by Erica Rue
“None of this should have happened. You’re just kids.”
“We’re more than that now. I know you don’t want to hear this, but I’ve been thinking a lot about home now that we’ve got this colonizer. We can make it back to our world, the reality we left when we ended up here, but what if it’s changed just as much as we have? I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something bad coming on the horizon. The Vens have been getting bolder, we knew that before we left. Then we were attacked inside the Bubble. War is coming, and we won’t be the only ones affected by it.”
“I hope you’re wrong,” he said.
“You know I’m right,” she replied. “I’ve reviewed the old data we have on the Vens. We haven’t looked at the datacore results yet, but I think we’re going to find something.”
“You should be resting, not reading about the Vens.”
“Research keeps my mind occupied,” she said softly, “and distracts me from the pain.”
Oberon put his head in his hands and sobbed. She fought another round of tears.
It was hard to see her idol become a mere human being, but Dione tried to take heart. Professor Oberon was just a man, and if he was just a man, one day she could become like him. Intelligent, thoughtful, inspirational, all while still succumbing to human weakness. Oberon was a flawed human being, just like she was. That didn’t make him any less worthy of her respect.
41. BEL
“Sam’s dead,” Zane told them. They were in the colonizer’s med bay where Dione would stay for a few more days.
Bel reached out to hold his hand. She could hear the distress in his voice, even if the others couldn’t.
“Technically, she was already dead,” Lithia replied. Bel glared at her, and she lowered her gaze. “Sorry, Zane, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“She did a lot around here,” he said. “Oberon and I were able to integrate a lot of the Calypso’s hardware into the base to improve the old AI, but it won’t be the same.”
Bel examined Zane’s face, his red eyes and tightly pressed lips, and she gave his hand a squeeze. I love you, she thought. I’m here for you.
“She went through hell to protect these colonists, and she had a last wish. She wanted us to bury her,” he said.
The room was silent for a few moments.
“Where?” Bel asked.
“There’s a spot in the mountains where she liked to watch the sunset. Before she…” He trailed off, apparently uncertain how to finish the sentence. “She gave me the coordinates.”
Oberon had something to add. “She gave me a petition to file that will give Kepos its own sovereignty. If the Alliance extends the Bubble to include this planet, the corporation that built this place won’t be able to take it back. She already sent off a copy, but no one will get it for a very long time. That’s why I’ll file it as soon as we return to Lavinian.”
“Creating the documents to give Kepos control over its own destiny were Sam’s last act,” Zane said.
Bel couldn’t help feeling that Sam had overlooked something as she prepared for her death.
“Even with the Vens gone, Kepos still isn’t safe,” Bel said.
“We’ll do our best. They might want some company after the isolation, but with the right filings, it will be on their terms,” Oberon said.
Dione scanned the documents. “They’ll have to set up a central government,” she said.
“I’ve already approached Ficarans and Aratians, and they’re taking care of that requirement with a co-council,” Oberon said.
Bel was glad they were talking about the legal implications, but she had other, more tangible concerns.
“That’s not what I meant,” she said. “The island. Dione, you saw for yourself how dangerous it is. Some of those species have already made their way here to the mainland. Now that they’ve got the Flyers and they know what’s over there, the risk is even greater.”
“I’ve spoken with Moira,” Oberon said. “She’s going to work with both sides to develop precautions. She’s also putting together a task force to root out the angler worms that have invaded.”
Bel bit her lower lip. “I think I’ll join the task force. We’ve got months before we leave, anyway.”
Oberon nodded at her. “I’m sure she’d appreciate the help.”
If Bel had her way, she’d blow up the whole island. She’d float that suggestion to Moira, she thought. Enough flaminaria would incinerate everything there. Even the dragons couldn’t survive if the whole island burned. She might not get to decide what happened to Jameson’s nightmare creations, but she would leave Kepos with as much information as she could, in case the island creatures became a threat.
***
Is this how you mourn a god? Bel wondered.
She had never been religious. She believed what she could prove, not what inspired her, but she closed her eyes anyway and wished peace for Sam’s soul. When Bel died, she would decompose and live on only in the sense that the conservation of matter implied. She would not be destroyed, but changed in form. The electrical impulses that made her who she was would cease, and her sense of self would disappear.
She thought it was beautiful, and that Sam would have found it beautiful, too.
Though the Aratians had the capacity to cremate remains, Sam had requested burial. It was unusual on the core planets, but out on the Rim, it was common. Bel had attended a few burials.
The Ficarans had constructed a coffin and prepared a grave near the base itself. Almost every able Ficaran attended the service. Some of the older folks who had met Sam in person said a few kind words. Then, they sang. The music echoed through the mountains, and Bel felt awe at Sam’s sacrifice and the way these people were honoring her. After the coffin had been buried, a few Ficarans came forward with young plants, sporting plump red buds that promised to bloom into magnificent, crimson blooms.
“It’s a hybrid she created,” Zane said, stepping into place next to Bel. “I found references to it back when I was up on the space station. She thought it was the best thing she’d ever engineered.”
“Why? Is it medicinal? Edible?” Lithia asked.
“Purely aesthetic. Art for art’s sake, in a way.”
“Hmm. She never struck me as sentimental,” Bel said.
“I think it was her way of coping with the inevitable. When she made the choice to merge her consciousness with Jameson’s AI, she walled that part of herself off. In the past few days, as she lost control, I think those walls started coming down. Like asking for a burial. She finished the translation, though.”
Bel hugged Zane, pressing her cheek hard against his chest. The translation. She had risked a lot to get that datacore. It had been stupid. Now that it was translated, she felt a strange sensation in her stomach. Guilt. Guilt that she had nearly died obtaining the information, and guilt that the translation had hastened Sam’s death. What if the datacore turned out to be worthless?
“She sacrificed a lot so we could read what’s on the datacore,” Bel said. “We owe it to Sam to make the most of that information. Even if my hypothesis is wrong and the Vens don’t have a predator, there’s got to be something on there we can use.”
“I used to be afraid that there wasn’t.” Zane rested his chin atop her head, holding her even tighter. “Now I’m more afraid of what happens if you’re right.”
42. DIONE
Lithia was cackling hysterically. “‘Shuckers’? Are you kidding me?”
Dione grinned. It was good to hear Lithia laugh like that. “It makes sense, though. If your body was a hard exoskeleton, a Shucker would be pretty scary.”
Everyone had come to the medical bay, where she would be trapped for a few more days, to discuss what Sam had translated from the datacore. Dione told herself the pain was getting better, but she wasn’t sure if that was because it was true or because she wanted to believe it was true.
“And what are we gonna do when we find these Shuckers?” Lithia asked.
&nb
sp; Bel rolled her eyes, but Zane laughed.
Even Oberon cracked a smiled. “The closest transliteration we have for their name is Sugians. Why don’t we use that for now?”
“The rhyming options for that one aren’t as good, but I’ll roll with it,” Lithia conceded. Dione studied her best friend closely, but the vulnerability she had displayed during their reunion was gone.
When the five of them began to pore over Sam’s translation, they quickly discovered that Bel’s hypothesis was right. Unfortunately, this meant that the laughter and smiles that had accompanied the start of this process soon evaporated.
There was no running from it anymore.
“The Vens have a predator,” Dione said. “Everything we’ve observed about them, their behavior, tactics, all of it has a greater context that we’ve just discovered.”
Oberon sighed. “You need to see this.”
“Is it a picture of a Sugian?” Dione asked.
“No, not exactly.” He cast it to the main screen.
Dione gagged, but Bel tilted her head and studied the image for a while before finally saying, “Huh, that’s interesting.”
“Is that a Ven… husk?” Zane queried.
“Looks like it to me,” Lithia replied. “Is that what these Shuckers do? Sorry, Sugians?”
“Yes,” Bel said.
“How does that work?” Lithia asked.
“They inject them with a poison that liquefies their insides, then they suck them out,” Bel replied.
“Tasty,” Lithia commented. “Bet those redundant systems the Vens have developed aren’t very useful when they’re all liquefied.”
Dione called up a new picture. At the sight of the predator, all levity was sucked from the room like liquefied Ven viscera.
In general shape, it reminded her of a large jungle cat, but that’s where the similarities ended. The creature was covered in a pale, thick skin. Its eyes were green with slits for pupils. It did not have lips; instead, its mouth was covered by thick flaps of skin. Another image showed those skin flaps open and extend to reveal a sharp bill.
“It must use the beak to pry open the Vens’ back plates,” Bel said. “Find a better picture of that,” she said, pointing to a red blip on the image.
Dione obliged. She’d been through these before. She knew what Bel was looking for.
“Gross. Is that—?” Zane didn’t finish the question.
“How they eat their Ven smoothie?” Lithia offered. Despite the joke, her nose was wrinkled in disgust.
“There are some images that have them walking upright on two legs, but they seem to prefer being on all four,” Dione said.
“We’ve got a lot of information to go through before we get a picture of what’s been going on with the Vens and these Sugians. Let’s get to work,” Oberon said.
He assigned them each a chunk of reading, and for a moment, Dione felt like she was back at StellAcademy. The nature of the reading quickly brought her back to reality.
Before she realized it, the time came for each to share what they’d discovered.
“I’ve been looking at loss reports, as in Vens lost to the Sugians. These numbers, though,” Dione said, looking up. “They can’t be casualties. These numbers are in the high billions. Do you think it could be your translation program, Zane?”
“It’s possible,” he said, “but it’s also possible the numbers are right.”
Dione blushed. She always seemed to say the wrong thing around him. “I didn’t mean it like that. Your program really is incredible, I just—”
“I know what you meant.” Zane nodded, and Dione felt relieved. “It’s a valid concern. One wrong bracket or comma, and the whole thing goes to pieces. But what if it’s right?”
“We don’t know how the Vens reproduce,” Bel said.
“The citadel ships are estimated to hold tens of thousands of Vens, not millions or billions. Even if our estimates are off, they can’t be that wrong,” Lithia said.
Dione frowned. “How long has this war been going on?”
“Hang on,” Bel said. She tapped away furiously on her tablet, until finally casting what she’d found on the main screen. “The Invader belonged to one of the citadel ships, and this shows its movements over the last century. Lithia, can you overlay the Sugians’ positions you were talking about?”
Dione saw it now. A game of cat and mouse, where the Ven citadel ship was the mouse.
“There’s more,” Zane said. With a few taps of his fingers, he had increased the size of the map. “This is the flight path for the last millenium.”
Lithia gaped. “They’ve been at this for a thousand years.”
“Longer,” he said. “There’s more data here, but I think you get the point.”
“I’ve got the last known positions of the Sugians,” Lithia said. A dozen or so red dots appeared on the screen. “They’re close. Like, really close. Months out from the Bubble if I’m reading the Ven data right.”
Dione tried to imagine what it would be like to be in constant flight. The Vens had arrived at her own corner of the galaxy decades ahead of these predators, but what was a decade in the life of a Ven? What was a decade in the face of millennia of running?
“Does the Alliance have this information?” she asked. ‘I mean, our Alliance— the one with the capital A.”
“I’m sure they do,” Bel said. “They’ve captured a few Ven ships. They’ve had the same access to a datacore that we have, and they’ve got linguists and the most sophisticated translation tech around. They almost definitely have this information.”
“I got into the Alliance database using Dione’s dad’s access, and I found some Ven data, but nothing like all of this,” Zane said.
“Maybe her dad doesn’t have the clearance,” Lithia offered.
Dione nodded slowly. “He’s pretty high up. If he doesn’t know, it must be a small group at the very top controlling this info.”
“About what I’d expect from the Alliance,” Bel grumbled.
“We have the data now,” Zane said. “We can do whatever we want with it.”
“Like induce mass panic?” Dione asked. She and Zane might have made a lot of headway since he ruined her plants, but she wasn’t ready to go full conspiracy theorist just yet. “We don’t have any proof that the Alliance has some sinister plan. If they know about the Sugians, they must have a good reason for keeping it quiet.”
Zane and Bel exchanged a look. Dione glanced toward Lithia and Oberon for support, but they remained silent.
Fine. That was their choice. But without good reason, she wasn’t going to abandon faith in the government or her father.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Oberon said. “First, we have to get that colonizer back into shape. The ship is so large, and even though it’s in working order, I’m creating a list of improvements, upgrades, and fixes to implement before we leave. It has standard comms, so we still can’t get a timely message out to anyone.”
“How long will it take?”
“A couple of months,” he replied.
Dione glanced at Lithia, who did her best to hide her disappointment.
“We can’t go any sooner?” Dione asked.
“I want to make sure everything is safe before we go,” Oberon said. “This ship is our only way home, and I’m not taking any chances. Its jump drive is old, and it makes much shorter hops than the Calypso could. You got here in one jump, but it will take several in the colonizer to get us to the nearest colony. The charging time is longer, too.”
Dione nodded and tried to shift her perspective. A few days ago, she thought she’d be stuck here on Kepos forever. A couple more months wouldn’t be that bad.
43. CORA
Cora listened as her uncle delivered the speech. One week had passed since she first met with Colm, Brian, and the others about the fabricator, and in that week, there had been countless more discussions, both about the fabricator, and about how to choose a new Regnato
r.
“The Field Temple once belonged to all of us, before the Great Divide, and now it will again. We’ll use the fabricator to repair the damage from the Vens, and we will set up a co-council of two Aratians and two Ficarans, to oversee the use of the fabricator,” Benjamin said.
“We will set up our own government here—one Regnator whose power will be tempered by two Moderators. We will collect the votes for these positions in two weeks, after people have a chance to put forward their names and plead their cases.” Benjamin’s announcement was met with cheers from the crowd.
“I would like to announce my candidacy for Regnator,” he continued. “If I am chosen, there will be no more Matching, though genetic testing for potential problems will be available to anyone who wants it. There is more to being Aratian than faith in the Farmer. I welcome any challenger and look forward to learning the will of the people.”
Benjamin had spent the better part of the evening answering questions and making reassurances. Cora had made the decision not to run for Regnator against her uncle. She would not run to be a Moderator either. If elected, her uncle would end the Matching. That had been the only appeal the office held for her. Even if the new Regnator tried to maintain the tradition, they would fail. She felt it in the crowd. Aratians had only accepted the sacrifice of autonomy inherent to the Matching because they thought it was necessary. Now, it no longer was.
Her time working with Colm had convinced her to fill a different need. She would run for a spot on the Co-Council for the fabricator. By extension, she would have a say in re-establishment of the Field Temple. That was the future of Kepos: working together and sharing resources. No more petty fights over old traditions and false gods. No more deception. Just colonists working together to survive on a planet at the edge of an empire that she hadn’t known existed a few weeks ago.
Lithia found her cousin helping rebuild a market stall later that afternoon. “Still not interested in Regnator?”