FORGED: 4 Reforged short stories
Songs & Sigils in Space
“I run a cargo ship, Xyn. Why in the hells did you call me for this?”
The round little Ixthian put down his datadex and scowled. He wiped sweaty silver hands down the front of his lab coat. “Because I trust you, Captain Myles. Are you going to start grumbling about that now, too?”
Tiberius Myles considered it, but finally shrugged. “Fine. What do you need it for?”
“The Nnyth fly on stellar winds,” Xyn said. “They don’t have ships of their own or even shielding. Not that anyone’s ever seen.”
“So what?” Tiberius asked. “We do have ships and shielding in the core. Those star wasps are dangerous. What do you want with a sample from one?”
“There has to be something in Nnyth skin, some secretion or quality that keeps them safe from stellar radiation. I think I can use it to protect systems from electromagnetic pulses.”
“EMPs?” Now it was Tiberius’ turn to scowl. “Like the ones that the police use?”
“They’re available to criminals and bounty hunters, too,” Xyn pointed out. “Stop being so self-righteous. You’re not a cop anymore, you know.”
Tiberius sighed. Xyn was right on that count, at least. It had been a long time since he left his homeworld. He was more than sixty years old, too old to keep up with the younger officers. Now the gray-haired old human was just a cargo ship captain with stiff scars and creaking joints.
“It’s a long flight out to the galactic rim,” Tiberius complained. “And reports don’t exactly agree about where the Nnyth hive is located.”
Xyn waved and then pulled a pair of white vorlex gloves over his six-fingered hands. His stubby antennae twitched. “I’ll cover your expenses. If you come back with the gene sample, of course.”
“Do you have coordinates?” Tiberius asked. “Anything more accurate than some hundred-year-old survey from a history file?”
“No.”
Xyn pulled a pair of goggles down over his faceted compound eyes. He swiped his fingers through his virtual keyboard a few times and then placed a slide under the scanner.
“Then how am I supposed to find the Nnyth hive?” Tiberius crossed thick, hairy arms over his chest. “Wish really, really hard?”
“Go find a guide,” Xyn suggested. “There have been some prospecting missions out to the rim. Someone must know the way. Just don’t hire one of those bird-backs. I know they’re all over Stray, but those feathery bastards are bad news. They know nothing about science and their magic is unpredictable at best.”
With his warning given, Xyn ignored Tiberius. The old human grunted and left the laboratory.
In my defense, Tiberius thought as sweat streamed down his lined and dusty face, I did try.
He had been all over the city and even spent several hours at a computer terminal, pouring over the mainstream in search of a guide. The planet of Stray sat at the edge of Alliance space and was the usual jumping-off point for infrequent journeys to the galactic rim. There were rumors about the Nnyth hive, but even on the Stray mainstream, nothing certain.
As Stray’s large, dim red sun began to set, Tiberius found himself staring out the window at Bird Row. Gharib was not by any stretch of the imagination a beautiful or well-planned city, but the Arcadian neighborhood was even worse. The buildings were small and in poor repair, covered in fine yellow-gray dust like sulfurous ash.
“Stop here,” Tiberius said.
The Dailon driver turned to look back over his blue shoulder. “Here? Are you sure?”
“Just stop the car.”
The black-eyed driver didn’t stick around long enough to complain about Tiberius’ miserly tip. His striped cab raced away, kicking up clouds of rust-colored dust. Tiberius swiped at his clothes, but the dirt clung stubbornly to the fabric. He sighed and made his way down Bird Row.
The residents here weren’t actually birds. The aliens that called themselves Arcadians slumped in doorways and windows and perched listlessly on sagging roofs. They looked like angels out of stories, more or less human but with ears that ended in elfin points and long, white-feathered wings for which Bird Row was named. Tiberius towered over every one of the Arcadians. They watched him pass, but none of them said anything or even let their gaze linger long on the human.
Tiberius wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for. A guide, to be sure, but most Arcadians didn’t even speak Aver. They were refugees from their ruined rimworld kingdom and even after a hundred years, they had done nothing at all to adapt to their new home. What did Tiberius think he was going to find here?
He chose a run-down bar and pulled open the steel gate that served as a door. An Arcadian bartender with only one wing listened to Tiberius’ questions and then shrugged. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, pointing to the bar’s back door. Tiberius wasn’t sure if that was an answer or if he was being told to leave. He thanked the bartender and went through the indicated door.
Tiberius found himself in a shadowed serviceway between the bar and a boarded-up shop. The narrow passage was full of trash, in bags and scattered loose across the dirty ground. That thumb must have been Get lost, Tiberius decided.
He growled a few choice oaths and made his way down the alley, back toward the street. There were no taxis working this part of Gharib. Tiberius would need to call one to pick him up and then drive back out to the landing crescent. When he got back to the ship, he would download the maps of the galactic rim and hope for the best.
The smell in the alley made Tiberius’ eyes water. One of the heaps of trash moved and a broom clattered onto the ground. He jerked to a stop. It wasn’t trash, but a woman. A bony Arcadian with dirty wings and lank black hair slumped against the rear wall of the bar. What Tiberius had first taken for a broom was actually a spear with a glass blade like a shard from a broken window.
Tiberius grumbled an apology and stepped over the fallen spear, but then turned back. The black-haired alien girl wasn’t even looking at him. Her red-rimmed eyes were fixed on her own thin hand. She picked up the spear again, just above the blade, where the haft was wrapped in ribbons that must have been colorful once but which were now stained drab and dark. Wrestling clumsily with her long weapon, the Arcadian pressed the sharp blade against the soft flesh of her inner wrist. Blood welled up around the glass and dripped down her arm.
Tiberius lunged in and grabbed the spear. He wrenched it away.
“What the hells are you doing?” he asked.
“Give back my spear,” the Arcadian said in a tired voice, “and leave.”
Tiberius flung the weapon away. It landed in a heap of black garbage bags, slicing through one and spilling rotten food. He grabbed the girl’s wrist. The cut was bloody, but not deep.
“Are you trying to kill yourself?” Tiberius asked, shaking the small woman.
“What do you care, human?” she said. Her Aver was accented, but otherwise very good. “Leave me alone.”
Tiberius hauled the girl up. Her filthy wings flapped uselessly, slapping on the wall behind her. She struggled in his grip, but Tiberius guessed it had been days since her last meal and she was very weak.
“Stop that!” he bellowed so loud that the Arcadian flinched. “You’re pissing all over your mother and father, everyone who has ever loved you. I don’t know what kind of honor your folk have, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand here and watch you throw away the life they gave you!”
The winged woman’s eyes filled so suddenly with tears that Tiberius worried he was hurting her. He released her wrist and the Arcadian slumped back against the wall, but her eyes remained on Tiberius. They were the silvery gray of storm clouds.
“Our homeworlds are lost,” she said in a thick voice. “I failed them all. There is nothing left for me.”
“I know. I’ve been to school. I know you were chased off your own planet, but how the hells could you fail all of the Arcadians?”
“I… I was a princess of my people.”
“Fine. All the more reason you can’t kill yourself,” Tiberius said.
The Arcadian princess — if that’s what she really was — stared at him with those gray eyes. “Why not?”
“Being a princess doesn’t mean you get to do whatever you want. It just means you’re dishonoring that many more people by slitting your wrists.”
She went boneless and slid down the wall, wings flopping limply into the trash. “What do you want, human?”
Tiberius frowned. He wasn’t really in the lecturing mood, but he had to do something. “I need a guide. I’ve been hired to fly out to the Nnyth hive and I have no idea how to get there.”
“The Tower.”
“What?” Tiberius asked.
With an obvious effort, the Arcadian hauled herself to her feet. “The Nnyth call their home the Tower. I believe that it is still in the Rynn system.”
“You know it?”
Tiberius was surprised. Even if the girl was a princess, she looked more like a drowned crow than any kind of useful guide. Still, she was probably the best he was going to manage.
“Why don’t you forget this suicide business and come with me?” Tiberius suggested reluctantly. “Just a quick trip out to this Tower place and then I’ll bring you back to Stray.”
“I have no interest in being a guide.”
An idea struck Tiberius. “I saved your life. You owe me a debt and I can’t believe you’ve forgotten all of your honor.”
The black-haired Arcadian woman narrowed her eyes.
“I did not ask to be saved,” she answered slowly. “And for this, you want me to take you to the Nnyth Tower?”
“Yes.”
“And that is all you want?” she asked pointedly.
Tiberius grunted. Even if she wasn’t about as attractive as a chicken bone, he was an old man and too tired to be chasing girls. “That’s all. Just get me out there.”
She considered his offer — demand, in truth — and then held out her small, dirty hand to Tiberius.
“Very well,” she said. “I am Maeve Cavainna. I will guide you to the Nnyth Tower, but do not think you have stopped my death.”
“Captain Tiberius Myles. And don’t even think about trying to kill yourself on my watch. Come on, my ship is this way.”
Tiberius had to pay the driver extra to let Maeve into his taxicab. Even so, the black-furred Lyran grumbled and growled the whole way out to the landing crescent.
The Gharib landing fields were just as dusty and flat as the rest of the drab little city. Tiberius grumbled not unlike the Lyran cab driver as he led Maeve across the peeling blastphalt to his ship. The poor old girl badly needed to be washed… The Phoenix was a small cargo vessel, just a rounded wedge the size of a modest house and bristling all over with antennae and sensor spars. Maeve paused at the foot of the loading ramp and frowned.
“This is your ship?” she asked.
“Yes,” Tiberius said. “There’s nothing wrong with her.”
“Is it not rather small for the flight all the way out to the galactic rim?”
Tiberius bristled at that. “The Phoenix is a good ship, dove. She’ll make it.”
Maeve shrugged and climbed up the ramp. She didn’t seem very convinced, but the woman had been trying to kill herself just an hour before. Maybe she figured that Tiberius and his ship would finish the job for her. Dark blood still crusted her hand.
Tiberius followed Maeve into the Phoenix. The cargo bay was empty but for a few plastic crates of food and water. Tiberius reminded himself to buy some more and put it on Xyn’s tab. It was going to be a long flight with another mouth to feed. He glanced sidelong at the skinny alien girl. A very hungry mouth…
Maeve stopped at the bottom of the fibersteel stairs that led up into the rest of the ship. “It is quiet. Do you manage this ship alone?”
“Of course not,” Tiberius said. “I have a copilot, Duaal.”
“Is he still in Gharib?” Maeve asked.
“No,” Tiberius told her. “He’s probably in his room.”
“Do you want to introduce us?”
Tiberius turned on his heels and gave Maeve a hard look. “Maybe later. Let’s get one thing clear, princess. As long as you’re on the Phoenix, you leave Duaal alone.”
The Arcadian cocked her head to one side and looked back at Tiberius through filthy twists of black hair.
“Very well. I am accustomed to the revulsion of coreworlders,” she said with a shrug. She raised her eyes to the fibersteel catwalk that ran along the back of the cargo bay. “And who is that?”
Tiberius followed her gaze and smiled. “Ah. That’s my lovely lady, Orphia.”
Maeve blinked at the graying hawk, who stared back with shiny black eyes. The two watched each other for a moment and then turned away. Orphia flew from her perch down to Tiberius and her talons bit into his scarred shoulder. He flicked her beak until the old hawk relaxed her grip. Tiberius really needed to trim those claws.
“Show me your maps and I will find the Tower,” Maeve said.
“Shower first,” Tiberius told her. “You’re a mess.”
“Which way?”
“Up the stairs, turn right and go to the end of the corridor,” Tiberius said.
Maeve nodded, spread her wings and flew up to the catwalk. Orphia ignored the Arcadian and preened her fading feathers.
Outside the reinforced windows, Gharib was cloaked in darkness. Stars glittered with cold fire in the high black sky. Tiberius squinted. He knew he couldn’t see the one they would be heading for. It was too far away.
But that didn’t stop him from looking. His destination wasn’t a single star, anyway. Once Maeve had showered and dressed in some of Tiberius’ old clothes — which fit like sacks over the alien’s too-thin body — she looked over the maps spread across the dinner table. The fairy pointed to a cluster of stars. Rynn, she called it, though the charts labeled it only LX12048; a trinary system with two small, dim brown dwarf stars orbiting a powerful neutron star.
“Are you sure?” Tiberius asked.
Maeve shrugged. They sat in the small crew mess. A bowl of chocolate-flavored nutrient paste sat on the table between them, but Maeve hadn’t touched it. There were dark blue circles under her eyes.
“I believe so. My brother knew the Tower well.”
“You have a brother?”
“Had,” Maeve said shortly. “He is dead.”
“Oh.” Tiberius wasn’t sure what else to say about that, so he returned his attention to the map on his datadex’s screen. “This is going to be dangerous, isn’t it?”
“It is. I hope that your friend is paying well.”
Tiberius hoped so, too. It sounded like good money, but he was beginning to think that collecting the samples Xyn wanted was going to be difficult. Tiberius took a drink of coffee. It was cold. He grimaced and stared at the map. A neutron star? That would be tricky to navigate. He began making notes on their flight plan.
A small shape appeared in the door. Tiberius put down the datadex and didn’t stand up.
“Hey, Duaal,” he said in as gentle a voice as an old cop could manage. “Are you hungry?”
The dark-skinned and dark-haired teenage boy crept into the room. He wore his clothes in layers that had nothing to do with being cold. His green eyes were wide and pointed at Maeve.
“Who is that?” he asked in a small voice, barely louder than a whisper. “Is she here to take me?”
“Of course not. Her name is Maeve Cavainna and she’s going to help us fly out to the rim,” Tiberius told the boy. “She won’t hurt you.”
Duaal didn’t look convinced. Tiberius gestured him over and Duaal sat down. He was a scrawny thirteen or fourteen years old, but acted much younger. Duaal slumped into his chair and didn’t look at anyone. Tiberius prepared some food and set the plate in front of his young copilot.
“We’re going to a trinary system,” Tiberius said. “That should be interesting, right?”
Duaal shrugged. He pushed the food around with a fork, but didn’t put any of it in his mouth. Maeve’s pale forehead furrowed as she watched the boy.
“What is wrong with him?” she asked.
Duaal’s shoulders bowed even more and he dropped his fork. Tiberius glared at Maeve.
“There’s nothing wrong with Duaal,” he said. “He’s been through some… trauma. He was stowed away on the Phoenix when I bought the ship. I didn’t find him until we were light-years away from home.”
“I ran away,” Duaal whispered.
“From what?” Maeve asked.
“Leave him alone,” Tiberius interrupted. “Duaal, you don’t need to talk about it.”
Duaal nodded and resumed poking at his food, arranging the yellowish carrots into lines and then scattering them again. Tiberius was used to the behavior. Eventually, Duaal would eat a little before retreating to his room. Maeve tapped her fingers on the tabletop, looking unhappy. Bruises darkened her inner arms and suspicious blue lines radiated out from them.
“What is that?” Maeve asked suddenly.
Tiberius shook his head and followed her gray-eyed gaze. The overcooked somatoes had oozed juice all across Duaal’s plate. The boy was tracing designs into it, something that was half star and half some sort of curling rune that Tiberius didn’t know anything about. That wasn’t to say that he didn’t recognize it — Duaal drew such things all the time on his dinner plate, on datadexes, and sometimes on the walls of the ship.
Maeve’s question made Duaal freeze like a frightened animal.
“What?” he asked.
“Tell me what you have drawn,” Maeve said. There was something imperious in her voice. Maybe she really was a princess. “Where did you learn that?”
Duaal whimpered and ran out of the mess. Tiberius jumped to his feet and would have knocked his chair across the room if it hadn’t been bolted to the floor. He slammed his hands down on the table.
“Damn it, princess!” he shouted. “I told you to leave him alone!”
“I only asked him a question,” Maeve said.
“About his little drawing? Why the hells do you care? Are you an artist?”
“No.” Maeve’s answer was dismissive. Not of the question, but of herself. “But I know that sigil. It was used by children of Arcadia in their magical lessons. That is the mark for fire. Where did he learn it?”
“I don’t know. Duaal’s been drawing things like that ever since I found him.”
“And you do not ask?”
“I did once,” Tiberius answered with a deep scowl. “And Duaal started screaming. He didn’t stop for hours. So no, I don’t ask. And neither will you!”
“You will have to ask someday,” Maeve said. She rubbed hard at her eyes with the heels of her hands. “You cannot expect that he will simply forget.”
“How the hells will that help? Duaal’s safe now. He never has to leave the Phoenix. I’m teaching him to be a pilot, princess. He can have a life and a trade here, one where he doesn’t need to be afraid of anything. I won’t let anyone take that away from him! So you leave Duaal damn well alone. Do you understand me?”
Maeve turned away and left the room without an answer.
“I know superluminal flight is boring, but it’s the basic stuff of piloting,” Tiberius said. “Sure, it’s all moons and comets and asteroids inside a stellar system, but between those is a lot of nothing.”
In the copilot’s seat, Duaal nodded. He wasn’t looking at the instruments or even at the shattered rainbows of stars flashing by outside. Duaal’s haunted green eyes remained focused on his own hands. They curled in his lap like wounded things.
While Tiberius tried to figure out what to say next, Duaal began singing softly to himself. Again. Tiberius couldn’t understand the words — there were too many vowels and strange sibilant syllables.
A rustle and the sound of small footsteps echoed up from the corridor outside, then Maeve appeared in the cockpit door.
“I wish to–” she started and then stopped, staring at Duaal. “What are you singing?”
The boy flinched violently and fell silent. Tiberius jumped to his feet, banged his head against the low cockpit ceiling and swore. He pushed Maeve out into the narrow fibersteel corridor and slid the door shut hard behind him. Tiberius grabbed Maeve’s shoulder.
“What did I tell you?” Tiberius didn’t wait for an answer. “Leave Duaal alone!”
“He was singing in Arcadian,” Maeve answered. “How does he know those words? That was a spell-song, a charm. Does Duaal know the whole thing?”
“How should I know?” Tiberius asked. He kept his voice down with an effort.
“You over-shelter the boy,” Maeve said. “Wounds do not heal by remaining covered. They must breathe. They require exposure.”
Tiberius hauled Maeve down the corridor to the crew mess. In his fist, her arm was thin as a stick. “You were trying to slit your wrists with a spear four days ago! You’re in no position to give advice on healing, princess.”
Maeve pursed her lips and wrenched her arm from Tiberius’ grasp.
“What did you want?” he asked.
“You fly your hawk–”
“Orphia.”
“–in the hold. Is it unwelcome if I do the same?”
“Sure,” Tiberius said.
Maeve’s face twisted in anger. “Very well. I will keep my wings bound.”
“Damn it,” Tiberius snapped. “That’s not what I meant and you know it! Go ahead and fly if there’s room. But stay away from Duaal, princess. You scare him.”
“It is a small ship, Captain Myles.”
Maeve was right. The Phoenix was large enough for its passengers, but not so large that there weren’t encounters. Duaal spent most days hiding in his room or in the cockpit with Tiberius, but still needed to eat and shower. Whenever Maeve saw Duaal, she stared with naked questions in her smoke-gray eyes. But she must have felt Tiberius’ eyes on her, too, because she managed to remain silent.
It was more than a month of tense travel to the edge of the galaxy. Tiberius watched the superluminal countdown in the cockpit while Orphia preened on the back of his patchwork chair. When the clock reached fifteen minutes, he turned on the Phoenix’s intercom.
“I need you both up in the cockpit,” he announced.
Duaal reported promptly and quietly to Tiberius, dropping into the copilot’s seat. He looked over the instrument panels and then at Tiberius.
“We’re almost there,” he said.
“Just about. You want to drop us out of SL?”
“I… I guess so,” Duaal answered. “But there aren’t any planets in that system. Where are we going?”
“The Nnyth Tower will be somewhere near an asteroid or debris field.”
This came from Maeve, who leaned in the cockpit door. She looked over Duaal’s shoulder at the admittedly thin survey information on the Rynn system. Duaal slid down in his seat, ineffectually trying to create distance between himself and the Arcadian.
“Why’s that?” Tiberius asked.
“That is how they craft their hive,” Maeve explained. “They build their Tower by chewing and secreting celestial stone.”
“There are two asteroid belts on the map,” Duaal said.
“The Tower will probably be in whichever is closer to a star. They fly on the stellar winds, which are stronger close to their source,” Maeve said.
“And weaker further out,” Tiberius finished. He looked at Duaal. “Alright, take us out on zero.”
The boy nodded, hiding his face behind his shaggy hair. The countdown ended and an orange light blinked on the control panel at Tiberius’ elbow.
“Now,” he said.
Duaal hesitated, hands shaking, and then disengaged the superluminal engines just a moment too late. The Phoenix lurched as it shot into the outer reaches of the trinary magnetospheres. Maeve staggered and very nearly fell on top of Duaal. The boy whimpered and jerked away from her, yanking the control yoke to one side. The ship began to spin out of control. Tiberius slammed a large yellow button, killing the power to Duaal’s station, grabbed his controls again and leveled the Phoenix out.
“Damn it,” the captain growled.
“I… I’m sorry,” Duaal squeaked through barely restrained tears.
“What kind of pilot are you?” Maeve snapped.
“A young one,” Tiberius answered. “Leave him alone.”
The Arcadian heaved a long-suffering sigh and looked out the cockpit viewscreen. Here at the edge of the galaxy, there were few stars in the endless black void. Tiberius shuddered. The effect was like standing on the edge of an impossibly high cliff in the middle of the night. It was lonely and dangerous. Tiberius was a native of mountainous Prianus and didn’t consider himself at all squeamish about heights, but this deep darkness was unsettling.
“There,” Maeve said.
She pointed to a small but brilliant crescent of silvery light: the neutron star partially eclipsed by the only faintly luminous sphere of one of its brown dwarf siblings. Maeve and Duaal waited while Tiberius ran a quick scan, information moving at the speed of light and still taking several minutes to return.
The other brown dwarf was on the far side, orbiting so close that the neutron star pulled it apart atom by atom and filled the stellar system with twisted geysers of plasmic hydrogen and radiation.
There were two asteroid belts, as the survey suggested, though they were more like clouds. Tiberius squinted at the readouts. Maeve seemed to be right. Other than the three stars, the largest mass in the Rynn system was located in the asteroid field closest to the neutron star and its twisted gravity field. The star funneled ice and stone into coils and looping patterns that Tiberius had never seen before. It was beautiful, but flying through it was going to be tough.
“That’s got to be it,” Tiberius said, tapping the fuzzy, angular smear in one corner of his display. “Right, princess?”
Maeve nodded. “How long will it take us to fly there?”
“Another couple of hours,” Tiberius told her. “In the meantime, is there anything we should know? How are we going to get a gene sample off one of the star wasps?”
“We’re not going to try to… to catch one, are we?” Duaal asked.
“No,” Maeve answered. “I do not think that this ship would be capable of flying down a Nnyth. You are faster, but far less maneuverable. And the Nnyth mandibles are quite capable of biting through your hull.”
“If they make a career of chewing up asteroids, then I believe it,” Tiberius said. “So how do we get Xyn’s sample?”
“For all their size and grandeur, the Nnyth are still insects by biology. As they grow, Nnyth must shed their exoskeletons. There is no waste in the Tower — they lack the resources of a planet — so the cast-off skins are used in the adhesive that holds the hive together.”
“That’s gross,” Duaal said quietly.
Maeve glared. “The Nnyth are an ancient and wise race. I am certain that they consider plenty of what you do to be distasteful. But the gene sample you require should be easily collected from any one of the outer tunnels, those used for transit rather than living.”
“You mean we need to go inside the hive?” Tiberius asked. “Even if I can fly us that close, is there atmosphere inside?”
“There is some air,” Maeve answered. “Enough to breathe, though we should not remain long.”
“I wasn’t planning to linger,” Tiberius said with a grunt. “What about gravity?”
“It is not strong, but we will be able to walk.”
“And what about the wasps themselves?”
“The Nnyth are… private,” Maeve agreed reluctantly. “And powerful. Even at the height of my people’s empire, we approached them with respect. We must be careful.”
Tiberius nodded and punched in a course that would take the Phoenix into the twisted labyrinth of the asteroid field. Duaal chewed his lower lip and watched Tiberius work.
“What about me?” he asked. “What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing,” Tiberius told him. “It’s going to be some tricky flying to get in there. I’ll handle it.”
“What about when we land? Do I have to come with you to look for the wasp skin?”
“No,” Tiberius reassured Duaal. “You can stay here on the Phoenix.”
“This may be his only chance to see the Tower. Coreworlders do not often make the long journey to the galaxy’s edge,” Maeve said.
“For a damned good reason. By the time we get our tails back to Stray, I’m going to need to rebuild the damned engines from the deck up,” Tiberius grumped. “Duaal can see the Nnyth hive just fine from here on the ship.”
The copilot nodded his hasty agreement and Maeve rolled her eyes. Tiberius sent her to the back of the Phoenix to check on the pressure in the respirators. Better to have them and not need them than find themselves gasping in star wasp territory, Tiberius thought. And it got Maeve out of the cockpit, away from Duaal.
The skinny teenage boy was quiet as Tiberius guided the Phoenix toward the trio of mismatched stars. He chewed one of his fingernails until his teeth were pink with a sheen of blood. Tiberius took Duaal’s wrist and pulled the hand away.
“Stop that,” he said. “You’re hurting yourself.”
Duaal crossed his arms. “Maeve isn’t right, is she? I don’t need to leave the Phoenix. Not ever?”
“Of course not. You’re safe here, Duaal, and you never have to go.”
They fell silent once more. The Phoenix passed slowly through the first asteroid belt. Gray ice and stone streaked past outside, too fast to make out details. When they emerged from the celestial debris, three stars filled Tiberius’ vision: two dim red-orange balls of light circling the third, occasionally flaring as the dense, bright neutron star tore free helixes of burning gas. Black shadows flickered across the glow as the second asteroid belt twisted around its captor stars.
And then, while Tiberius wondered if there was any time to grab some dinner from the dispenser in the mess, the Tower came into view. Made of stone though it was, there was no mistaking the Nnyth hive for an asteroid, or for the planar gray construction of a starship.
Why the hells was it called the Tower? The Nnyth hive wasn’t a tower at all, but a vast ring floating in space like a god’s lost crown. The huge circular hive was faceted like a jewel but gleamed more like metal. As the Phoenix flew closer, Tiberius could see that the silvery surfaces weren’t flat as they had appeared at a distance. They were riddled with thousands of what seemed to be tiny holes, but scale at this distance was deceiving. Scans indicated that each one was large enough for the Phoenix to land inside. The openings were all regular and angular in shape, just like the rest of the Nnyth Tower. The effect was complex yet simple, dizzying layers folded ever in and in.
Tiberius rubbed his eyes. Duaal gulped audibly and gripped white-knuckled at the edge of his seat. Tiberius didn’t need to ask what alarmed the boy as a graceful shape slid from one of the pentagonal openings. A Nnyth. The star wasp had a long body, striped in red and a deep blue-black. The Nnyth spread vast diaphanous wings, curled its slim segmented legs and flew out of the hive. The great insect was beautiful and frightening to behold.
Tiberius swiftly slid the Phoenix behind a pitted, ice-covered asteroid and called Maeve back up to the cockpit.
“What now?” he asked when the Arcadian arrived. “Those things attacked the first survey ships.”
“The Nnyth live apart by choice,” Maeve told him. “This is their home.”
“Then how do we get in?”
Maeve shrugged. “I guided you to the Tower. I have done as you asked.”
Tiberius scowled at her. It was as though the winged girl prided herself on being unhelpful. Tiberius would be more than happy to put her back down on Stray. He ran blunt fingers through his gray hair and thought.
“Well, those Nnyth are going out to collect stone from the asteroids, right?” Tiberius asked.
“Yes,” Maeve said.
“And they’ve probably been at it a while, huge as that Tower thing is. If we can find an area of the asteroids that they’ve already emptied, there should be fewer wasps. They’ve already done their work there. We’ll fly at them from that direction, get what we came for and be gone before they can buzz.”
Tiberius looked at Maeve and Duaal. Their expressions were skeptical, but neither one offered up an alternative. So Tiberius checked his computer and scrolled through results until he found a less populated area of the asteroid belt. Not as empty as he would have liked… The powerful and convoluted gravitation field of the neutron star kept the asteroids moving endlessly in complex, chaotic spirals.
Tiberius checked over his flight plan and had Duaal do the same. The boy sang softly to himself as he looked over the vectors. Maeve listened, but Tiberius glared until she left to wait in the cargo bay.
“Looks good,” Duaal said. “I think.”
“Let’s fly in fast, then. Before we’re noticed.”
Tiberius took a deep breath and eased the Phoenix out from behind the icy asteroid with a couple of short engine bursts. The ship floated in a wide arc around the great faceted ring of the Tower. Nnyth shone and flickered in the starlight as they flew between the asteroids, but they remained distant. Tiberius had no desire to see one up close.
Duaal barely breathed during the slow approach and Tiberius’ hands were sweaty on the controls. As he left the asteroid field and entered the cleared zone around the Nnyth hive, he felt naked, exposed.
A swarm of Nnyth soared gracefully between the asteroids on the other side of the Tower. They circled a large, slowly tumbling lump of frozen gasses once and then moved on, probably looking for something with more substance. Like a starship… Duaal whimpered. The hair all along Tiberius’ neck rose, but he kept the engines powered down. The Phoenix slipped closer and closer to the great gray ring. Tiberius’ pulse pounded behind his eyes.
An angular tunnel yawed open before him. The walls were flat and metallic, all perfectly smooth. Tiberius eased the Phoenix inside, flying slowly. The Tower’s gravity tugged at the ship, pulling sideways against the Phoenix’s gravnet. Tiberius angled his trajectory to match and landed gently. There were no Nnyth in sight. Tiberius heaved a relieved sigh, unbuckled his harness and stood up.
“Stay here, Duaal,” he said. “We’ll be done and back in two shakes.”
Duaal nodded nervously and kept his hands on his controls. Tiberius patted the boy’s head and headed down to the cargo bay. Maeve waited for him in front of the airlock. She held her glass-bladed spear in one hand and a small orange tank of stored air tucked under her other arm. Tiberius picked up the other respirator and stuffed it into one of his pockets.
“Ready?” he asked.
“I am.”
They opened the airlock and stepped inside. The door closed and sealed behind them. The indicator on the second door flashed a few times and then glowed yellow. Not optimal, but the air outside would be breathable and more or less safe. The airlock clanked. Tiberius pushed it open and they stepped out into the Tower.
“How the hells do they maintain pressure in here?” Tiberius asked. His voice squeaked a little in the strange air mixture.
“Their science surpasses yours or mine,” Maeve said. She knelt and ran her fingers over the strange gunmetal gray floor. “You would not understand the answer even if I could give one.”
“I’ll just be grateful then. Let’s go find us some wasp skin.”
The air was sparse and cold, as Maeve had warned and the airlock corroborated. Tiberius felt as though he was standing atop a high mountain. A mountain that tasted like frozen stone. The Tower felt and smelled ancient, like a place humans shouldn’t be. Or Arcadians… Maeve chewed her lower lip as they walked and held her spear tightly.
“Expecting trouble?” Tiberius asked and then coughed. There was so little air.
“We are here uninvited,” Maeve said.
Though it looked like metallic stone, the ground was strangely soft beneath Tiberius’ feet. It had a faintly iridescent sheen, too, like the inside of a seashell. The colorful cast was more than just shine, Tiberius realized. It filled the high, angled tunnel with a dim, directionless light. The effect was ethereal and unsettling.
They walked carefully down the gray tunnel. Tiberius’ heart worked double time, racing away behind his ribs like an engine in overdrive, but he gradually became aware of… something else. A buzzing, thrumming vibration that made the whole hive feel alive.
“That’s the Nnyth, isn’t it?” Tiberius asked.
Maeve nodded. “We are moving toward the heart.”
“Of what? The Tower? It’s a big empty ring, princess. There’s nothing in the center.”
The Arcadian didn’t answer. Instead, she pointed through the wan, indistinct light and Tiberius squinted. Something lumpy broke up the even flatness of the tunnel. Not a Nnyth exoskeleton, he saw as they gingerly approached. At least, not a whole one. Bits and pieces of dark-striped chitin lay jumbled against the leaning gray wall. The large triangular head sat on top like a mask, empty eyes staring blankly at the mammalian intruders.
Though it doubtlessly had what Xyn needed, Tiberius left the empty skull. Instead, he wrapped a piece of gently curving thorax up in a sheet of sterile mycolar and tucked it into a case slung on his back. The captain breathed a sigh of relief that steamed in the cold air.
“That’s it,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Tiberius and Maeve jogged back toward the Phoenix. It loomed up suddenly in the shimmering shaft and Tiberius stopped at the cargo bay entrance. There was a small domed window in each door of the airlock. He saw Duaal standing on the other side, the curved glass comically distorting his anxious expression. Tiberius smiled at the boy. Everything had gone perfectly.
A high-pitched trill jerked Tiberius’ attention up. A slender, many-limbed shadow crawled over the top of the Phoenix. The Nnyth’s long wings lay flat and shining against its narrow back. Curved mandibles as long as Tiberius’ arm clicked together, the inside surface lined with teeth capable of cracking stone. The breathy, fluting sound issued from the mouth between them.
The huge star wasp cocked its head and fixed a glistening, plate-sized black compound eye on Tiberius and Maeve. It gave another one of those ear-curling cries and scurried down the Phoenix toward them. Even now, the Nnyth moved delicately, not bending or even touching a single sensor spar.
Maeve shouted for Tiberius to get back, but the captain was already moving. He leapt away and the Nnyth followed. It landed lightly on the yielding tunnel floor and advanced. Tiberius’ hand flew to his side, but he hadn’t thought to bring a weapon. He had been too busy arguing with Maeve… The respirator was still in his pocket, though. Tiberius drew it and held the canister by the mouthpiece at the top. He didn’t know how good a weapon the respirator would be, but it was better than nothing.
Maeve beat her wings hard, but couldn’t fly well in the thin hive air. She landed again, staggered and threw herself in front of the Nnyth. Her gray eyes were wide. Maeve raised her free hand to the wasp and spoke frantically in the same lyrical language that Duaal had been singing days before, the one that Maeve said was her own tongue. The long, striped Nnyth whistled a shrill tone in answer and snapped its massive mandibles at Tiberius again.
With what sounded like an oath in her own language, Maeve lunged at the encroaching Nnyth. Her spear gashed a deep groove into the thick chitin of the wasp’s abdomen. The Nnyth drew back, hissing shrilly, but not for long. Maeve barely threw herself to the ground in time to avoid losing a wing.
“Hey!” Tiberius shouted.
He smashed the orange air canister into the glossy spindle of the Nnyth’s midsection. It thunked hollowly off the exoskeleton, but the wasp pivoted surprisingly deftly on six segmented legs and spun to face Tiberius again.
“Captain!” came a shout from behind him. The voice was high-pitched with fear, but it wasn’t Maeve’s. Duaal stood in the open airlock, waving frantically. “Run!”
Tiberius ran. A whoosh of displaced air blew through his bristly gray hair as the Nnyth leapt at him, but fell just short. Maeve vaulted over the wasp as it recovered and landed beside Tiberius, her legs already pumping hard. But she was so much smaller than the human and couldn’t keep up. Tiberius grabbed Maeve around the waist and threw her awkwardly through the airlock. She landed in a bent-feathered heap at Duaal’s feet.
His nobility had cost Tiberius precious seconds. The pursuing Nnyth snapped at his leg and closed its mandibles around his thick knee. One of the finger-long teeth sank into Tiberius’ hairy calf and he bellowed in pain. Hot blood spurted down his leg.
“No!” Duaal screamed. “Let him go!”
Maeve staggered upright and grabbed the boy’s thin shoulders.
“Sing the song and trace the flaming star,” she told him. “You know the spell. You can save him!”
Duaal stared between Maeve and the captain. The Nnyth lifted Tiberius, upending the human painfully and a red haze consumed his vision. He could barely make out Duaal standing in the airlock, weaving strange shapes in the air with his fingers, just like those he had traced on his plate.
“Ka il’ae avael!” Duaal sang in a trembling, rising scale.
He sang the words again, a little steadier, and raised his hands. A sheet of scarlet flame rippled out from Duaal’s fingertips. The fire seared through the air and burned across the Nnyth’s wings. It shrilled in pain as the delicate membranes curled and blackened. The Nnyth dropped Tiberius to the ground. If the tunnel floor had been as hard as it looked, his shoulder would have shattered, but Tiberius managed to roll to his feet with a pained grunt.
Duaal and Maeve ran from the airlock and grabbed Tiberius by the elbows. They yanked him, limping and staggering, back through the airlock. The Nnyth rolled on the ground, chittering and shrilling as it smothered the flames.
Maeve grabbed the airlock door and pulled until it hissed shut. Tiberius slid and nearly fell in the puddle of blood streaming from his wounded knee. He sagged against the stack of food crates and pushed Duaal away.
“Go,” Tiberius panted. “It will take me all damned day to get up to the cockpit. Run! Get us the hells out of here.”
Duaal nodded, spun on his heels and bolted for the stairs. Maeve grabbed a cargo strap from a hook on the wall and began wrapping it around Tiberius’s leg. He was about to thank her when the Phoenix shuddered. Maeve looked up.
“That is Duaal flying us away, I hope,” she said.
“No,” Tiberius told her. “It’s something outside.”
A huge black eye appeared in the airlock’s porthole, staring at them, and the ship shivered again. Tiberius slammed his fist into the intercom button.
“Duaal, we need to get out of here now. Get us out into the black!” he shouted.
“I… I can’t,” came Duaal’s voice from the dented speaker. “I’ve never done this on my own before…”
“You can do it,” Tiberius said. “If you can throw fire from your bare hands, you can sure as hells fly the Phoenix.”
A terrible crunching noise came from the airlock. Maeve’s hands tightened around her spear. Tiberius didn’t know how much good it was going to do. That glass blade hadn’t seemed terribly effective against the Nnyth’s thick chitin. Tiberius wondered if he could get to the gun in his room before the Nnyth chewed its way through the hull. Orphia was in his quarters, too, but Tiberius didn’t think she would be of any more use in defending the Phoenix than Maeve and her spear.
A base thrum echoed through the ship — the engines. The Phoenix lurched and rose. There was a sharp scrabbling at the airlock, a crack and then a squeal of metal as the Nnyth slid free.
“Good work, Duaal,” Tiberius said through the intercom.
“Captain, there are… are more of those Nnyth out here!”
“Follow the vector we came in on. Tuck your tail and crank up those engines! Don’t let them catch us,” Tiberius told the boy.
“Yes, sir!”
Asteroids and stars flickered by outside the airlock, then the Phoenix pitched to the side, throwing Maeve and Tiberius to the floor as a swarm of russet-striped shapes blurred past. The ship turned and banged again, perhaps off an icy stone or maybe one of the Nnyth. Another stomach-churning spin and then the Phoenix leveled out.
Maeve leaned against the bulkhead and finally released the breath she was holding. Tiberius sat up and looked at the Arcadian. Her expression was not of relief, but sadness.
“I guess we’re going to live,” Tiberius said slowly. “You were right about Duaal, dove. I didn’t even know he could do that. Hells, I didn’t know anyone but Arcadians could.”
“I have never heard of a human learning our arts,” Maeve said. “They are not simple.”
Tiberius limped heavily over to the corner beside Maeve and took down the first aid case. He opened it on top of a stack of crates.
“However Duaal learned… well, it scared the hell out of him,” Tiberius said. “Maybe if he can talk to someone, it won’t haunt him so much. But I’m no good at that kind of thing. And I never would have recognized his little drawings. I don’t think I’d even be alive if you hadn’t given Duaal that push.”
Maeve was silent. She ran a finger over the bruised needle runs on the inside of her elbow.
“I’m trying to say thank you,” Tiberius said with some difficulty. “You can stay… if you want. Here, on the Phoenix. I could use someone to help out around here, especially with Duaal. The pay won’t be much, but it’s better than dying alone in an alley on Stray.”
Maeve looked up at him then. Her storm-gray eyes were still sad, but she surprised Tiberius.
“I will stay,” she said.
“You don’t have to carry that weight all alone, either,” Tiberius offered awkwardly. He sprayed a clotting agent onto his knee and grunted in his beard. “You can tell me what’s haunting you, princess.”
“No.”
“Why not?” Tiberius asked.
“You speak to me often of honor. Surely there are crimes for which there is no forgiveness.”
“I suppose.” Tiberius looked up from the medical gauze in his hands. “You’re not done trying to kill yourself, are you?”
“No. And you are not done trying to save me, are you?”
“Not a chance.”
Tiberius held her gaze for a long moment and then tossed her a roll of bandages. Maeve caught them and cocked her head.
“Something will change your mind, princess,” Tiberius said. “Like you did for me. In the meantime, you may as well make yourself useful.”
