The Sunseed Saga

by Brett Bam

  She leaned into the pads and the Ribbontail surged through space, Dalys pivoted the ship and fired the ion booster to swing the stern around to a new trajectory, aiming to pass a coagulation of agricultural bubbles to get to open sky. When the bow lined up on her vector she boosted hard and the gravity spiked, and spiked, and spiked again, levelling out at three g’s cruising velocity.

  They came out from under the shadow of the asteroid and into the too bright sunlight.

  “Dalys!” There was a tremendous sense of urgency in Kulen’s voice. He sent her some info and she toggled the file. A sensor on the port side flicked onto her primary display. From the far end of the asteroid, where the docking endcap was, came a bright light. It was massive and it was burning. It streaked into the sky, sailing over the horizon and up, suddenly hot and dominating. A spotlight shone on them brightly.

  Dalys hauled the pads hard to starboard and boosted at absolute max. The RHS turned on its bearings, keeping the perceived direction of travel as up. The asteroid swooped by as Dalys performed as tight a circle as she possibly could, trying to impose the bulk of Gamaridia between them and that light. It chased them, roaring into space again, and Dalys had to keep up the thrust and force her trajectory into a steep dive to stay under the horizon. Then suddenly the bright thing reversed its direction, chasing them from the other side, and the horizon started to brighten in front of them. Dalys grinned her predator’s grin and put her finger on a trigger.

  When the light surged up over the horizon, Dalys accelerated straight at it. She pulled the trigger and the entire weapons set unloaded on the hostile light, at this distance and at this speed she couldn't miss. Explosions and fires blossomed, then she flipped them upside down and fled to the opposite side of the asteroid, diving again.

  When the horizon stayed dark Dalys changed course yet again, causing the RHS to swing through 90 degrees. Kulen groaned loudly as the thrust sat on his chest. Dalys boosted away from the main body of the asteroid and ducked quickly behind a water extruding plant before boosting hard again to hide behind a rock. The light was far behind them now, and Dalys slowed to a relative stop behind a large solar array.

  She flew away from the array, staying in its shadow, they crossed a small open distance to an aggregation of mining rocks. For a short while, they flew between sheer canyons and through a great cavern made by stationary masses of asteroid rock. Then she found open space and maxed out the acceleration helix. Kulen groaned again, and then passed out. Dalys hung on grimly, watching her stern sensors.

  Eventually the light swarming back and forth frantically over the outer skin of the asteroid flicked up and pinned them like a spotlight on a moth. The thing didn't seem to be harmed from the full salvage of armament she had thrown at it. It left the asteroid and accelerated after the Ribbontail at an unbelievable velocity. Dalys gritted her teeth and started the reloading protocol on the weapons set.

  She dodged and weaved her way through the belt, covering hundreds of thousands of kilometres. She tried as much as she could to occlude the light chasing them, flying from shadow to shadow. This type of flying was what she did best and soon, through clever changes in course and ever-increasing speed she lengthened the distance between her and her pursuer. She started to look for a clear burn which would put her all the way to Saturn. When she was sure she could boost into an escape trajectory, which would put them in a fast orbit around the sun and out to Saturn without hope of pursuit, Dalys set the course and boosted, saying farewell to her crew in her heart.

  A little red light started to blink and then suddenly went green again. Dalys zeroed in on it and pulled it up to her primary display. The stern airlock had opened and shut very quickly.

  Her heart froze. Had they just been boarded? She went through all the sensor scans again. Nothing. Space was empty all around. Kulen slept quietly. He had always known when they were attacked, and he was still and calm now. She saw the image of that terrifying face peer at her as it squirmed out of the airlock and jumped. That dark man, that forbidding stranger. That dangerous weapon fired at them by the Protocol. Surely not! There was no way he could have survived out there for so long, he had no environment suit. She had boosted and changed course, it had been hours! Then she considered his shining hand. Damnit. There was a possibility and she had to consider the threat.

  She dropped the acceleration down to a single gravity, fixed her setting and slid out of her couch. She stood on the deck and pulled her twin handguns from their holsters, checking the settings. Kulen was looking at her, expressionless, befuddled.

  “Stay here. I need you to monitor the interior of the ship and warn me if you see anything moving, okay? I'm locking this portal behind me as I leave.”

  She climbed down through what was now the floor and cycled the portal shut behind her. As she walked across the staging area and main airlock she holstered one gun on her right side and lifted the other up, sighting down the barrel. Because of their acceleration, the corridor down the superstructure was now a vertical shaft which fell for tens of metres. She cycled the portal, which was in the floor at her feet. She stepped gingerly toward the hole in the floor as it irised open, leading with her weapon. She looked down the corridor. It was empty, lit brightly from the lighting gantry down one side. Down its length, little landing platforms bordered each module. She reached out to the wall beside her and unclipped a cable. There was a stirrup and a handhold, which Dalys gripped. Thus secured, she stepped over the edge of the corridor shaft, and dropped the five metres to the next level, the cable spooling out slowly and lowering her silently. She stepped quickly down the corridor like this, from one portal landing to the next. She cycled each portal and inspected the interior before cycling it shut again. She found nothing through the tense descent. At the bottom of the corridor was the entrance to the space plane storage module. It was in the floor at her feet. To either side were the last two modules attached to the spinal corridor by their independent set of frictionless bearings. To port was a storage module, to starboard was the stern airlock and Moabi’s EVA gear, and a small airlock. The room where the intruder would be. Dalys clipped the line to a wall bracket. If she needed a fast ascent back to the RHS, she could use the winch to pull her up. She stepped up to the portal and cycled it. She dipped her head quickly around the entrance for a glance of the interior.

  Nothing unusual. She dropped to her knee and looked again, slower this time. Still nothing, no movement. She stood and slipped into the room, putting her back to the bulkhead and scanning the equipment which cluttered the space. Without looking, she shifted her handgun to fire taser darts, the most effective and least destructive round to use in this tight space filled with sensitive and important gear. She moved slowly and looked behind a storage cupboard, and an air station. A rack of exposure suits rustled as she brushed past it. She sighted the stern airlock and approached it slowly. Everything was normal. This module was empty. As soon as she sighed and dropped her weapon, the man in black stepped out from behind a bank of batteries. She yelled in fright and lifted her gun, finger tightening on the trigger. The man in black lifted his silver hand and walked toward her. She fired three rounds into the hand, which simply ricocheted away, and then he had the barrel in his palm and was twisting. Dalys let her weapon go, she dropped to the floor and rolled away, drawing the other handgun as she came to her knees.

  The stranger held her stolen gun up by the barrel and looked at it strangely. It turned to dust and cascaded onto the floor.

  The display terrified her. She snapped off a shot. This gun was still set on hard projectiles so it thundered in the small module. Dalys was up and out the portal into the corridor. She grabbed the descent line, flicked it free and pulled hard to activate the winch. The man in black came out of the module as she lifted up the corridor. She pointed the gun down and hammered the entirety of her clip at him as she rose to perceived safety. She stepped out into the staging area at the top of the corridor and dropped the line. She kept her gun trained
on the portal, trying to calm her beating heart. He was surely dead at the bottom of the shaft; her aim was outstanding and she'd seen multiple impacts as she rose. She stepped up to the edge and looked down. The man in black was at the bottom of the corridor looking up at her.

  Unharmed.

  “Sorry if I scared you.” He smiled as he said it.

  “Who are you?” And Dalys heard the amazement in her own voice.

  “That's a complicated question.” His voice was deep and sonorous.

  “How are you still alive?” She still had the gun trained on him, even though she now doubted its effectiveness. He held up his hand in answer, and showed her the silver. It pulsed once and the acceleration helix cut out. The ship was no longer under thrust and they were plunged into zero gravity. The dark man jumped high, just as the gravity ceased, and his momentum carried him quickly up the corridor towards Dalys. He looked like he was flying.

  Dalys had been swept off her feet by the adjustment, and was now drifting agonisingly slowly toward, what a moment ago, had been the roof. She flailed in the air, trying to swim to a purchase. The dark man was almost upon her. She slapped at the dial on her belt and her shield came up.

  The Protocol’s man struck out and encountered only the field, suddenly black and thick in her arms. They drifted apart from each other, glaring angrily. His glove pulsed again and the acceleration helix was suddenly live, gravity returned with a rush. Dalys hit the deck running. She leapt over the dilated portal and came down with her field extended into a blade. She swung the blade, but the stranger simply moved aside as if he had all the time in the world. She dropped the blade form and went into sledgehammer mode. She swung the short club, but missed. She took three quick steps forward and came directly into his reach. She struck and he blocked it. She struck harder and faster but he blocked again and again without giving ground. Then she feinted, and he blocked the wrong way. Dalys made it count. He was wide open and she planted the heavy ball solidly behind his right ear with all the force she could muster. The ball made a meaty thump. The intruder held up his hands in a placatory gesture and smiled as if nothing had happened. Dalys was out of breath.

  “That's the last time you'll use that as a weapon against me.” he said calmly.

  “I seriously doubt it,” she said, and shifted the field into a sharp black blade again. She went to cut him, but the blade would not move in her hands. There was an opposing force, like two magnets repelling each other. Blue sparks flew at the point of heaviest resistance. She could not bring the blade anywhere near him. He smiled again. “Told you.”

  Dalys was perplexed by his behaviour, he was almost friendly.

  “We shouldn't be fighting. You're one of my favourite people in this life, I won't hurt you. I want you to trust me. How's this?” The man in black turned his back to Dalys and stood silently, arms out, palms up.

  Dalys didn't trust her field, so she unholstered her gun, and shot him in the back of the head at point blank range. His head was knocked forward and blood sprayed all over the bulkhead, along with bits of skull and brain. It dripped wetly down the wall. For a long horror stricken moment, Dalys waited for him to fall. But he didn’t, he stayed on his feet. Then the dark man turned around to face her. His face was torn apart, there was a great cleave in the top of his skull and skin flapped open horribly. His nose was gone and one eye hung by a purple nerve in the ruin of its eye socket. His mouth was blasted apart and most of his teeth were missing. He stood and looked at her. Slowly, and then faster as it went, he began to heal. His head melted back together. The blood and meat and bone on the wall seemed to evaporate and turn into a fine red mist, which drifted and settled into the place it had exploded from. The last thing to heal was his tongue, he stood with his mouth open until the swirl of mist stopped flowing inside. Then he smiled properly, humour in his eyes. Dalys was transfixed.

  “I could kill you at any moment, just so you know. And you can't hurt me, I hope you see that now.”

  “How is such a thing possible?”

  The man in black cocked his newly reformed head to one side and looked at her. His eyes glimmered like rainbows and his long dark hair fell across them. Dalys saw in that moment the great and abiding parallels between the man and the boy. It was beyond a simple similarity, it was in everything. From the shape of the jaw and the angles of the eyebrows, to his smile and his voice, this man looked specifically like Kulen De Sol. He was not merely similar in appearance the way a father is to a son; the way Marcos had looked, he somehow looked like an older version of the same person. She recognised him, the same person but older. He saw her recognise it in him and he smiled.

  “Ah, the first glimmer of comprehension amidst overwhelming confusion. There is so much happening in the world right now than you know of. I have the answers to all your questions, and the questions you don’t know you should ask. The beginning of understanding for you is to know who I am. Do you know who I am, Dalys?”

  Dalys was speechless.

  “All things are possible now, Dalys. Humanity has been transformed. I am the start of a new epoch.” He held up his hand and his silver glove flowed across it, lively and rambunctious, like the sea on a windy day.

  “This is the tool to forge a new history. I came through the core of the sun to get here, Dalys. There's nothing on this plane of existence which could conceivably harm me, and I certainly don't want to hurt you.”

  “You came through the core of the sun?”

  He laughed. “Twice! And you thought a bullet could hurt me.”

  “You're insane.”

  “By your standards, yes. But that matters little in the larger scheme of things.”

  “What about the boy?”

  “That no longer concerns you. Be quiet now.”

  At his gesture, the portal to the RHS irised open, and the man in black called out.

  “Kulen, come out. I will not harm you.”

  Nothing happened, everything remained quiet inside the room, and for a fleeting second Dalys hoped that Kulen had somehow escaped and was not trapped on the ship with this mad monster. He would escape this moment, he would escape seeing his inexplicably older twin, standing here impossibly.

  “KULEN. COME OUT.” It was not a shout, but the man’s voice dropped deeply in pitch and sounded loudly and powerfully enough to make the deck vibrate. It was overwhelming and insistent. Her heart fell as, slowly, the boy looked around the door frame and into the staging area. His eyes flickered with subtle colour, a marvel mirrored in the dark man.

  “Ah, I remember this moment, this is what I've been waiting for. Hello Kulen.”

  The boy walked onto the open deck and into the light, his own silver hand shining with a timid light although he did not look particularly afraid.

  “Who are you?”

  “Haven't you figured it out yet boy? Curtis knew straight away, and I know you're smarter than her.”

  “Are you here to take it back?” Kulen clutched his shining hand to his breast. “Are you here to kill me? Or punish me for taking it?”

  The man chuckled. “No Kulen. I'm not here for that. I'm not from the Protocol. I have the same machine you do. It is mine to do with what I will, as yours is to do with what you will.”

  His hand started to shine brightly. The illumination quickly intensified to painful proportions and Dalys covered her eyes. “I'm not here to hurt you Kulen. I'm here to teach you, to show you how to make the impossible, to show you what you’re truly capable of.”

  “But you killed so many people!”

  “Have I? Who have I killed aside from Moabi? How many deaths have I inflicted?”

  Dalys raged at him. “ALL OF THEM! You killed everybody! This is all you! How many on the asteroid are dead because of what you did?”

  The stranger turned to her and smiled. “Shows what you know. You'll find, when all the dust settles, that there were significantly less deaths than you would think.”

  “But you killed Moabi.”

&nb
sp; “Yes.” He hung his head as if remorseful. “I did do that. But you have to understand that Moabi was a tortured soul, unable to forget the abuse inflicted upon him on Mars, in his youth. He had a very dark side. He wanted me to do it, and at the last he was thankful for the mercy of death,” he looked askance at Dalys. “You know what I mean.” The stranger’s eyes flashed colourfully, brightly.

  Dalys frowned as the memories of suspicious moments leapt up in her mind. The little moments where she had caught the big man staring at Curtis. The way he behaved when he thought nobody was watching him, his love of the violent moment. She had long feared the potential of darkness in him, the looming physical threat he could be. The horrid danger of being stuck somewhere deep in space with a nightmare monster raging on board. The idea had occurred to her more than once in the deep dark sky. She had a countermeasure in place, was prepared for the event.

  The stranger’s eyes glowed softly and Dalys wrenched her eyes away. The memories stopped flowing and Dalys blinked, breathless. He had done that to her, he had pulled the memories to the surface and watched them, he’d read her mind. She could see that Kulen had known what the man was doing, and felt guilty for not stopping him.

  “You may as well put the gun away, Dalys. Oh, and here, this is yours.” He held out his hand in which he was suddenly holding her previously disintegrated pistol. Unscathed.

  Dalys holstered her sidearm and took the offered weapon. It was identical, down to the scratch patterns on the handgrip where her interface tattoos pressed. She holstered it also, feeling the balance restored, marvelling that reclaiming a reconstituted pistol was not the weirdest thing to occur in the last week.

  “Do you know who I am Kulen?” The man spoke to the boy, and Kulen looked thoughtfully at him.