by Paul Tassi
There were plenty of rules in Colony One, namely that everyone be where they were supposed to be, when they were supposed to be there. Meal and rack time was strictly regimented, and everyone was up at 0500 every day. The most important rule, however—one that Erik frequently broke—was that they were not to leave the compound. Colony One wasn’t a prison. There were plenty of field trips for the group, and you could request a special escort to many destinations on the planet. A year or so ago, Sakai learned that there was an ancient library in Ghurain that had a few eighty-thousand-year-old tomes in it. She’d put in a request to visit, and a heavily armed escort had taken her and Noah there for a few days. Their security detail when they were out on such excursions, or even safe inside the colony, was enormous, though there had been only a few attempts of outsiders attempting to invade. Some remnant Fourth Order lunatics had attempted to “cleanse Sora of the plague of humanity.” The most successful among them got about three miles outside the colony before they were shredded by auto-turrets.
Erik was something else though. He was always illegally leaving the compound, either by digitally hacking his way through security or just good old-fashioned sneaking. If he put half as much effort into his coursework as he did his escape attempts, he’d be the top student in the colony. Rather, he was content slipping past security and being scooped up by one of his many rich Soran socialite friends who whisked him away to party until colony guards tracked him down and hauled him back.
For as much as Noah and Erik sparred, they were still brothers in each other’s eyes, despite not sharing genes. Erik would often invite Noah to tag along for his escapes and subsequent debaucherous evenings, but Noah would always refuse. While Erik was brash and bold, Noah was reserved and contemplative and had little interest in such things. He was content to exercise, study, ascend the stairs to the White Spire, or simply spend time with Sakai.
Oddly, of all the rules in place at the colony, fraternization between the genders wasn’t restricted at all. It was practically encouraged. There were no rules about sleeping arrangements, so long as everyone was awake and dressed by the appropriate hour. As such, couples were gradually formed as the Earthborn hit puberty and nature and hormones took over. Sex was commonplace, though all were informed that they had been temporarily sterilized so as not to rapidly explode the human population. Having children at the ages of fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, or even nineteen in Noah’s case, would interfere with their education. There was plenty of time for that later, they were told. This lack of restriction was so they’d learn how to function as a normal society would, once it was time to gradually start rebuilding the human race.
Noah’s stature and rugged appearance had made him a frequent target of the girls in the colony. Not to mention he held something of a place of honor as the famed “Last Son.” But despite their nearly universal affection for him, Noah had been enraptured by only one of them, the enigmatic Sakai. He had been with her and her alone for well over a year now. Despite a lack of official rules regarding relationships, two were universal among the Earthborn themselves. You never pursued someone else who was officially paired (though that had been known to occur), and the tank-borns would obviously never pair with anyone with whom they shared a father or mother. To ask any of them, the idea was simply nauseating. Whether that was a natural reaction or the avoidance had been genetically engineered into them, it was hard to say.
As Noah approached the Watchman’s head office he saw Wuhan, Sakai’s half-brother, leaning against the side of the entryway eating a purple piece of fruit. He still had most of his plating on. Wuhan was Japanese-Chinese, named after a city in one of his parents’ home countries. It was how all of the tank-bred were given their names at birth.
“What are you in for?” Noah asked.
Wuhan shook his head.
“Nothing this time, surprisingly. I’m just here to file a travel request for Rhylos.”
Noah scoffed.
“Good luck. Didn’t he reject you the last three times?”
Wuhan nodded.
“Yeah, but I’ve been kill leader the last few exercises. I’m hoping that wins me some points.”
“It’s won you a target on your back from everyone else,” Noah said.
Wuhan shrugged and flicked the pit of the fruit into the brush.
“Well, the only ones I’m scared of are you, and you’re on my squad, and your brother. But lucky for all of us, he doesn’t seem to take the exercises seriously. God help us if he ever does.”
“He did today,” Noah said.
Wuhan winced.
“Yeah, I heard. Scattergun to a naked cranium? How are you conscious right now?”
“Kyneth’s blessing,” Noah replied with a smile.
Wuhan rolled his eyes.
“Sure. Anyway, I’m pretty sure your thing takes priority over mine. I can hear the yelling from here.”
Wuhan stepped aside and Noah entered the Watchman’s quarters. The walls were sterile, devoid of anything resembling decoration. Noah followed the sound echoing off the metal walls until he found what he was looking for.
Erik stood stiffly with his arms behind his back as Watchman Tannon Vale was berating him. Despite the older man’s intensity, Erik’s gaze was fixed past Vale and out the window, which overlooked the eastern mountains. He looked bored. Tannon didn’t stop when he saw Noah enter, and continued his tirade.
“—and where in our combat scrolls does it say anything about executing prisoners at point-blank range? And with a scattergun? You could have given your brother brain damage!”
“He’s a tough guy, Watchman,” Erik said diplomatically. He always regarded Tannon very formally, but his tone usually carried a sharp tinge of sarcasm.
“As miraculous as it is that he’s standing here now, that’s not the point. You’re a danger to yourself and everyone in this colony when you refuse to respect the laws that have been put in place for your protection. You’ll run the circuit a dozen times tonight before lights out and think about that.”
“Requesting permission to be expelled from the colony, Watchman,” Erik said, still standing at attention in his full armor plating.
“If only I could,” said Tannon. “But you know better than that. Just don’t let this fixation you have with provoking your brother go any further. One of these days he’ll have had enough and make you wish you hadn’t.”
“He tried today, Watchman,” Erik said, a faint smile crossing his lips.
“Noah,” Tannon said, addressing him for the first time, “Try harder next time. Maybe you can teach him a lesson that I can’t.”
“Yes, Watchman,” Noah replied, also now standing at attention.
“At ease,” Tannon said. “I didn’t call you here about this.”
Erik glanced at Noah. Standing side by side, the two couldn’t be more opposite. Noah was tall and thick with muscle. He had buzzed sandy-blond hair and oceanic blue eyes. His cropped undersuit revealed the large burn that spread across his shoulder and arm, a remnant from a homeworld he couldn’t remember.
Erik was a combination of the two greatest heroes of the era. He had Lucas’s hard jawline, nose, and mouth, but the rest of him was all Asha, with her wild black hair and piercing green eyes. Two years younger than Noah, he was almost a foot shorter. But he was lean and hard and spry. When he wanted to be, he was the best fighter in the colony and was smart as a whip to boot. Too smart for his own good, his instructors often said.
“What is it, Watchman Vale?” Noah asked.
Tannon sat down behind a sprawling desk alive with holographic displays. He looked tired, and his age was finally starting to show, which was rare in Soran culture. His short reign as High Chancellor had taken a lot out of him. He’d devoted nearly his entire few years in office to first distancing himself from the crimes of his sister, who was discovered to have committed genocide and treason on a shocking scale before her death at the hands of the rebel Hex Tulwar. Tannon knew nothing about her crimes
at the time, and had barely gotten the trust of the public back. But the Vale name was forever tarnished after Talis’s sins. The new High Chancellor, Madric Stoller, had granted him the position of first watchman at Colony One, supervising and training the young Earthborn. Some saw it as less of an honor and more of a form of exile. It was often a difficult job, but Tannon said it still felt like retirement compared to serving as an admiral or ruling as High Chancellor.
His last act before abdicating office was to clear the names of Lucas and Asha as supposed conspirators working with Hex Tulwar and the Fourth Order to assassinate his sister and destabilize the planet. He tasked the smartest living being he knew with the job of unraveling Tulwar’s attempt to frame them. Alpha relished the opportunity to clear his friends’ names and spent months of painstaking work piecing together video and audio tracks that the now-dead Tulwar believed he’d completely wiped from the palace security feeds. What he had manipulated to make the Earthborn look guilty, Alpha unwound to show the truth. Tulwar alone was the traitor, and Lucas and Asha were exactly who they claimed to be. It was a relief for a world desperately in need of heroes. Though some still reviled the Earthborn, and probably always would, most continued to see them as a symbol of hope in the endless war with Xala. When it was revealed what they’d done on Xala during the Battle of Altoria, the public at large went back to worshipping them.
“They want you for the anniversary this year,” Tannon said. “Stoller himself made the request.”
Erik cursed under his breath.
“Again?”
The anniversary of Altoria was coming up in a few days time. The battle was named after the green gas planet in the Soran solar system where the two massive fleets had clashed all those years ago. It was when Lucas, Asha, Alpha, Zeta, and Mars Maston traveled to Xala itself to spark the Xalan uprising and disrupt the enemy’s communications. Only through their work had the Soran fleet been able to break the Xalans in the black of space, barely three billion miles away from Sora itself. The shattered enemy force limped out of the system only to find all their colony planets in open revolt when they returned. Their citizens had learned the truth Alpha’s father had uncovered before his death. The premise of the entire interstellar war was built on a lie that Xalans were a sovereign race with a homeworld destroyed by Sora, when in fact they had been slaves genetically engineered from Sorans themselves, mercifully banished to the barren world after a violent uprising.
“I thought the point of living here is that we can be zoo animals with no visitors,” Erik continued, losing his formal tone.
“The people need reassurance the next generation of Earthborn are still our committed allies. It’s a symbolic gesture that unites our two planets.” Tannon didn’t sound particularly convinced himself.
“We don’t have a planet, Watchman,” Erik shot back. Tannon glowered at him.
“From what I can tell, you like the spotlight,” Tannon said. He pulled up a feed of the Stream that was playing a video of a drunken Erik at a nightclub in downtown Elyria with his friends a few weeks earlier. A scantily clad Soran girl was tucked under each of his arms. He stumbled and fell, pulling both down with him.
“I didn’t know you were a frequenter of the gossip feeds, Watchman,” Erik said with a sly smile.
“Only when it involves one of my charges illegally going off-site where any madman could murder or abduct him,” Tannon said, annoyed.
“They can try,” Erik said coldly.
“When do we leave, Watchman?” Noah asked, eager to get out of the colony, no matter the reason. It had been too long.
“Tomorrow. And no, you can’t bring Sakai, so don’t even ask.”
Noah figured as much, but knew she’d be disappointed. Sakai loved Elyria. A holographic photo of the two of them at a state dinner in the Grand Palace’s throne room had a permanent place next to her bed.
“I’m heading off-world for some sort of damned summit, so I won’t be here when you get back,” Tannon continued. “But I’ve told security to keep extra eyes on you,” he said, glaring at Erik.
“Is that all, Watchman?” Erik said, assuredly eager to return to whichever Earthborn girl he was currently sleeping with. Was it Penza or Tula now?
“Dismissed,” said Tannon.
There were three full moons as Noah ran the thousand-stair climb toward the White Spire that night. In truth, it was actually 1,653 stairs—Noah had counted—but that didn’t roll off the tongue as easily, he supposed.
Sakai was sleeping when he stole away for one of his many midnight runs to the spire. She’d come with him a few times, but after a hard day’s training, climbing that high to pray at a temple to gods she didn’t even believe in was usually the last thing she wanted.
The White Spire was the oldest building in the entire compound and was placed high up on the backside of a mountain. It was still under the protection of Colony One’s security, but far removed from everything else. The temple was perfectly intact, unlike other similar structures that lay in ruins on the colony grounds below. The faithful always believed it was because the gods had blessed it, keeping it safe from harm for untold millennia. But chances were it was simply too far from any possible conflict, and it had been prevented from falling into natural decay by Zurana’s Anointed, who had lived there for as long as the structure had existed. They weren’t immortal, but their order was devoted, and when one sister died they’d send another in her place. As they all wore white woven veils at all times, it was impossible to tell who was a new recruit or a two-hundred-year-old crone, other than perhaps by judging their gait as they moved through the stone corridors.
Noah reached the 1,653rd step and gazed up at the glorious structure before him. The White Spire was actually many spires, all carved from stone, that thrust hundreds of feet upward into the night sky. From a distance, they looked like a single unit. All the building’s stone was white marble, and it was hard to believe how long the temple had stood intact. Before Colony One had been established, many faithful would make pilgrimages to the spire, and they were dismayed now that they no longer could. It was one of the oldest sites of worship on the planet.
Two colony guards nodded curtly at Noah as he entered the temple. Both were heavily armored and armed, as the spire was in a rather exposed location. There were even more guards inside.
Noah couldn’t really explain how he’d come to appreciate the faith of the people who had once tried to kill his parents and frame them for murder and treason. He’d studied all the religions of both Earth and Sora, but was inexplicably drawn to the Tomes of the Forest and the knowledge they contained. When he first reached the White Spire years ago, he felt a peace he couldn’t explain, and he had been coming to pray ever since. No, he didn’t know if the First Man and Woman, Kyneth and Zurana, were actually sitting on oak thrones listening to him, but it made him feel better all the same.
There were no other patrons that night. He’d spotted Quezon up here a few times in recent weeks, but the chapel floor was currently vacant. Round, flat stones rose out of the ground, all curved around a central towering statue of Zurana, the First Woman herself.
Noah took up a kneeling position on one of the stones. Many of the white-robed and veiled sisters were doing the same, but others were attending to unlit candles or sweeping the floor with wiry brooms. Coming here was like stepping back in time thirty thousand years. Almost nothing had changed in that span, right down to the sisters’ holy garments and the carefully arranged pattern of the prayer stones.
Sitting back on his heels, Noah placed his hands on his thighs and lifted his head toward the vaulted ceiling. He spoke in a whisper.
“Zurana, hear my prayer. Protect our colony from those who would do us harm. Guard Erik and me on our journey tomorrow. Bless our soldiers in the field, and their families still at home.”
He paused.
“Keep Asha safe, wherever she may be. May she find whatever she’s looking for.”
Noah knew where Ash
a was supposed to be. The official word was that she was back on Makari, helping the Oni there shake off the last remnants of Xalan occupation. The colony there had given birth to the quickest and most volatile uprising, with a large Xalan resistance force already in place and a native human population to agitate things further.
But whether Asha was there or not was anyone’s guess.
Things had been good for a few years, which Noah could still remember. Asha had returned home from Xala injured, but alive. With Lucas gone, she did her best to be a mother to him and Erik. They lived in exile, as Tannon and Alpha were still trying to clear the Earthborn for their supposed crimes, but they had each other, and that was enough. Noah’s memories from that time were faint, but warm.
Eventually, when Noah was seven and the Earthborn were absolved, Asha was called back into service as the war escalated. Noah and Erik were brought to the newly built Colony One and assigned caretakers and tutors during their formative years. Asha was out on assignment frequently, stopping by the colony to see the boys when she could. But over time, her missions became longer, her visits more spread out. When they saw her a few years back, she was distraught and wouldn’t speak about where she’d been. Later, it was Alpha who told them that she’d been caught trying to commandeer a long-range null core in order to travel to Xala to look for Lucas.
Noah confronted her about it, and she confessed that she never believed Lucas was dead. If only they would just let her have a ship, she swore she could find him.
It was heartbreaking to hear her say those things with such conviction. But it was also worrisome, an indicator she might literally be losing her mind. Whether she was actually on Makari right now or cruising toward Xala in a stolen spaceship, Noah had no idea. But either way, she wouldn’t be at the anniversary ceremony tomorrow, as she hadn’t for the last ten years or so.
When Noah prayed for her to find what she was looking for, he didn’t mean the long-dead Lucas. He meant peace of mind, something that seemed to forever elude her.