Eaters of the Light

by J. Edward Neill

  Our trek was a quiet one.

  The soldiers remained voiceless. Maliah never broke from her interminable frost. The workers in the grand hollow beneath Perseph never smiled, nor laughed, nor raised their voices much above whispers.

  Maliah had spoken of the war as if humanity were winning.

  And yet, to look upon the people’s faces suggested they’d lost long ago.

  “Do you know why we bring you here?” Maliah asked me as we walked the steel scaffolds and white platforms lining the hollow’s walls. We’d come here seven days in a row, and she’d yet to explain her reasons.

  It didn’t matter.

  I knew.

  “You want me to understand,” I replied. “To see that your whole planet is and always has been at war.”

  “Correct.” She looked mildly surprised.

  “I only wonder,” I continued, “if you found the Strigoi so soon after your arrival, why didn’t you leave? Why not retreat to the Milky Way a thousand years ago? Why not go back to Earth?”

  Maliah stopped halfway across a platform in the room’s heart. Her soldiers, normally stoic, seemed to shiver beneath their robes. The few workers who’d overheard me looked up from their screens.

  I’d said something blasphemous.

  “Leave us,” she said to her guards.

  The six men hesitated. None of them moved a muscle.

  “I said leave us.” Maliah glared.

  Within seconds, they were gone.

  “And you. You go, too.” She set her smoldering gaze onto two workers’ stations. “All of you, leave us.”

  The workers scattered. In their absence, their vid-screens went black. I was alone with Maliah.

  “Seven days, remember?” I spoke before she could unleash her wrath. “You told me you’d have answers. And here we are – I’ve been following you from dawn ‘til dusk, and I’ve had the courtesy not to drown you in questions. You said seven days. The time for answers is now.”

  I’d been on Hermes eight days, and already I questioned my decision to leave Sumer. I’d yet to learn what role, if any, Hermes would allow me in their war.

  “We’ve tolerated you this much.” Maliah turned her glare on me. “We’ve invited you, an intruder, into our most sacred places.”

  I closed my eyes. If I’d learned anything during my thousand years, it was patience.

  Let her speak, I told myself.

  And so I did.

  “You’re not supposed to be here.” She stood tall above me. “Do you know why? No? I’ll explain it for you. You weren’t made to be a fighter. You weren’t meant to be anything more than a vaccine, a cure. Not a fighter. Never a fighter. And certainly not here, on Hermes.”

  She must’ve seen the look in my eyes.

  It wasn’t often I looked anything other than calm.

  But now…

  A cure?

  What’s she talking about?

  “That’s right.” Her eyes went cold. “Oh, you mean you didn’t know? Your makers didn’t tell you? All you were supposed to be was a cure for the Varkolak draining, and a vaccine against their disease. That’s all. They should’ve told you. But then I suppose there’s plenty you don’t know, Lightbringer.”

  My gaze sank to the floor.

  I wanted to disbelieve her.

  How could she know anything about my makers?

  How?

  “Yet here you are,” she fumed. “So completely improbable. I told them we should imprison you. But no – they want me to include you. I ordered them to take your ship, but they voted to allow you to pray with us. To let you live. And even to fight with us. I am Calipha, and in forty years I’ve never once been overruled. Until now. Until you. And you’re going to stand here and ask me why, after just seven days, I haven’t crowned you humanity’s savior?”

  I understood then the conversations that had taken place about me.

  The politics about which I knew nothing.

  The debates upon which my life hung by a thread.

  She wants me gone. I stared at Maliah.

  She wants me dead.

  But the only words escaping my lips –

  “What do you mean – a cure?”

  She looked to her soldiers, who stood in a cluster on the platform’s far end.

  “Take her to Zephayus,” she boomed. “Do it now.”

  * * *

  In a sterile room with chrome walls and glass doors, I stood.

  The two soldiers who’d hurried me away from Maliah exited by the same door they’d brought me in.

  Again, I was alone.

  You knew you’d have to be patient, I told myself.

  Just breathe.

  If they wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead.

  I wasn’t sure where they’d taken me, only that we’d never once emerged into the sunlight. For a people who revered the sun, stars, and all things made of light, it felt as if most of their lives were spent underground.

  If nothing else, the subterranean chamber to which they’d delivered me felt more comfortable than elsewhere in Perseph. The shadows were deeper, the lights less glaring, and the air somehow warmer.

  I stood in the room’s heart.

  And I let myself thaw.

  In moments, I heard voices beyond one of the room’s many glass doors. A woman emerged through the door, and then dozens more afterward. Dressed in white, many of them pregnant near to bursting, they streamed past me in a line. For all the noise they’d made just seconds earlier, they grew quiet when they saw me.

  Their voices became whispers.

  They looked at me as though I were an alien, which I supposed was true.

  In swift succession, they crossed the room and exited through the same door into which Maliah’s guards had brought me. Near the line’s end, one of the women broke away. She flipped her hood back and came to me.

  Mina.

  The rest of the girls vanished beyond the door. Mina, paler than I’d ever seen her, stood before me. I’d yet to see her smile, but her usual frosted stare was absent.

  “You’re here?” she asked.

  “Your mother sent me away,” I said.

  “Ah. Well. Don’t be offended.” She rolled her eyes. “Sending people away is what Mother does best. Whether away from her or away to war, it’s her specialty.”

  “I’m to see someone named Zephayus,” I explained. “I’m told he’s a doctor.”

  “Yes.” Mina sighed. “He’s my doctor. He’s everyone’s doctor. Mother doesn’t trust you. She’ll want Zephayus to inspect you. Don’t worry. He won’t inspect you like he does us. I’ve already told him you’re not carrying a child.”

  “Comforting…” I tried to joke.

  Mina looked at me in a way she never had before. I saw something more than her usual disdain.

  She doesn’t hate me anymore.

  She’s worried.

  “Zephayus is Mother’s most trusted servant,” she said. “He was a warrior many generations ago, or so Mother tells me. He fought the Vark during the destruction of D11-Dark, one of their biggest planets. Some of the girls like him. Most are afraid of him. I’ll give him this—he’s quick about his work, and his treatments help the pain go away.”

  “But?”

  “But…even so…I don’t enjoy my visits.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  She searched for her words.

  “Just…once you’ve spoken to him, you’ll know what I mean,” she said. “If you want to talk, find me at dusk prayers tonight. That is, if Mother lets you out of her sights again. And if they don’t schedule you for termination.”

  As she walked away, she finally managed a smile.

  Whether it was sarcastic or sincere, I couldn’t tell.

  Alone again, I waited in the room’s center. I hoped for a chair or soft surface on which to sit and meditate, but the barren, empty space meant standing would have to do. The longer I waited, the more I thought about what Maliah had said.

 
‘…all you were supposed to be was a cure,’ she’d claimed.

  ‘…there’s plenty you don’t know,’ she’d said.

  No human, no matter their intellect, could’ve pieced together Maliah’s meaning.

  But I did it with ease.

  The original inhabitants of Hermes were in contact with Earth, I knew.

  …somehow.

  They knew about the Strigoi before they arrived.

  No.

  They knew before they even left Earth.

  Which means…

  They knew Earth was going to die.

  A door opened behind me. I ascended from my thoughts and faced the man emerging into the light.

  Zephayus.

  The frail, wrinkled creature crept from the black hallways beyond the door. Over his eyes, he wore oversized lenses, while the tiny metallic devices dangling from his sleeves were too numerous to count.

  I’d seen doctors before. During the process of creating my first human bodies, I’d learned to be comfortable in their invasive presence.

  But Zephayus seemed another sort of man altogether.

  In his white coat, he walked to me. Diminutive, his eyes bespectacled, he looked harmless. But something about him felt uncomfortable. The way he walked, the way he leered at me, and even his smell—all of it put a too-human chill into my bones.

  “You are the AI,” he said while adjusting his glasses.

  “Callista, they call me.” I looked down at him.

  “Lightbringer,” he chuckled. “I half expected you to glow. The Calipha tells me you’re nothing magical, but I see the spark in your eyes.”

  Stoic, I shook my head. “It’s just the nano-luminescence. I’m not sure why my makers made my original body blue and glowing, but they did.”

  He circled me once. I imagined him cataloguing my face, my hair, my every imperfection.

  “Will you talk with me?” he asked once he’d finished his circuit.

  “I’m not sure I have a choice. Will you answer my questions? Or does meeting with you put me one step closer to being dead?”

  “Dead?” He raised an eyebrow. “I’d sooner destroy myself than so wonderful a creation as you.”

  I’d learned long ago to read the signs of deception in most humans.

  I expected his lies.

  But him I couldn’t read.

  “Follow me, Lightbringer.” He waved me toward the door.

  And down we went.

  In a place far below Perseph, in a vast room brimming with metal tables, tanks of nameless fluid, and more tools than I’d ever want to count, Zephayus and I sat across from one another. He wore a tight smile, stretching his wrinkled face. As he keyed one of his many datapads to life, I gazed into the shadows surrounding our table.

  “Is something the matter?” He placed his datapad between us. The little device had begun recording our conversation.

  “It’s the smell.” I made a face. “It’s familiar. You have Strigoi artifacts here.”

  He stiffened in his chair. He didn’t like the word I used.

  “Many civilizations have used many different names for the Varkolak.” He grimaced.

  “How can you know?” I countered.

  “It’s written into their bodies—into their bones. Can’t you see it? They carry traces of every world they’ve annihilated, every life-form they’ve consumed. I’ve studied them for years. They are a perfect form of life…or rather un-life.”

  “And now you’re studying me.” I held his stare. “You’re deciding whether or not to tell Maliah to get rid of me. Or maybe you’ve already decided, and this is just a game we’re playing.”

  His frown deepened.

  He’s offended, I knew.

  Zephayus held my stare. Mina had been right about him. Everything about him unsettled me.

  He keyed a button on his datapad, deadening the little black thing.

  “The Calipha doesn’t want you dead,” he explained. “She wants your ship. Though it’s true the Hermes people were once far more advanced than Earth, we’ve fallen behind. Your new ship, your Sabre, it’s a marvel, and its weapons are more powerful than ours.”

  I’d guessed as much.

  But I’d hoped otherwise.

  “She wants me uninvolved,” I said. “She wants you to declare me unfit. I’m AI, and she doesn’t like it. She wants my weapons. She probably wants the Gamma Suit, too. I’d almost give it to her freely, but I will be involved in this war. It’s what I am now. It’s what I do.”

  “You knew all of this before now?” he asked.

  “I’m a thousand years old,” I said. “I know plenty. But there’s more I want to know. And I think you’re going to give me answers. You can decide not to help me, but if you do, this won’t go well for anyone. Only I can pilot the Sabre.”

  No one had stood up to Zephayus in a long, long time. He blinked hard, and I saw the pride burning in his eyes the same as in Maliah. For me, just a half-human girl, to sit before him and make demands wasn’t what he’d expected.

  “You’re right.” His breath rattled in his ancient lungs. “Maliah wants me to sit before an assembly and tell them you’re just an AI, closer to Varkolak than human. But I’ve no intention of declaring you unfit. Hermes needs you. Rumors of your arrival have already spread beyond Perseph. You are known, Lightbringer. You are the hope they need. To strike you down – it would be the final blow in a battle they’re already losing.”

  I said nothing. I rose from my glass chair and wandered away from the table. It didn’t matter that I was an AI. I needed time to think.

  On a silver shelf piled high with tools and strange devices, I glimpsed fragments of Strigoi bones.

  Against the far wall, two black rifles leaned. They were skeletal in make, and anything but human.

  In the nearest fluid-filled tank, I saw a partial Strigoi skull floating. Long dead, it gazed out at me, smiling at me with ebon teeth.

  “Ask.” Zephayus tottered up behind me. “Go ahead. No one on Hermes has more answers than I do.”

  I breathed.

  And I looked the Strigoi skull straight in its hollow eyes.

  “The people who first came to Hermes – they already knew about the Varkolak,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “But they didn’t tell everyone on Earth. The Exodus had already caused wars and famine. To warn humanity that they only had a few hundred years left – it would’ve been cruel.”

  “Yes.”

  “But they did help, didn’t they?”

  “They did.”

  “They sent back plans for a ship – the original Sabre. They told Earth’s remaining scientists how to build quantum engines. They gave Earth coordinates to a planet neighboring a Varkolak homeworld. And they sent instructions for how to build me. The cure. A little glowing girl who could remove the effects of Varkolak draining and eliminate the disease our enemy spreads.”

  “Yes.” Zephayus shivered with something resembling pleasure. “You’ve put it together rather well.”

  I gazed hard at the floating Strigoi skull. In it, I saw everything I hated.

  Everything that defines me.

  “When you go to the assembly,” I said to Zephayus, “tell them I’m fighting whether they like it or not. Tell them I want my ship back. And the Gamma Suit. Make me a part of everything, and I’ll help you destroy the Varkolak.”

  I didn’t look at him again.

  I stared at the Strigoi skull.

  And let it make my heart go cold.

  Thoughts and Prayers

  “I’ve heard her pontificate before, but rarely this much.”

  I looked at the man who said it. Although I couldn’t see his face, I imagined him smiling.

  He’s right.

  She’s angry today.

  In Sufi’s dome, as the snow swirled through the predawn darkness, we knelt in the frigid cold and worshipped the coming light. Maliah’s voice burned bright and clear through the vast open space, and all of us
knew her wrath.

  In the three days since I’d met with Zephayus, I’d been mostly confined to my chambers in the mountain stronghold.

  But I’d listened to the soldiers beyond my walls.

  And I’d learned.

  Maliah had good reason to be angry.

  “Is it true?” I whispered to the man beside me. “What they say about the war?”

  He glanced at me, and for the first time I saw his face. He’d been watching me the entire prayer, and I’d been watching him.

  “Every bit of it.” He faced Maliah again.

  “How many dead?” I asked beneath my breath.

  “An entire expeditionary group,” he whispered. “Five Rings. Fifteen warships. Three-hundred seventy soldiers.”

  Three-hundred seventy would’ve been nothing back in the Milky Way.

  But here…on Hermes...

  We listened to Maliah erupt on her pulpit. Her words were volcanic, while her epithets for the Varkolak knew no boundaries.

  Surrounded by lamps, her face smoldered white.

  Her pleas, though fiery, possessed the same meaning as always:

  May the light emerge victorious.

  May the shadows be burned away.

  May Sufi, in all her glory, protect us from—

  I couldn’t listen to the rest. Not being quite human, I didn’t have the luxury of believing in Sufi. In destiny. Or in anything divine.

  I knew exactly who my creators had been.

  And exactly who could protect me from the darkness.

  No one.

  “She’s extra fierce today,” the man whispered as we rose from a long period of kneeling.

  “I wonder how much of it’s my fault,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t worry about her anymore.” He faced me. “Since I’m your commander now.”

  “You?” I said.

  “Me.”

  The prayer ended. If Sufi gave us her blessing, no one saw any evidence. Through the sorrowful clouds and tumbling snow, her light leaked into the dome little stronger than a lone candle in a black room.

  In the desolate sunrise, hundreds shuffled away with lanterns glowing in their palms.

  I saw faces I’d begun to recognize.

  Soldiers.

  Mothers.

  Sympathizers.