Eaters of the Light

by J. Edward Neill

  I tried to imagine the sound, but I couldn’t.

  “God,” the young pilot exhaled.

  “It’s finished,” I said. “They’re all dead. I can feel it. Can’t you?”

  He looked at me with his mouth hanging open.

  “Weren’t they already dead?”

  “Yes…well…now they’re dead-dead.” I smiled. “And this was their last world in our galaxy.”

  * * *

  The hologram in the Grand Spire’s heart flickered and went out.

  Hephast and all the others fell into a deep, satisfied silence.

  I wanted it to last forever. But too soon, Hephast spoke.

  “It’s done,” he cried out. “It’s finished. The Strigoi are dead.”

  I opened my mouth to interject, but the Congressional Court erupted into applause. Their raucous shouts washed over me. My new body hadn’t been conditioned for such noise.

  “Lightbringer. Lightbringer. Lightbringer!” they chanted.

  “The war is over,” they bellowed.

  I waited.

  And I let them come back to calm.

  After several moments, the clamor died. Hephast called for order, and most of the assembly sank back into their seats.

  “Lady Lightbringer,” Hephast said to me. “You have done a great deed. For hundreds of years, we have lived in the Strigoi shadow. Many of us never thought it would end. We assumed...no…we knew we would make weapons and send fighters to their doom until the end of all days. And now—”

  “All hail Lady Lightbringer,” someone in the assembly rejoiced.

  “Our champion,” shouted another.

  “Give her whatever she desires,” said still another.

  With a wave of his fragile fingers, Hephast quieted the room again.

  “And so we shall,” he said. “Lady Lightbringer—or Lady Callista, as you like—we shall restore your full citizenship upon Sumer. You shall be given a tower, upon which your name will shine until the end of time. When our people look to the sky, it is your name which will linger in their minds, and your victory for which monuments numbering in the thousands shall be hewn.”

  “President Hephast…” My voice sounded small. “If I may speak…”

  “You may,” he said.

  I began with a deep breath.

  “It’s true—the Strigoi menace in our galaxy is destroyed,” I said. “And yes, we’ve spent nearly a thousand years making it so. When he – when Joff Armstrong slew the very first Strigoi installation, I never thought it would be possible.”

  “And yet here we are,” Hephast raised his slender arms, igniting fresh cheers from the crowd.

  “Yes. Here we are,” I said. “But our galaxy isn’t the only one in which our enemy thrives. The Milky Way is only the beginning. We know them to exist elsewhere…in Andromeda.”

  “Andromeda.” Hephast scoffed. “This too, we have heard. But even the Strigoi must know they can never overtake us now. Our scientists have said it will be a hundred-thousand years before our enemy can again marshal enough power to threaten us. A hundred-thousand years…it might as well be a million.”

  “Are you saying the war effort will end?” I looked at him. “Are you saying you believe it’s over?”

  The room quieted. I heard only the beating of my own heart.

  “There is no war.” Hephast looked down at me, and his eyes were full of shadows. “This very day, we shall send word to the other planets. It is confirmed—the Strigoi are defeated.”

  I fell into silence. In my heart, I’d always known what his answer would be, and yet I’d dared to hope otherwise.

  For all my centuries of wisdom, I often forgot the simplest lesson I’d ever learned:

  Hope is a mistake.

  From Sunlight to Shadow

  “How long has it been, Cal? How many lives have you lived?”

  I looked my old friend Griff in his tiny blue eyes. Ten centimeters tall and made of azure light, he floated near the window of my room in Arcadia’s largest hotel.

  I remembered being like him.

  Many centuries ago.

  “You’re what – a thousand years old now?” I countered his question.

  “Nine-hundred seventy-nine.” He drifted closer.

  “And you’re calling me old?” I cracked a smile.

  “Well…I…” he stammered. “Technically you’re a few years older.”

  I walked past him and went to the window. A hundred stories below, white lines blazed on the Arcadian streets, stretching forever into the night. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have believed the city covered half the planet.

  “Forty-seven times,” I exhaled. “This is my forty-eighth body.”

  “You mean—?”

  “Yes. I’ve died forty-seven times.” I shrugged. “Though never once of old age. I sometimes wonder what that’d feel like. If ever I tried to live a full life, would I want to live another?”

  Griff had never been capable of as much emotion as me. Unlike me, his range of feelings were self-limiting.

  Even so, I swore I saw his tiny eyes widen.

  “Were all of them…violent deaths?” he asked.

  “Not all,” I said. “I died once of a hypo-chamber malfunction. My corpse floated thirteen years between planets before they found me and popped my cortical plug into a fresh body. It was strange waiting like that. I’d gotten used to being killed faster.”

  Griff looked at me in disbelief. He’d long ago decided against the permanent transfer to a living, breathing body. He’d remained himself, tiny and made of nano-light particulates, for all of his existence.

  I sometimes envied him.

  “And you always choose the same body?” He looked perplexed. “It makes no sense, Callista. One would think you’d want to try something new. Different hair, different eyes, or maybe even—”

  “A man’s body?” I tugged the window curtains shut.

  “Yes, well—” Griff fluttered close to a lamp, in whose pale blue light he seemed almost invisible. “Why not?”

  “I like this body,” I said. “It’s strong. It’s fast. I’ll never have to redesign the shape of my cortical plug to fit inside a different skull. If I die, I just float out and reinsert myself into a new body. Besides…” I glimpsed myself in one of the room’s twenty mirrors. “…they say this body is beautiful, whatever that means. Being pretty helps when convincing humans to make war against the Strigoi.”

  Griff crossed his arms. His gesture reminded me of something I used to do.

  “This isn’t about prettiness,” he said.

  “No. I guess not.” I sighed.

  “This is about Joff, isn’t it?” he said. “You still love him.”

  Joff.

  I closed my eyes and stood in the room’s center. I felt weightless, floating in the clouds far above Arcadia.

  “When they plug me into a new body, the first thing I see is him,” I admitted. “Always. Every time. And it’s not as if I can help it. He’s just there. It’s the way they made me. He’s been gone for nine-hundred years, but the way my mind works…it doesn’t matter. I was meant only for him.”

  “Oh,” was all Griff managed.

  “And that’s why I’ve arranged a private meeting with Hephast. No crowds. No Court members. I need to talk to him. I need him to understand the war isn’t over. Joff knew it then, and I know it now.”

  “Is that wise?” Griff floated so close I could’ve touched him. “Hephast doesn’t like you. In fact, most of Arcadia won’t like you when they find out what you really are.”

  “And what am I, exactly?” I stared hard at him.

  He looked down at his hands, bright blue and glowing.

  “We’re not the same,” I said.

  “Close enough.” He shrugged.

  I paced the room. Light from Griff and the pale lamp splashed on the floor, but otherwise I moved in darkness. In the shadows, I remembered things I’d tried to forget:

  Joff sleeping in a bed
back on Earth. Every night, I watched over him, anxious for him to awaken.

  Leaving Earth behind. Soaring between worlds. No one else but me and him.

  Seeing his smile the first time I came to him in a human body.

  Kissing him. Making love to him. Watching him die in the heart of a newly-born star.

  “If he were here, he’d do the same.” I broke the silence.

  “Which is?”

  “Keep fighting.”

  * * *

  I rose from a glass chair and walked into Hephast’s presidential office.

  Every muscle in my body tightened.

  I didn’t want anything to do with Hephast.

  I hid it well.

  I entered his grand chamber, and the lights within made me wince. Every white and silver surface gleamed in the sunlight pouring through a wide bank of windows. Sumer’s suns, fiery red Atreya and blue beauty Kokab, smoldered on the far horizon, no less furious despite the approaching twilight.

  So beautiful it hurts, I thought.

  Two hundred stories above Arcadia, Hephast’s room was as vast and opulent as I’d expected. A glass table sat in its heart, littered with every manner of outlandish Arcadian sculpture. I walked in silence across the white marble floor, and the President reclined in a chair whose arms were plush with fur from some faraway planet, and whose shape had been carved to resemble a hand as pale and skeletal as Hephast’s own.

  I took my seat.

  I longed for the Sabre’s cold, dark confines.

  I wanted my bed, my lonely rooms, and the deep silence of my interstellar ship, the Ring.

  Instead, I looked the old man in his eyes. I had every intention of asking him to wage war against the Strigoi until the end of time.

  “Lady Callista,” he greeted me.

  I nodded in deference to him. I glanced to his office’s corners, and I couldn’t help but notice two soldiers standing guard. They looked the same as the sculptures on Hephast’s table.

  Pale.

  Motionless.

  Is he afraid of me?

  “Thank you for seeing me,” I said. “Forgive me for being early. I tried to take a walk, but the heat…it’s unbearable.”

  He looked me up and down. Despite myself, I felt small in his presence.

  What Griff had said was true.

  He doesn’t like me.

  “What is it like?” the old man asked.

  “Pardon?”

  “Being what you are…what does it feel like?” He steepled his skinny fingers. “Do our suns overheat you because of your…artificial-ness? Have the Strigoi affected you in some way as to make you shun the light?”

  I couldn’t tell whether his tone implied condescension or curiosity.

  Likely both.

  “My body–this one and the others—they grow in a tank aboard my interstellar Ring,” I explained. “The fluid therein is colder than the womb of a natural human mother. This body is new, and so it hasn’t yet acclimated to Sumer’s warmth.”

  “How new?” he asked.

  “You remember the holo-vid in which we destroyed XV Prime?”

  He nodded.

  “Two weeks prior, I landed on a Strigoi moon with a small band of fighters. We needed to abduct a satellite…to understand the frequency of light capable of destroying it. But we were ambushed. The Strigoi fell upon us, and most of my team was killed. It might’ve been the true end for me, but I escaped my cortical plug a few seconds before they incinerated my body. It took five days for me to fly back to the Ring in nano-light form. My new body was already grown—I like to keep a spare.”

  “And nine days later?” he asked.

  “We attacked XV Prime.”

  If my explanation satisfied him, he showed me nothing. His face looked chiseled from the same white metal in which his guards were armored.

  “Five days,” he said. “You’ve been here five days, and yet you’ve not moved out of your hotel. We have houses for you, banquets ready to honor you, and a tour planned for you to spread your story to all of Sumer. Will you explain your reticence?”

  I drew my life’s deepest breath.

  “I won’t need any houses,” I said. “Nor any banquets. I regret to say I must decline the chance to tour the planet. I can’t stay here.”

  The lines in his face tightened. I suspected he already knew everything I planned to say. But it must’ve galled him, the overlord of an entire planet, to sit across from a young woman who refused all his honors.

  “You can’t stay?” His eyes darkened. “You want no towers, no houses, no glory? These are things we do not offer lightly. You could be a goddess in the people’s eyes. Or you could be no one.”

  Breathe, Cal.

  You’ve no pride.

  Swallow it anyway.

  “The glory isn’t mine,” I said. “Not yet. As long as the Strigoi roam the outer darkness, humanity will never be safe.”

  The old man grimaced. He’d hoped for something else.

  I continued.

  “We’ve colonized six new worlds in the last nine-hundred years. Six. It’s impressive, but it’s not enough. It’s too slow. The Strigoi aren’t mindless killers, nor are they afraid. Every human alive hopes for a hundred-thousand years of peace, but they won’t get it. They enemy will come back for us. They’ll adapt. They’ll find a way to bury us all. It’s what they do.”

  I saw Hephast’s anger vibrating within him.

  Even if he believes me, why should he care?

  He’ll be dead in a few years.

  Maybe sooner.

  “Let us suppose, Lady Lightbringer,” he began, “that what you say is true. Let us assume the Strigoi will come for their revenge far sooner than every scientist on this planet believes. What would you have us do? Our galaxy, a mere ‘Strigoi outpost’ as you’ve called it, is far smaller than Andromeda, where you claim our enemy has many strongholds. But you have no fleet left to chase them, and even if you did, you’ve no one willing to follow you across the void.”

  “But—”

  “I’ve read your reports,” he interrupted. “And I’ve seen your remarks about the so-called Hades Galaxy. If such a thing exists, how would you propose we attack it? How precisely will you wash away the trillions of Strigoi you believe await us? How many galaxies out there teem with darkness? You might slaughter them for a million years, and for what? You’ll never find peace.”

  Look at him.

  He believes me.

  He knows I’m right.

  He doesn’t care.

  “I don’t have all the answers,” I admitted. “Not yet. But a thousand years ago, I had even fewer answers, and here we are. Humanity should’ve been wiped out centuries ago. Because of what Joff Armstrong did, we’re all alive. I have to finish what he started. The war must go on. For a thousand years…or a million.”

  “Joff Armstrong…” Hephast sneered. “He was never real. Admit it, Lady Lightbringer…you created this fictional man in your lonely mind to justify your role in the war. We all know the truth—you are a machine, and incapable of any feeling beyond obsession. This Joff…this Armstrong…he never existed.”

  He meant for his words to sting.

  And they did.

  I flinched, but I allowed no tears to escape. I’d always known my greatest foe wasn’t the Strigoi, but rather the men who urged me to walk away.

  “Are you saying you won’t help me?” I stared hard at the old man.

  He turned his cheek to me.

  “You refuse my hospitality.” His voice chilled me. “You will not accept my gifts. You come to us on the eve of victory and all but declare our inevitable defeat. Who are you to shun our scientists? And who are you to claim you understand our enemy better than all others? What is the point of your achievements if you never stop to savor them? Yours is the mind of a machine, not a living, breathing human.”

  I’d hoped to sway him.

  I’d been foolish.

  Without his support, no one on Sumer
would dare help me. Door to door, I might’ve gone, and found no soul sympathetic to my cause.

  “If you will not stay, you must go. If you reject peace, you and I have nothing more to discuss,” he said. “Leave. Go from my tower. I would see you placed under arrest, but I know you have no real power anymore. The Strigoi are gone, and you with them.”

  I had more to say.

  But I kept my tongue behind my teeth.

  * * *

  At dusk, I stood before the giant glass doors of my hotel.

  Music thrummed from every nearby tower.

  People fitted in garish Arcadian costumes streamed in and out of buildings.

  I stopped before entering the hotel. Beneath my hooded dress, I stood anonymous in the street as revelers milled all around me. I didn’t recognize them. I didn’t know what they celebrated, though I felt certain it had little to do with the Strigoi.

  I watched them walk the streets, and I felt they weren’t the same as the people I’d left behind. Drugged, drunk, their senses saturated by nano-machines flooding their bodies, they were something other than the humanity I’d known.

  In a way, they were even less human than me.

  Standing there in the vibrant Arcadian night, I remembered something Joff had once told me. As a young man, his father had told him about human excess, and how Earth had almost perished many centuries before Joff was born.

  The Exodus, they called it. The moment when millions of Earth’s finest had left the rest behind. They had abandoned everything, all the technology, culture, and unlimited entertainment humanity had allowed itself.

  And they’d started over with nothing.

  If not for them, everyone would’ve died when the Strigoi killed Earth’s sun. Instead, the Exodus people spread out to other worlds. They escaped all the things humanity had done wrong on Earth.

  But they’ve forgotten.

  They’re starting all over again.

  If Joff had stood on the glass street with me and watched the rivers of people flow past, he’d have asked me:

  “Does humanity deserve to live? If this is what we’ve become, do we matter? Are we worth saving?”

  I wouldn’t have been able to answer.