by Essa Hansen
Laythan cut him off. “If you hadn’t tried to stop that Casthen Enforcer, we would have dealt with it and they wouldn’t know there’s a ship more valuable than even a Glasliq. We haven’t uncovered half of the Azura’s secrets, and you’re ready to throw it and your future away to vent a foul temper. Stopping one pack of Casthen won’t stop the whole. You need to come to terms with not being able to win every fight or save every thing.”
Leta.
Caiden had once struggled to protect her and himself against a pack of duster pilots who were pissed he’d taken a repaired vehicle for a spin. They beat him dizzy and added to ten-year-old Leta’s legion of bruises. Caiden wobbled to his feet to march after them and pay them back in pain. Leta caught his inferno of a temper and said, “Let them go. If they stay away, who cares.”
“I care,” he’d said. “You’re hurt.”
“So, why hurt them back? They’ll just hurt you more, nothing will change.”
Smart girl.
Caiden released a held breath and headed to the Azura’s lower level.
“Hey, kid,” En called, trotting over to join.
“Endirion,” Laythan shouted, stopping her in her tracks. “A word.”
En halted, expression bitter. She forced a smile for Caiden and swirled back.
Caiden entered one of the sleeping chambers and collapsed on the bed, stress-raw and sullen. He fished the glassy cube of the database from his morphcoat pocket. It unfolded in his palm and the holosplay emerged: light filled up a dimpled grid of air, ready for queries.
He asked about planets, xenids, universes. The database showed him magnificent worlds— and ugliness with it. The multiverse contained so much variety, everything had a value to someone, somewhere. For every story of safety and glory there was one of slavery and massacre. A twisted rhythm of being.
The Cartographers’ laudable goal of exploration was corrupted by shady passagers into a search for profit. Only the Dynast, in Unity, ensured holistic safety and equality for all, adhering to a belief that the Graven civilization had a noble purpose that had been forgotten.
He queried, “What is the extent of the Casthen’s business?”
An inexhaustible list scrolled. They were suppliers and buyers, controlled many universes outright, and were involved in every industry to some degree, from food to medicine to shipbuilding.
“What would happen if the Casthen were destroyed?”
After a moment of processing, its words re-formed: One million species expired.
He blinked at the letters. “How?”
Countless aspects unfolded, showing how the Casthen’s influence or ownership would deteriorate industries. “Machine spirit” cloning operations would cease without the Casthen’s proprietary germination techniques. The lack of new spirits would result in existing ones being forcefully desenescized— aged backward— to prolong their life span: beings wrung out and re-sopped like rags.
Five thousand other species would lose the ecological factors that sustained them. The cessation of predator harvest in five universes would threaten another twenty thousand species, each of which provided critical exports. Ecological links all over cascaded into catastrophe the moment a few key species were lost. Then a 3 percent drop in fuel-prism production would limit access to worlds in need of aid.
The Casthen appeared too large to destroy. The database reported that previous assassination attempts had all failed, and the Casthen Prime, Çydanza, had been in charge since anyone could remember, over multiple lifetimes. The location of the Casthen Harvest, their headquarters, was carefully hidden— not even the Cartographers knew.
He stopped reading and let the information flicker down the list. Noble things flourished off ignoble gains. The Casthen were the manure out of which beautiful things grew. They needed to be stopped, but as the crew was trying to tell him, the roots were too deep. He’d need a trowel, something sharp to dig under the roots and lift the whole structure up.
Would the six years of accelerated aging make him sharp enough?
Caiden squeezed his palm closed and the device furled back into a glassy cube.
He twisted onto his back on the bed and let everything he’d learned sink in. The darkness was warm but he couldn’t sleep. He pored over Sina’s strange obeisance, the sick nophek pup, Threi’s bag of gloss, and the ship’s beautiful universe protecting them all from a star. He tangled that all up until he couldn’t make sense of it, and still couldn’t sleep. In the end, all he could think about was the young nophek beast, destroyed by the rind.
CHAPTER 15
NOTHINGNESS
Caiden wielded a glave in his dream, and faced the stampede of nophek. Their gait was strange, as if they were tangles of scorched bodies tied up in the shape of beasts, given teeth and smeared with blood. He fired the glave over and over, blasting white tunnels through pink flesh.
His mother stood with him, the last vision of her he remembered: rod-straight spine, shoulders wide, bronze skin gleaming, and hair whipped free from its pile. She stood protecting her child from the teeth of the world.
Caiden fired over and over— because he knew what happened to her next.
One nophek leapt and bit his wrist, tearing forearm from elbow. The glave went with it. He was helpless when another nophek smashed his mother into the rock. Claws tore her sideways. Jaws opened, sharp enough to rend a soul.
Another slammed into Caiden and carried him to the ground.
He screamed, fell off the bed, and curled up shaking against cold metal.
Didn’t the memory jog wring all these visions out of me? He whimpered into the floor and squeezed his eyes shut.
The door slid open and Panca swept to his side. He blinked at her. A waking vision? She crouched and placed a velvety hand on his cheek. “Your scream. You went back there?”
Caiden nodded and she wrapped him in a hug. He bowed his forehead against her and forced himself to breathe through jerking sobs. “It’s punishment,” he murmured. “I hurt you.”
“Not punishment. I’ve recovered.” Her arms tightened around him, her petting hands soft as wafts of vapor. He felt her heartbeats: two discordant, then three, four, a fluttering of pulses like a snared bird. “It’s a burden you don’t deserve after everything you’ve been through. You’ll …” Panca trailed into a whisper and stopped petting him.
“I’ll … ?”
She pushed back to look at him, and tension swelled in her face. “I also underwent memory jog, which doesn’t work for all species, and some’ve minds that repeat it after … Saisn do. I relive my past every night, and will for’s long as I’m alive. Sometimes pieces, sometimes all. Whatever you are … you might too.”
“Relive it? The rest of my life with—” Caiden’s throat hitched and the dreaded words stuck there.
Panca curled him up tightly. “You’re moving forward very, very fast for someone who went through’s much as you did. Appreciate your own needs, make sure you don’t break yourself still running— in your heart— from your trauma.” She took his head in her hands, soft fingers caged around his skull. “Close your eyes.”
He did. The darkness deepened.
“Breathe. Feel your ribs expand. Breathe in from your stomach to the crown of your head.”
Panca’s fingertips lifted from his skull. Without the pressure, his thoughts floated up like a flock of birds, tingles filled his body with each breath of air and he almost toppled over. Panca splayed a hand on the center of his chest.
“Focus on nothingness, just be here, breathing and present. Let your thoughts slide off and away.”
She propped his shoulders square, straightening his spine. Her hands stayed there.
“Imagine you’re wind. Nothing can snag it. It streams over and keeps going, because it’s empty.”
Caiden’s fire guttered out. His breath was a circuit, washing sparks up and down his limbs. Clotted emotions whisked away. His body grew heavy, only Panca’s hands keeping him upright.
; After a while, he opened his eyes.
The bright limbal rings of Panca’s own eyes flicked as she looked over his face and tucked stray hairs behind his ear. Feather-soft, she asked, “Better?”
“Y-yes.” He still tingled, feeling as if he’d just been scoured. “How did you learn this … this nothingness thing.”
“My formative years were nothing, as no one. I was born a clone, replacement body for a saisn high official, one day. Since my mind’d be rewritten, I was raised without stimulus or interaction.”
“You were made as a replacement part,” Caiden whispered. Expendable, like him. The sandy beach his parental unit would have been “retired” to— that was surely a lie. They had been meat, and he their replacement part.
She said, “My memory jog’s another story … but after it, I was unnecessary, sold as a mechanic slave, confined to an engine room meant to be my prison. I made it my teacher. I grew up inside it, knowing only its vibrational language, energy, function.”
Like the little birds that would perch on the livestock, picking at bugs. Symbiotic.
“The ship was attacked, lay dead for years. I’d nothing but nightmares and nothingness. I used one to solve the other. Then Laythan found me, and I found a new life, and filled my nothingness with good. We can all’ve second chances. Come.” She took his hand, tugging him to the glittering, starry world of the engine room.
The hum of processes and whirr of small motors welcomed them. Caiden inhaled metallic and chemical fragrances: briny, powdery, floral. No grease scents, no soot or fumes.
Halfway down the dark mess of modules and conduits, Panca eased Caiden to his knees in front of a waist-high column of glassy material. Silent purple fire throbbed through ink within.
“When I relive my memories, or when I hurt,” she said, “this helps too. Your ship’s a healer.”
She pushed his forehead against the crystal. Colors burst through his eyes. Sugar sweated across his tongue. The ship’s singing vibration engulfed his skull, stilled his shivers, filled the ravine his nightmare had carved. Caiden went slack as pulsations rolled over him. Jagged bits of despair spilled free, cutting him on the way out. Warmth and gratitude infested him, and the ship’s weave of tonal textures felt indescribably right, like a language he hadn’t realized was his mother tongue.
If I have to endure horror every time I dream, for the rest of my life, at least I have you. I can survive it if I have you.
His breath reflected off the Azura’s surfaces and warmed his cheeks, as if he and the ship breathed together.
“Thank you, Panca. I’m so sorry my stupidity hurt you.”
“Don’t apologize for your wounds.” Pink reflections glistened through her forehead core, sparkling on the vertices as she regarded the engine with a loving look. She ran her hand across morphing metals. “This ship … she’s confused. Whatever drove her to crash, she remembers, keeps making the same injuries. Like you. Hate’ll make you keep wounding yourself, and neither engine nor nothingness’ll be enough. Either need someone to keep fixing you, or … learn to let it scar.”
Caiden placed his hand near Panca’s. Soothing tones slithered into his skin and pooled beneath his palm. The metal puckered into a field of tiny opalescent spots.
“She likes you.” Panca’s throat fluttered airily: a laugh.
“I like her.” Caiden smiled. Warmth welled up around his fingertips.
“Machines’re simple, talkative, honest.” A tightness in Panca’s fine musculature relaxed, ridges gone from her face. A smile in return? “They’re the sum of parts. Transcend parts. Humans’re the sum of experiences … and struggle to transcend.”
“Machines are definitely less complicated than people.” And Caiden was reminded of the arguments he’d fled from, the bad blood stirred up among the crew. “I’m so glad you’re all right, Panca.”
The core in her forehead glittered as she nodded, laughed, and rose to return to her work.
Caiden had tougher judges to face. He left the engine room, and in the little hallway outside, a fresh argument reached his ears. The crew was above and behind him, beyond the gouge that the hallway’s ramp made in the bay. Caiden stalled.
“Sell,” Ksiñe said.
“Keep.” Taitn’s voice was hoarse. He paced in jingling boots.
“There isn’t room,” En’s feminine voice said.
Taitn argued, “With the gloss funds we could afford a pan-hauler, keep both. Think about it. A universe. Do you have any idea what we could cash in on if we can go literally anywhere?”
“No,” Laythan said. “We don’t know enough about this ship yet, and a damned Casthen Enforcer got eyes on it already.”
The crew was discussing something that wasn’t theirs. Had they already decided on discarding him? Caiden’s morphcoat prickled into black scales, sensing his darkening mood.
Ksiñe said, “Dynast will pay fortune for unheard-of Graven tech.”
“No,” Laythan snapped again. “First we confirm whether the Dynast funded the nophek farming through Casthen ties, and we sell our gloss so we’re not targeted. We get a new ship sorted, then leave Unity as soon as possible, as far from the Azura as we can get.”
“Layth, let’s …” Taitn growled in frustration. “Slow down. Let’s see what Pan finds during repairs, once she’s recovered.”
Caiden lifted his chin and scrambled together confidence as he strode up to the bay and around, steeling himself to walk straight through their argument.
“Thanks for all your ideas,” he said, “but the ship is mine. You have your gloss. What I do after the acceleration is up to me.”
That sounded good. Puffed with pride, he marched to the cockpit, where a slew of doubts deflated him. He glanced over his shoulder, pleased by the silence that stretched in his wake, however awkward. Taitn looked stung, and slouched in the open collar of his dark-green jacket. Laythan stared as ever, pale gaze sharp as a spike, but his forehead furrowed. En tsked and looked ready to smack both men. She strode to the cockpit but Caiden angled his back to her. He didn’t need pity, didn’t want their opinions. He’d said his piece.
“Layth, can I speak with you below?” Taitn asked, and sipped from the little flask. Laythan grunted, and their footsteps retreated.
At the sight of Caiden, Ksiñe uncoiled and stalked forward. Purple ire strobed across his skin, and his eyes flashed like bloody moons. Something glinted in his fingers.
“Stop.” Panca treaded up into the bay, straight for the startled Andalvian, and pulled him by the wrist to face her. She placed a palm on his collarbones, and looked at him intently.
Ksiñe’s skin flushed cream and pink under her touch, and the colors slowly overcame him, down his arms and to his fingers, as his breathing settled too.
Some wordless communication passed between them, before the medic glanced around, self-conscious, and poured himself into work inspecting the monitor nodes and threading and other esoteric medical tech he’d installed on Panca’s skin. The whipkin fetched or returned tools and medicaments from an open med case, her body a fast wiggle of black and white and indigo fur.
En said to Caiden, “Scary habit of Panca’s. Seeing everything you want to hide.” She eased herself into the pilot’s seat at a crooked angle and propped her roomy boots on the console. Her oversized clothes fit loose with strategic belts and magnetic snaps to cinch them around her muscular curves. Long hair spilled over the arm of the seat like a black waterfall, too voluminous and slippery to contain. This face of En’s was androgynous, and bore a pensive expression Caiden hadn’t seen before.
He kept to one side of the cockpit, untalkative.
“Are you hungry?” En asked.
“A little.”
“Good.” En smiled at the vista, her dark eyes dancing with colors. “Cooking will settle Ksiñe. I didn’t have time to get ingredients for ramia, but you’ll like everything he makes.”
“Thanks, En.” Caiden wasn’t cheered, but appreciated her attempt.
Caiden glanced at medic and mechanic in the bay; Panca sat motionless as Ksiñe fussed.
En caught his eye line. “Panca was a big part of Ksiñe’s rehabilitation. Taitn still isn’t keen on us breaking up the trio family he got used to, but Ksiñe’s tamed a great deal since he first joined. I, on the other hand, haven’t tamed at all.” She hummed. “Don’t worry. Laythan never stays in one place very long, but I won’t let him ditch you at the next stop. A family system like ours benefits from a little upset once in a while. We’ve been stuck in our ways lately, and you remind us how we can still grow too. Growing comes with pains.”
Caiden worked that thought in silence, picking at the feathery sleeve of his morphcoat. Eventually he asked, “Ksiñe’s newest in the crew?”
“Besides you. Panca was first. Taitn was next. Then me. I’m why Taitn—”
She cut off as the pilot returned from below, nursing the blue flask. He kicked the pilot’s seat, still occupied by En. She smiled up at him, feet still on the console. A pink flush crept above Taitn’s bearded scowl. He took a drink. En, with eye contact and impish slowness, folded herself out of his seat.
Caiden was too distracted by the approaching rind to sort out their dysfunction, and why En’s feminine forms needled Taitn so much more. He gripped the back of the seat as Taitn settled in.
“Worried?” The pilot tilted his face back and smiled warmly. “This crossover won’t be bad. Unity is the original universe, its rind the oldest and gentlest. Newer universes on the fringes of charted space are more dangerous.”