Far, Far Away // The Great Ring
Short fiction set in the Star Wars universe… barely.
The Laughing Crone sat on her rock and meditated. She cast her consciousness out into the cold void, searching for the object of her desire: An aging star, pregnant with heavy elements, just like she’d dreamed! And there, encircling it, a ring. An orbital ring. Twin bands of liquid metal coursed around the star, skimming its corona with just enough momentum to keep itself from falling in. An entire world rested on its outer surface, shielded from the blinding, searing, all-consuming light.
Its great, obsidian cities sat empty, abandoned, but that’s not what interested the Crone. She wanted the particle accelerator that hung beneath it, fed by the star’s energy, smashing matter at energies that could collapse space and time.
It would be a challenging jump, so close to a stellar mass, but such a prize was worth the risk. She made her hyperspace calculations and summoned her strength.
Faraway had always considered climbing a form of meditation. It demanded patience, mindfulness, and total commitment. One must meet the mountain on its own terms, in its own time. One cannot bully, seduce, or cajole a mountain. The mountain merely IS. As are we all.
Of course, she was not climbing a mountain, not in the strictest sense. More like a cliff, or maybe a wall. It was not a natural structure, insofar as it was made by intelligent beings, but its scale and grandeur rivaled that of Nature herself and Faraway felt it best to approach it as a mountain.
Carefully, she wormed her fingertips down the seam of a coolant pipe the size of a tree trunk, searching for a solid hold. When she found one, she swung her legs over and lifted them to her chest, reunited her right hand with her left, and just hung there for a moment. The wind tore at her cloak and jangled the bells around her ankles. She breathed, slow and steady, summoning her strength.
The next handhold was a worn rivet above her and a full span to the right, well out of reach. She started her legs swaying back and forth, a little wider each time, then hauled upward with both hands as hard as she could, launching herself into space. For a moment, she was weightless, adrift in the void, flying like a starship through the heavens. The wall’s massive ventilation shafts and power conduits fell away. She danced among the stars.
And then her fingers found the rivet and gravity reasserted itself. She braced her feet against the wall once more and dangled like a sack of grassgrain. She spared a glance up, where the top of the wall beckoned. She was nearly there, The Edge of Forever.
Though her troupe traded regularly with the Edgers, she’d never seen their village for herself. They always brought their goods down on hover skiffs: manufactured things like frying pans and bolts of cloth. They took their foodstuffs back up the same way, floating between the wall and the city like leaves on the wind.
Just as she was about to make her next jump, she felt them approaching. Faraway froze, magnetized her bells to stop their jangling, and held her breath. A flock of security droids wheeled out from between two towers about twenty levels below, shell-wings stretched out to either side of their spherical bodies, thrusters glowing.
Suddenly, the lead droid veered upward and the flock followed in tight formation. Faraway thought she was made, for sure. Adrenaline flowed into her legs, but the flock whirled and dove after just a few levels, quickly vanishing back into the deep canyons of the city.
Finally, she let herself breathe. The last thing she needed tonight was mixing it up with a murder of crows, especially this close to the top. A hop and skip later, she was wedged between two power conduits and shimmying her way up the last five levels. She curled her fingers around the edge, hauled herself up, and there she was: The Edge of Forever.
What a pile of junk!
Huts, shacks, shanties, and lean-tos stumbled over each other, nearly spilling off the wall. Electric lights popped and fizzed from the tilting, claustrophobic alleyways that spidered through the settlement. Here and there, Faraway caught glimpses of the scenic overlook that once existed, in the planks of a pedestrian walkway or the empty basin of a fountain, in a fanciful sculpture of some alien bird or beast.
These people hadn’t arrived on a colony ship or stowed away on a cargo freighter. No, their ancestors had been the crew of a casino ship, bravely bringing booze and whoring to even the farthest flung corners of the galaxy. Until, one day, they’d decided to settle down and start families or whatever.
They’d been cannibalizing their starship ever since, using its parts to build mills and looms and blacksmith’s furnaces. Why, the cloth in Faraway’s own heat-masking cloak had come from The Edge of Forever. She could hear the loom clacking away, even at this hour.
What remained of the starship now stood over the village like an old sentinel, stoic and gaunt. Only the frames of its engines remained, now mostly used to dry laundry. Weeds grew out of the ports where its sensor array once stood. Even the glass over the cockpit was gone.
The bar, of course, remained.
Faraway ran her hand along the hull as she passed beneath it, imagining both the cold caress of deep space and blistering pain of planetfall. Someday, she’d see the galaxy as this ship had seen it. Someday, she’d walk on alien worlds.
Two staircases spiraled down from the center of the craft, leading up to its brightly-lit interior. She could already hear the drunken cavorting. Faraway steeled herself. This was her destiny; best to get it over with.
Upstairs, the ship was arranged around a central promenade, which would have doubled as cargo space, a long time ago. Doors to private rooms ran around one side; a window into the bar area curled around the other. She ducked her head down the hall to the cockpit, just out of curiosity, but the control panels had all been gutted. Nothing in there but ghosts.
The bar was much more lively. A droid tended it for a handful of barely-conscious patrons and a card game was being played at one of the tables, but it was the floor-to-ceiling window that caught Faraway’s attention. It looked directly out onto The Great Ring! Blacker than the blackest night, it stretched out to infinity between two walls of cascading, white light. It made her feel like an insect at the very edge of the universe.
BANG! One of the gamblers slammed his fist into the table and growled something in a lesser tongue, one Faraway didn’t understand. Still, his meaning was apparent. The target of his threat was, unsurprisingly, the very person Faraway was here to find. In her vision, she’d thought he was an alien, but now she could see that the enlarged ears and pronounced ridges across the bridge of his nose were actually self-inflicted, the result of dozens of piercings. There were more in his eyebrows, lips, and tongue.
His clothes were an eclectic mix of… everything, none of which fit him very well. His jacket was an asymmetrical affair, all black and yellow stripes, that ran across his body from hip to shoulder, flaring into a high collar on only one side. She wondered if it ever caught on his earrings.
“Ch-ch-chchch-choice of beverage?” the droid spat at her in The Tongue. It quoted her a price, but she’d only brought barter goods. Besides, she wasn’t here to drink. It wasn’t even willing to pour her some water for free.
Their negotiation was cut short by the sound of blasters powering up. The gamblers were all rising from their chairs, intent on ending their game with the highest possible stakes. Most of the barrels were pointed at Faraway’s target, who was holding a comically large, snub-nosed pistol at the angry alien’s head. At least, she assumed that was its head. You never did know.
“Hey, fellas…” the gambler purred with what seemed to Faraway like totally inappropriate confidence. “How about I give you a chance to win some of it back, huh? My luck’s gotta run out sooner or later.”
Apparently, his barmates were pretty sure his luck had already run out. Two of them lowered their weapons in order to collect the cash from the table, which is when the gambler opened fire. Or tried to open fire. The barrel of his blaster spun madly around, shooting blue sparks in every direction except at his target.
He had just enough time to flash the angry alien a studded grin before everyone started shooting.
The gambler ducked, flopping face first onto the table, and scooped up his winnings on his way to the floor. Faraway dove over the bar, barely avoiding a stray bolt. The droid wasn’t so lucky. It crashed down beside her in a shower of sparks, smoke billowing from its empty neck. This had not been in her vision, but Fate often brushed past unimportant details like deadly shootouts in bars.
Still, this was not how they died. Faraway released her rope darts from their magnetic clasps and let their chains unspool from her arms. She was just about to ignite them when the gambler flew over the bar, smashing into the wall of bottles, and dropped down onto the droid’s corpse.
Up close, he was even uglier, but he flashed her that confident grin before getting back to his feet and running past her toward the door. A hail of blaster bolts obliterated the rest of the booze and, before she took a bath, Faraway decided to follow his lead.
She dove over the end of the bar and rolled through the door, coming to her feet on the promenade. The gambler was already halfway down the stairs, taking them two at a time. Faraway just leapt into the gap and landed in front of him.
“You’re coming with me,” she told him.
“The hell I am!” The gambler tried to shoot her, but his blaster sputtered out. He slapped it with his palm and tried again, but no dice. “Hrm… Maybe I shouldn’t look a blaster rifle in the barrel. Got a good escape route?”
“I’m sure we’ll find one.” She grabbed him by that ridiculous collar and turned him toward the city, back the way she’d come. His pursuers tumbled down the stairs in time to see them race into an alley. Blaster bolts sang behind them.
They took each turn at random, any path that didn’t double back into the center of town should reach the edge of the wall eventually. Angry voices reverberated through the labyrinth as they leapt over stray animals and piles of trash, careened past bolted doors and shuttered windows, even climbed over a few low walls in their mad dash toward freedom.
When they finally emerged back into the open, relatively speaking, an even larger mob was waiting for them. Apparently, they’d woken the whole neighborhood. If there’s one thing the descendants of a casino ship’s crew can’t tolerate, it’s cheating at cards. They’d rolled out of bed with their blasters and knives, blackjacks and pitchforks and blacksmith’s hammers, even a laser sword. Faraway and her new ‘friend’ skidded to a stop at the end of the alley, all but surrounded.
“See ya!” the gambler quipped as he tore ass toward the edge of town.
Faraway ignited her rope darts as a dozen different triggers were pulled at once. They hissed to life as she flung them out to either side and leapt into a barrel roll, pulling them back toward her in wide arcs that intersected every last blaster bolt, deflecting them harmlessly into the night sky.
Another volley. Faraway twirled her chains across her body, dancing through the battlefield, a bubble of calm in the mayhem. The more she connected to the moment, the clearer she could sense… everything. She felt the bolts coming at her, the anger of the minds firing them, the fear of children hiding indoors, even the inanimate objects piled all around her in precarious heaps.
Subtly, she changed the angle of her swings, sending each ricochet into a target of her choosing. Instead of counter-attacking, she blasted a hole in a load-bearing wall beside the mob. Weakened, it could no longer support the ramshackle shed above it. A wave of scrap and refuse and long-forgotten heirlooms washed over her would-be murderers, ending their barrage and temporarily blocking the path.
The dancer leapt and twirled a few more times, rewrapping her chains around her forearms, before chasing off after the gambler.
She found him at the edge of the abyss, waiting for her. He held up his arms and shrugged as if to say, “Well…?” Like she was supposed to have all the answers. He ducked as blaster fire erupted from behind her.
“This is not how we die!” she shouted before barreling into him like a charging bantha and throwing them both off the wall.
The wind screamed against their ears as the ground, formerly so distant, rushed up to meet them. The gambler had just enough time to start regretting his life choices before landing on the back of a security droid. Faraway wasn’t so lucky, but she was prepared. She threw one of her rope darts around its shell-wing and clung to it like a spider on a thread.
The droid dove and rolled, trying to shake loose its rider, but the gambler wrapped it in a bear hug and held on for dear life. Faraway looped the chain around her waist, kicked her legs out, and spun herself around, winding up the chain. The ground was uncomfortably close when she finally reached the droid and slapped one hand over its sensor array. She pulled on the threads of its internal circuitry, inducing current within its repulsorlift. They rapidly bled off momentum as the last levels blurred by.
“Jump!” Faraway commanded. Much to her relief, not to mention surprise, the gambler obeyed. She pulled her rope dart free and followed right behind him, sliding down the curved base of the wall while the droid crashed and burned. At long last, she came to an undignified stop above a storm drain at the base of the city.
“You’re my lucky charm!” the gambler exclaimed as he approached Faraway at an high-spirited jog. “I had a bad feeling about that, but you were right. We figured it out.”
“It wasn’t luck,” she grumbled, brushing the grime from her cloak as best she could.
“I’m sure you’re right,” he countered, “but I knew something had to be up. I was on such a hot streak, there was no way those roughnecks were gonna let me just walk outta there. And when Trusty Rusty misfired on me… well, either something was gonna come along or Lady Fortune was gonna owe me one, ya know? Speaking of which…” He tossed her one of the metal bars he’d nearly died over.
She scoffed. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Um… buy things with it? Things you like?”
“Where we’re going, nobody has a use for shiny bits of scrap.” She tossed it back to him. “Alright, maybe they do, but that’s not the point. If you really wanna thank me, pick up your feet. We don’t wanna be here when the rest of that droid’s flock come looking for it.”
Not waiting for a reply, she turned and started walking back to her troupe. The wall was actually the rim of a monolithic bowl in which the alien city rested. Waste water ran down the inside of this bowl and was reclaimed in vast recycling systems deeper inside the Ring. The terrain was so much easier down here, it was often faster to walk around one’s destination than try to go straight through the city.
Her new companion circled in front of her, walking backwards, and held out his hand. “I’m Raik.”
She gave it a single, professional shake. “Faraway. Blessed Faraway.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Blessed.”
She laughed. “Blessed is a title, not a name. You really are a tourist.”
“Yeah, I’ve been on a bit of a pilgrimage.” He didn’t offer details and she didn’t request them. After an awkward silence, he asked, “What did you mean, back there? About this not being how we die?”
“I’ve seen your future, of course. I find you at the Bar at the Edge of Forever, then you accompany me to the Revel. You couldn’t do that if we died at the bottom of this chasm, so logically something had to be down here to break our fall. Simple.”
“Uh huh,” the gambler mused. “And what if I choose to do something else?”
“I don’t follow.”
“What if I decide to turn around and walk the other way right now?”
Faraway sighed. This was gonna be a long walk. “Look, I may not know how or why it happens, but it happens. I’ve seen it.”
He stops in his tracks; Faraway keeps on walking. After a few seconds, she hears his mismatched boots clanging on the plasteel grate, running to catch up. “You’ve piqued my interest, Blessed Faraway. I wanna see how this plays out.”
“Of course you do,” she smirked.
The revelers were waiting for them outside an ancient, corroded service hatch just beneath the city. They were clearly ready for a party: bells and ribbons were woven into their hair, skin was covered in colorful paints and chalks, coin skirts were wrapped around waists, bangles draped over wrists and ankles. Here and there, isolated groups had already started to dance, moving to the music in their hearts.
Faraway waved to a few of them as she maneuvered through the throng, Raik doing his best to keep up. Finally, she found what she was looking for. “Blessed Oldest, this is Raik. I found him at the bar, just like you said. Raik, this is Blessed Oldest. He’ll be helping you interpret your visions, after the Revel.”
Funny, he didn’t look that old to Raik. He was shirtless and well-muscled, under a thick layer of purple chalk. The whites of his eyes popped like firecrackers against that backdrop. A smattering of silver hairs peaked out, especially at the temples, but his hair was still thick and fell to his shoulders. Late forties, if Raik were a betting man, which he was.
Blessed Oldest clasped his shoulder and smiled. “You have the look of a man who has never done this before, but fear not! We dance to experience the ecstasy of exhaustion. You will get tired, your lungs will ache, your legs will beg you to let them stop, but just keep dancing. Once your conscious mind fades away, you’ll see the world as it truly is.”
“Sounds great,” Raik smiled back with furrowed brow. “Is there a cover?”
Oldest laughed, all the way from his toes. “No cover, my friend. This experience is free for all. Just don’t make an ass of yourself,” he said, slapping Raik on the back before turning his attention to Faraway. He handed her a pair of wooden sticks. “I want you on the catwalk, yeah?”
“Sure!” It must have been an honor, because she positively glowed. At some point, she’d lowered her hood and now Raik got his first real look at her. Short, black hair brushed her shoulders in an unruly mop. Her sun-baked skin was peppered with tiny scars and scratches, keepsakes of a life lived in the elements. Dark, downturned eyes seemed fed up with the world, even as she beamed.
Oldest signaled a group of revelers near the service hatch. They laid their hands on either side of it and closed their eyes. Suddenly, the hatch lurched open and a great gout of water poured out! Raik was the last to move out of the way. Water sloshed around his mismatched boots.
Whatever else may have been inside drained away quickly and even the flood outside receded back the way it had come. Raik guessed that forcing the hatch open had triggered some kind of failsafe. He wondered how long it’d be before service droids started showing up.
“How’d they do that?” he asked Faraway. “Open the door like that?”
“Same way I landed that droid: they induced an electrical current.”
“You can do that with your minds?!”
“You can’t?”
The crowd started filing inside. “Hey,” he tapped Faraway on the back while they waited their turn. “Why’s he called ‘Oldest?’ I see plenty of older people here.”
“Those of us who’ve been through the trials pick a name that reminds us of how we’ll die,” she told him over her shoulder. “Blessed Oldest will die a natural death, surrounded by students and family, many years from now. He’ll be the oldest one in the troupe, by then.”
“And you? What’s your name mean?”
“I’m going to die far away from here, fighting for a cause I believe in.”
“And you’re okay with knowing that?!” he gasped.
“Why wouldn’t I be? Armed with that knowledge, I can throw myself into every situation between now and then without fear.”
“Yeah, well, I hope that’s not why I’m here. I’d like to keep it a surprise.”
She shook her head. “That kind of vision requires a specific sort of trial, one of several. It’s not for most people. You’re just here to catch a glimpse of your near future… and to dance your little heart out,” she winked. “Have fun.”
Then, she was through the hatch and gone. A smell like the inside of a cadaver-fruit assaulted his sinuses. Oldest was standing beside the hatch and saw him recoil. “Fear not, son. The fumes are actually beneficial for first-timers. If you pass out, we’ll take good care of you.”
“Tell that to my nose,” he croaked, wrapping his collar more tightly around his face. He ducked through the hatch and shuffled down a short corridor, exiting on a catwalk that curved all the way around the inside of an enormous tank. Its walls were blue-green and stained by centuries of toil. Circular filters rose from the catwalk to the top of the tank; revelers with the wooden sticks, including Faraway, had taken up positions at each of them.
Everyone else was climbing down into the bottom of the tank, where a pair of mixing blades still turned, their momentum not quite spent. He felt overdressed. Everyone else was basically naked. Their combined body heat was already baking him through his jacket. He’d have to do some serious laundry after this.
The men and women on the catwalk shouted in unison, then began beating the biofilters like gigantic drums. The whole tank reverberated with sound! The revelers responded in kind, whooping and hollering and stomping their feet. Their bells and bangles turned every movement into music; their skirts and ribbons and rope darts turned the air itself into a canvas.
The fumes were already going to Raik’s head, numbing pain and fatigue. He felt weightless, like he could dance on the wind. He leapt and spun and stomped, bounced around like a water drop in a storm. At some point, he ditched his jacket. He hoped someone would be kind enough to return it later.
Time slipped away. The crowd and the music slipped away. Raik danced alone in a single, endless moment. His breath flowed like a river. His blood burned like a star. Every atom sang. Their tiny voices merged into a single waveform, an unbroken chain of causality that bound the past to the future.
He saw the sacred tree that stood outside his village, mocking him. He watched as the Ring’s leviathan thresher devoured it, tore through the entire jungle like a sandstorm through the desert.
Then, he was in the Shareholder’s city, facing an old woman with a stone smile that split her face from ear to ear. And then the Ring itself vanished and they were standing on the surface of the star! A black pit opened beneath them, like a ravenous whirlpool. The old woman fell in, laughing all the while.
After that… Freedom.
When he woke up, Faraway was beside him. She put a cup to his lips and poured water down his throat, whether he wanted it there or not. “There’s a good boy.” She slapped him a few times on the cheek before getting up and running off. Raik noticed that his jacket and boots were folded neatly on the ground nearby. When did he take off his boots?!
He was in a cave. No, some kind of storage or utility room abutting a tunnel. It was dark. Was this where they lived? Like rats in the walls?
When Faraway returned, Oldest was with her. “Fate is always truthful,” he intoned from the doorway, “but it rarely tells the whole truth. If you’re willing to tell me about your vision, I can help you interpret it.”
But Raik was already lacing his boots. “No need. I know exactly where we have to go.”
“Don’t you ever wonder about them?”
Raik laid on his back, staring up at the galactic disk, what little of it could be seen. They were both wearing goggles, to shield them from the corona’s relentless brilliance. This high up, they couldn’t count on buildings or the walls of The Ring to offer much protection.
Faraway was pacing at the edge of the reflecting pool. She could be impatient when she didn’t already know what was going to happen. They’d climbed to the top of the tallest tower in the city and now they were… just waiting. For what, Raik either wasn’t sure or didn’t want to say. In either case, it made her nervous.
“Don’t I ever wonder about who?” she responded testily. “The Shareholders? I don’t see the point. They left a long time ago.”
“I bet they were all tentacles.” Raik wiggled his fingers in front of his face. “Just floating heads trailing dozens of tentacles, dripping slime wherever they went. That’s why they needed so many droids to clean up after them.”
“You can’t possibly know any of that.”
“Can’t I?” he countered, sitting up like a sprung trap. “Why else would they put all their control panels on the ground? Or haven’t you noticed? Everything around here’s controlled by levers that stick out of the floor.” With much drama, he jabbed one finger up at a balcony. It was the highest point in the city, perched atop a spiral staircase that unrolled gracefully onto the obsidian plaza about a dozen spans from the reflecting pool.
Sure enough, Faraway could see a few levers poking up from the floor on either side of a delicate, artful podium. In point of fact, she had noticed that about the city, but hadn’t really put much thought into it. “Maybe they just had hands where their feet should be.”
“And that’s any better?!” he guffawed. “Probably why they didn’t make statues or pictures of themselves, because they were so ugly.”
“You’re being — “
They both felt it, just a moment before it happened. They turned toward the reflecting pool, looking down its length and across the plane of light beyond. It was the strangest thing: A teeny, tiny figure of a woman appeared far off in the distance — like, way out in a space! — and then zoomed toward them faster than anything.
They both flinched, like it was gonna crash right through them and keep on going. Instead, it skimmed over the reflecting pool, kicking up a monumental wake and a burst of wind that just about knocked them on their asses.
And then there was an old woman standing before them. She was taller than either Raik or Faraway, by a good half a span, and Shareholder knows how many turns older. Unkempt, steel-gray hair puffed out around a band of cybernetic implants that wrapped the back of her skull. The rest of her was encased in so many layers of clothing and life-support gear, it was impossible to know how much of her was flesh and blood.
Oh, and she wore a respirator mask that made her look like a maniacal clown.
“Who the fresh hell are you?” she wheezed, leaning heavily on a staff. She smelled like the dust of a thousand different worlds.
“I’m Blessed Faraway and this is Raik,” the reveler offered with a tiny bow. “I think we’re here to help you.”
The stranger laughed at them. Her eyes looked like she was smiling, but it was hard to say with that ridiculous mask on her face. “Don’t that beat all?! Alright, if you’re here to help, the first thing I’m gonna need is a ship. Nothing fancy, just enough to get ‘round to the far side of this orbital ring.”
Faraway’s mouth fell open, quite at a loss, but Raik jumped in. “I know just the place.”
“You do?” Faraway asked in disbelief. Then, resignedly, “Of course you do.”
“Yeah, I do,” he grinned. “All we need is a ride.” He twirled his blaster free of its holster, pointed it over his shoulder, and reduced the Shareholders’ podium to a cloud of shiny bits. “See?” he lowered his voice for Faraway, “Trusty Rusty’s got it when it counts.”
“What did you do?!” Faraway didn’t know whether to slap him or… slap him.
The old woman had no such misgivings. She let Raik lead her up the spiral staircase to the balcony entrance, where they hid behind the door frame and waited. When Faraway joined them, she was still speechless.
“With a little luck,” the gambler explained, “they’ll send a repair droid with a cargo container big enough to fit all three of us. Everything here is enormous,” he added for the old woman’s benefit. “The aliens that built this place were, like, really big.”
“I can see that,” the Crone confirmed. “Good thinking.”
“Was it?!” Faraway exclaimed, using both her hands. “What if they send a security droid instead? Or a whole flock of them?!”
Raik scrunched up his face. “I dunno. I’m feeling pretty lucky.”
“Really? After yesterday’s little adventure at the bar, I’d think you’d be all out of luck.”
“Trust me, I have quite a line of credit with Lady Fortune. Just be quiet and give it some time. This’ll beat the pants off climbing all the way down to the dockyard.”
She couldn’t argue with that. It only took a little while for a many-legged droid to show up with a large cargo container. It cleaned up Raik’s mess, removed a new podium from the container, and installed it. Meanwhile, Faraway got the container doors open and the three of them crowded inside. It was dark and greasy and it smelled like a droid’s filthy armpit, but it still beat climbing all the way back down. Faraway covered her face with her cloak and envied the old woman her mask.
Relatively certain the droid wouldn’t hear them through the container, or maybe just willing to bet on Raik’s good luck after all, she uncovered her face enough to ask, “What did you mean, back there? About Lady Fortune owing you?”
Unsurprisingly, Raik seemed relatively immune to the smell. “Since we have some time, let me tell you a story…
“Once upon a time, there was a wise old hermit. He lived in a food forest on an orbital ring, outside a tiny village of very stupid people. He spent his days cultivating his luck and communing with nature. If any hardship approached the village, he’d sense it in advance and go down from his hilltop to warn them. More than that, he’d tell them how to stop it, usually through some kind of penance or sacrifice. They’d follow his advice and things would keep on keeping on, good times for all.
“By the time he died, the old hermit was so connected to the area that he reincarnated as a tree. Boy, were the villagers pissed! They’d wanted him reborn as a child, so they could have their Caretaker back in just a few turns. Now, they’d have to wait for a tree to get old and die! They couldn’t just cut it down, either, since it was sacred. Them’s the breaks.
“Instead, they had to make due with a novice Caretaker, a kid who’d been taking care of the hermit in his old age. They didn’t trust him, didn’t even take him seriously. They thought he was a screw-up. How could they think anything else, comparing him to such a great man?
“Anyway, the young Caretaker made himself at home and started doing his thing, being awesome and all that. Working his ear plates and cultivating his luck. He tried his best to commune with nature, but something was off. A great shadow had crept over the forest and it took him far too long to see its shape. A disaster was coming and it would take a truly terrible sacrifice to avert it.
“He told the villagers all this, told them what they had to do, but they refused! He pleaded with them, but they called him a fool and cast him out. Worst of all, they laughed at him. The young Caretaker visited that sacred tree on his way out… and spat on it.
“High atop the Ring wall, he watched as the droids moved their leviathan thresher into place on the far side of the food forest. It took almost no time at all for the machine’s countless rows of metal teeth to chew through everything. It mulched the sacred tree, the village, every plant and animal and human being. Ground them up and recycled them.
“So yeah, Lady Fortune owes me big.”
As luck would have it, the droid dropped them on the floor before hoisting the cargo container into the rafters. That’s how they stored everything: Hung from the rafters of a cavernous warehouse deep beneath the city, like an upside-down forest of junk.
As soon as they’d recovered their balance from the bone-rattling ‘landing,’ the three of them slipped out and scurried off across the nice, traversable floor. Faraway didn’t sense any security droids, but they tried not to draw attention, just the same. A repair droid with a saw or an arc welder would kill them just as dead as a blaster bolt.
Raik seemed to know where he was going. He lead the way with his usual confidence, in any case. As the furniture and plumbing and power conduits gave way to spare parts for engines, Faraway’s confidence grew to match.
They turned onto a catwalk and the world fell away below them. Blinding starlight filtered up through level upon level of shiny, black ships. They reminded Faraway of polished pebbles resting inside half-shells, like pearls. The design seemed odd until she realized they weren’t starships… they were yachts! Sightseeing ships meant only for jaunts across the surface of the star. Hence, the thick heat shielding on only one side.
They probably didn’t even have hyperdrives, she realized with a sinking feeling. No wonder the Shareholders left them behind. Deep down, Faraway must have been hoping the old woman would whisk them away from this place, off to adventure in the great beyond!
Instead, she was just taking them on a joyride.
The Crone picked one of the smaller ships — smaller being a relative term in this world built by giants — and they climbed down to it. Faraway had no trouble opening the hatch and they found themselves under a massive dome of dark glass. Not a scrap of furniture to be found, just a vast expanse of gleaming, black floor.
Another hatch, another induced current, and they found the bridge. It was tucked away in the heat shielding, windowless, and bristling with levers. More levers than Faraway cared to count. She despaired; there was no way they’d be able to get this ship underway on their own.
“Looks simple enough,” the Crone stately flatly. “I just need you to rev the engines, dear.” She stared at Faraway with those tiny, sunken eyes of hers. The lights on her cybernetics blinked expectantly.
“What? Me?” Faraway stammered. “I can’t… I mean, there’s no way. Boosting a door open is one thing, but this is an entire ship! And I don’t even know how it works. If you’re counting on me for this, you’re just plain out of luck.”
“Pish tosh!” The Crone closed in on her, laying one hand on her shoulder like a lead weight. “Size does not matter. The power is all around you. It’s in everything. You’re its guide, not its source.”
“Fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Faraway knelt down and flattened her palms on the floor. She slowed her breathing, expanded her senses, and explored the ship. Somewhere behind them, a titan slept. Its heartbeat was slow, but strong. Faraway could feel its arteries running out to the rest of the ship: engines, heat sinks, sensor array, the thicket of levers in the room with her.
She found a point where they all came together… and pulled.
At first, nothing budged. Faraway’s body tensed, her mind strained, and still it didn’t budge. She almost gave up — washed her hands of the whole affair and just left — but then she decided to try it the old woman’s way. She gathered up all the threads and just… showed them where to go.
Suddenly, the bridge was full of light! Read-outs and charts and strange glyphs floated everywhere. Faraway could see the star and The Great Ring and the fleet of ships moored above them.
“Atta girl!” Raik cheered her on. “Now we’re in business.”
“Yes, quite adequate,” was all the Crone had to say on the subject before pulling a series of levers.
The ship lurched, yanking on its still-connected mooring lines, and tore the catwalk free like a trebuchet. It crashed into another ship, which broke loose from its mooring and crashed into another ship, and so on until debris was falling around them like hail.
If the Crone was concerned, she didn’t show it, just cranked on a few more levers and sent the universe spinning around them. She used the heat shield to deflect first one ship, then another. They careened away and smashed into whatever else was available.
And then things started exploding.
“This is not how we die,” Faraway told herself over and over as the ship dove and rolled and finally cleared the slowly unfolding disaster. They leveled off and accelerated along the bottom of the Ring.
“Smooth sailing from here,” the Crone announced, unjustifiably pleased with herself.
Faraway was about to lay into the old woman, when a far more important thought occurred to her and she ran back to the observation deck. From below, the true structure of the Ring became apparent. Faraway’s entire world — everything she’d ever known or loved or mourned — was just a thin skin resting atop its real bones.
Two gargantuan tubes ran in parallel, held up by some trick of physics or technology that eluded Faraway’s grasp. Around these tubes, hovered magnetic rings; she could feel their electricity from here. The tubes hovered above the star and these rings hovered around the tubes.
And beneath it all, a beam of laser light brighter even than the star. It was encased in some manner of shielding, but clearly made of energy. It pulsed hypnotically and Faraway may never have stopped staring if not for the swarm of security droids that suddenly descended upon them!
She probably should’ve seen this coming. Faraway threw herself back down the ramp, but Raik and the Crone needed no warning. The swarm was already lighting up their holographic displays like firecrackers.
“Do they have shields?” the old woman was asking Raik.
“I don’t think so,” he shrugged, looking to Faraway.
“They have thick shells that double as wings. When attacking a hard target, they’ll fold their wings in front of them like a spearhead. They’re extremely tough, can punch through just about anything that way.”
“Hrm…” the Crone considered. “But they’re only metal, yes?”
Faraway nodded.
“Then we’ll have to make the most of our one advantage. Weee!” the crazy lady laughed as she pushed a lever forward and tipped the ship’s nose toward the star. They dove deeper into the corona.
Faraway returned to the observation deck. From the very front, she could see over the lip of the heat shield. Through the darkened glass, the star was cast in high-contrast, searing light and depthless shadow. Eddies swirled, flares soared, an infinite ocean of light flowed forever in all directions.
Above them, hundreds of droids circled like carrion-eaters. The old lady was right: they couldn’t fly as close to the star without real heat shielding. And if the plan had been to live the rest of their lives on this ship, that would’a been great.
“They’re holding back, but we can’t hide here forever,” Faraway shouted down to the bridge.
“Way ahead of you,” Raik called back. The Crone had given him the helm, which he’d taken only out of necessity, since she’d decided to take a nap. That wasn’t fair; she was clearly meditating. Or maybe she was in power-saving mode. Hard to tell. “Hey, tell us when they’re right over the hole!”
“The what?” Faraway almost asked, but then she saw it: A gaping, hungry maw was opening in the surface of the star. Plasma drained into it as it grew, wider and wider, until Faraway was sure they would fall in, too.
But they did not. The ship flew over and Faraway lost sight of it, for which she was grateful. She dared not even imagine looking down that endless well. She closed her eyes against the vertigo.
Then she remembered her job. She dragged her eyes upward to where the swarm still buzzed. She ran to the back of the ship, just far enough to glimpse the edge of the black hole. “Yeah! Now!”
Raik was about to relay the message, but the Crone’s eyes snapped open. When had she started levitating?! She dropped to the ground with a thud.
What happened next wouldn’t entirely register on Raik’s read-outs. Only Faraway would witness it. A column of searing light blasted up from the whirlpool, radiation straight from the very heart of the star. It obliterated the droids in an instant, stripping their electrons and scattering their atoms on the solar wind.
The dome went black just in time to save Faraway’s retinas.
“Did we get ‘em?!?” Raik’s begged. She could hear the beads of sweat on his forehead.
“Without a doubt,” she whispered back.
“But how did you do it?!” Faraway interrogated the Crone as they sailed across the surface of a star. The old woman sat cross-legged in the center of the bridge while Raik and Faraway paced back and forth.
“I sculpted the star’s gravity, same way you manipulate electricity,” she responded cooly. “Just, you know, a lot better.”
“Who are you?!” the girl shouted.
“Does she always ask this many questions after a thrilling escape?” The Crone was obviously asking Raik, who stood with his back to both of them, watching the readouts dance.
“Yes, actually,” he reflected.
“You may address me as ‘Professor.’”
“Of what?” Faraway scoffed.
“Oh, everything,” she chuckled, “by which I mean mathematics. My fellows in The Lost College, we study everything so that we might master everything. Knowledge is the only true path to freedom, you know.”
“And where are you taking us?” Faraway demanded, already bored.
“Technically, you offered to help me! Let’s not turn this into a kidnapping prematurely, shall we?”
“Prematurely?” Raik asked under his breath.
“Yes, fine, we’re here by choice, but the question remains.”
The so-called Professor sighed. “We’re going to the far side of this orbital ring, where the black holes are born.”
“The what?!”
“Isn’t that the whole point of this place?” the Crone asked, not entirely rhetorically. “The particle accelerator smashes hydrogen into heavy elements, exotic matter, even tiny singularities. What else would you use it for?”
They looked at each other blankly, but Raik was the first to find his tongue. “Look, we don’t use the Ring for anything. We’re all just stowaways. The Shareholders — that’s what the droids call them — they abandoned it a long time ago.”
The Crone clapped her hands merrily. “Well, then you’ll just have to take my word for it. This place makes black holes and I’m going to use it to make my own universe. You’re welcome to come live there, but know this: It’s my universe and I make the rules. I do not take requests. Now leave me alone so I can find a place to land. You’re both terribly distracting.”
They went upstairs to watch the universe pass them by. It was really quite beautiful, when you weren’t running for your life.
“She’s crazy,” Faraway proclaimed.
Raik frowned. The expression looked uncomfortable on his face. “Maybe her intellect is just so advanced that it’s indistinguishable from crazy.”
“You heard her! She wants to make a black hole so she can become god of her own universe! That sounds ‘advanced’ to you?”
“If it’s not crazy… yeah, pretty advanced.”
“Oh, come on!” She prowled the edge of the dome like a sweeper droid in a corner. “You shoulda let Oldest interpret your vision. There’s no telling what we’re in for. I mean, I know this isn’t how I die, but it don’t much care for being stranded on the far side of the SUN either.”
He approached and took her hand in his. “Maybe this is how you get wherever you’re going, huh? I don’t know any other way off this forgotten world. And pocket universe or not, we both saw her walk right outta the sky, like she was crossing the street!”
“Fine, but I don’t trust her.” Faraway took her hand back abruptly.
“No one said you had. Here…” Gingerly, he removed a small, jade stone from his earlobe and held it out to her. “For good luck.”
“Ew! No,” she recoiled, refusing to touch it.
“Woemongers like me,” he explained, “we use things like this to cultivate our luck. You can’t push the universe without it pushing back, so we inflict little harms on ourselves all the time. Then, the universe pushes back with acute acts of serendipity, like when you dropped out of the sky and saved my butt,” he grinned. “As an instrument of my suffering, this object carries some of my luck. I’m giving it to you, to keep you safe.”
“I think I’m good,” she assured him. “People like me believe in Fate, not luck. The universe isn’t some supernatural ledger, it’s a web of cause and effect. It pushes back, alright, but you can’t cheat it. Trying… well, that never ends well.”
“Can’t they both be true? Maybe it’s my fate to give you this right when you need it.”
Her eyes lit up. “Was this in your vision?!”
“No, but — “
“Then no dice! The universe is run by Fate, not fortune.”
“You’re both talking about The Force!” Somehow, the old woman had snuck up beside them. They both started.
This time, Faraway recovered first. “The what now?”
“The Force!” she widened her eyes, as if that would explain anything. “It’s an energy field that permeates the universe, connecting all things. It’s what lets me see through space and sculpt gravity. It’s how you induce electrical currents and whatever the hell he was talking about. You’re both talking about The Force, just in different, stupid ways. You’re both so stupid.”
Faraway snatched the luck charm from Raik’s hand and shoved it in her pocket… then wiped her hand on her cloak. “For such a smart woman, you could demonstrate more tact.”
“Tact is for the young,” the Crone crooned. “Us old people don’t have any time to waste on tact. Speaking of which, we’re almost there.”
“Where?” Faraway quipped. “The black hole factory?”
“Yes,” she confirmed, returning to the bridge. “And you’ll wanna hold onto something, cuz we’re definitely gonna crash.”
“There’s nothing to hold on to, you old bat!” Faraway screamed over the blaring alarms inside the bridge. Presumably threatening messages in the Shareholders’ language flashed and scrolled all over the walls and ceiling. Red lights bloomed across the navigational map.
The Crone cackled with glee as she threw levers seemingly at random. The ship pitched and rolled, slipping through a thicket of blaster fire like a hare heading for its hole. Whatever was down there, the Shareholders didn’t want anyone messing with it. Not even their own city had been so well-defended.
The yacht took one glancing blow after another, but the Crone had calculated the safest possible path and soon they were running parallel to a low grassland. Herds of hooved mammals scattered in their wake.
As they approached the outskirts of a town, one of the cannons got lucky. The engines took a solid hit and the ship dropped out of the sky, smashing through rows of low, earthen homes and tumbling straight through a lovely, flower-covered gazebo.
They bled off the rest of their momentum rolling halfway up a monumental ramp on the far side of the village. The ship came to rest upside-down, its dome smashed and sparks flying.
The dust had barely settled when Faraway burst through the hatch and discreetly kissed her new luck charm before helping the others get free.
Raik slapped the old woman on the back and bellowed, “That was some fancy flying, Professor! Did all that with mathematics, eh?”
“Mathematics and moxy!” she chortled.
“I can’t believe the both of you!” Staring out across the swath of wreckage, Faraway was anything but amused. “That was the worst landing I’ve ever seen. Or can imagine.”
“We’ll have to work on your imagination, then,” the Crone replied, “but later. My baby’s on the way and there’s no time to dawdle. Pick up your feet! We only made it halfway up.”
“You were trying to crash all the way up?!” Faraway didn’t have time to press the issue, however, because security droids were taking flight all over the village. “You two go,” Faraway told them, suddenly calm. “I’ll cover your retreat.”
“I never retreat!” the Crone objected, but grabbed Raik and started walking just the same. To Raik, the glass temple at the top of the ramp looked like a distant mountain peak, but the Crone had no intention of walking all that way. She sat them both down on the cool marble, closed her eyes, and twisted gravity. Raik nearly vomited as the world tilted beneath him until they were halfway down the ramp, not up, and they started sliding.
“Weee!” is all Faraway heard behind her as she climbed up onto the yacht and let her rope darts dangle from her hands, pulled their electromagnetic threads, and ignited their power couplings.
The droids opened fire and Faraway dodged the first volley as if dancing through the rain. As she became attuned, she started knocking their bolts back at them, slagging dozens of sensor arrays. The blind monsters rampaged into each other before colliding with the ramp.
The rest of them turtled up, closing their wings in front of themselves and powering down their blasters. Two of them dove right for Faraway, aiming to skewer her like a kabob. She leapt just as the first reached her — embedding itself deep in the heat shield — and kicked off the second in mid-air before it did the same.
Thus airborne, Faraway sent her darts out to either side, magnetically clamping two more droids. She pulled and twisted, banging them against each other with skull-rattling force, before hurling them at targets further ahead. Six more wrecks rained down on the marble ramp as Faraway landed in a dramatic crouch.
She wished Oldest was there to see it.
Unfortunately, that still left three droids barreling past her on their way to murder her (kinda) friends. She ran up the ramp with amplified strength, but it wasn’t enough. The first of the three droids was already charging Raik…
Raik watched his new friend dismantle an entire army of droids — by herself! — and knew he’d made the right decision. Whether it was luck or fate or some mystical force made not one bit of difference to him.
With growing alarm, he realized that three of the buzzards were going to get past her. He drew his faithful sidearm and gave it a kiss for good luck, before spinning up the chamber. Overconfident, the droids opened their wings as they drew near and primed their own blasters.
Raik closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger.
The first droid exploded like a ripe fruit! Trusty Rusty threw off a fan of blue lightning as she charged for another shot. The remaining droids folded their wings defensively, but it wouldn’t matter. His next blast tore through another one like it was made of glass.
But there was no way he’d get off a third shot in time. The last droid was almost on top of him, bearing down like a bad hangover… until it stopped. Just stopped in mid-air! Raik leaned over to look behind it and found Faraway pulled taut between her rope darts, one anchored to the ramp and the other magnetically clamped to the droid.
She whipped that second chain hard, up and then down, smashing the machine into the ground, cracking it like an egg.
“You’re amazing!” he gushed as she walked through the smoking ruins, still winding her chains around her arms.
She winked at him as she passed and he fell in line behind her. “What’s the crazy lady up to?”
“Got me,” he shrugged, holstering his weapon.
They walked through a grand archway and into the glass temple. It projected out into empty space, because the twin tubes of the Ring separated from each other here and widened to make room for a vast, parabolic dish. Beams of energy passed through the middle of this dish from either side, smashing into each other at its focal point.
The Crone stood at what Faraday would have described as an altar, already pulling levers. The energy beams pulsed brighter and brighter, causing the glass walls to darken protectively. None of this particularly frightened them, given everything they’d seen that day, but then the temple itself began to tremble.
A sickening weight dropped into their stomachs. The floor tilted forward and down, off the edge of the Ring, or maybe that was just the vertigo talking. Then the glass began to crack… and the Crone began to cackle.
“Decided whether you’re coming with me yet, kiddies? It affects my hyperspace calculations, so now’s the time to speak up!”
Faraway turned to Raik, who was also doubled over in pain. “I think she’s gonna destroy the whole Ring!”
“I think you’re right,” he admitted, dropping down to this hands and knees. “But this isn’t how we die?”
“It’s not how I die. I don’t know about you.”
“Good enough.” He pulled his pistol, then struggled to raise it toward the Crone. Or rather, past her to the array of levers.
He closed his eyes and fired.
For a moment, he thought he’d killed them all. Or maybe just everyone except Faraway. The entire front wall of the temple tore free and fell into the dish, down into a swirling vortex of death that had formed between the energy beams.
And the Crone went with it.
When Raik opened his eyes, she was hanging from the end of Faraway’s chain. The death dancer was staring at him with desperation in her eyes as her feet slid across the floor. He grabbed her around the waist and pulled, dragging them back to a solid wall.
Thus anchored, she started hauling the old woman in, but Raik tapped her on the shoulder. “Gimme a minute!” he shouted.
“What?!” she hollered in pure disbelief, but he was already edging his way to the ragged hole in the building, out to where the Crone dangled. He leaned over the ledge for a few seconds — still much longer than Faraway would have liked — before turning back to her with an idiotic smile and one thumb thrust upward.
Together, they reeled in the would-be mass murderer and retreated through a slowly-descending blast door to relative safety. The nascent singularity outside burned itself out in a cataclysmic flash, obliterating what was left of the temple.
Once they’d caught their breath, Faraway punched Raik in the face. “What was that all about?!” she demanded.
The Crone cut him off before he could answer. “He made me promise to take the two of you wherever you wanted to go, anywhere in the galaxy, until you found a place you wanted to stay.”
“And not to kill us or let us die on the way,” Raik added, nursing his jaw.
“And also that,” she conceded.
“I can’t believe you!” Faraway pinched her nose and tried not to vomit. “You risked all our lives for extortion?!”
“Well, you said you weren’t gonna die, so I figured my odds were good,” the gambler argued. “And Lady Fortune owes me. Besides, I’ve been wandering this endless treadmill for years and I’ve never found another way off. How else are you gonna fulfill your destiny, Blessed Faraway?”
“So it is,” she conceded. You can’t cheat Fate, but nobody ever said Fate couldn’t cheat you. “And we’ve got no other options. More droids will be coming and we can’t fight them all. Where do you wanna go?”
“No idea,” the gambler shrugged. “I was hoping you had an ancestral planet or something — ”
“Oh, fry me on a hot skillet!” The Crone was taking this no better than Faraway, but a promise was a promise. Besides, this place was no good to her anymore. And how long could these two possibly keep themselves alive? She gave it six weeks, tops. The blink of an eye, to someone like her. “I’ll pick the first world. Only so many places we can go from here anyway, and neither of you brought respirators, so I hope you’re good at holding your breath. Now shut your noise holes for a blessed minute!”
Faraway paced the ramp, listening to the distant buzz of thrusters on the horizon. Raik kept watch through the otherwise ornamental rifle scope perched on his blaster. There were more than just security droids, this time: Big juggernauts with blaster cannons on their backs, many-armed monstrosities with buzzsaws for hands, slithering serpents with mouths full of independently mobile fangs.
“Faster would be better,” he whispered.
“You can’t outrun Fate,” Faraway replied.
“Oh yeah?” the Crone bounced to her feet. “Watch me!”
With that, she grabbed her new wards by their ears and dragged them through hyperspace to the first of many adventures.
And only rarely did she try to get them killed.
This story was an experiment: How much of Star Wars can you change and have it remain recognizably Star Wars? I rather like how it turned out and look forward to continuing this adventure...
