by P. K. Lentz
After a gracefully arcing approach, the shuttle entered the faintly yellow clouds of Tabit-1’s atmosphere.
“Sun Mother Tabiti, we thank you,” the former street-preacher Phoris uttered in formal tones. The other Dawners present, Baako and Trisma, said nothing but merely watched the swirling clouds break open to reveal a windswept sea stretching out to a gently curved horizon. Zhi was silent, too, observing a set of displays in front of her.
Arixa wasn’t immune to having her breath taken by this first glimpse of an alien world. Fortunately, awe didn’t cause her imprinted abilities to suffer any. Her mind and hands continued to do what was required for a smooth flight even as she gaped at the white-capped waves under a yellow sky.
Minutes later, the island which was their destination came into sight as a black mass on the ocean. Arixa caused the shuttle to descend toward it, revealing more detail: a rocky coast on which white waves broke, two rough mountain chains that appeared small from above but surely were more daunting to travelers on foot, great patches of black that didn’t look like any forest Arixa knew, but were exactly that.
And then there were patches where dark structures with unnatural edges—some too straight, others too jagged—grew from the ground. These, according to Zhi, were the ancient ruins of Tabitan cities.
But it was not mountains or forests or ruins which set the Scythian heart beating. That was the plains, and Tabiti-1 had them in abundance. In the shadows of the mountains and filling the many gaps between the black forests were huge, flat swaths of yellow-green.
Moving over them, if one looked closely, clusters of dark, moving shapes—herds of alien beasts—could be seen. Gentle ones, if Zhi’s data proved accurate. The same data, old as it was, suggested the fiercest life on Tabit-1 was to be found in its seas.
With an ease that felt simultaneously alien and natural, Arixa set the shuttle down in the middle of one of the largest of the yellow-green plains. The instant the craft was still, she unbuckled and leaped from her station, reaching the exit hatch before it had begun to open. When it did, she pushed right up against the widening gap and stepped out as soon as her body would fit.
Her boot hit the soft ground of the plain. She inhaled the air of another world and found it sweet and damp and fragrant, everything shipboard air was not.
It was hot on Tabit-1, like standing near a campfire in summer.
Arixa put her second foot down and could not keep from smiling, even though there were many reasons not to. Reasons like Ivar. Leimya. Tomiris. Matas. Matas’s son Plin, who didn’t know his father was dead.
Assuming Plin yet lived. Assuming any of them had survived being left behind on Nemoora.
This moment, with the Dawn shattered and Jirmaken ships possibly en route to Earth to inflict unimaginable reprisals, should not be a happy one.
But with the soil of another world under her feet, she spared a smile, and even a small laugh.
While Phoris, Baako and Trisma climbed out behind her, Arixa tugged off her boots and planted bare feet on the soft, strange ground. These plains were blanketed not with grass but something more like a thick moss from which sprouted knee-high, feather-like reeds. That she had seen nothing like it before only stood to reason. Every other sight she beheld out here was a first.
Right away she noticed a subtle difference in her body’s weight on Tabit-1 compared to both shipboard and her flesh’s memory of Earth. She felt heavier on her feet here, if just slightly.
Crouching, she ran fingers and palms over everything in reach. A smile lingered on her lips until the weight of many burdens returned, erasing it. The others smiled and acted similarly, apart from Zhi, for whom far fewer things presumably were firsts. That, and she wasn’t prone to smiling.
Predictably, Phoris shouted praise to Tabiti and suggested a sacrifice be made to her as soon as possible. The Dawn had sacrificed plenty, Arixa thought, but didn’t say, for she knew that was not the preacher’s meaning.
“We will,” she said.
“It’s magnificent,” Trisma observed. “I don’t want to leave.”
“This is not a home,” Zhi was swift to point out. “This planet belongs to its inhabitants. We are here to make minimal and temporary use of it.”
“We understand,” Arixa said. “We’re nomads. No one’s staying.”
“Except the dead,” Trisma said.
“Except the dead,” Arixa agreed grimly.
Several holds of the Sagaris were packed with the Dawn’s fallen. Burying them was to be their first priority on Tabit-1. This plain would serve as well as any place for the graves.
“Thank you for bringing us here,” Arixa said to Zhi. “We plan to respect the natives.”
Lately Arixa had adopted a conciliatory attitude toward Zhi in an effort to smooth past and present differences between them. Zhi had unilaterally aborted Arixa’s planned attack on the Jir warp tether, an act of deception for which Arixa had nearly murdered her.
More recently, at Br’niss, they had clashed over priorities—specifically, whether or not the eighty thousand or so human and alien Sleepers aboard the Sagaris should be put at risk to rescue the members of Ivar’s expedition to Nemoora.
Zhi had gotten her way, and the Sagaris had fled, leaving Ivar and the others. In fairness, by the end, the only other option had been death at the center of a gas giant.
It was Trisma who often reminded Arixa that they had great need of Zhi’s skills. For now.
Arixa agreed, but it was more than skills that gave Zhi value. However often Arixa disagreed with Zhi, and as impossible as it was to admit in heated moments, in retrospect it was for the best that someone like Zhi was around to prevent a simple steppe-rider from making suicidal choices on behalf of everyone in her vicinity.
The friction between the two of them was undeniable, but Arixa sensed the Dawn was better off for Zhi’s presence. A leader such as Arixa aspired to be—the kind who was more than just Captain of a war-band—needed true advisers, not just sycophantic ones who said whatever won them favor.
It was for that purpose that Arixa had created the Dawn Council, the bulk of whose members presently stood with her on the surface of Tabit-1. She had told Zhi that the Council would be responsible for important decisions, but Zhi was smart and likely knew the truth: Arixa intended to get her way much more often than not.
Zhi was good to have around, but also a pain to have around.
“We’ll unload the tools and start digging,” Arixa said to the Dawners. Then: “Zhi?”
Zhi didn’t respond. She was not entirely immune to wonders. Right now she stood savoring the warm, humid wind of Tabit-1 while gazing tranquilly at the peaks on the horizon. Arixa used the delay to do the same.
“I will conceal the Sagaris on the second-largest moon,” Zhi finally said on returning her attention to the humans present.
“Please send Vaspa down with the rest of the Dawn. And the bodies,” Arixa said. Only half-joking, she asked, “You wouldn’t leave us here, would you?”
Zhi answered soberly, “If I did, I wouldn’t warn you first.”
Arixa forced a smile, outwardly dismissing the idea that Zhi would abandon them. In truth, she didn’t discount the possibility. But now was the time for some trust. She wasn’t about to force any of the Dawn to miss the funeral, nor could a reasonable Captain justify skipping it herself. Even if she posted a trusted few on the bridge of the Sagaris to watch over Zhi, that likely would not stop her, and only lead to the Dawn being splintered once more when and if Zhi stole the ship. Better that they remain as one.
If Fizzbik kept his stated intention to visit the surface in the next trip, then at least they might not lose him, too, if the worst did happen.
Over the next several minutes, they unloaded the equipment and supplies brought down from the Sagaris, primarily shovels and other digging implements along with food and water. Zhi said there were easier ways to dig holes, but it was fitting that the Dawn perform this labor in the traditional way.
Once Vaspa brought the others down, the work would go quickly.
There were only thirty-four left of the Dawn’s three hundred now, not counting those who were absent, their welfare uncertain.
“Look!” Phoris raced up to Arixa and directed her attention into the distance, where a collection of dark, indistinct shapes moved over the yellow-green plain. “If we can catch a few of those beasts, we’ll have our sacrifice!”
Arixa glanced back at the shuttle, where Zhi hung in the open hatch, looking in their direction. There was no doubt she’d heard.
“Brother Phoris,” Arixa said earnestly, “I understand the need. But we don’t belong on this land. We’ll find ways to pay tribute without slaughtering what isn’t ours. However...” She allowed herself a half-smile. “I don’t think it would count as a crime if we tried to ride them.”
Zhi scoffed and boarded the shuttle.
Phoris began, “Arixa, I implore you to—”
“You heard her, yellow-robe,” Trisma interrupted. She had spoken such on Arixa’s behalf rather often of late. That Arixa did nothing to prevent it had taught Dawners to listen. Accordingly, Phoris fell silent.
The shuttle lifted off and vanished into Tabiti-1’s thick, yellowish cloud cover, leaving the only remaining Gorosians on the planet to start digging holes in which to bury their dead brothers and sisters.
The honest, dirty work felt good. It had been an age since Arixa, or any who had left Earth with her, had performed so simple a task as digging. It was one of many things it would never occur to a person to miss until it was gone. Later, when the dead were buried, the living were sure to do a dozen other simple things that weren’t possible in the metal warrens of a starship.
Of course, the greatest simple pleasure of all was just to have sky overhead.
The soft ground cover and the drab, clay-like soil underneath yielded to their tools without too much difficulty. That was fortunate given the stifling heat. Sweat quickly poured from every body, causing the bulk of clothing to be shed. The temptation was great to immediately seek the shore and engage in yet another long-lost pleasure, that of bathing in water instead of jelly.
But the time for that would come after duty was done.
From time to time they looked skyward for sign of Vaspa arriving in a lander packed with the living and dead remains of the war band. Before he came, and with just a fraction of the necessary soil excavated, the heat and exertion had three of the four diggers laying flat on their backs on the mossy ground.
Only Shadow-man had not yet succumbed. “This feels like a chill day in my land!” Baako said. Hopefully he joked, but Arixa had been to Baako’s land once, and there was a similarity.
But even Baako didn’t last. Eventually, he staked his shovel in the soil, joined Arixa and asked directly, “How will we return to Br’niss? Assuming that remains the plan.”
“Of course it is,” Trisma answered on Arixa’s behalf, correctly.
“The goddess brought us here,” Arixa answered. “She’ll provide for that.”
“In my experience,” Baako said, “the gods are just as likely to steal away as to provide. Nor do they always act swiftly.”
“A sacrifice might prove persuasive,” Phoris mused.
“Give it up,” Trisma told him.
“If Tabiti doesn’t provide...” As Arixa spoke, she caught sight of a distant, dark shape piercing the cloud cover—Vaspa’s lander. “Or if she isn’t swift enough... then I have a plan or two in mind. But I’ll keep them to myself for now. First we put our dead to rest and give the goddess her chance.”
Nine
“It’s a dark day when the dead outnumber their mourners,” Arixa addressed the assembled crowd of thirty-eight humans and one dog-like Gaboon.
Phoris had already performed the rituals—substituting synthesized food for animal sacrifices—and spoken solemnly on matters of death and gods. Now it was Arixa’s turn.
“So it is today,” she said, “as we lay two hundred and nineteen brothers and sisters under this alien plain. They can’t be buried in their homeland, but they died no less in its defense. This first soil we have stood upon since leaving Scythia is a fitting spot. The Sun Mother brought us here, and her light will lead the shades of the dead to where they must go.
“She will guide us living, too, as we seek to honor our dead by finishing the task of saving Scythia from annihilation by false gods. I set the Dawn that task and bear responsibility for the hardship it brings. Some of these dead rose against me over my decision. They are forgiven. Some of you who still live also rose against me. You too are forgiven. If we cannot remain united, then we may as well bury ourselves here beside our brethren.
“There’s no denying the Dawn is damaged. It is scattered. But it is not broken. The Dawn lives and will rise again brighter than before. Stay by me. Fight with me, as you ever have. Put your trust in me. That may mean that you, like those we honor today, wind up under an alien plain. But like them, you will not have died in vain. You are lucky enough to be part of something far larger than any warrior of Scythia could have dreamed. You have seen wonders that few, if any, born of Earth have seen.
“I know that the greatest wonder you could see at this moment is the plains of Scythia. I can’t promise you will ever see them again. But when the time comes, when other victories have been won, or if too many are lost... then I will try to lead us home. Some of you may choose to stay there. I don’t think I will. Now that I have witnessed what lies beyond, to merely range the steppe would seem like settling to a quiet life.
“But that’s a future concern,” Arixa concluded. “Until then, we’re nomads in our blood, you and I. This place will do as home for now—until it doesn’t. It’s a better one than we’ve had on that ship. We’re alive and we’re free. So let us live, and celebrate the lives of those we lost. Thanks to Ivar and the brave ones left behind—temporarily—at Nemoora, we have spirits to drink and space-cannabis. Nectar, I suppose we’re calling it. Most of you tried it on the journey here and know that a drop or two is enough to let you see the dead. More than that, and you may well wish you were one of them.”
A mild chuckle passed over the crowd, showing that her words had fallen well, or at least not badly. Through all the nightmares, through darkness and decimation, through mutiny and punishment, her Dawn remained hers.
* * *
In Scythia, the fallen would have been entombed inside a kurgan, a great heap of earth meant to mark the spot where the honored dead lay. As long as Scythia belonged to Scythians, it was known that no passerby would dare to plunder or desecrate the grave.
Here, on Tabit-1, they could be certain of no such thing, and so Arixa had ordered the eight shared graves to remain flat and unmarked, as was the custom when there was no choice but to inter the slain in foreign ground. The Dawn had never done it, and few war bands ever did, but the practice was called for now if ever it was.
Around the freshly covered oval pits of disturbed soil and cold corpses, the Dawn settled onto alien moss, partook of the throat-burning Grel’s Eye that Ivar had done so brilliantly to obtain on Nemoora, and they shared stories of the dead. Once drunk, they played games of a kind that were dangerous to play when drunk, games involving blades and arrows. But that only made them more enjoyable, particularly to observers.
Tempting as it was to lose herself, Arixa drank only sparingly from one of the spill-proof flasks they used shipboard, instead taking satisfaction in seeing others enjoy themselves.
They weren’t safe here. They weren’t safe anywhere, and weren’t likely to be for a long time to come. At any instant, a comm could erupt in Arixa’s ear warning of incoming attack. Or there might be no warning at all, with enemy ships simply bursting out of the clouds with weapons blazing.
She couldn’t afford the luxury of feeling safe, but she was pleased to let her band do so. She had to. If the Dawn was not to shatter, then its survivors needed to live, not just stay alive. They needed to be under a sky again even if
that sky hid untold dangers. Metal boxes could protect, but Scythians were not born to live in metal boxes.
The games died down as more of the Dawn squeezed drops of Nectar onto their tongues and came to see, taste, hear and feel their surroundings in strange ways. Arixa had tried the Nectar once, on Sagaris during the voyage here—if they were safe one place, it was in the Blue—and found its effects to be very different from Earth-grown cannabis. People and objects took on new forms, sounds were distorted, colors bled and transformed and inanimate items became animate. Thoughts and emotions changed dramatically, too. Nectar caused reality itself, or one’s perception of it, to warp in ways that could be either pleasant or alarming.
For Arixa, it had been mostly the latter. It wasn’t so much the bulkheads rippling like fields of grass, or the air tasting like apples, or Trisma’s animal tattoos coming to life that had soured her on Nectar. It was feeling scared. Where most seemed to spend their hours under the substance’s influence in a sort of happy delirium that was not too far removed, to an outside observer, from what one felt in a cannabis lodge, Arixa had spent much of her time on Nectar stricken by sadness and despair.
Like the gossamer bubbles she had seen rising from Vaspa’s hair, suspicions and anxieties that she easily suppressed under normal circumstances rose up and burst inside of her while on the Nectar. It was not an experience that she cared to repeat. Which was a shame, considering how much vibrant color it imparted to the lifeless Blue during otherwise dull stretches of subverse travel.
After the funerals, as the yellow glow of the clouds darkened to amber with the setting of the star named Tabit, Arixa watched her half-drunk and half-high war band variously speak earnest nonsense to each other; perform tricks they were ill-equipped to perform even when sober; chase each other across the plain like children; butcher both the lyrics and the tunes of camp songs; and sway gently back and forth staring at the mountains while waggling fingers in front of glassy eyes.
The two Eraínn, Morgana and Dearg, members of Bowyn’s crew, started the funerary festivities sitting apart from the rest. But once drunk, they let themselves be drawn in. Imprinting meant that all the Dawners by now were able to communicate with the Eraínn in Nexus-G, even if intoxication made them favor their native Scythian. After an hour or two, most of what was said made little sense in any language, rendering such barriers a non-issue.