Nophek Gloss

  These magnificent bones hinted at the Graven ruin’s original shape, before it was stripped of whatever spiritual materials had fleshed it out.

  Caiden marveled all around as he fit himself among pockets of crowd, most of whom were marveling too. Threi, ahead, strode with purpose like he’d been here before.

  Toward the back of the gigantic palace, a grand hall gaped and thinned out the crowds. The Dynast’s flagship perched at the far end, just in front of an opening to space. A shimmering atmoseal capped the opening and a view of stars and traffic outside. The flagship itself had to be twenty or thirty times the Azura’s size; flat, wedged, and bladed like an ax, cored through with cylinders fluted in glossalith. A beast of engineering. Its finish was layered Dynast colors of black, blue, and copper, and tiny windows winking light.

  Dwarfed by the flagship, but with a presence far more immense, the Dynast Prime Abriss stood by the foot of it.

  Caiden’s heart swelled, inexplicably. Even across fifty meters, his adoration drew him to her like a tide. She wore a knee-length copper coat atop a dark flight suit, reflecting a lustrous glow around her body.

  “Nine crimes,” he swore under his breath. Was Threi there to tell the Dynast that the Azura existed? Or to expose Laythan, the convict? Caiden aimed closer while keeping to the edge of the hall where the crowd basked in this glimpse of the Prime.

  Threi stopped in the center of the hall. His posture bulked and curled like a predator poised as Abriss approached him alone. Did she know he was Casthen? Was he there to sell the gloss he’d reclaimed in the Den?

  They shared words that Caiden strained to hear across the distance, his translation devices unable to parse snippets of syllable and motions of lips. The Prime said something that made Threi’s posture recoil, then he forced himself to stand even taller.

  “Kneel,” Abriss said warmly, but her voice brimmed with intent and was raised enough to reverberate across the space.

  Caiden’s knees went weak, his whole being filled with a rush to please her. Around the circumference of the great hall, xenids in the crowd fell to one knee in unison. The crack of bone on floor and zuzz of rustling cloth filled up the air at once. Caiden was able to resist, at this proximity, as were some of the other species in the crowd. The Andalvians mostly remained standing, and Caiden recalled Threi struggling to convince Sina of his orders. The power had limits.

  Threi resisted for one heartbeat.

  Two.

  Then even he folded himself down to one knee, still cradling the burden over one shoulder.

  Is he a vassal of hers? Caiden leaned against a pillar. He couldn’t hear the contemptuous exchange that passed between the two as Threi rose laboriously to his feet.

  More words passed between them. A shrug from Threi.

  Whatever language they spoke was archaic and hard to unsnarl, but between the translators and Caiden’s understanding of a descendant tongue, he stitched the bits together: Threi was trading the body for information.

  Caiden scrubbed away the sweat on his brow. This exchange they were making might not be about him or his ship, and the body might not be a child or even alive.

  Abriss knelt to splay the body out across her knees and inspect it. The hood tumbled down and head lolled— on the other side of Abriss where Caiden couldn’t see what species. Something rare or capable, and valued for superficial uses? Caiden was proof that if you obtained a being young enough, you could shape it into whatever you wished.

  Satisfied with the barter, Abriss rose and passed the being into the hands of sentinels. Caiden drifted closer to the flagship so he could see where they took the body: folded up into an egg-shaped pod and loaded on top of others. Were the contents all the same?

  He’d missed conversation between Threi and Abriss. She said, “Very well,” and reached in her pocket to draw out a miniature star resting in her palm. Whatever the tech was, it made a dimple in the density of space and jetted out sharp rays of light. The fingers of Abriss’s free hand were loaded with glass rings. She gestured over the star-tech. Rainbow ripples of light gushed out of it and separated, arranging within a sphere that surrounded her. The colored light hanging inside formed into data symbols: astronomical bodies, planets, aspects, projections. A small orrery.

  Laythan’s words sprung into Caiden’s mind: an astrologian like Abriss could divine information and predict events, within Unity.

  Caiden paced to relieve the tingles in his spine. He pretended to observe architecture while fitting into other groups. There was no way to get closer to the conversation, and their archaic language was a briar of melodies.

  Abriss used her ringed hand to shift through data and zooms, surveying the complicated geometry of Unity’s heavens. “It is here,” she said, along with other words that were lost.

  “Where?” Threi hissed.

  “In Emporia.”

  Anger raised his voice enough to hear; “Where in Emporia?”

  “An inexact initial question produces inexact answers.” Abriss looked up sharply as a score of Dynast sentinels poured into the hall. Their raucous, mismatched steps fell into a perfect rhythm the closer they came to their Prime. She closed her palm around the orrery device.

  Whatever she said next made the sentinels fan out in an expanding circle to clear the hall of visitors.

  Caiden swore and slinked away, back through the Dynast’s lightseep obsidian palace. I have no proof of any scheme, just inconclusive and poorly translated dialogue. Laythan would slug me if he were here.

  There was nothing worse Caiden could do than cause more trouble.

  But one thing was still clear. He had to fly as soon as possible.

  The Azura was vulnerable.

  Anxiety and excitement hummed similar chords in Caiden as he headed to where he’d been told Taitn was waiting. He stood in a grungy lift chugging up a wall of Pent’s depository.

  The lift opened to a large, unlit room with a short ceiling. The far wall was translucent but dirty, and looked out on streams of ship traffic and flashy lettering on Emporia’s next layer over. With new languages, he could read the colorful light-script, no longer the signs of foreign terrors but hawking mundane things like respiratory implants, motile tattoos, and exotic cuisine.

  “Taitn?” His voice ricocheted off hard surfaces as he stepped from the lift. “I saw something I need to talk to you about.”

  The room’s lightseep surfaces were peppered with projection devices.

  “Over here,” Taitn’s excited voice rang out. “Are you ready to fly?”

  “Y-yes. Beyond ready.” Caiden walked in and looked away from the bright windows, letting his eyes adjust to the dark. “I was also thinking if you’re taking the Second Wind to …”

  In the middle of the space, Taitn hunched over a lone-standing pilot’s seat and a half ring of tall holosplays.

  “What’s this?” Caiden asked.

  “It’s an old model, but still good for testing ship compositions and upgrades before actually installing or removing any parts. Mostly, Pent uses it to enforce a no-refund policy.”

  “A model of—” He cut off, needled by the realization. A flight simulation. Stupid to have believed a first-time pilot could jump right into a starship— why wasn’t the stupid accelerated out of me?

  Caiden scratched the scales on his morphcoat. He tried to cram disappointment in that small corner where he shoved anger and frustrations and everything else he didn’t have time for. To deal with soon.

  “Taitn, on my way here—”

  Taitn initiated the foggy light of the holosplays, which began to congeal. It lit his smile, which was so excited it may as well have been a punch to Caiden’s chest.

  “I modified a C-Center Class ship that’s a close match,” Taitn said, not listening. His fingers flew across the holosplay setup, and the lightseep in the room exploded into a sprawling vista. Caiden’s train of thought cut off. Whitecaps and rose-colored foam tipped cyan waves. The air condensed into the walls of a coc
kpit, pressing the ocean behind windows.

  Taitn lowered a brilliant thread-thin neural halo around Caiden’s forehead. It hovered at forehead height, riveted by the strange magnetics of his new implant. It would approximate neural control in this … simulation.

  Caiden crawled into the lonely pilot seat. He couldn’t break Taitn’s heart now. This wasn’t the time to discuss haste or fear.

  Taitn switched something on the seat, which tugged back Caiden’s shoulders and waist. The metallic scaling on the morphcoat must have been magnetic, designed for flight, similar to Taitn’s prim green jacket. “Post-acceleration, all the sensations and maneuvers are already in your brain. We just need to unlock it so you feel that instinct. I’ll be right here behind you as we fly a test course.”

  Caiden hovered his hands, and brilliant lines— drive guides— congealed in the air and twined around his fingers, ready for him to orchestrate motion.

  The engine was docile and lazy, not a latent wildfire like the Azura. Caiden’s fingertips traveled across now-familiar symbols and circuit trees. The faux engines spun to life, pushing off the ocean. Foam and spray whipped up beneath the hull. Caiden felt every droplet on his skin.

  Taitn said, “Get her moving.”

  His smallest motions and the vibrato of his nerves sent signals to the ship’s mind. Ocean spray turned to roiling vapor as he revved the thrusters and climbed to puffy clouds. The tiny stars of flight-track points led the way.

  Caiden’s frustration vanished. This wasn’t the Azura, but it was still incredible. A stupid grin split his face as he rocketed up. The pressure of a lean gravity melted him into the seat, and the butterflies in his stomach tickled up into a laugh.

  Taitn patted his shoulder. “Now straight and level, hotshot.”

  Ocean billows ripped past into a new vista of crystalline water with golden bands twisting on its surface. A chain of basalt pillar mountains jutted out of the kelp forest. The track lights descended into them.

  “Take her under,” Taitn said.

  “Under?”

  “The water. C-Center starships are aquatic too.”

  “I knew that.” Caiden laughed again and pitched into a dive. As intention and excitement roared in him, a tense curl rumbled somewhere in the ship’s body. They hit the water with barely a splash, and plunged into silence. Flexing towers of flowery leaves and beaded stems striped the blue. Sunlight narrowed into shafts, and marine hues transformed to sapphire depths where distant lights twinkled the way.

  He tried to think of an exclamation more intelligent than “Wow,” but sat speechless.

  The engines fluttered to life. Water rushed through portions of the ship. Caiden’s mechanical knowledge whispered suggestions of marine ramjet propulsion. Pressure and density parameters flickered in his peripheral vision.

  Track points rolled him sideways between kelp bands, below basalt arches, finally ascending out of the sea in a burst of glittering drops, hovering momentarily as the thrusters erupted back into their former shape. The ship guzzled air and fire as it shot up to a clear sky.

  “How fast can I go?” he asked.

  “Fast as you want.”

  Caiden grinned and pulled his wrists in, gathering the cockpit’s light guides, bunching and condensing the ship’s power. Its roar narrowed to a fine screech as it picked up speed. The seascape squiggled into dunes and serpentine banks as tan earth took over.

  Desert. Binary suns adorned the other side of the world. The sky was black, and a glow blanketed the ground a kilometer high, like the nophek planet. Caiden’s speed slowed, and it wasn’t his trembling hands but his quaking mind and the jaws and sand and metal scents that made the ship groan and sputter, losing pitch.

  The stars were white nails holding up a black curtain.

  The ship yawed right and began to roll. Stars spun.

  Taitn’s hand slapped over Caiden’s and the control lines flashed red as he took command. In an elegant tumble, he completed the roll, spinning sky and ground until the ship leveled out neatly just above the sand.

  “Terminate,” Taitn said gently. The desert flickered to darkness, and the large, bland room surrounded them once more. But Caiden’s mind was still there, fogging up. His body was fire, tendons glitching, body rigid.

  “Hey, breathe,” Taitn said. “Your brain has to integrate. We won’t push it, we’ll do several sessions. The accelerated skills are still unfolding in you.”

  Taitn lifted the halo off Caiden’s head.

  It’s just sand. He stared at the darkness where the vision had been, and drew a shaky hand through his sweaty hair.

  “Winn?”

  He thrust aside festering thoughts and told himself his quivering was from the exhilaration of flight. He thought of the blue and the speed, and summoned his bravest smile. “That was incredible.”

  But it wasn’t the Azura. In simulation, the bulk and power of the ship was an illusion. He was steering nothing, in control of nothing.

  They both swiveled around at the sound of the lift opening. Ksiñe stood inside and kicked a case their way, then punched the lift button. “Laythan said feed you.” The whipkin perched on his head. She squealed recognition before the doors closed and the lift shuddered back down.

  Taitn retrieved the case and opened it: full of ramia, still steaming. Rich, spicy, meaty aromas wafted over.

  Caiden accepted one and ate, but disappointment flattened even the ramia’s taste. “How many more simulations?”

  “Sorry.” A thinly veiled fear consumed Taitn’s brutish face, excitement gone. “You hate waiting, huh? This isn’t something to rush, no matter what Laythan says. Push yourself too hard and you’ll make errors. A ship like yours isn’t the same as these simulations.”

  Caiden nodded, unable to verbalize. His objection would sound like Laythan’s, and that would push Taitn over an edge. He took the ramia to the window wall and sat to eat.

  Vessels of all sorts whizzed to and from the hexagonal rooms making up Emporia’s many layers. The traffic patterns looked much easier than what he’d flown in the simulation, and he recognized the different classes and origins of ships, like the sleek Dynast patrollers shelled in the same colors and style as their flagship.

  Taitn sat beside him, but instead of eating, he pulled out his blue-and-white lacquered flask.

  They watched the traffic for a long while before Taitn met Caiden’s pleading gaze. “Laythan agreed to taking the Second Wind for a test flight away from Emporia, through crossover and back through an egress. Come with us. I’ll walk you through cargo-class-vessel procedure. Easy flights.”

  Cargo class … Caiden finished chewing before he responded. The manners he’d learned on his homeworld still applied in the multiverse, and it gave him a moment to bundle up his hopes into words. “Taitn … I’m ready. It’s a short flight, I can go with you, piloting the Azura. If anything happens, you’ll be right there. Or Laythan can come in my ship; he used to be a pilot.”

  Taitn crossed his arms, leather creaking, half silhouetted by the window’s glow. “Part of you is ready, but not all of you.”

  Caiden finished the ramia and heaved to his feet. “I won’t be reckless. All of me feels ready to fly.”

  “Recklessness makes people forget things. There’s another reason we can’t take the Azura out.”

  “I didn’t forget the Dynast’s Graven tech sensors. I’ve studied them. The sensors are carried on ships, and work in zones, sweeping Emporia. I charted a simple route that stays ahead of it and ends up in open space. I’m ready.” Heart hammering, he turned his gaze to Taitn.

  The pilot’s reaction was calmer than expected. A blank look. “No. And not just because you’re reckless to push yourself. Laythan won’t ever agree to it. He’s terrified of your ship and won’t allow it anywhere outside the shielding hollow until we’re ready to leave.”

  “Laythan? He controls so much of your life, Taitn … It’s my ship. I just— I can’t stay bottled up. I need to … move.” />
  Taitn steepled his hands against the window. His dark-blue eyes traced traffic patterns back and forth.

  Caiden opened his mouth to speak his heart again, but all his carefully prepared words were already expelled. The morphcoat prickled between breezy mesh and scales as waves of heat rolled off him.

  Softly, as ever, Taitn asked, “What’s so important that you’re rushing to risk your life?”

  The worth of Caiden’s life flashed in his mind: Leta huddling in a corner of darkness and filth, waiting for him to return, blood and violence on her doorstep. That was the cost of his survival. How many more beings like him and Leta were out there, exploited by the Casthen? Illegally harvested? Slaves auctioned? Universes pirated? Threi had dumped a child-sized body into Abriss’s arms, something he might’ve killed— the injustice of the Casthen ongoing. Caiden couldn’t wait, turn a blind eye, or allow complacency to sink in. His eyes alone were clear.

  It was all too big for words.

  Caiden scrubbed a fingernail through dust on the window’s base, serrating the grime until vivid colors bled through. “In the Dynast’s district, I saw Threi buying information from the Dynast Prime. All I could understand was that he was looking for something in Emporia. Laythan’s fears might be true.”

  “What were you doing—” Taitn cut off, jaw grinding. “Laythan is prone to overreactions. We’ll only be gone a day. With more simulations and depending on how you perform piloting the Second Wind, we can leave Emporia right after and everything will be fine.”

  Caiden ate another ramia and mulled it over, but couldn’t find the fault in his simulation performance or his request, and felt slapped by Taitn’s dismissal of what he’d seen. Why be honest if no one listened? There was some snarl in the web of the crew that he still didn’t understand and it kept sticking him in place, even at twenty years old. My jagged edges don’t fit in this puzzle. I keep bouncing around, damaging everything I touch. Maybe like a river stone I’ll be smooth one day after years of tumbling.