The Shadow Among The Stars

by Dylan Sanchez

  Through a series of subtle topic shifts, Kirby had managed to experimentally broach the topic of her appearance and got the aouman waxing poetic about her freckles—apparently such a feature was extremely rare and envied by Qixing. The way Xong’Tcho told it, freckles were a chief feature of the royal family and seen in few others, and in past ages was seen as a mark of the gods’ favor. Kirby simply stared, dreamy-eyed and contented as the yolnfa spoke. Kirby soon heard everything she never knew she wanted to hear about being so freckled that makeup made it look like a cosmic artist had taken an eraser to part of her face. She was absolutely, positively certain she would not care if every last thing Xong’Tcho said had been a bold-faced lie.

  Vort had since joined Runner and Fra’Houn on their couch. He quietly observed the yolnfa slowly edge closer to Runner, gradually dialing up a look of rapturous attention and appreciation with the subtlety and control of a blind mountain sage embroidering a tapestry. Runner was either oblivious to the progression or attempting to see its furthest extent.

  Vort spun two of his eyes around toward Kirby and Nicadzim. The jockey was staring in poorly disguised, rapturous infatuation at Xong’Tcho. Aoue was currently orating a classic Qixing drama from memory, haous eyes closed as aoue rumbled forth a hear-trending soliloquy. Nicadzim made a subtle motion with one hand behind the back of the couch, and Kirby started as if she had been lightly smacked on the shoulder. He shot a gently chiding look at Kirby, only for her to stick her tongue out at him.

  Vort was settled down with his ten legs tucked beneath him. He bent his trunk to one side and loudly sipped tea from his cup. His feathers and skin rippled with lovely stripes of cyan and robin’s egg. The gray swirls of his eyes regarded his companions in turn, and he reflected on just how absolutely strange his new friends were.

  “I know your job is to be as cautious as possible, and I deeply appreciate travel clearance into your space, but a Qixing specialist, just one individual on loan to Dread Naught will allow much quicker response times when we have to operate in your systems. If The Dreaded escalate or we make a time-sensitive discovery, you do not want a military delay on your hands.”

  “Dame Branok ...” Rur’Thu placed the three middle fingers of haous left hand on his brow. “... we both want what is best. But I am beholden to the Lords and Ladies of the Body Royal to abstain from the slightest whiff of abnormal military prudence. Were we to assign a specialist to accompany Dread Naught as anything more than an occasional liaison, it would require shipments of regular supplies and an extended communication chain between both that individual and the CSOE that no amount of subtlety could long conceal.

  “Since the recent tariffs imposed on the T’hròstag, our most profitable trade routes with the Ly Aulth have suffered. We owe it to the citizenry to maintain as low a profile as possible—any extraneous expenditure, justified or otherwise, will not contribute to the appearance of thoughtful economics. I understand if this seems like a small issue to you, but Humans have historically lent more credence than we to military budgeting without mass displeasure. We find particular offense in perceived inefficiency or waste.”

  Bryluen shook her head. “Well we believe that preventing a tragedy with a bit of waste is better than suffering the alternative. You can hold out for the time being: but keep praying that the first time you get the proof you want to justify a military push, it isn’t because you have to answer for deaths.”

  “The Sentinels and Internal Garrisons will hold, Dame Branok. They always have, and we will soon determine a method of tracking the Sjorthursars, I am sure. We have no less interest in our safety than you do for your own people, and we are more than aware of your personal interests in Qixing security. We thank you for your thoughtfulness, and as always wish to work alongside Humanity, but we must also attend to the orderliness and peace of our own realm.”

  13. Disappointment and Duty

  After deliberating fine details for another hour, Bryluen and the ambassadors left the meeting room. With a motion, Rur’Thu summoned the yolnfas from the lounge. Dread Naught saw them off in a neat manner, with Xong’Tcho kissing Kirby’s hand as aoue departed. She was unable to summon words in response. The moment the shuttle retreated from sight, Bryluen’s professional stance and smiling expression instantly vanished. Wordlessly she wheeled around and stomped back up the entryway corridor, sounding as if her weight had suddenly tripled. The others looked at each other, confused by her sudden departure. She took a hard right into the meeting room once more.

  After a moment of silent thought, the rest of Dread Naught followed cautiously. Once outside the closed meeting room door they heard a ruckus inside—yelling and impacts, mostly muffled by the sound proofing. Some moments of tense staring passed between them all. Vort did his best imitation of a shrug with his wings. Runner kept glancing back at the door, then to the others, while Kirby crossed her arms and stared at the ground. None of them had a clue how to handle the situation. Nicadzim, used to unknowns, simply sighed and handed Runner his jacket. He put his meaty hand on the door button, motioning for the others to stay back.

  Bryluen sat sideways on a discarded chair in the far corner of the meeting room. One of her hands was busy mussing its way through her hair. Her legs were stretched out ahead of her and her ankles were crossed. She had kicked her shoes off at some point, each laying in a different end of the chamber. Her jaw was locked in anger, her dark eyes burning.

  The withering stare she flashed Nicadzim as he entered and closed the door behind him may well have slain a lesser man. The other chairs were thrown about the room, one of them sideways on top of the meeting room table. Nicadzim calmly picked up this chair with one hand, placed it on the ground, and sat down.

  “Not to state what was most obvious, but I was guessing the negotiations did not go so well?”

  Bryluen snorted. “They sent out a complementary camera drone and promised not to shoot us out of the sky. It’s absolute horseshit, and people are going to die because of it.”

  “So no real cooperation—a token gesture, at best? That will seem … odd.”

  “You’re telling me. You know what the problem is with people that have never had their borders busted and been slaughtered like animals? They tend to think it just won’t happen to them. Sure we’ve got invisible space monsters crawling up our asses and lighting shit on fire, but we’ll be fine, surely nothing unexpected could happen?”

  “What … what type of things were you hoping will be agreed to?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, a Qixing specialist so we can have direct contact with their military, some actual logistical support, maybe increased defense forces and patrols? Literally anything except a pat on the god damn head. There are going to be shit-tons of them, we ... Nico, would you mind getting everyone else in here? I’m going to chew your ears off for a minute.”

  Nicadzim nodded, then appeared in the lobby. He summoned everyone into the meeting room, and they all came in and righted chairs for themselves. Bryluen stood up and began to speak, pointing toward the non-human in their midst. “Alright, we’re just going to get this out there now. Vort is from a different galaxy. A whole other galaxy an unknown distance from ours.”

  The team glanced at Vort, taking a moment to process the incredible information they had just been given. Vort turned a shade of turquoise.

  Bryluen insistently snapped her fingers, dragging everyone’s attention back to her. “Somehow, that’s not even the headline. His people have heard of The Dreaded, remember? If there are enough of them that they’ve been spreading between galaxies, how many are going to end up here? They’ve been ramping things up since their first recorded appearance—how much higher does that slope go? At what point is the entirety of our civilization going to be hopeless against a tide endlessly flowing through our gates? We can’t even see the little shits most of the time right now, so if there are hundreds or thousands of Sjorthursars prowling around … then what? We have no way to know of their numbers, and the facts
leave open the possibility of an endless number of them.”

  Dread Naught was deafeningly quiet. “The Qixing aren’t agreeing to direct support. We can go into their space and operate freely, but other than that it’s basically business as usual for them. We’re doing all we can, and the CSOE will get all proof or information possible to them to try and get them to act. But people are going to suffer. Right now, our best option is to keep doing our job, and hope our allies see the big picture before it’s too late to put together a real plan. I’ve forwarded the details to your computers. Anyway, that’s my depressing-ass part of things today. How was it for you folks?”

  The team shuffled nervously for a minute. Kirby cleared her throat. “I … uh, we all managed to not get nekkid? I was real strongly thinkin’ about it, but you bein’ angry seemed purty scary to me.”

  Bryluen responded in a thoroughly sardonic tone. “Well, that’s one thing that went how it should have, so good job, I guess. Anyway, I’ll probably be in a better mood some minutes from now, but until then: life has no inherent purpose, and we are all doomed to one day be forgotten. Dismissed!”

  Soon afterward Bryluen changed into black athletic wear. She was squared before a punching bag in the exercise room, hammering the bag with repeated patterns of strikes. She huffed through her teeth, and lashed out with a tight left hook that sent a harsh shiver through the bag. The exercise room was along the exterior of the structure was open to the rolling mountains and forests beyond. It was now a little past noon, and she had been at the punching bag for over forty five minutes working out her frustrations.

  Her footwork was precise and carefully metered and her strikes swift and sharply on-form, leaving no unnecessary openings. She always remained steadfastly dedicated to maintaining her physical state, and little externally had changed about her body as she had aged other than the development of lines on her face. She felt no vanity in that respect, the clear visual impression of experience granted by having a lined forehead and eyes helping her self-representation if anything. Runner arrived at the door to the exercise room. Seeing Bryluen attacking the punching bag, he thought twice about disturbing her and instead set course for the library.

  A few days after the meeting with the Qixing, Kirby stood before the Marduk in the workshop. She had finished testing and greasing her new finger joints, and was appreciating her work. The gleaming digits of each mighty gauntlet should now have improved sensitivity and wider independent ranges of movement, enough to effectively grip an opponent or weapon. She had concluded such feats, and many other melee or grappling maneuvers, would benefit from greater motion granulation than the walker’s gauntlets previously provided.

  She nodded and wiped the back of one hand across her forehead, remembering somewhat belatedly that her hands were thoroughly doused in oil. She snorted as she considered the large black streak now dominating the top half of her face. Gazing at her reflection in the hulking, impassive machine, her mind wandered.

  She had been through many trials to arrive at this point. When she was younger she dreamed of being many different things, none of which had been to become a Marine. Two failed marriages later—the first due simply to being young and foolish, the second for other reasons—she found herself in desperate personal and financial straits. With no local family connections, and having opted out of the ability to have offspring in her youth, she took the first chance she found to escape.

  The Astral Marine Corps had been her way out, an escape from the shattered circumstances of her life. Kirby watched herself gently scratch at the large scar on her chest, a constant reminder of just how badly she needed that chance. Looking at where she was now, she felt she had done all right for herself ever since. A soft smile forced its way onto her face in spite of herself.

  Runner entered the workshop, whistling softly. He had failed to replace his shirt despite not entering the exercise room. He marched over to the table holding the project he had been working on, the weapon finally ready for testing. It was a hefty, two-handed firearm with a complex system of valves, electro-magnets, and dials. Kirby turned toward him, her eyes and forehead obscured by a black swath like war paint. He picked up the experimental weapon and nodded to her.

  “Want to see what thi-i-is baby does?”

  Kirby grinned. “Oh honey, I was beginnin’ to think you’d never fuckin’ ask!”

  He chuckled, hefting the solid weapon in his hands. “I like to play hard to g-get. Show, don’t tell, as th-h-hey say.”

  Kirby laughed briefly, lightly touching one of Runner’s sculptural abdominal muscles with an outstretched finger. “Well the second part of that I can see pretty damn clear.”

  ◆◆◆

  Nicadzim held his metallic fire-block in two hands. He edged along the side of a viscous cliff of fear-gelatin, its surface swimming in countless pastiches and snapshots of divorces, injuries, sickness, unpaid bills, and many other less pleasant things as seen from a million sets of eyes. On the other side of the canyon wall, he saw the long shadow of the coming danger he had been stalking for what he perceived to be a week.

  Vort sat next to where Nicadzim had been napping on a couch in the lounge. At the moment, all that accompanied the small alien was a large impression left behind when Nicadzim vanished. Vort fought a slow tide of anxiety. While the large man did tend to disappear when sleeping, it was still unduly nerve-wracking to watch it happen, not knowing when or if he would be back.

  The small creature twitched and generated a strangulated yelp as Nicadzim suddenly walked in through the door connecting the lounge to the balcony. Nicadzim yawned and wiped green residue from his hands. “Vort, do you have any idea where Bryluen happens to be at this moment?”

  Dread Naught soon stood around the fountain in the lobby, gathered around Nicadzim. Kirby’s hair was down for once, and she wore an oversized t-shirt and denim shorts, her spare frame causing the shirt to rustle around her in the gentle breeze permeating the lobby. Runner wore a fitted black shirt and a tight pair of pajama pants. Bryluen was now clad in slacks and a velvety red, sleeveless blouse. A brief flick of her eyes noted Runner’s and Kirby’s states of dress in silent evaluation. Nicadzim wore a blue tank top and khaki pants. His massive arms were nowhere near the highly defined anatomical sketches Runner’s arms were, but were on an altogether larger scale.

  He ran a hand across his bare scalp. “During my recent nap, I was able to … apprehend a small idea, or image, of The Dreaded. I will believe it to be a small fragment of the nearer future.”

  Bryl’s brow furrowed. “A specific future, for example one of us, or a general part of some future? Can you tell?”

  “I believe it be a coming event for us all. The details have been, as always, sparse, but I was thinking that perhaps such a thing behooves me to tell you all, given our frustrations recently.”

  Vort tilted to one side. “So you saw a small piece of what seems to be our future? Has this happened to you before? Are such things … reliable?”

  “I have never, in all my years, experienced something that was not in some way real. Whether I will tread upon the metaphorical constructs of a poem I have not yet read, or swam across glimpses of childhood pets, all I had seen was real in some way. I see the memories of others, and events as they turn out to be the memories of others before they happen. I assure you, what I will see is real, and it would be relevant to us … soon after now. I regretted that it is not more comprehensive, but I believe it is encouraging in some ways to share with you all.

  “I see stormy skies, green and beige buildings. Myself, Bryl, and Runner entering to fight Dreaded in the corridors. The larger Rabisus—the En-Rabisus were present. Kirby, Vort, and … someone else?—they will be outside. We are pursuing a stone—black, mysterious, that same Stone Bryluen has been hoping we can find. The Dreaded are attempting to take it, and among them was a larger one, something more than the En-Rabisus. I will feel it more than I will see it in the vision, perhaps Kirby and Vort encountered it?”r />
  Bryluen put one fist under her chin. “We’d have our proof, and if we can get that Stone from them, we will be on much better footing. It figures we’ll be encountering bigger and worse Dreaded. At least we have some warning, rather than getting jumped by something awful. The En-Rabisus are supposed to be bad enough as-is.”

  “Hell, I can think of a few places that might be like that facility.” Kirby crossed her arms. “Green and beige? I was posted near a Qual-Ex lab once that looked like that. Chunky, thick walls with overhangs around the edge of each building? They’re not a big company, I don’t think. Can’t have too many facilities out there.”

  Bryluen wagged a finger. “Qual-Ex … Nico, you said it was stormy. Could you describe it?”

  “Hmm … the sky is a dark blue-gray, the clouds thick and solid, though it will be day time. The air holds tension, a feeling of energy and static—”

  “—Electrical storm! God, that’s Qual-Ex’s main depot. It’s on Tāwhiri, the Atua system, bordering the Qixing—there are almost always violent electrical storms in the upper atmosphere. I’ll send through a call to them right now.” Bryluen started to walk across the lobby to her office. “Be ready to go, because if they’ve got that Stone we’re leaving now.”

  Bryluen sat in her office chair, waiting for the display above her desk to dial through. CSOE contact protocols meant that even if you had no reason to expect a call from the CSOE, you would be quite aware of how important the call was.

  INCOMING CALL FROM: