by Orion, W. J.
He’s scared out of his mind.
Yasmine watched and felt with entire being as Luminous—guided by Trey and at least one other presence—lifted up off the ground like a feather in the wind. She felt a grinding, thundering heat and vibration at the back of her head, and when she turned her attention to try and seek out what it was, she instantly became aware of the ten tentacles at the rear of the ship. The delicate dance of each engine nacelle at their tip flooded into her awareness, and she could feel how Trey, Indigo, and Delta adjusted each thruster’s position to lift the ship up in balance.
This thing must be incredibly maneuverable. Like a helicopter on steroids.
After rising up into the air—high enough to surpass the towers and their giant fan blades as long as football fields—he turned the tentacles and their engines to the aft, and the starship shaped like a cephalopod began to knife its way through the dry morning air toward the south-west.
Yasmine looked to the horizon and saw for the first time the curve of the Earth. As Luminous ascended and picked up speed she saw the specks of distant settlements on the parched world below. First came Sturgeon Bay, straddling the old water’s edge. She saw people standing in the streets, cheering their passing. Beyond that, handfuls of miniscule ribbons of smoke crept up into the blue sky from cooking fires or… or worse.
“Trey, are we in danger? Flying like this? Can any other crab ships see us? Or sense us?” she asked. Whoa… I can hear my voice with the ship’s sensors too. Echo echo echo….
“They can see us, if they see us,” Trey replied, and she heard his voice in the same doubled manner. “If they’re looking, that is. But we’re masking our neural signature so we look like a vessel that should be here.”
“Last we flew, there were thirty or forty ships moving about on the planet,” Indigo added. “The sky is large, and hard to watch all of.”
I’m also boosting their concealment efforts, Trader Joe added. It’s unlikely we’ll be spotted here inside the atmosphere. Once in space though… it’ll be harder to obscure our presence.
The ground underneath slipped by, mile after mile. Yasmine lost track of time as she felt more and more of the ship’s presence seep into her awareness. She connected with strange sensations that overlapped with her physical senses. Blood pumped in her veins, and at the same time she felt the water circulation systems, coolant flows, and heat exchangers running. She felt the air on her skin, and above that she felt the wind sliding off the iridescent skin that coated Luminous. She heard the engines, the sky, the world, and under that, she heard her uncle talking to Michelle and to Trader Joe.
They thought she was sleeping; she let them believe that.
A few moments later, the desert gave way to the ruins of the city, and soon after, the wounded spire of Monolith Tower appeared, piercing the sky and welcoming them back.
The city looked so vast the first time I looked on it from the seventeenth floor. Buildings spilling out in every direction. Ruins as far as the eye could see. It’s so small now. We flew over it in seconds. Are all cities like this? I mean… I know there are bigger cities, but this seems so tiny.
In the big picture, all things are small. The universe is so big, after all. Yours is a large city. Do not let the speed Luminous can travel at dissuade you from remembering that.
Why were you here, Trader Joe? Why did you run salvage for Shant? You’re not from Earth; why Earth? Why Shant?
I’ve made it my life’s goal to follow in the wake of the crab’s destruction and do what I can to help the survivors. Earth happened to be the next world I traveled to after the last. I came just as the war broke out. I had a few days prior to open warfare to move amongst your society and learn. I was able to spirit some artifacts to safety. History of yours. A memorial, perhaps. Those things will one day be given back to you, so that you may return them to where they belong. As for why Shant…. I don’t know. My wanderings in the dying Earth the last thirteen years took me there. Good fortune.
Why haven’t you left?
I like humans. You’re easy to be around. You are, as a species, worthy of survival. You put up one of the most effective fights against the crabs ever. One race in galactic history turned them away. Your race failed to win the war against them, but you gave them a black eye and a bloody nose, and that’s far more than most races managed before being eliminated.
Was it your race that turned them away?
Yes.
You could’ve killed them all?
Most, I think. Enough that they would never be a threat to the universe again
Why did you stop? Why didn’t your people follow through?
The crabs went on a rampage that threatened to destroy the home worlds of other races, as well as the Nexus. We had to protect those races. It’s a long story.
I’d like to hear it.
I’ll tell it on the way to the wormhole. I promise.
“I’m going to land us about a half mile from the tower,” Trey said as they slid in just over the rooftops of the outer edge of downtown. “I don’t want to get shot out of the air on our first voyage.”
I wonder what it would feel like to get shot while connected to the ship?
Let’s never find out, Yasmine.
Chapter Twenty-Four
If You’re Gonna Forget Something, Make Sure It Isn’t the Toilet
They spent six hours at the tower. None of the Monoliths back at the skyscraper saw the ship before they departed. The Baron didn’t want to alarm anyone or risk spies revealing their location. Caleb had them moving at a frantic pace, dropping off everything they wouldn’t need and grabbing all the things they might that they could fit aboard Luminous. Spare space in the crab vessel was slim to say the least, but Caleb found ways to fit everything he could in those spaces.
It wasn’t until they were drifting out over the dry lakebed that he admitted his real reasoning for their haste.
“You have any idea how pissed they were about me leaving four good trucks with a different group?” he laughed. “I think two thirds of them demoted me from Baron to horse turds on the spot. Sorry, Yaz, but you might have to carry the load of leadership when we get back.”
“I’ll try to live up to your shining example,” she said.
“We’re going to ascend out of orbit now,” Trey’s speaker announced. “You’ll feel the tilt, then when we hit the layers of atmosphere there’ll be some shaking and a lot of noise. When we enter the vacuum of space, you’ll feel your weight disappear, then you’ll float. That’s how it’ll be until we get onto a ship with a gravity generator.”
“How long will that be?” Michelle asked the crab powering and piloting the ship.
“I can’t say. Days, weeks, months?”
“No longer than our journey to Nexus,” Trader Joe countered. “Ten days at the most, barring unforeseen delays.”
“He’s correct,” the voice of Indigo agreed. “Please hold on as we depart Earth.”
Yasmine did as she was told, grabbing onto a thick tube on the wall near the wooden floor she sat on. The events of the next sixty seconds played out exactly as Trey said they would. First, the floor angled upward at a gentle, then steep incline; then the ship shook; then all the weight she’d ever had on her feet shrank, and Yasmine felt her bottom rise up off the floor. Across the small space she watched as Michelle, Knox, Bernie and her uncle all did the same. Some laughed, some became very queasy, but within a minute, they were all floating, held still only by what they’d grabbed onto.
Trader Joe didn’t float, and she stared at him where he rested on his back, atop the large tube with the blue glow. She started to call him out on the strangeness of his body somehow still having gravity, but he saw her, and waved a finger to discourage her from saying anything.
The crabs can’t see me while I’m inside and can’t tell that the lack of gravity has no effect on… this form. If any of you say something about it out loud, the other crabs might be alarmed due to my presence, and it cou
ld complicate our journey, the alien telepath said to the group. I will have to figure out how to fake weightlessness.
“What the holy hell,” Michelle said with eyes pinned wide open. “We’re floating, and he’s-”
“Shhh,” Yasmine said, pointing at Trader Joe. “It’s just space, keep quiet about it and stay calm,” she added, winking at her new friend. She mouthed, don’t say anything.
Michelle nodded, but still seemed freaked out.
“Are we doing okay?” Trey asked them.
“Yeah, it’s weird, but we’ll manage,” her uncle answered. “Where do we go to the bathroom?”
“I, uh… knew I forgot something,” Trey said. “I’ll skip doing a spin around your moon then. Get you to a toilet a smidge faster. Not like this boat has any windows anyway.”
“And you people wonder why I always ask if you’ve gone to the bathroom before we go anywhere,” her uncle said.
Trader Joe laughed. Only Trader Joe.
Six hours into their silent voyage into deep space, the toilet issue was… solved.
No one was happy about the solution, but the smell wouldn’t be horrible. Still bad, but not horrible.
Falling asleep turned into a real problem for Yasmine. She hadn’t slept in such close proximity to so many people... ever, and then the sensation of zero gravity didn’t help. Farts, snoring, burping, Bernie’s habit of talking in his sleep, and the constant feeling of having her arms drift up into the air made her crazy. She succumbed to exhaustion after vowing to find a solution the next time she needed to sleep.
She awoke first and rolled over underneath the thick rope she’d tied herself down with.
Hello, Trader Joe said from his comfy, cozy home with gravity across the room. I trust you slept as well as you could.
It sucked. How do people sleep like this?
Most ships designed for non-aquatic races have artificial gravity, or dedicated sleeping compartments for zero-G. Comfortable restraints, that kind of thing. When we get aboard a different vessel, I’m sure the accommodations will be far more suitable.
Why are you not floating?
The laws of physics don’t always apply to my people.
Say what? Yasmine thought. I see you; I’ve seen you move things. I’ve touched you; you are real. The laws of physics sure do seem to apply to you.
Ha, you say I’m real, but what is real? Are memories real?
Um… they were when they happened.
But you can’t touch them, and they cannot interact with the real world. They are no more, yet they have a weight that seems very real to the people who remember then. Memories then, are still just as real, yes, but they skirt the laws of physics?
Are you saying you’re a ghost?
That’s a fantastic way to describe my people, but it isn’t entirely accurate. We are… alive, and active, yet not physical in the way a being made of material matter is. We are, for lack of human words able to better describe us… we are sentient energy and ideas, able to use our presence to interact with the material world. You could call us telepaths, telekinetics, pyrokinetics in some cases, and more.
So… why are you wearing clothes? How are you even able to wear clothes? Why aren’t you floating again? I’m so confused.
Trader Joe glanced at the other sleeping people in the room then sat up to face Yasmine. He tugged down the high collar of his tight jacket until he reached the edge of the fabric he wrapped his face with. With his other hand, he pulled the fabric up, revealing a smooth, dark surface that didn’t look like skin at all.
Is that… a seam? In your skin?
I have animated an old store mannequin. I use it to interact with the physical world in a way that’s less demanding on me, and a lot less confusing and unpleasant for the humans of Earth. As far as the floating issue is concerned, my raw energy doesn’t experience gravity and has a bit of an anchor in space that keeps this body from moving.
Isn’t it stiff? No mannequin moves like you can. Nor can they bear weight like you. They’d fall apart. I should know, I knocked more than my fair share of mannequins over. Shouldn’t your mannequin be floating, anyway?
My telekinetic abilities keep it whole and do the bulk of the lifting. As far as flexibility goes, I have done some work on the joints to make them more flexible. The dummy exists for shape. Like paper-mache, if you will.
So you’re not real? But you’re real? This whole time I’ve been talking to nothing?
That’s hurtful. I’m definitely something. I am someone. I am a consciousness with personality. I have will and can affect reality as you know it.
I wasn’t trying to be a jerk about it.
I know, he said. Besides, my mother said I’m handsome, and that has to count for something.
They shared a quiet laugh.
So… what are you, exactly? What do you call yourselves? What’s the story here? She asked him.
Ah, and here we are: at the root of it all. This is a good time, I suppose. Allow me to reintroduce myself, more or less, and tell you about a few hundred years of galactic history. I will, of course, paraphrase, because we don’t have time for a thousand years of this galaxy’s drama.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Trader Joe Spills the Beans
I am a Beru’dawn, and my original name doesn’t matter. It’s an idea–and an experience–that couldn’t be translated into any language with any sense of expeditiousness. My human identity is Trader Joe, a name I chose as for several reasons, none of which are important anymore. I have been alive for the human equivalent of three hundred years. By my race’s standards, I am middle aged, similar to your uncle.
The Beru’dawn originate from a nebulous cluster of stars and gas very far from here. We do not live on planets, or moons, or celestial bodies of any kind. We exist in the gases and voids of space, roaming about as we like. We are peaceful, with no natural predators. We subsist by absorbing radiation and subtle energies from the universe. If we chose not to interact with other races, most other races wouldn’t know we even existed.
But when the Galon passed through our area of space, we were fascinated by the idea of other life, especially intelligent life, and we initiated our first contact. Ah, yes, the Galon. Fascinating creatures. The Galon are radially symmetrical creatures with three facings. Like a pyramid crossed with a starfish, but stretched out to be twelve feet tall and with arms and eyes on each facet. I guess you could say they are like pyramids with feet. They are diligent, wondrous creatures who sought to travel the galaxy and map it. They had already met another race, called the Irib’dirari.
The Irib hail from a system of planets filled with gas giants that are remarkably homogenous in atmospheric composition. They spread out from their home world to inhabit the other gas giants in ships they made out of ice that formed in their atmospheres, if you can imagine that. Physically the Irib are large spheres covered in manipulatory appendages, each able to see, hear, and think on a basic level. They are like… a child’s toy you have on Earth–a levitating Koosh ball. You remember those, yes? Well, the Irib are no toy. They are brilliant, able to think and calculate at a rate that leaves most other living creatures in the dust. They make fantastic pilots and navigators.
When our races met, we decided that a journey of the cosmos was a destiny that life should fulfill. Sentience had a duty to experience all the universe had to offer, and to bring peace and prosperity where it could. With the physical abilities of the Galon, the calculatory power of the Irib, and the cosmic knowledge of my Beru’dawn, we created the first stable wormhole. The celebrations lasted for years.
Anchored between the Irib home world and the Galon home world, it reduced a trip that originally took three years to make down to six weeks. Building our second wormhole took nearly a century after that but reduced a hundred year voyage to five weeks. So on and so on, our three races continued, encountering new life and building wormholes near to them to connect all our races. The exchange of sciences, mathematics, and mor
e increased all of our quality of lives and brought prosperity as we’d wished. Interstellar commerce had begun.
But, as is the way of many sentient species, conflict arose. Petty squabbles over territory or rare minerals and gasses cropped up, and the whole… what’s the expression…? The house of cards, it all threatened to come down. So, we three original races—the Triumvirate, we had come to be called—allied together for all time on a special construction: the Nexus.
We needed a central hub for all of our wormholes. You see, each anchor, each portal entrance, could only lead to the companion gate it was linked to. We hadn’t the technology to create gates that could connect to any location, and still don’t. Therefore, if someone wanted to travel from the Irib home world to the Perenall System, they would jump through six gates. This was a waste of not only time, as the gates were opened and closed, but more importantly, a waste of energy. And, as you’ll hear time and again with the Triumvirate, the energy required to operate the gates is… enormous. We had to streamline travel. Less jumps. We also had to centralize wormhole security. We couldn’t risk warfare at the portals and couldn’t travel constantly to assure their security.
The Nexus brings together twelve wormholes in one place; a space station the size of a moon, we built. When I say we, I mean mostly the Galon, but you understand my meaning. Technologically managed by the Irib’dirari and socially managed by my telepathic Beru’dawn, the Nexus ushered in a great period of peace. You see, we then urged all species that sought to use our wormholes to agree to binding arbitration in our neutral court aboard the Nexus. Want to travel the stars? Be peaceful and seek the greater good, or take the very long route. The route that made your species irrelevant.
We were exploring a new region of space, looking for a home to build the thirteenth wormhole anchor, when we encountered the region of space the crabs called home. They had… ravaged it. Entire solar systems reduced to asteroids and dried husks. Trey can explain the mistakes of his people better than I, but from the Triumvirate’s perspective, we had met an aggressive species that matched our collective power: a species that had the martial capability to wage war against all other species at the same time.