The cart jerked into motion. Mose had the impression of entering a much larger space as a cool, damp breeze infiltrated around the rim of the lid. Its smell reminded him of the Veerten hideout, cool stone and a hint of mildew. There was a whiff of machine oil in the mix this time. He listened for the squelching steps of the Veert and the squeak of the cart’s wheels to bounce back at them from the walls of the space they were in. It took several seconds before any echo returned; the chamber must be huge.
His cart’s wheels clattered over a threshold and more doors whooshed shut. Mose waited to descend again, but instead heard the squeal of a train car moving along a track. That explained the machine oil, at least. Mose desperately wished he could see beyond the variations of light and shadow against the lid. It was growing uncomfortably warm and close inside the cart, the air stale with his own exhaled breaths. Though the cavern or whatever it was wasn’t warm, sweat budded on his skin, dampened his mane. Though he knew they couldn’t be, the opaque walls of the cart seemed to be drawing inward on him.
Mose had never known claustrophobia before—even the stinking interior of the capsule craft hadn’t seemed to press in on him like this. The calm fatalism that had washed over him as the taser’s shock had paralyzed him was wearing off as he regained control of his muscles; they pushed, semiconsciously and helplessly, against his spitstone sheath.
He didn’t want to die. He knew that with undeniable clarity for the first time since he’d collapsed on the street in Za. The surprise of it was almost enough to still his fear.
Mose felt the trajectory change in the tilting of his cart. The train car described a shallow, agonizingly long downward spiral before it jerked to a halt. Then his cart was moving again, angling up a ramp. The light dimmed briefly, and the damp breeze disappeared. There was a right turn, a left . . .
The cart ground to a halt. Mose drew deep, centering breaths. Whatever awaited him on the other side, whatever punishments or interrogations the Council had in store, it couldn’t be worse than the shadow existence he was leaving behind. He could survive. He was seph. He was Osk. Whatever you do to my body and mind, you cannot take those two things from me.
He smelled it a second before the cart was opened. An oddly familiar scent.
The lid swung away and he was looking at a room modestly furnished with a table and low couches. A large window looked out over what seemed to be a darkened cityscape, buildings rising beneath a sky of basalt that was the cavern’s roof. The hard surfaces of the room had a curious sheen, as though they’d been coated by a thin, clear layer of resin.
His backbrain noted all these things automatically. His conscious mind was too busy being astonished at who was waiting for him.
There was nothing extraordinary about the cart. Shomoro had seen dozens like it, had used them to haul sensitive equipment to and from her lab many times. But her legs were weak and shaky as she rose from the ledge fronting the apartment’s window and approached Stone’s team and their package.
She had wanted to believe Daikar would do the right thing, but she hadn’t been sure. Right up until Stone paged the door, she hadn’t been sure. The adrenaline shakes running down her limbs were spurred by a relief she hadn’t dared hope for. Relief, and anticipation. For now the thing was real: Mose was here, and the real work of her plan could begin.
She gestured to Stone, the upward motion of her fingers made curt by nerves. The Veert opened the cart’s hinged lid and moved away, and Shomoro looked in on the seph who’d been sent to this world to kill her.
Mose Attarrish was around the same size and well-muscled build as Daikar, and perhaps a few years younger. Shomoro couldn’t see more than his outline under the spitstone sheath that encased him. She noticed the red mane Daikar had described right away: it drew the eye, splayed around his head on the floor of the cart. It was damp with sweat near his hairline.
She pictured him struggling futilely against the spitstone and suppressed a grimace of sympathy. But though his body was immobile, his eyes were alert and fixed on hers.
Shomoro returned the stare. “Do you know who I am?”
Mose’s jaw worked. “Shomoro Lacharoksa.” Then more words escaped him in a dry hiss: “Are you going to kill me?” He looked surprised at his own question.
Maybe it was that surprise that made her laugh and actually grin. “Not at all. In fact—if I’m right about you—I’m going to set you free.”
EPILOGUE
GREENWICH HUB, 23:07 LOCAL TIME
Vernsky wheeled his chair back from his desk and stretched. The office beyond his cracked-open door was doused in red night lighting, and as he looked back at his screen, he saw the time.
“Shit.” Then again, eleven wasn’t bad; maybe he’d actually be in bed before one A.M. Things always slowed down when Mose was away on a mission. Other than monitoring his internal trackers’ telemetry and vital signs, there wasn’t much for Vernsky’s team to actively manage. He’d spent the evening going over the capsule travel protocols. He thought there might be a few ways to make capsule travel more comfortable for Mose.
As Vernsky collected his jacket from the chair back, his monitor pinged. With a tired groan, he opened the notification without sitting back down and read:
ERROR Code 2846: Suit telemetry offline.
Blinking, Vernsky opened the telemetry records. Mose had made second contact with the capsule craft at 11:16 Anmerresh local time and retrieved his armor. Since then, the suit had been pinging the craft its location every half hour.
Until a few moments ago—13:46 local time—when its signal had disappeared. Heart in his throat, Vernsky toggled over to Mose’s internal telemetry record. The timestamps differed from the suit’s, but they were spread out at hourly intervals up to the last ping at 23:05 Greenwich Hub time.
He blew out the breath he’d been holding and straightened slowly. So Mose was still transmitting, but his armor wasn’t. A telemetry malfunction?
Or maybe he’d disabled it somehow.
Vernsky tiptoed to the open crack of his office door and peeked into the larger room. No one there. Everyone had gone home, trusting in the Project’s automated systems to hold down the fort till shifts resumed at seven the next morning. No one would expect him to be here so late when it wasn’t pre-mission crunch time. No one would know if he went home without reporting the error. It must have come up after my shift ended. He could say that.
Vernsky threw on his coat, then went back to the monitor.
His finger hovered over the power button, then pressed it. He stood a moment in the office door, looking toward the console as he wrestled with the urge to say it out loud.
“Good luck, Mose.”
He turned out the light and went home.
Bonus Story: Visible Elements
On the rebel world of Teluk, resistance against the Expansion takes many forms.
When the Terran forces came seeking new territory, Teluk fought back--not just with ships and soldiers, but with propaganda campaigns.
Artists of many species have been commissioned by the High Council to represent the war in sculpture and mural, shaping the story of Teluk’s glorious victory-to-come.
Vysha, a young Veerten artist, desperately wants to secure their own commission from the Council. But Veert see in the infrared, and their art has long been dismissed as incomprehensible by Teluk’s other species.
Vysha must find a way for their art to bridge the gap if they are to be a voice for their people.
Visible Elements
Caitlin Demaris McKenna
Materials
The pulse of the launch guns wakes Vysha. They wait for the length of two breath cycles, seawater pumping through gill slits, shivering with the fatigue of interrupted torpor. Vysha’s internal clock tells them it is deep into the night-cycle. Again, fingers of warmlight etch the stone wall above the rejuve pool, and this time Vysha comes fully awake.
The direction of the pulse is wrong. The rejuve pool o
n this level of Traat, the great seastack of the Veerten and Vysha’s home, faces the sea; yet the launch gun array is inland, anchored into the bedrock of the old caldera that cradles the city of Anmerresh like a cracked eggshell. They shouldn’t be able to sense the warmlight of the array’s lasers from here, although sometimes they can feel the vibrations rippling through the water, through their gelatinous body.
Uncoiling their stalk from its dormant position, Vysha detaches their footbody from the pool floor. They brush past the unconscious bodies of other Veert anchored to the floor like a forest of seaweed, careful not to jostle the others’ delicate sensory bulbs. The pool floor slopes up and Vysha breaches the water. A shock of air causes their arms to contract, shielding their own sensory bulb from desiccation. But it’s only the moist air within Traat. After the first instinctual contraction, they unwrap their flexible arms from the swelling of softer tissue in the center: a disc-shaped structure containing their tympanum and the infrared-sensitive cells that allow Vysha to both see and transmit warmlight. A cool night-cycle breeze blows from the aperture carved into the exterior wall. Following the gradation of cooler air, Vysha shimmies along the floor to the window.
The sea beyond is an emptiness. No flickers of warmlight from the sun heat the tops of the waves to visibility. Trying to get oriented, Vysha recalls the topographical maps they have traced with the sensitive pads lining their arms. Anmerresh City is a waxing crescent of rocky land nestled in the crook of a steep bay, the remnant of an extinct volcano. A waterbreak partially encloses the wide harbor where the Veerten have their seastacks. Rocky islands pock the rougher surf beyond, remnants of land almost swallowed by the sea.
But the islands are apparently far enough above the water line to serve as stable platforms for more launch guns. The thermal catalyst lasers scream from each peak for half a breath cycle: pushing more payloads into space, raw materials for the orbital assemblies to churn out ships and weapons to replace those lost to the Terran forces. Vysha startles as the spears of warmlight streak their vision. This time the surprise is succeeded by sinking comprehension, like a current of colder water washing over them.
The Coalition of United Species must have commandeered the islands for the war effort. Built more launch guns in secret, in the dead night-cycle hours when no Veert would be awake to protest. The islands are legally Veerten territory, as are all the maritime parts of the planet with a saline concentration greater than one in five parts. It is part of the treaty the Veert drew up with the first land-dwelling settlers to reach Teluk. Not long ago, the Open Council would have categorically denied such a violation of Veerten sovereignty. But war makes light of such niceties. With the planet under martial law, the military Coalition can pretty much do as it likes.
Vysha resolves to lodge a formal protest with their Councilor the next day-cycle, though the gesture will likely be futile—as futile as all Veerten protests have been since the Coalition committed to this conflict.
Two revolutions have passed since the Terrans pushed into Teluk’s inner system, puffed up with demands for a lease to one of Teluk’s moons. A temporary arrangement. The Terrans are losing a war a system over; they need the moon’s materials for more ships and mechs. They need the space and the breath cycles to build them.
The Open Council of Teluk considered. It opened its halls to all its citizens, as it had done in the past. It heard the arguments for and against allowing the Terrans a presence in Teluk’s system, even if it was temporary—a holdfast from which they could strengthen their war machine.
Vysha’s people had been in favor of the arrangement. It was only a small moon the Terrans wanted. It had no water or air, so was equally useless to Veert and land-dwellers alike. Let them have it, the Veerten representatives said. Think of how the new trade opportunities could enrich Teluk: unusual crops, precious ores, adaptive synthetics. We have treated with the Expansion before to great benefit. Listen to us.
But the Veert had been only one voice in the Council’s amphitheatre. They’d been drowned out by the protestations of the land-dwellers, the Rul and the Baskar: The Veert care nothing for the land. If the Terrans break their promises and make planetfall, it is not Veerten territory that will be in danger.
The Council looked at the arguments. They studied the war raging a system over—a war the Terrans started by an injudicious grab for territory from a civilization they did not understand. And the Councillors of Teluk refused the lease.
Predictably, the Terrans did not tolerate this insult for long.
Granules of soft wet sand press in around their stalk as Vysha squirms down the tunnel hollowed into the ocean’s bed by the bodies of Veert ahead of them. The sun has risen, but no warmlight penetrates the hard-packed sand; Vysha must press blindly forward with their flexible arms, feeling the shape of the tunnel with their whole body. With each pulse of their footbody Vysha sweeps their arms out to the sides, widening the tunnel a few centimeters. The vibrations of other Veert squeezing down the tunnel shudder over Vysha’s skin. Each Veert broadens the sand tunnel with their passage; after uncountable day-cycles the tunnels leading out from the seastack will be ready to be coated with spitstone and hardened into shape.
Soon the tunnel walls take on the hardness of rock. The water loses its saline tinge as it mixes with groundwater. Vysha is in the bedrock under Anmerresh, in one of the bunkers the Veert have carved under the city by order of the Council.
There are fears of an orbital bombardment. If Teluk’s planetary defenses don’t hold, there will be nothing to stop the Terrans from raining hyperkinetic fire onto the coastal cities. Prickles of an unfamiliar anger pucker Vysha’s skin. Veert are a cautious species, slow to anger. Yet Vysha cannot stop the unpleasant heat rising up their stalk at the decisions that have led the children of Traat to this place, burrowing their bulbs in the sand in hope of shelter from Terran weapons.
Vysha is here because the Council refused to grant the lease on a dry, waterless moon. The Veert have known, or at least suspected, the price for such a refusal in the decades since the first Terrans reached Veerthome. It was not just pragmatism but caution that led the Veerten elders to treat with the Terran Expansion. Opening Veerthome’s dry land to Terran settlement had seemed the safer choice, and not a hard one to make: the Veert are creatures of the ocean; the land is useless to them.
Vysha has always considered Teluk their home. They are part of the fifteenth generation of Veert to have hatched in the seastack of Traat since the first Veerten colonists discovered Teluk. Until now, Veerthome has been a vague notion in their mind, like the warmlight impression of someone they knew a long time ago. A comforting dream for Vysha to wrap themself in each night-cycle before torpor takes them. Vysha has never been to their homeworld—never tasted the salinity of its oceans, never touched the basalt of its great seastacks, never seen the warmlight from the hot blue sun the elders call Firstlight. And if the Coalition wins its war and closes Teluk off from the Expansion, Vysha never will.
“A commission?” Vysha asks. The question pulses through their speaking organ in bursts of warmlight, which the translator strapped over their sensory bulb converts into soundspeech. The audible syllables of the interstellar Bask trade language reverberate in Vysha’s tympanum in a weird synaesthetic feedback: they perceive themself asking the question twice, once in lightspeech, again in soundspeech. Using a translator is disorienting, but it’s the only way to talk to non-Veert.
Warm freshwater swirls around the lower half of Vysha’s stalk. Their skin tastes herbs as their Rul friend, Sky Harvester, washes and separates the edible river weeds he brought to trade.
“Works of art to commemorate the Coalition’s noble resistance against the Expansion,” Sky Harvester replies. “The Council has graciously commissioned me to create one.” The words are in the mechanical Bask of a translator device, but Vysha can see the excited flashes of the Rul’s lightspeech scintillating along his pods. Like the Veert, Rul use precise bursts of r
adiation to communicate, though Rul lightspeech ascends into higher spectra Vysha can’t see. Only a smattering of what he says is in the perceptible range of warmlight.
Still, Vysha likes talking to Sky Harvester when the two of them meet on trading day. Even hobbled by the dull inflection of the translator, his speech has a poesy they have rarely encountered among other Veerten. His name, Sky Harvester, has the same dreamlike quality, as though it floats just above everyday life. All Rul names are like that, amalgams of traditional caste titles with the primordial elements of Rul cosmology: Star Catcher, Stone Dreamer, Fire Birther.
Sky Harvester interested Vysha from the first day they traded together. It had been a wet afternoon, the air moistened pleasantly by the penumbra of a passing rainstorm. Yet Vysha had sulked in one of the pools of upper Anmerresh’s water gardens, their stalk bent away from the crowds of Rul and Baskar weaving between stalls. The seaweeds and crustaceans of Traat’s sea farms were spread around Vysha, goods offered in exchange for freshwater plants and fish.
Traat’s rotating duty roster ensured all Veert shared trade duty equally, and it was less physically onerous than tunnel construction: the locks could lift a swimmer all the way to the water gardens. There was no need to travel in a bulky environment palanquin to keep from drying out.
Vysha almost preferred the barrier of a palanquin. They dreaded crossing the gradient where Anmerresh’s rivers became more freshwater than salt. More often than not, it was prelude to a day spent sitting in too-hot sun while Rul flashed painfully bright lightspeech at their sensory bulb, and Baskar fingered their produce and discussed its quality as though Vysha wasn’t there. They couldn’t decide which they disliked more: being treated like a mindless polyp or one that might be communicated with if a sufficiently strong light was shone on it.
Alliance of Exiles Page 36