“Whatcha do, even?” Uncle Thunder asked, frowning. “Did you press a button or somethin’?”
Kindle blinked. “What?”
“It just...stopped?” Uncle Pit frowned too; the face he made reminded her of Mastiff’s, still but ready for a fight. The similarities unnerved and angered her, and the power of the Flames splashed within her. “The Major slipped past when the door opened and the thing came out.” He cocked his head towards the large door, covered partly by ivy, leaves, and flowers. “Whatever you did made it stop. I ain’t sure - ”
The door hummed an interruption.
The nanoswarm once surrounding her spun and rushed towards it, filtering into a small device housing a translucent orb in a steady stream, until it started to beep sharply, and then settled into a sunset-color glow; the light coated the door, piecing together a long holographic face spun into a form by the ‘roids.
“NEW USER IDENTIFIED. BREAURIAN ACCESS GRANTED,” it spoke, its long mouth opening wide with every word. The face nodded and disappeared; the door behind it opened. An abyss - an endless, ever-growing unknown - met them on the other side.
“Stay here,” Kindle said, her voice odd in her own throat. “You’re not allowed to enter. Head back.”
Her body, stepped towards the door as though pulled by strings, with the pleas of family falling on deaf ears at her back The door slammed shut with a load bang.
Kindle turned, returning to her senses. Nothing. She couldn’t hear anything on the other side. Her heart sank. At least they’re safe, she told herself. Whether that was true or not, time would tell. She stepped more into the darkness, her sinking heart pumping blood through her body. Her footsteps echoed from wall to wall.
No. Not hers alone. Somewhere in this darkness stood the Major, having slipped through the automatic defense while his Bluecoats and her family fought; she had to find him. That, or a way out, and leave him stuck in here.
No, you have to find that Core - it’s important. A wave of urgency replaced the fear and hesitation. She thought it courage or purpose for a moment - but deeper down she knew she was wrong.
The Flame or whatever it was tapped her in the right direction - gentle pushes, here or there. She felt it cool and rise within her with every decision she made. The selfish power pulled her in every direction. Old memories pushed to the forefront of her mind in flashes, but she choked them down and focused on the darkness in front of her.
One step. Two steps. Three steps. She kept moving, the whispers within her spinning tales. She didn’t know what to think, what to do. She hated every second of it. Was this how my mom lived?
After what felt like an eternity, the darkness broke. To her left, she saw something that she hadn’t expected; through the window, she saw the world she lived in. The planet of C’dar.
She hadn’t ever seen it from the outside. The vast size of it was daunting, a massive blue sphere covered in greens, reds, and small flecks of purple land here and there. She lived all her life on that planet, not knowing what it looked like on the outside. She had wished to leave the planet one day, like every young Caldwell did at least once; she hadn’t expected that time to be now.
She looked around, a sudden realization striking her. She wasn’t on a ship, but a satellite station within orbit. Grandpa nor any of his brothers ever mentioned anything like this before. Perhaps they hadn’t known either.
What else don’t we know? Knowledge - like the unknown, or space - was both terrifying and amazingly vast.
The Flame urged her forward, pushing her instincts through the winding corridors. Reminiscences of a lost civilization threaded through each room, of people both similar and foreign to the life she saw on the C’dar. Centuries of dust, ivy, and mold layered most rooms, some even inaccessible or locked off by the internal system. She turned, winding through living corners, through mess halls, through an infirmary. She hadn’t the chance to look or digest any of it. The Flame pushed her to the edge of nausea. She was in a piece of history and she couldn’t savor it.
In a trance-like march, she made it to a room labeled nothing more than the Terrarium. This door flung open without any resistance.
The power within her cooled, if only for a while.
The Terrarium was abuzz with red error screens, each blinking on the surface of glass and metal before she stepped foot into the room. At her presence, everything stopped, screens flickering off one by one until none remained. Kindle regained her composure, realizing soon after the immense size of the room she had stepped in. In every direction there were forests, lakes, cliffs, deserts, and grasslands, each sectioned off in contained areas. A large metal orb spun in the middle of the room, slowly and steadily beeping; from the center of it, a beam swept from landscape to landscape, stopping only to twist the environments here and there. Mountains rose. Rivers changed course. Dunes collapsed. All within seconds. All in a blink of an eye.
That was technological power, the legacy of dead civilization lost to time and human errors. The Terracore.
“You came. I thought you might’ve gotten lost for a second there.”
Major Steven Debenham stood in the shadow of the Terracore, arms behind his back; Grandpa and the rest had done quite a number on on him. The robotic pieces of his body had been melted, while the human pieces were covered in dried blood and cracking burns. He stood tall and proud regardless, though sheer madness on his face betrayed his cool nature of his posture.
“Do you know what this is? How it can save thousands of people? No. You don’t. None of you do. You’re out to protect what’s yours. All of you are selfish beyond compare.” The Major turned to her. “But I needed you. Remy Breaux squirreled you away to activate your abilities and all I had to do was push. Make you want to save your family. But now...you’re here. The Shaman has served her purpose - activating Ogoun. I don’t need you or your family anymore. I had a good time, but it’s time for me to do what I came here to do.”
The Major was a wolf going for the neck or a bird swooping a fish from the pond. He came at her with bullets. She barely had time to react, to find cover. Glass shattered all around them, breaking the tranquility of creation in favor of destruction.
She ran from place to place, trying to create space between her and the Major. She fired back when she could, the satisfying sound of Coal’s chamber echoing through the Terrarium; any hit she made on him, Debenham ignored as though they were inconvenient taps on the shoulder. Kindle didn’t have that luxury. Shaman or not, she was still flesh and blood, and bullets didn’t agree with either of those. She kept running, scrambling to the mountain area.
Don’t you turn your back against a gun. Good way to get shot in the back. Funny how it wasn’t the newfound powers she had that she was leaning on, but words she had heard a thousand times by her grandpa. She would’ve smiled at that if she wasn’t running for her life.
The glass and kinetic field of the mountain area dropped at the sight of her. Lucky thing, that. She assumed it would let her in like everything else, but if she was wrong she would’ve ran straight into a glass wall - an embarrassing way to die.
Kindle sprinted through the artificially created land, head turned slightly to keep an eye on the rampaging ’roid. She created some space; she needed more. She darted through the cover of the land from hill to hill, from cliff to cliff within this small sample size of a world. She jumped over a lip of rocks into the cover of tall crags and cliffs.
A rock burst into pebbles from a high-caliber bullet near her head and she almost yelped. Shards scraped against her cheek and got into her eyes; small annoyances, all in all. But those minor distractions added up after a while. One second was enough to kill you.
She squatted and shuffled from cover to cover, thinking through her plans. More shards of rock fell on her shoulders, the bullet spray growing tighter and tighter; she felt the bullets graze her, a warm sting here and there among the cuts and bruises. Block it out, block it out. The feeling of dread mixed in wit
h the thrill. She pushed it all down. Distractions.
Kindle spun around a rock spire, hand still wrapped around the Breaux spear she came with. She listened, waited. She heard the click she had been waiting for - a reload. She had to do it, so did he.
With all all her strength, and some borrowed from the Flame within her, she kicked off a small rock, leaping higher and higher until she hit a plateau. She saw him on the other side, the gatling in his arm spinning and spitting out shells.
He saw her a bit too late. Kindle leapt through the air, aimed, and launched the spear with all the power she had in that arm. Years of spearfishing with her father served her well. The purple crystal-tipped spear slammed clean into the Major’s forearm; sparks and a small fire bloomed body, and he doubled back, both from the shock and the force. She gave him no quarter.
Landing with the grace of a cat, Kindle aimed and fired two more shots from Coal. Debenham used his dead arm and the spear itself as a shield, running behind the crags of the mountain. She would’ve caught him on the transition, but luck wasn’t on her side;the sweeping light came. It terraformed the landscape of the rock in a sudden burst upwards and provided him a shield that wasn’t there before. Her clean shot barrelled into a newly formed rock.
She cursed some very improper curses that her pa would’ve popped her wrist for. Stay focused. She reloaded her own gun. Never waste a bullet; never miss one. She took a deep breath, wiping the sweat from her brow. This was far from over.
Kindle heard the man’s soft muttering from behind the newly formed rock range. There was a sickening rip and the clattering of her broken spear to the ground. She had to have hit a human part of him. Had to. That pain was real.
“...understand. I don’t get it…” She heard pieces of his muttering, distorted here and there, but couldn’t see him. “Why put yourself through this effort? What’s the purpose of all this struggle? Why? This technology can help people, change lives. A little sacrifice for the greater good.” His voice was closer, soft against the AI-forged winds. “I have a daughter ’bout your age, two sons younger than that. I’m willing tear apart a thousand of you to make sure they have a life better than mine.” Closer. Too close. He wanted to distract her, have her focus on his words, on his -
Whatever hit her, hit her hard. She felt herself flying and then slamming into the dunes of the next contained area yards away. Kindle rolled and rolled, millions of rough grains of sand coating the inside of her mouth, and spat blood, spit, and sand onto the ground. A sharp pain ran down the entire length of her shooting arm, forearm skin ripped and raw. Coal was tossed out of reach, steadily becoming buried among the whipping sands.
What happened? Her mind and vision spun back into focus. Where are you? she thought, blinking back tears of agony. She flexed her fingers. Good. She hadn’t broken anything. Where are you? Fear rose in her chest. Was all this for nothing? There were too many questions that need to be answered. For the first time in a long while, she felt her age - lost, confused, and scared.
I can’t do this.
She shook her head. No. She had to go on.
“That should’ve killed you,” she heard his voice call out. “The Flame must be good for something.”
This time she heard him coming. Kindle dodged barely, the force of his attack punching a brief hole in the sandstorm. Now she was eye to eye with the Major. His cold eyes fixated on her for a kill. He went for another punch, time slowing around her.
Was that what hit her before? A simple punch, each thundering with a force of a cannonfire. Any one of those should’ve killed her. Bang. Bang. Bang. Each punch was louder than the next, gradually gaining speed. He was recovering, bit by bit. Cyborgs could do that, she knew. She pulled a knife from her back with her uninjured arm between his blows, watching for an opening. Blow after blow. Each perfect. Each with the trained ability of a professional. He ducked in, feet steady against the uneven sand. Not a slip. Not a mistake in sight. She reacted out of fear, plunging her hidden knife at his neck, and only stabbed air. He pivoted at the last second, grabbed her by the wrist, and yanked her to the ground.
She crashed face first into the sand, eyes burning and head pounding. Her shoulder popped, his raw strength twisting her arm behind her back. She screamed.
No more words.
He was gonna kill her.
She clawed helplessly at the sand and roots with her free arm, his strength breaking her other. No. I can’t. I can’t, I can’t die. Sand and blood. The taste of own teeth in her mouth. She shouted again.
“Dig deeper. Break everything,” a voice told her.
Another joint popped. The pain became all she knew, the only tangible thing her mind. The whispers in her mind grew stronger.
“Destroy it all. Survive.”
Blood now. Blood everywhere. Breaking bones and open wound.
“Destroy it all! Survive! LIVE!”
A waft of spice and sweetness struck her nose, followed by a hard push. Whatever tenuous hold she had over the Flame slipped through her fingers. She tried to catch it, but she had a better chance catching a frying pan from the burner; she lost it, and with that loss of control came a power she didn’t know she had. Pain was a mere inconvenience now.
Kindle, or what was left of her, pushed upwards with one arm and tossed the Major aside effortlessly.
White and red flames curled around Kindle as she stood. Major Debenham blinked his confusion at her. The arm that once held her wrist had been melted beyond recognition. Sirens screeched and the blinking red screens returned. Kindle didn’t care to read any of it. Words didn’t matter. Sound didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was gone.
She raised her hand, unamused. The nanodroids of the Flame, red and angry, wrapped around her fingers.
“Goodbye, Major.”
A flash of light left her hand, followed by a burst of fire. The stream hit the Major and swallowed him within seconds. He didn’t scream. Not once. The pain must have been terrible, but he took it without a sound leaving his throat. She watched, her mind uncomprehendingly, wondering how he even lived through it. You have to end this. You have to end this now. She gave a hard swallow, adrenaline still pumping through her body.
She walked over, picking up Coal amongst the sand on her way. The Major curled within the dunes, clothes burned away and naked, not unlike how she found her granddad. A desperate scene. One she might’ve pitied if she felt anything. But there was a certain poetic justice in that.
She dusted off her gun and aimed it the man’s head. Major Debenham turned, his eyes remarkably human.
“You don’t know what you just did, do ya?” He laughed, curling within the comforts of the sand. “You broke it.” His laughter grew louder. “You broke it. You actually broke it. Well. Great.” He deflated. “All this time and I leave empty handed. Gosh darn it.” Kindle touched the trigger. “Well. Guess I gotta go. I’ll see you around, Cassie.”
She fired her gun but found no target. A bright light swept the Major away, leaving a hole in the sand where he once was. A recall beacon. He was gone now, safe in a ship.
Kindle would’ve felt bitter about that, but again, she felt nothing.
The Flame cooled again within her after long minutes of sirens and screaming computer screens. All at once, all her feelings came rushing back to her - the pain in her arms, the warmth of blood on her skin, the fear and desperation. She stood, looking around the station. There was an automated voice on the intercom. She could barely hear the words over the ache in her own head. She stepped down the sandy dunes, boots digging deep through the sand. The words on the screens became clear.
STARFALL PROTOCOL INITIATED.
The words sent a panic through her. What had she done? What did she do now? Ignoring the pain, Kindle trekked down the dunes back to the middle of the Terrarium. The cold dread rose within her. What did I do?
The core was a red ball now, crackling arcs of lightning in all directions. She stood frozen, looking at the screens p
opping up all around her. There were places she recognized on the planet - familiar ones, places she’d visited. Storms brewed on the coast, snow raged on the mountains, giant waves tumbled on the seas.
C’dar was falling apart.
It struck her - the Flame was the very thing keeping this planet together. This station had terraformed C’dar like it had in this small sample size, keeping a wild planet tamed and in check from orbit. She had ruined that somehow, broken it in her own desperation. Where would she go? Where would her family go, now that she’d unknowingly broken the world? Her throat tightened. How would she -
The door behind her opened.
A woman stood in the frame, dark skin glistening with sweat. Her curly black hair was in disarray but her round eyes took in all the information in a second.
The woman locked eyes with Kindle, and her heart pounded her chest, words caught in her throat.
The woman rushed over and grabbed her by the arm. “This is not your fault,” she said with a voice Kindle had only heard in dreams or visions.
Kindle knew who she was. And worse - she didn’t know how to feel.
“We have to go. We have to go now!” the woman shouted over the failing systems that Kindle had somehow overloaded. Astonishingly, she didn’t sound angry. There was a crack in her voice so deep that she felt it through the woman’s grip. “I’ll explain on the way. And...I’m sorry for what we put you through.”
Chapter 19
Starlight Exodus
Appetite
“The world we knew is gone. I couldn’t have predicted this. Maybe I could’ve if I looked hard enough.” -- Mary Lu Caldwell, the Augur of Owls
Appetite was watching from Sundancer when his daughter broke the world.
Kaulu darted from one side of his computer core, waiting for a response. The AI often flipped from being helpful, to caring, to obnoxiously amused at the dismay of humans. Showing any type of emotion that the AI wanted gave it the closest thing to satisfaction an intelligence its age could manage; Appetite struggled to keep his face devoid of emotions as he paced up and down the length of the ship. He scratched at his red-clay beard, the stubs of his missing fingers barely reaching his chin. The fear tugged at him. He knew now the burden that Ina had once carried with her, the reason why she couldn’t depart the planet for any long period of time. Everything had fallen on Kindle’s lap, and with it had come the worst possible outcome. Appetite hated it.
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