by Essa Hansen
Taitn glanced into the ship and blushed furiously. He gently herded Lyli around the corner outside.
En broke into giggles that he tried unsuccessfully to stifle.
Laythan scoffed. “Taitn may be younger and inexperienced, but you’ll never stop being the immature one, eh?”
CHAPTER 48
UNCHARTED
During the long and uneventful egress-hopping trip to Laythan’s secret sector of the multiverse, Caiden was able to forget everything but the present moment. The crew’s routine made time irrelevant: good food and better games, banter that Caiden was old enough to contribute to, a soft bed and a beautiful ship and a family.
They took both vessels and swapped passengers at Cartographer Dens while resupplying. When they finally reached the lonely universe where Laythan’s uncharted planet existed— somewhere in it, he assured them— it was Caiden’s turn with En and Silye.
“Why did Laythan never sell this charting?” Caiden asked. “Habitable planets are worth a large fortune.”
En reclined against a wall, surrounded by tools. She tinkered on her kneecap, which lay open like a flower, tendons draping to the floor. “The nophek we’re hauling are worth an insane amount, and ten times that if their gloss ever matured. You could be set for life, yet you aren’t selling them.”
“The nophek need to be free to live as real animals for however long they have. Their value isn’t in currency, to me.”
“Exactly. Laythan is repaying your nobility by sharing something of his own. Besides, he may want the idea of a safe planet to escape to one day when he’s sick of passager life, but honestly, Laythan will die before he ever settles down.” She smiled. “Are you sure you’re going to stay on this planet, whatever it is, with the nophek?”
“I need to rest. I spent too long looking ahead, trying to be something I wasn’t ready to be, wrapping myself around feelings that no one is ever big enough for.”
En arched an eyebrow. “Philosopher hero. What will you do after?”
“Depends what I learn in my research.” The Azura. The Dynast. The Graven things Threi was hiding in the Casthen data vaults. And Caiden’s own genetic sources. The Azura’s data storage was packed with whatever he could steal before they’d left the Harvest. “I can protect and liberate those who are too ignorant, innocent, or indentured to save themselves. Hopefully that will validate my engineered origin.”
Something monstrous lingered in him, in that nightmare-carved hollow that he’d let his pain and rage inhabit in order to survive becoming Casthen. It was asleep, but he could feel the shape of it, just out of perception.
En gave him an adoring look. “Born and bred a hero! Well. If you’re gonna be here a while, better hope Laythan’s planet is not as ugly as RM28.”
Caiden set the Azura on auto-course to follow the fat tail of the Second Wind toward unnamed constellations. He got up to stretch.
Clinks and tiny sparks emanated from En’s work. “Are you gonna keep Silye?”
“She’s not a pet or a slave, and can’t be owned. Crimes, En, we’ve been over this.” Caiden threw his morphcoat over the back of the pilot’s seat. The ship’s climate cooled in response to his heat.
There was a bout of silence while Caiden did footwork drills across the length of the bay to get his muscles moving. He glanced down the ramp. Silye had fallen asleep in one of the chambers below. “I was bred to be a manipulator, and she was bred to be manipulated. She’s not staying with me. It’s inhumane.”
“Even if she’s happy?” En asked.
“Can you drop it?”
En fixed him with a quizzical look. “Just trying to understand.”
“You’re good at poking at wounds, huh?” Caiden sighed. “Even if she’s happy, coercion is inhumane, it violates rights.”
En tinkered for another arcminute. “All right, but remember: Andalvian, vishkant, falvees, and others are fairly Graven-resistant; you have options.”
“I’m not lonely, En.”
A message prickled Caiden’s neural link a moment before words formed in the cockpit holosplay: Speeding up.
Thankful for the distraction, he crawled back in the seat and matched the Second Wind’s acceleration, but it was still a long, monotonous wait until anything changed. After a while, it became clear they were headed for a large sun.
Silye wandered up from the lower level with Caiden’s nophek pup on an invisible lead. A transmitter in its collar linked to a bracelet too large for Silye’s wrist.
“Any change in it?” En asked, closing up her knee.
Silye shook her head. They still feared that something about the universe might kill the pups despite the chems, but no change so far was a good sign.
“The planet’s biosphere will be the real test,” Caiden muttered. Laythan couldn’t even say if there would be enough food there. “Fish,” he had said, and shrugged.
Caiden smiled as Silye brought the nophek to the cockpit and crouched to stroke it. Had they been cuddling, the two of them, when she slept? The creature was still a bit sedated, but like all animals, it was quickly taming to food. On its collar, he’d tied the glass chicory flower memento.
Caiden rubbed the nophek’s plush ears, then looked to Silye. “Are you all right?”
She stared at him for a long moment before nodding. She must have used the scour: her hair shimmered in thick, weightless waves and snarls. She wore one of En’s long-sleeved shirts in a pastel fiber from some far-off universe. It was a thigh-length dress on her.
Silye drifted to Caiden’s shoulder and pointed out the cockpit windows. A beat later, a message appeared, signaling the Second Wind’s deceleration. A burning sun and a cloud-wrapped sphere dominated the view.
The Second Wind vanished into the deck of gray cloud. It reminded Caiden of his home planet sheathed in the ceiling of vapor, and he half expected to see green pastures beneath.
A realization unspooled a sigh from his chest. I’ve been inside stations and facilities almost exclusively since RM28. The knowledge of other worlds has been rattling around in my head but I haven’t smelled them, felt them, breathed them. I’m finally going somewhere real.
The atmosphere enveloped them. As robust as the Azura’s glossy engines were, she still quaked. Moans of stressed material slithered through the roar of engine and flame. Silye clung to him stoic-faced, but her hands shook. The nophek pup crawled beneath Caiden’s legs.
Fantastic blasts of heat and whipping vapor obscured the view before the ship broke cloud cover. Caiden leveled up and slowed in awe.
It wasn’t green. A soft glow permeated the air. The sun rested on the horizon as a spectacular rose-colored sunset textured by cloud. Ocean stretched between strands of black sand, but this wasn’t the choppy abyss of his homeworld’s seas. The water was ice blue, shallow everywhere and without a wave. The Azura’s reflection streamed across it, disappearing in deep sapphire chasms.
Silye’s hand slipped off Caiden’s arm. Her mouth hung open and her eyes glistened.
En whistled in amazement. “Well, no wonder he wanted this untouched.”
Crystalline monoliths shot up like islands. Higher, stepped hills captured water in marbled decks of obsidian and quartz. Waterfalls streamed across jet rock, fed by rivers that snaked through moss-covered highlands.
“En, is this … unusual? Or do a lot of planets look like this?”
“Laythan has a taste for the unusual, if you hadn’t noticed.”
More and more greenery spotted the landscape, hidden under waterfalls, in shady ravines, and hemming the beaches where sand met stony soil. On one such landmass, the Second Wind hovered and began a laborious descent on the beach. Caiden found a plateau just above and set the Azura down first.
He rocked himself out of the seat. Scalar gravity disengaged. The planet’s own gravity was more silken, and he was instantly at ease. “Ready?”
He slid the nophek’s leash bracelet off Silye’s wrist and twisted it on his. Silye slipped her hand i
n his free one. He tried to decipher her blank stare and dilated pupils. “You haven’t …” The words caught in his throat. It was time for the heartbreak of the Casthen’s cruelty to be over. “Have you never been on a real planet, Sil?”
Never, she signed, and squeezed his hand.
Warm air blasted in as En hit the bay-door switch. Caiden grinned and headed out. Urged by the leash, the nophek pup uncurled and padded at his heels.
Expanse engulfed Caiden, rendering him small and insignificant. His worries evaporated, memories dissolved in the reality of sky and sea.
“Wow.” He laughed and twisted to take in the full vista, breathing sweet, dewy air. Sunset striated the sky rose through brushstroke clouds. That alone would have been enough to entrain his attention for hours, disregarding the glow over the sea or the clouds of mist thrown up by distant waterfalls. The air felt soft and electric against his face.
A breeze lifted all of Silye’s hair. En trailed a hand through the strands as she walked by. “Come on, Laythan’s unloading already.”
They picked their way down the rocks to the black beach. Reflective facets caught light, making the sand glitter like a night sky. The ocean had no surf but rested quiet and shallow for a good kilometer out. In the distance, a flock of ivory birds swayed in the wind.
“Laythan, this is incredible.”
The captain squinted at the sunset and back at the mossy highlands. “It’ll do. This landmass has shelter, water, and critters among the rocks. A good life, for a while.”
“How could you leave after finding this place?”
Laythan scoffed but smiled. “You have a lot of worlds to see, boy. Some are even better than this one.”
Caiden struggled to believe that. He drew another breath of clean air and a fragrant cocktail of herbs, water, and sweet florals.
Silye dropped Caiden’s hand and crept to the edge of the water, letting it soak into her slippers. Her hair waved around in the breeze.
Caiden headed to the Second Wind. His nophek kept up, happier for the softer terrain under its paws. The snick of claws on sand no longer sparked his fear. The creature was playful, rooting its nose in the grains and crunching up shells. A memory flashed of the huge, intelligent nophek he’d befriended, and he felt prideful of this little echo.
“Stand clear!” Taitn shouted. A hundred cage latches unclicked at once.
Caiden sidestepped from a small stampede of black-and-red shapes. He recalled his population streaming from the open transport cube into waiting terror. Now the terror, in miniature form, rushed out of captivity into freedom. Nothing terrible waited for them.
Caiden’s heart swelled. Taitn came up beside him and together they watched the beasts sniff in the sand, clamber up black scree to tuffets of moss-covered stone. Their collars jingled, vials tinkling with the chemicals that would give them a chance.
Panca watched from the bay with a smile. “Stronger chems Ksiñe made’ll last them a half generation. Enough time to adjust to new habitat.”
“Maybe not.” Ksiñe gathered a seawater sample. “But atmospheric pressure looks good. Humidity too.”
The pack headed uphill, disappearing on the plateau. Caiden’s pup sat by his boot, digging in the sand.
“Hey,” Taitn said quietly. “This has been a crazy ride. Bad and good … ever since you and the Azura saved our lives on RM28. I wouldn’t be— Well, a lot of things wouldn’t have happened without you. You’ve grown so much. Thanks for forcing me to grow too.” He glanced around at the crew. “Us. Us to grow …”
Embarrassed, Caiden pushed sand with the toe of his boot, covering in the hole the nophek made. “You all started this. Could have left me in the desert.”
“Come on.” Laythan strode over and clapped Caiden on the back, prodding him up the slope. “I have something to show you.” To the crew behind, he yelled, “Follow us but land in the water.”
En startled as Taitn put his arm around her shoulders and led her inside the ship. They talked, but Caiden couldn’t make out the words.
Silye ran with soggy slippers to catch up with Caiden and Laythan.
Caiden glided the Azura off the plateau, and Laythan directed him past more islands to a cluster of crystal monoliths lining a solitary black strand. Large curls of sand dipped in and out of the ocean. Tucked in the bosom of the largest beach lay a one-room aboveground bunker. The roof was cluttered with dishes, antennae, and transmitters overgrown with emerald and purple plants. Behind it rose a cliffside dripping with more flora.
“Set on the beach here,” Laythan said. Curls of seafoam and sand whirled up around the Azura’s glass wings as Caiden landed. Laythan opened the bay iris when the engine roar died to whispers. “Welcome to the only place I’ve ever called home besides a ship. It’s not much to see.”
Laythan strode for the structure but Caiden froze the moment he stepped out. High-altitude winds ripped the cloudy sunset into a starry blue night, thick with stellar dust and distant worlds. Large chunks of crystal spotted the beach and refracted the view like self-contained worlds of their own.
The nophek sniffed and tossed its head, mewing in hunger, while its flashing white eyes shifted over the beach, oblivious to the sky.
Silye’s head craned up, eyes wide and eyelashes wet.
“Nice to see something new, isn’t it? This is no Casthen facility. No media in a holosplay. This is real.”
He left her marveling and followed Laythan inside the building. It held a cot strewn with colorfully patterned, ancient-looking blankets, a storage pantry hewn into the cliffside, and an entire wall of computing clusters and ripped-out ship database drives stacked on one another. Laythan switched on a holosplay.
“Every bit of data my ship has is here too,” Laythan said. “Universes, species, terminology, so forth. All my Cartographer charts. You can add whatever you brought.”
“More than enough to figure out what to do with my life.”
“You sure you’re staying?”
Caiden returned to the beach and the view. “Yeah. I need time to recover and wrap my head around everything.” Figure out what to do about Threi.
There was so much to see and do, but in many ways he’d lost his enthusiasm. A deep fatigue gnawed on his bones, and no treatment of Lyli’s had dulled those teeth. He needed simplicity, and knowledge at his own pace.
The Second Wind caught up and settled in shallow water. A bank of sand joined the Wind’s flank with the shore. The crew disembarked.
It was time to say goodbye.
CHAPTER 49
NOW
Behave.” En wrapped Caiden in a tight hug. “No gallivanting until we get back. Seventy ephemeris days will go by fast.” When En pulled away, looking shy for the first time, the veneer of flesh had cleared from dramatic striped sections of his arms, chest, and neck, revealing true materials. Impressive materials. Caiden recalled Çydanza’s accusation that En had been changing in all the wrong ways.
“No regretting your augmentation?” Caiden asked.
“Fluidity is what actually suits me, I realized. I like all that I am.” En drew in a long breath then grinned and stole one more hug.
Ksiñe bent to examine the nophek pup’s collar and implants. He stroked its back before straightening. Fair purple ripples streamed down his neck and shoulders, pooling around his many white scars. The whipkin launched over to Caiden’s shoulder and arched, rubbing against his cheek while purring into his ear.
Ksiñe’s face stormed. “Forgive me … for saying nothing about memory loop, before you went into biodata chamber. Could have stopped it.”
Caiden shook his head. “Without it I wouldn’t be here now or have become who I am. Right away in the desert, Laythan tried to tell me that with hindsight we can appreciate how horrible things have made us so much stronger. I accept what the nightmares did.”
Ksiñe’s complexion cleared, pink specks babbling at the corners of his eyes. He smiled, frighteningly, for the second time, then reached out to gathe
r the whipkin.
Caiden flushed. “Where’s Panca?”
Laythan nodded toward the Azura.
Caiden wandered into the engine room. Panca strolled along the machinery, trailing her fingers across its inner music, which only she could sense in full.
“You’re always welcome on my ship, Panca, for as long as you want.” His voice reverberated in the darkness. “And I’m counting on you to help me fix her up in earnest.”
Panca’s face was soft and loving as she circled around the other side of the engine block, her gaze moving between elements. The core in her forehead flashed now and then with a deep reflected luster.
She sought words. “Take care of her.”
“I will.” He followed behind as she walked up to the bay.
“Fuel prism needs rotating,” she said.
“Yes.”
“The stagger’s flawed again.”
“I know.” Caiden chuckled.
“Don’t use florescer till we find more Boll adapters.”
“Thank you, Panca.” Caiden stopped outside and caught her smile as she walked back to the Second Wind.
Taitn strolled over, admiring the Azura. Her transparent shell reflected stars. “You sure you’re all right here alone?”
“You all keep asking that.” Caiden gazed over the stars parading across a golden horizon. “I’m not fourteen anymore.”
“I’m not forty-two anymore.”
Caiden laughed. “Take care of Lyli.”
Taitn wrapped him in a strong, quick embrace. “See you later, brother.”
Caiden beamed and composed himself as he walked over to Laythan.
The edge of the sun set red. Monolith crags jutted up like the silhouette of teeth. A “thanks” wasn’t enough to appreciate what Laythan had given him. Instead, Caiden inhaled another deep breath of real, unfiltered air.
Laythan laid a hand on his shoulder, squeezed, and left it there as they watched more stars prickle through the clouds. Finally, Laythan withdrew and started toward the Wind. There was no better farewell than the wordless, easy energy between them.