Eaters of the Light

by J. Edward Neill

  They’ve forgotten Earth.

  They don’t know what happened.

  Maliah gave a stirring speech. As a ruler, she was more eloquent than ever Hephast had been. And yet, even as she spoke of suns and stars and holy lights striking down the Varkolak, the meaning of her words died in my ears.

  The war wouldn’t be won with prayer.

  It’ll take courage.

  And science.

  And more luck than anyone here knows.

  At the prayer’s end, I stood alone and watched the crowd disperse. In a river of white robes, they flowed out of the dome and into the frigid dawn. Some began the long trek up the roads winding into the mountain.

  But most slid into vehicles massed on the shores beneath the dome.

  As the first of the tiny flying machines floated into the air, I watched from one of the dome’s thousand windows. In the sand, the half-spheres looked anything but aerodynamic. Yet when hundreds took to the air, powered by gravity-repulsion, my eyes widened.

  Like steel bowls filled with people, the hover-spheres zoomed over the dome and toward the imposing city beyond the mountain. Blue shields popped into existence atop each one, walling off the frozen winds which skirled down the mountain. Given the sheer number of spheres, I expected collisions, and yet they soared away at breathtaking speeds. None crashed. No one died.

  Mina, the Calipha’s daughter, came to me as I watched. Her hood was down, but her sleeves rolled partly up, revealing the white armor beneath.

  “You don’t have hover-spheres where you’re from?” She sounded less rigid than the night before.

  “I’m not supposed to talk about it,” I said. “Your mother – she’s afraid I’ll say too much and introduce ideas Hermes doesn’t want.”

  “True enough.” She nodded. “Come with me.”

  I followed the girl toward her mother. Mina’s eyes were darker than Maliah’s, and yet the resemblance was obvious.

  Other things were obvious, too:

  She’s fought the Strigoi before.

  She’s pregnant.

  “You’re going to have a baby.” I said as we approached the glowing light in the dome’s heart.

  “Is it so obvious?” She sounded almost vulnerable.

  “No. I mean – not yet. I only know because I’ve seen it so many times before.”

  She looked at me. I saw a light in her eyes, and a powerful will to suppress it.

  “Can AI reproduce?” she asked. “And if you did, would the child be human…or another like you?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’ve never tried.”

  Five meters before reaching Maliah’s dais, Mina stopped.

  “Mother says you’re hundreds of years old.” She faced me. “But you’ve never tried to have a child? You must be as soulless as she says.”

  I knew I couldn’t let anything spoken by Hermes’ people bother me. But I admitted – her remark stung.

  “Mother, your guest is here,” she said to the Calipha. Maliah watched the last of the hover-spheres soar toward the city, and then faced us.

  “Thank you, child. You’re dismissed,” she said to her daughter. “See to your bath. And to your visit with Zephayus.”

  “Mother, I wish to speak to you about the oper—”

  “It’s decided, child.” Maliah waved her away. “Until you’ve given birth, you’ll see no battle.”

  Mina dropped her hood over her eyes and departed with her white robes swirling.

  Alone with the Calipha, I stood below the dais.

  “A warrior and a mother.” I watched Mina depart.

  “A mother twice.” Maliah raised her chin. “The girl’s been blessed with Sufi’s light. And yet, of all my children, she has the most darkness in her.”

  “Seeing the Strig—I mean the Varkolak, will have that effect,” I said. “No man or woman is ever the same afterward.”

  Maliah descended from the dais, though when she reached the bottom she looked down at me no less.

  “All thirteen of my children have fought the enemy.” She smoldered with pride. “Mina is the last…and most promising. She might one day lead our fleet against the very walls of Hades. But until that day, she must bear her children, and she must do it well. For they, too, will learn to make war. And so on until the end of days.”

  Thirteen children, I thought.

  And twelve of them dead.

  “You’ve prayed well, Lightbringer,” She pulled her hood closer to her cheeks. “Now you’ll follow me. I have something special in mind for you and your pretty warship, but you have much to learn.”

  * * *

  Stuffed in a hover-sphere between two ivory-armored soldiers, I soared to the city beyond the mountain. Maliah’s sphere and two others flew ahead of us, the blue sunlight sparkling on their silver bottoms.

  If the Calipha’s mountain fortress had been a forbidding sight, the city beyond it was anything but. They called it Perseph. It was Hermes’s grand capital, the crown jewel of the planet’s army, the home of its all-powerful clergy.

  I’d glimpsed its lighted towers when I’d landed the Sabre, but I’d seen little else.

  In the breaking dawn, it was beautiful.

  Through a cold haze we descended. Perseph rose up at me, glistening with frost, her narrow streets lined with silver. Far below, white marble houses spread across a snow-sprinkled valley, each one connected by bridges, glass tunnels, and spiraling staircases. Rising above the marble dwellings, pale towers leapt into the day’s new light, piercing the waifish morning fog like swords.

  Every structure seemed joined to every other, as if the entire city had been carved out of the mountains in a single motion.

  It wasn’t often I allowed myself to see the beauty of things. But as we descended upon Perseph, I never once blinked.

  Somewhere in a warren of silver domes and white minarets, we landed. The blue shields slid away from our hover-sphere, and again the cold washed over me. I shivered beneath my robes. For all my dislike of Sumer’s relentless heat, I wasn’t made for winter any more than summer.

  “I didn’t expect an AI to shiver,” Maliah greeted me on the snow-swept platform. She wore only the same white robes she’d prayed in.

  “My body is human.” I shrugged. “I’ll adjust to winter soon enough.”

  She and four of her guards swept ahead of me. “This isn’t winter,” she called back to me. “This is summer...only just beginning.”

  Of all the things I’d expected, trailing a prideful queen through the snow hadn’t been among them.

  If I were younger, I’d…

  Never mind.

  In silence, I followed Maliah and her cadre. Down into the city we marched, gusting through narrow alleys and striding between walls thick with frost. That they allowed me to tag along was notable, but I’d no doubt what they thought of me.

  I’m an afterthought.

  Siraya’s father left here more than a century ago.

  These people have no idea who I am.

  We reached a door. Maliah was first through it, trailed by her guards. A tall, faceless soldier held the frozen door open for me. In I went, striding down a hall barely wider than my shoulders.

  The mountain hangar had been vast, its halls broad enough to house an entire fleet of warships.

  But deep in Perseph, I felt as if I’d fallen into a labyrinth. The twisting corridors and claustrophobic rooms reminded me of the fortress in which I’d been created on Earth.

  Cold.

  Empty.

  Desolate.

  At the hall’s end, Maliah’s guards swept a handheld device over a panel on the wall. The panel glowed with blue light, and a door opened where none had existed. I peered over the guards’ shoulders to see what lay within the vast space beyond.

  A giant room.

  Computers. Monitors. The smell of machines.

  We’re deep below the city.

  We’re someplace important.

  I stepped inside.
<
br />   And I knew the room’s purpose.

  In the grand hollow far beneath Perseph, hundreds of men and women sat before thousands of vid-screens. The hollow space had been graven into the rock in a sphere’s shape, and its insides made into a web of stairs, platforms, and alcoves. I stood behind Maliah and her men, and I tried to take it all in.

  Everything’s white. Their clothes. The stairs. The walls.

  The vid-screens…not unlike the Sabre’s. The images…mostly of deep space.

  A control room.

  They’re looking for something.

  The Strigoi.

  “Follow us.” Maliah glanced back at me.

  We descended two flights of marble stairs and crossed a bridge spanning the room’s heart. The workers looked at me as I passed, absorbing the sight of me. I saw them, and I couldn’t help but notice how alike they looked. The people who’d fled Earth so long ago would’ve been of many nations, many sizes, shapes, and colors. But the men and women of Perseph felt too similar, as if they’d all had the same parents.

  They were pale, too pale.

  Their hair was long and black, their eyes golden, and their faces chiseled as if from ice.

  I was the one who’d lived a thousand years in bodies that had never changed.

  But they’re the ones who look artificial.

  “They’re looking for something,” I said to Maliah as I trailed her.

  “Some are looking,” she said. “Some have already found.”

  We marched past another dozen vid-screens. Most were lit with soft blue light, and most revealed images of planets, stars, or deep, dark emptiness. I shuddered at the sight of several worlds whose surfaces were ragged, and whose cores had been gutted by Strigoi machines.

  “How many?” I asked.

  “How many Strigoi outposts have we destroyed?” Maliah knew my meaning.

  “Yes.”

  “Thirteen-hundred and forty-four,” she answered. “But it’s not enough.”

  I crunched the numbers in my head. Throughout all humanity’s years spent hunting Strigoi in the Milky Way, we’d annihilated more than six-hundred outposts.

  But here…

  Thirteen-hundred and forty-four.

  The Strigoi. Their presence here is stronger.

  We came to another stair, which we descended in a hurry. Maliah’s soldiers seemed as robotic as ever, but she looked on edge. I caught her glancing at nearly every screen we passed. The screen-watchers fell silent beneath her, their faces even paler than before.

  And then we arrived.

  On the lowest platform in the sphere-shaped hollow, we stopped amid a ring of some hundred vid-screens. At least fifty workers looked up from their duties, none daring to look the Calipha in her eyes.

  “Bring it up.” Her voice boomed in the shadows.

  “Pardon, Calipha,” the eldest of the workers dared. “What image would you like? And on which screen?”

  Maliah breathed a sharp breath through her nose. She expected everyone to know exactly what she meant.

  “The Coffin Engine,” she declared. “On every screen.”

  I moved beside her. Her soldiers didn’t try to stop me. Together we watched a flurry of motion as the workers swept their hands across the floating blue symbols before them.

  Within moments, every screen went black.

  And in moments more, the same image appeared on every one.

  “There.” Maliah pointed at the largest of the screens. “Tell me, Lightbringer—have you ever destroyed one of those before?”

  I walked closer to the screen. The two workers beneath it left their seats and shuffled aside. They weren’t fearful of me, but of the image of the thing they’d summoned on their screen.

  “The Coffin Engine,” I whispered to myself.

  I stared at the screen.

  And I wasn’t sure what I saw.

  In a cloud of dust many light-years’ across, something evil slumbered. As big as any planet, as black as any void, a dark ring floated in the nothing. Although no one gave me permission, I walked directly beneath the screen and lifted my hand into the blue lights serving as its controls.

  I zoomed closer to the image.

  And closer.

  Of unimaginable size, the black ring peered back at me. Dark, misshapen tendrils writhed along its surface. Tubes, pipes, and bones as big as cities clawed along its length, pumping billions of gallons of Strigoi effluence.

  I glanced back at Maliah.

  And stared at the screen once more.

  “No,” I said. “We’ve never destroyed one of these. I’ve never seen one before now.”

  The workers remained silent. The soldiers dared not move. Alone, Maliah came to me.

  “No one has,” she said. “At least not before twenty years ago.”

  “What does it do?” I asked.

  “It digs deeper graves.” Her eyes were dark. “When the Varkolak destroy every star in an area, the Coffin Engine comes. It eats gravity. It ensures the dust and bones of fallen stars will never again reform. It ensures their dominion over everything they destroy.”

  I’d learned plenty of science during my many years, but I’d never heard of such a thing.

  “Eats gravity?” I said.

  Maliah grimaced.

  “It deprograms every atom within a few hundred light-years. It steals the mass of everything. Stars, planets, moons – they turn to dust. And then the dust itself becomes null, floating through the nothing without purpose. Entire solar systems die in this way. And in time, entire galaxies.”

  I stared at the terrible thing. I felt the same as Joff must’ve when he’d stood on his farm and counted the stars missing in the sky.

  I hadn’t been afraid, truly afraid, for a long time.

  But now I’m shivering.

  “And you’re sure you’ve never seen one?” Maliah pressed. “Your message said you’d wiped the darkness fully out of your galaxy. And yet, how can you be sure?”

  I looked again at the monstrosity staring back at me.

  And I understood.

  “It’s new,” I said. “This is the first one. They’re adapting to us. They know we can destroy them. And they’ve decided to kill us faster.”

  I heard at least one gasp from the workers behind me.

  Maliah wanted to disbelieve me.

  But when I looked into her eyes, I saw the only thing I needed.

  She knows I’m right.

  Zephayus

  As we prayed, I sensed the air’s heaviness.

  Shoulder to shoulder, we knelt in Sufi’s dome and waited for the sun to rise beyond a wall of grey clouds. Maliah reigned atop her pulpit, preaching hope and glory in the predawn shadows, but I knew I wasn’t the only one ignoring her.

  Behind me, two men whispered of the twenty new stars Hermes’ scientists had rumored to be lost.

  Somewhere in front of me, I heard a woman weep. Her father had died an awful death while destroying a small Strigoi installation only a dozen light-years away. Two men whispered consoling words, but her soft cries never slowed.

  Beside me, Mina glared at her mother’s dais.

  “Very soon, our children will outnumber us,” the Calipha’s daughter whispered. “And then what? We’ll send infants to do battle?”

  I looked at her, but said nothing. It felt strange hearing her say such things. She spoke often of her eagerness to return to the war.

  And yet today, she sounds…

  …rebellious.

  If Mina’s mind had changed, perhaps she had good cause. Her second child was only seven months from birth, and like all the other children of Hermes, the youngling stood a good chance of being orphaned when her mother went to war.

  Hermes was a planet full of orphans.

  For the past three days, I’d listened much and spoke little. And what I’d learned shook me. I’d heard whispers of Hermes’ birth quotas, which decreed every woman was to bear at least five children before her thirtieth year. Those who fail
ed to reach five were subject to harsh penalties, while those who exceeded the quota were held in the highest esteem.

  I’d heard of entire cities full of children, sprawling nests of towers and dwellings in which the young outnumbered their elders fifty to one.

  And I’d learned of factories in which the young assembled weapons for their elders to use in battle.

  Because so many of their parents are away at war.

  …or floating dead between the stars.

  Hermes’ reverence for fertile mothers wasn’t founded in anything sentimental.

  The planet needed bodies for the war.

  “Is yours to be a boy or a girl?” I whispered to Mina.

  “Girl.” She glanced at me. “Though I wish they hadn’t told me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because.” She scowled. “I could’ve pretended. I could’ve hoped for a boy. But now, all I know is she’ll end up exactly like me. I’ll have two daughters. Might as well be a hundred. ”

  I knew what she meant.

  Her children will be taken away.

  Sent to schools far from home.

  Trained. Indoctrinated. Impregnated.

  They’ve been doing it since the beginning.

  “I envy you,” Mina said to me after a short silence. “You either can’t have children or you don’t want to. You get to fight as you please. You don’t have to care about anything.”

  “I do care,” I said. “I’ve always cared.”

  She shot me a cold look. “Until you’ve lost something, until you’re human, you don’t know what it means to care.”

  I thought only of Joff.

  And I said nothing.

  The sky lightened, but Sufi never showed herself. Her light, trapped behind colonnades of dark clouds, allowed only greyness to glower upon the masses. As they must have many thousands of times before, the crowds arose to leave, and they did so in a somber mood.

  They’re quiet.

  Contemplative.

  Afraid.

  Mina dropped her hood over her face and walked away. Despite her mother’s moving prayers, she looked utterly joyless.

  As did they all.

  Again, I flew in a hover-sphere to the warrens of Perseph. And again, I trailed Maliah and her soldiers through the silent city and into chambers deep underground.