she had made a dedicated study of their ways. Maeve was impressed, but more grateful for the direction. Duaal keyed into Sunjarrah orbital control from a panel in the center of the cockpit.
“Control, this is the Blue Phoenix. We need to put down in New Hennor as soon as possible,” he said. “We have urgent business.”
“Please hold,” a computerized voice answered. “Please hold for an authorized flight control representative.”
Duaal banged his fist into the com panel, but his frustration was no rival for the dents left by Tiberius. Gripper winced.
“Oh, come on!” Duaal growled. “Exactly what part of urgent is confusing, you stupid computer?”
“Please hold for an authorized flight control representative,” the com system answered cheerfully.
Duaal was threatening to pull out the control system’s wires one at a time — and Maeve was inclined to join him — when the mechanical voice suddenly cut out and a woman with the same automatic cheer as the computer informed them that they could now land in New Hennor. She sent coordinates to the Blue Phoenix navigational computer and bade them a good afternoon.
Duaal made a rude gesture at the com.
“Xartasia could have already landed and left again in the time that took us,” he said. “Damned bureaucracy.”
“Then get us down there and stop wasting time,” Logan told the young captain.
Duaal stuck out his tongue, but angled the Blue Phoenix down toward Sunjarrah’s surface. The view outside turned white-hot as the ship descended through the atmosphere, then dim and gray in the upper cloud layer. Finally, they punched through the gloom and into the warm orange sunlight of the Sunjarran afternoon.
Logan brought up the coordinates relayed by orbital control. Duaal nodded and turned the ship south.
The light of the twin suns cast the domes and arched windows of New Hennor in molten colors. The Blue Phoenix raced high over the bronzed cityscape and landed in a public field tiled in spiraling patterns like licking metal flames. As Maeve stepped off the ship, she rubbed her eyes until they adjusted to the bright sunlight.
Panna said that New Hennor wasn’t a large city and taxis were expensive, so Maeve flew. Panna, Logan and Duaal walked briskly below, casting long shadows in the afternoon sun. Gripper and Xia had remained behind — there was work to do back on the Blue Phoenix. And Gripper was scared, Maeve knew. The Arboran was little more than a boy and they were going in search of dangerous enemies. So was Duaal, but without Tiberius, there was no one left who could tell the young mage what to do. He hurried along with Logan and Panna to keep up with the flying fairy princess.
New Hennor looked a lot like the cities on Mir. Other than the scorching suns — the back of Maeve’s neck felt brittle and baked — it was almost as though they had not left Mir at all. The glaring afternoon light cast fragmented binary rainbows through the glass blade of her spear.
“Hey!”
Maeve looked down at the source of the loud shout. A Mirran cop leaned out the window of his green- and yellow-banded car. The null-field generator hummed, motionless against the curb.
The officer regarded Panna, Duaal and Logan through his tinted sunglasses. He waved Maeve down to the ground. She landed on the sidewalk, in a spot cleared by watchful pedestrians. Maeve had been in New Hennor for less than ten minutes and she was already in trouble.
“Where are you going with those weapons?” The cop nodded to Logan’s Talon-9 and Maeve’s spear. “You have permits for the firearm, I assume.”
Logan hesitated. He didn’t have a license to carry the weapon anymore and hadn’t wanted to bring the laser, but Maeve was the one to point out that if they found Xartasia and her Devourers, they couldn’t afford to be unarmed. The cop’s mirrored gaze moved from the Talon-9 down to its owner’s illonium hand. The Mirran’s mouth worked under his green and brown mustache.
“Mister… Coldhand?” he asked hesitantly.
Logan’s eyes flickered toward his own hand for a moment and then back to the police officer. “Yes.”
“So what brings you to Sunjarrah?” the officer asked. His tone wasn’t subservient — strictly speaking, his authority far outstripped a bounty hunter’s on his own planet — but it was respectful. “Business or pleasure?”
Duaal and Panna exchanged a look, but they remained carefully silent.
“I’m looking for someone, actually,” Logan answered. “An Arcadian woman.”
“A fairy?” The Mirran cop looked at Maeve, who did her best to look like an appropriately stern bounty hunter’s companion.
“The Arcadians tend to stick together,” Logan said. “Usually in a single community. Anything like that in New Hennor?”
“Sure,” the cop answered. He said it with a slightly buzzing burr. Zure. “Over by the old settlement. No one can grow anything there anymore, so it seemed like as good a place to put the immigrants as any. They have a sort of camp out there.”
A camp. Fury kindled on Panna’s face and Duaal had to grab the girl’s shoulder.
“Great,” Duaal said quickly. “Which way?”
The Mirran cop twisted in the driver’s seat, looking at the street and getting his bearing. “Uh, a ways down Penton Road.”
“What’s the address?” Logan asked him. “We can just put it in my com.”
“There’s no system out that far,” the cop answered. “Positioning doesn’t bother keeping real close track of things out there. Just follow the road out until the pavement stops off.”
With a final respectful nod to Logan, the police officer brought his window up again and pulled the striped squad car back out into the street. Every other vehicle slowed noticeably as law enforcement’s attention turned back to them.
“The end of the road,” Panna said. “That could be a long walk.”
“Yeah,” Duaal agreed. “Let’s get back to the Blue Phoenix. If it’s as empty out there as he says, there should be plenty of room to land.”
They hurried back through New Hennor, attracting more stares and mutters. Duaal called ahead and Gripper had the airlock open for them. Maeve landed with a ringing thud on the fibersteel and ran inside. Duaal was already climbing the cargo bay stairs, taking them two at a time.
“Um, Glass? Where are we going?” Gripper asked, hanging from the edge of the catwalk by one huge hand.
“An Arcadian encampment outside New Hennor,” Maeve said.
Xia pressed herself against the wall as Duaal ran by.
“And you think that they can tell us where to find Xartasia?” she asked.
“There are more Arcadians in New Hennor than anywhere else on Sunjarrah,” Panna answered. “One of them must know something about Xartasia’s pickup.”
The Blue Phoenix rumbled and then jolted beneath them. Sun-washed cityscape raced beneath the ship and swiftly gave way to flat plains. Maeve steadied herself against the wall and stared out the airlock viewport. The ground was a patchwork of tough, pale grass and the lumpier green of scrubby bushes. An occasional solitary tree rose suddenly from the ground, casting a long, dark blue shadow and then was gone as the ship flew past. Logan and Panna looked over Maeve’s shoulder.
“There,” the Prian hunter said, pointing one of his metal fingers at a geometric smear of brown down below. Logan held down the green intercom button beside the raised cargo ramp. “Duaal, there are some buildings to our port side.”
“I see them,” the captain answered. “I’ll take us in closer… if I can. The sky is full of fairies.”
Maeve squinted into the twin suns’ bright light. Duaal was right. She could just make out hundreds of pale-winged shapes wheeling and diving through the sky. Circling? Arcadians were not vultures who flew rings over the dead and dying.
So what were they doing?
“There’s something down there,” Panna said.
Logan jabbed the intercom button again. “Get us on the ground, Duaal.”
In answer, the Blue Phoenix dropped precipitously, tumbling Maeve and Panna against the airlock. The window filled with green grass and brown stone as the ship turned sharply and swooped down toward the ground. It landed with a hard thump. Maeve recovered her balance and slapped the airlock button. The reinforced old doors creaked and groaned, then grated open.
Maeve was in the air within seconds, flying low and fast. Shouts and the clatter of footsteps followed her from the Blue Phoenix, but Maeve didn’t slow. There was the old settler housing that the cop talked about. The buildings were long and low, with peeling siding and cracked solar panels lining the roof, cloudy and grayed by the years. An old quick-sink well sat crookedly in the middle of the old settlement, surrounded by plastic buckets and mycolar bottles that looked recently used.
But there was no one on the ground. All of the Arcadians arced and swooped through the white sky, casting flickering shadows on the ground below.
Maeve beat her wings and crested a three-story common hall, where Sunjarrah’s early settlers would have gathered for meetings and emergencies. The overgrown cornfield was full of a hundred or more Arcadians, wheeling this way and that and crowding the skies with wings.
The dark, sleek shape of a ship crouched in the field’s center, crushing dead brown stalks beneath it. An ember-red light glowed next to the closed airlock. Maeve landed hard, spear in hand. Logan and the rest of the Blue Phoenix crew sprinted around the corner of the common building and stopped beside her. Duaal and Logan took in the sight of the black ship and looked at Maeve.
“That’s the Oslain’ii,” Logan said.
“Xartasia’s ship,” Duaal finished. “She’s already here.”
