“A cube,” I observed. “But not just one. They’re everywhere.”
I panned the Sabre’s scopes through Hermes’ orbit. A few thousand kilometers above the planet, hundreds of cubes identical to the first floated in silent unison. I glimpsed lines on their surfaces, etchings I’d never seen before. Carved into the face of each, a glowing white eye gazed out into the darkness.
I stared at them, and the cubes stared right back.
“Are they weapons?” I asked aloud. “A defensive net to keep Strigoi out? If so, they might kill us.”
At the edge of the cube-ocean, I brought the Ring to a complete stop. I panned the scopes once more, and I counted the cubes. Their white eyes—all of them—gazed in my direction.
“We shouldn’t go closer,” I said. “We’ll send another message.”
I opened my mouth to speak to the Ring’s console, but the console lit up before I could utter a word.
‘New communication received from Hermes.’ The words flashed before me.
I tapped the glowing blue console, and the message flared up in the space before my eyes. The soft blue light reminded me of myself, of the way I looked while not inside a body.
The message was different than the first, filled with far more detail. As before, the words weren’t in a language I knew.
I wasn’t sure why, but I recalled the dream I’d had of Joff while lost in hypo-sleep.
‘Why haven’t you plugged in?’ he’d asked me. ‘After all these years, you should know all there is to know.’
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
Accelerating my learning using my nano-nodes felt inhuman, as if I were cheating the universe. I hated it.
Just this once, I told myself.
Never again.
I closed my eyes and allowed a few hundred light-nodes to escape the cortical plug in the back of my skull. Their departure wasn’t enough to injure my body. They were just enough to learn.
The blue particles floated in the air beside the message from Hermes. Curling, dancing, and weaving, they soared between each character of every word.
Soaking it up, I thought.
Cheating.
In moments, the light-nodes darted back into my cortical plug. I lifted a lock of blue hair to let them in, and I felt their gentle touch as they reentered my mind.
Just like that, I learned the language of Hermes.
The message read:
Lightbringer, we see you. We know your origin. Undock your warship from your interstellar craft and proceed to the coordinates attached to this message. Any deviation from course will result in your destruction. Any use of quantum devices will trigger our light-net, annihilating your body and AI.
Yes, we know you are AI.
Proceed to coordinates.
Await further instructions.
Praise be to Sufi – the light
- Maliah, Hermes’ High Calipha
I’d expected Hermes to know me. I was ancient, after all, and it seemed likely Siraya’s grandfather had mentioned me during his pilgrimage.
But I hadn’t expected giant metal cubes.
Or to be threatened with destruction.
I keyed the coordinates into the Sabre’s console. The location they wanted me to land existed on Hermes’ far side, shrouded in darkness for lack of the distant star’s light. I felt my chair vibrate as the Sabre uncoupled from the Ring, and as I eased the ship away I wondered if I’d ever sleep in my bed again.
Doesn’t matter.
It never mattered.
I descended.
Through thick white clouds and black skies, the Sabre carved its way into Hermes’ atmosphere. I spied glimmers of light on the planet’s surface, cities scattered throughout the darkness.
I glimpsed mountains, vast and covered in ice.
I saw frozen rivers, glaciers, and glasslike lakes.
I risked much in coming to Hermes. If they shot the Sabre down, it would’ve taken weeks for my nano-body to fly back to the Ring.
By which time they’ll have destroyed it.
On a whim, I tapped a sequence into a panel atop my arm-cannon. A tiny screen slid open. On it, I saw all I needed to see:
Surface temperature: 2.9 degrees Celsius
Atmospheric pressure: habitable – 998.29 millibars
Air quality: safe
Behind Hermes’s surface readings, thousands of green dots winked at me.
I breathed a little easier.
Green dots meant life.
Hermes wasn’t full of Strigoi.
I guided the Sabre over a frozen lake and toward a distant mountain. White lights encircled holes graven in the mountain’s side. Slowing, I cut through a last layer of fog.
And I arrived.
The Sabre processed a signal from inside the mountain. My ship switched to auto-pilot, its grav-controls maintaining a stable descent. In moments, it entered the mountain and floated to a stop. I peered out the cockpit window, and I saw them waiting for me in a vast hangar. They were dressed all in white, almost as garish as the Arcadians, only colder.
I keyed a quick sequence into the console. The Sabre dropped off into sleep.
With a deep breath, I lowered the Gamma’s helmet over my head.
This’ll probably terrify them. I considered how the black, sharp-angled Gamma Suit would look.
But really, I just want to stay warm.
The Calipha
To the waiting soldiers, I must’ve looked like a monster.
We stood opposed inside the mountain hangar, two-hundred of them and just one me. In the Gamma Suit, with its gleaming black plates and cannon covering my right arm, I was the darkness.
And they were the light.
They’d turned out to meet me, or perhaps to kill me. I took ten steps away from the Sabre, and I wasn’t sure. The mountain hollow in which I’d landed looked big enough to hold a city, and yet silence reigned. Except for me and two-hundred Hermes soldiers, nothing and no one stirred.
Twenty white-clad soldiers broke away from the ranks and marched at me. Their faces were masked, their pale robes swaying atop their armor as they walked. They held rifles in their hands, long and deadly. These were no Arcadian grunts trained under President Hephast.
These were soldiers hardened in battles I knew nothing of.
They stopped twenty meters away. They hadn’t yet lifted their rifles, but I understood any wrong movement I made might be my last.
One amongst them said something, though I couldn’t tell which. Their white cowls and faceless visors hid their mouths too well.
I listened hard. I knew their language, but my body wasn’t accustomed to hearing it.
He said…what did he say?
Why do I come here wearing black?
“This is the Gamma Suit,” I explained. “Scientists…they made it for me. I didn’t get to pick the color.”
The soldier said more. Even with my suit’s sound augmenters, I didn’t fully understand him.
Or is it a her?
Did she just say what I’m wearing is blasphemous?
The soldier woman spoke again. I heard her voice clearer.
“You will come with us,” she said. “You will put down your weapon.”
I looked at my arm cannon, attached seamlessly to the Gamma Suit.
“It doesn’t come off.” I smirked.
“You will come with us,” she said again.
In unison, the soldiers surrounded me. I saw none of their faces. In the bitter cold, I expected to see their breath steaming the air. But I saw no steam, only white shrouds dangling beneath masks frozen and pale.
I let them usher me into their midst.
And I marched with them to a faraway door.
The door slid open, and we abandoned the mountain hangar for a long, barren tunnel with walls of stone. Beyond the tunnel, we climbed a flight of stairs, and we ascended a ramp to a hall whose blazing lights would’ve hurt my eyes if not for the Gamma Suit’s visor.
“…wears black, but calls herself Lightbringer.”
“…can’t be the one.”
“…Maliah will know.”
Despite their numbers, they feared me. I felt insulated inside my suit, though I knew my invulnerability wouldn’t last.
I’ll take my armor off.
And they’ll see I’m human.
Well…mostly human.
They never touched me, but they crowded me nonetheless. Somewhere in the mountain’s heart, we marched into a room with low ceilings and chrome tables, and a dozen soldiers gathered in a tight circle around me. In all my years of making war, I’d never seen such discipline, such rigidity.
“Take it off,” the soldier woman commanded.
The more I heard her talk, the more I realized she wasn’t a woman.
She’s a girl.
“All of it?” I asked.
A dozen soldiers adjusted their rifles. I understood their meaning.
All of it.
Starting with the ebon boots, I loosed the Gamma Suit from my body. Pieces clattered on the chrome floor, powering down as they fell away from me. I stripped away everything – my left-hand gauntlet, my thigh plates, the black spheres encapsulating my shoulders. I saved my arm-cannon for last.
And then my helmet.
I lifted the smooth black helm from my shoulders, and I felt the air bite my skin. Even deep inside the mountain, the cold clung to everything, creeping inside my black shirt and leggings. I breathed Hermes’ atmosphere for the very first time, and I tasted ozone, salt, and the scent of machines I’d never been near.
I liked it more than brutally hot Sumer, but less than all the other planets I’d visited.
Even some of the Strigoi ones.
Barefooted, with my too-thin shirt and leggings, I waited. Though I couldn’t see their faces, I knew the soldiers stared at me. They’d never seen a blue-haired, blue-eyed AI girl before.
They might’ve been awestruck.
…or awaiting the command to kill me.
“What’s it going to be?” I said in their language. I’d already picked up their rigid way of speaking, and I mimicked it as best I could.
The girl soldier motioned for her comrades to ease their fingers from their rifles’ triggers. They did, and I understood they weren’t going to kill me.
She walked within two meters.
And she pulled off her mask.
Her hair was dark, her eyes bronze, and her skin pale as snow. She stood at my height, eye-to-eye, staring me down. Despite her manufactured confidence, she couldn’t have been older than seventeen.
“You know our language,” she said.
“I suppose I know anything I want to know,” I countered. “I’m AI. It shouldn’t surprise you.”
“It’s just that you don’t look AI.” She grimaced. “You’re very convincing.”
I said nothing.
“I suppose the old galaxy is full of things like you.” She toyed with her rifle.
“No. I’m the only one,” I said.
She looked at me as if she didn’t believe it.
“You’ll need new clothes.” She retreated into the soldiers’ ranks and returned with a mound of white linens in her hands. “Put these on.”
After a thousand years, I’d grown comfortable with my body. Shameless, I stripped away my black garments, and for a moment I stood naked before them all. If any of the men enjoyed the spectacle, I couldn’t tell.
I slid into the white garments. The robes cascaded over my body, making me as shapeless as the soldiers. The sleek, skintight boots warmed my frigid toes. I dropped the hood down over my cheeks, but the girl scolded me.
“No, not the hood. She will want to see your face.”
I threw back the hood and let them lead me from the room. Two of them scooped up the Gamma Suit’s pieces and bundled them in white sheets. The rest gave my crumpled black clothes wide berth.
I didn’t yet understand.
But I will, I knew.
* * *
In a room graven high into the mountain, I stood before a bay of windows. Night reigned atop the sea far below. I looked down across the distant water, whose formless waves swallowed the starlight. The feeling of being so high above the sea calmed me.
I closed my eyes and dreamed of Earth.
I stood on a mountain not unlike this.
With an ocean of trees, not water, below me.
It feels the same.
A door opened behind me, and a woman in a white dress slid into the room. I gazed at the faraway sea a moment longer, and then I faced Maliah, Calipha of Hermes.
“Almost two kilometers down.” She sank into a white chair in the room’s far end. I expected rigidity, but the way the Calipha spoke sounded like the wind, breathy and calm.
I wanted to ask questions.
What is this place?
What were the cubes in your planet’s orbit?
When will I get my armor back?
But I’d dealt with politicians before. Planet to planet, in every city I’d ever gone to rally soldiers for the war, human rulers were all the same. They liked to ask questions, and answer none.
“You know who I am.” I remained by the windows. “And yet you don’t trust me.”
Maliah leaned back in her chair. In the room’s low light, I saw the starlight gleam in her silver hair. Her face spoke of a woman in her mid-forties, but her eyes told a far older tale.
“Did Mina treat you well?” she asked.
Mina, the soldier girl, I knew.
The resemblance is striking.
She’s the Calipha’s daughter.
“I know I’m a stranger here,” I said, “but somehow I expected a warmer welcome.”
“Ah, yes,” said Maliah. “We don’t really do warm.”
She rose from her chair and walked to the far end of the window bay. She was taller than me, pale and regal as a queen carved of snow.
I didn’t like her. But I had to admit her beauty.
“So long as you are here, you will abide by our customs,” she said without looking at me. “You will dress as we dress. You will pray when we pray. You will not speak of the places from which you come, not their technologies, nor their people.”
I almost asked a question.
I bit it back.
“I’m here to help you,” I said. “If you don’t want me, send me back to my ship. I’ll fight them alone.”
She glanced at me. “You think you can kill the Varkolak better than we? You think your weapons are superior?”
The Varkolak, I mouthed the word. Its meaning was the same as Strigoi.
“I think I’ve organized seven planets to fight them for the last nine-hundred years.” I kept my tone mild. “And I think you’d be foolish to reject me just because my armor and ship are black, or because you fear the makeup of my artificial mind.”
Even in the shadows of her dimly-lit room, I saw pride welling inside her.
To her credit, she swallowed it.
“You say you can help us.” She gazed into the darkness beyond the window. “You with your one ship. So be it. We may accept your offer.”
“You may?”
“However,” she interrupted, “you will wear the Goddess’s white. You will kneel at dawn and dusk. You will bow in Sufi’s sacred chapel. And then, once you’ve been baptized, we will decide whether or not you are fit to go to war beside us. Our decision will happen soon. You will know our answer within seven days.”
Seven days.
At least Hephast had the courtesy to reject me quickly.
“I will have questions,” I said.
Maliah turned away from the windows. “You’ll get your answers. But not tonight.”
* * *
That night, in a room somewhere deep within the mountain, I sat on a bed and considered all things.
The soldiers who’d led me to my stark, windowless chamber hadn
’t said a word to me. I was the AI, the one they must’ve thought of as emotionless, and yet they seemed far more machine than I.
They’re afraid of me.
They know more of me than I expected.
They have questions they’re not allowed to ask.
I peered around my white-walled room. I’d dimmed the lights, and yet everything still shined. The chrome floors, frigid cold and impossibly clean, reflected the lights of the too-low ceiling. The room had no trappings, no art, no furniture, and no warmth. Even the shower I’d taken in the room beyond had chilled me.
Hermes, or at least the Calipha’s mountain stronghold, seemed a sterile place.
I’d hoped for more.
Sufi’s Hope
In a white marble dome, as pale and distant Sufi crept over the far horizon, I knelt on the floor in the company of thousands.
And I did as the others did.
They touched their foreheads three times to the stones beneath our knees, and I mimicked them. They lifted their gazes to behold the lanterns shining in the dome’s heart, and I followed their eyes.
I’d never prayed before then. Every human settlement I’d visited pursued pleasure and technological advancement far more than any spiritual end. The Milky Way was full of hedonists.
But on Hermes…
Beneath radiant blue spheres in the dome’s center, Calipha Maliah stood. We wore the same robes, all of us white and hooded, our eyes standing out as our only sign of humanity. When we rose at her command, the rustling broke the silence like an ocean wave.
And when Sufi’s first light struck the dome, the most zealous among the crowd cried out as if they’d never before seen a sunrise.
Or might never again.
I understood.
In listening to the people talk, I’d learned far more than I ever would have by asking questions:
They’ve been at war with the Strigoi for thirteen-hundred years.
They worship the sun, whom they call the Goddess Sufi, because they fear the darkness will consume them.
Eaters of the Light Page 7