Children of Enochia

by Luke R. Mitchell

  “Probably eavesdropping every word of this,” I said rather pointedly, knowing it was likely true. “Other than that, I don’t know. We’re alive, I guess. But seeing everything that’s happening down there right now...”

  “It’s a lot to take in,” Johnny agreed.

  That pretty much summed it up. Enough so that I wasn’t sure what to add.

  Silence stretched for a few moments before Johnny continued.

  “But, the way I figure... Well, either everything we’ve kicked up is true—and I think I believe it is—and this needed to happen for the sanctity of our future anyway... Or it’s all bullscud, and we’ve fallen for it. But either way, this planet was sick. It is sick. I don’t know how else to explain the fact that we ended up in civil war over a freaking alien invasion. That’s the kind of scud that’s supposed to unite a society, not rip it apart. And if this chaos is what it takes to get us back on course, then I guess all we can do is try to keep as many people safe as we can while we all work it out together.”

  I turned his words over, surprised.

  He shrugged, apparently noticing my surprise. “I might’ve borrowed a line or two of that from Freya.”

  I smiled despite myself, and decided there was no need to point out that it wasn’t just the raknoth that had driven Enochia to war, but also the emergence of Shapers into the public eye, too. But we hardly needed more brooding right then. I wasn’t even sure that little detail really contradicted Johnny and Glenbark’s underlying point anyway. Because Enochia was sick, wasn’t it? Hunting an innocent subsection of its own people solely because it was caught up in the fever dream lie of a raknoth who was a thousand years beyond the pyre?

  That sounded like a sick planet to me.

  So for once, I tried not to dwell on the negative.

  “I miss being down there,” I said. “I miss seeing you and Elise.” I shook my head, blowing out an incredulous huff of laughter. “Terrible as it sounds, I think I actually kinda miss being at war with the hybrids. At least back then we were all in Haven together, and everyone was more or less on the same page.”

  “Back then,” Johnny muttered. “Like it wasn’t just a couple cycles ago.”

  “It’s been a long couple cycles, broto.”

  He tilted his head in concession. “It was a lot easier to tell who the bad guys were back then. I’ll give you that.”

  “Here’s hoping we can get back to that place someday, whether it’s Haven or wherever else. As long as we’re together.”

  The last words left an aching in my throat that caught me completely unprepared. And Johnny didn’t miss it.

  “Yeah, about that,” he said. “You’re not... planning on, uh, disappearing on us, are you?”

  “No,” I said quickly, shaking my head. “I mean”—I glanced in Alton’s general direction without really meaning to—”No. I don’t really know what comes next for me. But I’m not just gonna, you know...”

  “Vanish into the ether without a trace?”

  “Yeah. That.”

  “Good.” Johnny looked less than convinced. “Because we’ll make a place for you down here whenever we have to.” He smiled a little. “Even if we have to hide you in the wilds like a two-headed mutant for a little while. We’ll make it work.”

  “I know,” I said, not wanting to argue, or to point out all the numerous ways that their helping me would only further complicate the already murky waters down there. “I’ll, uh...”

  “Talk it over with Captain Red Eyes?” Johnny asked, eyes narrowing a fraction.

  “I’ll keep an eye on the reels,” I said, “and think about how to handle our good captain.”

  “Personally, I’d vote you give him the ol’ stabby-stabby right now.” His brow furrowed. “Except that Bells is doing better.”

  I sat up straighter, and Johnny’s frown shifted to a guilty grin.

  “Yeah, guess I probably should’ve led with that, huh? She woke up for the first time yesterday. Therese said she was pretty disoriented, which I guess makes sense. But she’s hopeful she’s gonna make a full recovery. Along with all the other hybrids they treated.”

  “Johnny, that’s... That’s amazing.”

  “Best news I’ve heard in years,” Johnny agreed. “You know, followed closely by finding out you were still alive after the fire, of course. And after we lost you at Sanctuary.” He frowned. “And the White Tower. Twice.” He shrugged. “Guess the news kind of loses its kick after the first five or six times, huh?”

  I smiled. “I’m not sure I even care all that much anymore.”

  The joke fell short even before the words had finished leaving my mouth. I sobered, searching for something else to fill the painful silence.

  “Well, I hope you get to see Bells soon, buddy. In person, I mean.”

  Johnny nodded. “It’s a definite possibility. Things are gonna be moving pretty fast down here from now on. Freya was serious about retaking Haven, and I think we might even do it without bloodshed, but... Well, we’ll see how things go from here.”

  I nodded, trying my best to look optimistic. “Have fun saving Enochia.”

  He smiled. “I learned from the best, broto.” He paused, concern creasing his brow. “Hey, be careful up there, huh? Don’t make a broto have to come avenging your ass.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said, still hesitant. “And, uh... No hasty decisions up there, either?”

  I nodded again, showing him my empty hands in a gesture of surrender.

  “Good,” he said. “Right then. Duty calls. Talk soon, broto.”

  With Johnny gone and nothing but the churning newsreels and the faintly discernible specter of Alton Parker left to fill my spirits, the void at my center grew unpleasantly fast. After a few more minutes of mindless scrolling, I decided there was nothing more to be gained from the reels, and stood to go try my luck elsewhere.

  Much as I didn’t feel like talking to Alton Parker ever again, Johnny’s talk about being careful up here had reminded me of one critical consideration about being trapped aboard a not-so-large ship with a bloodthirsty raknoth, and I figured I might as well address it before I thought about closing my eyes again.

  I didn’t need to reach out with my extended senses to guess that Alton would be on the flight deck. And there he was. Just standing there, staring off into space, as I’d realized over the past few days he seemed to be perfectly content to do for long hours at a time.

  I guess after a couple thousand years of existence, you probably get pretty good at handling boredom.

  “Come to give me the ol’ stabby-stabby, have you?” Alton asked, not turning from the viewing wall.

  So he had been listening.

  It wasn’t much of a surprise. With how sharp his ears were, I’m not sure he even would’ve had a choice in the matter. But it was good to know anyway, just for future reference.

  “It’s been a while,” I said, deciding to ignore his comment. “Do you need blood, or not?”

  He turned to me with a smile. “Yes, I do.”

  I stared at him, waiting for him to ask, or to suggest some arrangement, or to say anything at all, really. But he was content to just keep smiling, obviously enjoying my uncertainty. It made my decision easier, at least.

  Let the bastard starve, I decided, if he was going to make a game of this.

  I was about to turn back for my room when his smile widened further, taking on that especially punchable look he was so adept at nailing, and he withdrew something from an inside pocket of his charcoal jacket. A dark crimson something.

  “I came prepared,” he said, holding up the blood bag for my inspection. “Though I do appreciate your thoughtful generosity.”

  I hesitated, kind of wanting to walk away now out of principle more than anything.

  My curiosity got the better of me.

  “How much... How long are you stocked for?”

  “I have enough on board to survive for at least se
veral seasons. Possibly for years, depending.”

  I watched him, waiting to see if he’d elaborate.

  “Our needs can change rather drastically depending on several factors,” he explained, apparently done with his games for now, “not the least of which being how... active we are, physically speaking.”

  “Active as in shirking off gunfire and punching through permacrete walls?”

  He tilted his head. “Precisely. As far as I’ve observed, even that changes from individual to individual, but you may rest assured, provided we are largely at rest, I do not need nearly as much blood as you might assume.”

  “Well color me relieved,” I said, not bothering to hide my sarcasm.

  I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to find out he was prepared for a long voyage, all things considered, but it made me uncomfortable all the same. I refrained from asking how much food he had stocked aboard. I didn’t want to know the answer.

  “So what do you think we should do?” I asked instead. Why, I couldn’t have said. I already knew what Alton Parker wanted to do, after all. I guess I was just trying to fill the silence, and maybe make a little sense of the wild fire below that I no longer had even the illusion of any control over.

  “I imagine we wait, and we watch,” Alton said, echoing my own fears.

  I glanced over his shoulder at the viewing wall, dreading the thought of stewing away for who knew how many more days.

  “That,” my raknoth companion added, brandishing the sealed blood bag one last time before sliding it back into his jacket pocket, “or we set a course, and prepare for bloody times ahead.”

  38

  End of Days

  For all the time and breath I’d wasted bad-mouthing civilians—wondering how they could possibly be so vocal about their myriad of worldly complaints when they weren’t even willing to stand up to serve and protect the freedoms they so readily spat upon—I quickly realized something in the days that followed.

  It wasn’t easy, watching the world tick by as a powerless observer.

  I’d thought I’d understood that well enough during my years as a Legion tyro, toeing regulation lines and snapping to orders day in and day out. But that was unmistakably different. Because even at the most degrading, helpless moments of Legion service—even as I’d scrubbed scud from the nooks and crannies, with Docere Mathis barking at me that we didn’t have all day, Silver Spoon... Even then, I’d known that it was supposed to stand for something. That it was all in service to something bigger than any one of us.

  But now, adrift in space with no one but Alton Parker for company, I felt like less than a civilian. I practically felt like an alien to my own damn planet, watching events below unfolding like a storyvid drama. And unfold, they did.

  It started with the news that the High Cleric had been asked by both his Sanctum advisers and the praetors of Divinity to abdicate his position and make way for a less controversial successor.

  It was probably a smart move on the Sanctum’s part, judging by the unparalleled crisis of faith that had been blazing across Enochia ever since the world had gotten a good behind-the-scenes look at their High Cleric strangling the kid who’d come to tell him that his religion was in fact a raknoth construct, birthed as a vessel to keep the planet’s inhabitants under control.

  Not that the truth about Sarentus and the rakul had been widely accepted.

  For the most part, it seemed like almost everyone thought it was all wild bullscud, and those who actually believed any part of it were almost guaranteed to be laughed straight out of any so-called serious debate about the future of the Sanctum. But the fact that no one actually believed our wild claims didn’t seem to have done anything to prevent half of Alpha’s loyal children from looking up for the first time in their lives to question whether the Sanctum was to be so blindly trusted as they’d once thought.

  I admit, I didn’t really understand the rationale, there. But maybe I was too biased by what I’d seen in Alton’s head, or just too far removed from it all up there on my alien spaceship.

  Whatever the case, when it came to the High Cleric, it wasn’t hard to understand why the Sanctum’s decision rankled the man. Because that was the point, really. He was a man—just another prideful man like the rest of us, no matter what the Sanctum had wanted to believe. And I doubted any amount of mental gymnastics would ever allow him to escape the fact that his so-called less controversial successor could only also be thought of as his more worthy better.

  And so the High Cleric rebelled against his advisers, clerics and praetors alike.

  That, at least, I understood—even if I’d never thought to expect it. Then again, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised. It wasn’t like the world was making much sense these days.

  And so I watched, with a disbelief that was quickly becoming so routine as to be mind-numbing, as the Sanctum followed the Legion’s example and splintered into warring factions, with the disgraced High Cleric fleeing—somewhat ironically, I thought—to Humility, where his support remained the strongest. Meanwhile, a new High Cleric took the dais in the White Tower, and promptly proceeded to pretend as if nothing were truly amiss, and that this was all nothing but a fleeting test of the loyalty of Alpha’s faithful.

  It was the first time I’d ever witnessed a High Cleric booed on the dais. And so the War of the Four began, according to the growing inferno of reel commentary.

  It wasn’t pretty. And it didn’t exactly set me at ease, either, knowing that the crux of the Sanctum’s in-fighting had just landed itself directly over Elise’s head in Humility. But given how long the Emmútari remnants had apparently been hiding down there, I trusted she and the Children of Enochia would be safe enough until they decided to make their move and maybe just bump it up to the War of the Five.

  What that move might be, I hadn’t a clue. I wasn’t privy to that sort of intel as a demon-loving blue-blue-red—a status Elise still hadn’t seen fit to shine satisfactory illumination upon in our few hurried conversations over the Lights.

  “They’re frightened because you’re powerful,” she finally snapped, on the day I refused to drop it. “Can we just leave it at that?”

  “Is that what the red means?” I asked immediately, pathologically incapable at that point of simply leaving it at that.

  “No.” She shook her head, sighing. “No. That’s the blue. Raw power, and emotional empathy, and...” She bit her lip, looking more flustered than I was used to seeing. “... And they don’t actually know what the red means, so can we please just stop talking about it? It’s just gonna drive you crazy.”

  I didn’t know how to take that. It was the most tight-lipped Elise had been about anything since we’d met. And it kind of scared the crap out of me.

  Luckily, I had nothing but free time and a constant stream of dark tidings with which to drive myself slowly insane.

  Disgraced High Clerics and worldwide crises aside, I found myself worrying more and more every day that our parting act hadn’t been enough—that, no matter what might happen to the Sanctum, we hadn’t changed a thing for the Shapers of Enochia. Because as tumultuous as things were down there, if there was any one thing the people of Enochia could still collectively agree on, it was that the Demon of Divinity and his raknoth pal needed to be found and put to the noose, right along with the rest of our demonic brethren.

  If anything, the words, “raknoth” and “demon,” seemed to be becoming more interchangeable.

  Rumors of where we’d gone had been rampant since the attack on the White Tower—many of them more accurate than their perpetrators probably knew. Then again, maybe the conclusion that Alton and I had fled into space wasn’t such an impressive one to reach, given that we’d done so in an Alpha-damned spaceship, but Alton assured me that no scanner or scope on Enochia would be capable of spotting us without a hefty dose of sheer, dumb luck.

  I might’ve taken more comfort in that, if it hadn’t been so clear that even the knowledge of my continued
existence was still a source of trouble below. Some days, I wondered if I shouldn’t just say demons to the wind with it, and head back down to rejoin the fight. Others, I wondered if maybe Alton and I shouldn’t have had the decency to at least fake our deaths on the way out. But it was too late now.

  Slowly, though, my name began to fade from the reels, and the conversations turned more and more away from the reactionary mudslinging and toward the serious question of how many threats remained lurking unseen on Enochia, and how the good people were ever to repair the widening rifts within and between the Sanctum and Legion after everything that had happened.

  Glenbark, at least, had a resounding answer for the latter query.

  Day after day, her campaign to cast out Auckus and reclaim her rightful seat as High General had proceeded at a seemingly unstoppable charge. It was the only decidedly good news I could seem to rely on in all of the chaos. Every time I spoke with Johnny, they were gaining more support, winning control of another outpost, another legion. It was only a matter of time, he told me.

  Even so, I could scarcely believe it the day he called me from Annabelle’s bedside in Haven to let me say hi, and to tell me that General Auckus had been marched to the Haven brig in shackles just an hour earlier.

  Glenbark had done it. They all had. Together. And as much good as it did my heart to smile and laugh with Johnny and Annabelle just like old times, it only made me feel that much more alone when the call ended, and I was left staring down at Enochia.

  They’d all done it, together. And here I was, floating in orbit. The world’s most useless spectator. Losing my mind a little more each day. Losing my will, my sense of purpose.

  I telekinetically crushed a lightsteel shipping container I found in storage that day, just to prove to myself that I could.

  All that power, crackling through my fingertips, and here I was, powerless to help anyone.

  “I can’t stay here,” I whispered, rather unexpectedly, like some deeper part of my brain had stepped forward to take control of my mouth and give me a piece of my own mind. I wasn’t even sure what I meant by it. That I couldn’t stay here on the ship? That I needed to return planetside, and take my chances hiding out?