Inherit the Stars

by Tony Peak

  The lift door opened to an observation deck lined with vegetable, fruit, and flowering plants, where two older Naxan women argued in playful tones over how much water the plants needed.

  “This way.” Jandeel stepped from behind a giant indigo hibiscus.

  “Some woman with a red cap sent me.” Kivita smirked and touched her new hat.

  Jandeel chuckled and led her from the observation deck into a dim-lit, cubicle-filled room. In each cubicle, a Sage instructed several students. Two holographic displays in the room’s center showed various educational images: humanoid anatomy, planetary rotation, or Bellerion-reed growth cycles. Students of all ages discussed Naxan philosophy of the individual, Ascali respect for nature, or the pitfalls of ancient autocratic human kingdoms—subjects forbidden in Inheritor universities.

  Not that Kivita had attended an Inheritor university—hell, any university—but she’d slept with enough students in spaceports to know. For the first time, that bothered her. Had she been nothing but spacer trash all these years?

  “Don’t feel disconcerted. Many others have yet to see our brand of education,” Jandeel said.

  “No, I’m okay.” She pushed back red-blond bangs and continued on.

  One Sage sketched engine schematics on a slate board for five adult students, pointing out the flaws in current light-jump technology and offering suggestions. Kivita recalled the vision she’d had about tweaking phased fusion-energy dumps.

  “Hey, if you smash the protons together faster in the energy dump, I bet you could shave jump speeds by a third,” Kivita said.

  The Sage and students stared at her as if she’d turned orange.

  Jandeel took her arm and passed the cubicle by. “Later, Kivita.” They exited the room via another circular doorway. “Though I like your attitude. This is what the Thedes do: share knowledge. You’ll have a chance to share everything soon.”

  They passed through a room cramped with rusty terminals and maps printed on oversized placards. Three men and two women, their faces stern, examined the maps and discussed military strategies. Kivita glimpsed plans for aiding the insurgencies on Haldon Prime and Tahe, and for arming Sutara against Inheritor aggression.

  One placard mentioned Frevyx and showed routes for weapon smuggling in Inheritor Space. One route passed by Gontalo. So, Sar had been a gunrunner all this time? The time they’d spent on Gontalo, had it all been a cover while he supplied Thedes with armaments? She turned away from the placard, eager to change her train of thought.

  “Where did this ship come from?” Kivita asked. “Doesn’t look Inheritor or even Tannocci.”

  “Luccan Thede, the founder of our organization, discovered it abandoned near the Tahe system. With much effort, he and many allies refitted it. Luccan used knowledge from Vim datacores and engineered a null beacon that rejects scanner signals.”

  A reinforced door opened to another corridor. “So where’s Luccan now?” Kivita asked.

  “The Inheritors assassinated him,” Jandeel replied.

  “Just because he fixed an old starship?” Kivita’s eyebrows rose.

  “Luccan was a Tahe mercenary under Inheritor employ,” Jandeel said. “After seeing how the prophets wasted so much wealth—and lives—in their wars with the Aldaakians, he decided to educate people about the costs of such ruinous decisions. As he discovered more, Luccan revealed the breeding programs of the Rectors, their lecherous Oath of Propagation, and just how impoverished Inheritor citizens were in comparison to their leaders. This caused riots and unrest on several Inheritor worlds. The prophets hunted him down, executed his family. They even razed his home city to the ground, when they finally conquered his homeworld.”

  Kivita had salvaged for those bastards many times, and all she’d had to show for it was a beat-up trawler and the thought that she was free.

  “How did he die?” she asked, staring at the placard with Sar’s old route on it. A heaviness pressed down on her heart.

  “One of the Rector’s own Proselytes finally killed him in a raid near Tejuit,” Jandeel said. “But Luccan’s work continued. He’d dubbed himself a ‘Thede,’ an old feudal word for ‘teacher.’ All his followers gladly accept this moniker.”

  “So what do Thedes teach?”

  Jandeel patted Kivita’s shoulder. “Navon can answer your questions far better than I. Only because of your own gift, and because Sar sent you, do we trust you in his presence.”

  “You have my word,” Kivita said, meeting his eyes. “I just want some answers.”

  “I hope you have some for all of us.” Jandeel limped away.

  A second reinforced door opened, and the scent of jiir juice and silver lotus stung Kivita’s nose. Two plush couches, three grass mats, and two telescopes filled the room. A shelf packed with old paper books, computer chits, pieces of stone, thin crystals, and metal shards reached the ceiling.

  A human male rose from one of the grass mats and smiled. He stood over six feet tall and had sea-green eyes. His gray hair hung in thick Bellerion coils, and he wore a green bodyglove.

  “You are welcome here, Kivita Vondir. I am Navon.” His deep-timbre voice and Bellerion accent gave his diphthongs a warbling sound. He gestured at one of the couches. “Please rest. I am glad to see you walking.” He sat back down on the grass mat.

  Kivita wanted to be polite, but impatience took hold. “Where’s the Juxj Star?”

  He pointed at the viewport sill. The gem rested there, almost obscured by a telescope stand. Kivita finally nodded and sat on a couch.

  “You are correct to be forthright,” Navon said. “I have never seen a gem so large used for a Vim datacore. As you can see on my bookshelf, I have collected several others. I am glad you trusted Sar and did not sell it to those who do not share.”

  Crossing her arms, Kivita leaned forward on the couch. “Listen I . . . I don’t understand any of this. I keep having these dreams, and when I touch the Juxj Star, I suddenly see and know things I shouldn’t. I can even make others see them.”

  Navon nodded. “And you do not like it, do you? Neither did I at first. Being a Savant is not something you can cast aside. From what Cheseia has told me, there is a possibility the Sarrhdtuu know this. Shekelor Thal does, and he will not keep it secret.”

  Kivita stood and paced the floor. “Well, now what? Jandeel told me strange things. Things that match some images I’ve seen in my thoughts since touching the Juxj Star.”

  “I know. I felt the signal the first time you touched the gem on Vstrunn.”

  “What? How?”

  “We have long known about the Juxj Star, but never suspected the tower that housed it was some sort of antenna. Your signal, sent out from your brain through that tower, reached me aboard this ship almost two Haldon years past. In that time, no one has deciphered what the signal means, only where it leads.”

  “But I’ve never felt these things before. Why me?” She placed her hands on her hips.

  “Savant talents are hereditary, Kivita. The Inheritors, Aldaakians, and Sarrhdtuu can detect the difference in electrical pulses from the human brain. This makes itself known only in early adulthood, however. What I wish to know is how you broadcasted that signal. How you make others see what you see, by thought or touch. I can only decode a datacore. Your abilities astound me.” Navon’s brows furrowed.

  She sat cross-legged before him on the same grass mat. “Do humans, Ascali, and Aldaakians all come from the same race? Did the Vim make us and the Kith? I’ve seen cryo ships, growth tubes, coordinates to massive ships five hundred light years from the Cetturo Arm. Even the Sarrhdtuu attacking the old colony ships.”

  Navon leaned forward, eyes wide. “I have not touched the Juxj Star myself, for I wanted to speak with you first. Thede scholars have theorized that those three races are related, yes. I do not know which race came first. I do think the Vim had a hand in it, and there
can be no doubt the Kith defended the Vim against the Sarrhdtuu. They have been enemies for millennia.”

  “Really? I haven’t seen any clues why the Sarrhdtuu attacked those colony ships. It seems they drove some of the humans into the Cetturo Arm, though.” Kivita described to him all her visions concerning the ship crash-landing on Susuron.

  “The Narbas lineage . . . I have long suspected this.”

  “Go on.” Kivita licked her trembling lips.

  “Terredyn Narbas, the ancient queen of Susuron, was the first Savant capable of doing what you can do. Cheseia says your vessel was named after her?” Something gleamed in his eyes.

  “Yeah, my father named it. I think it’s so strange he would have chosen that name, and here I am, a Savant, too.” She smiled but wrung her hands.

  Navon sat back. “Yes. Two Savants who can send information across the cosmos by mere thought. Whatever happened to your father, Kivita?”

  She frowned. “He died in a salvaging accident when I was seventeen. Saving passengers from a ship whose reactor had . . . Well, even though Inheritor law forbade it, I got Father’s ship. They let that slip because I started salvaging for them right then. Father taught me how to fly when I was four, so I knew everything about starships already. I never knew my mother.”

  Navon rose and walked over to the bookshelf. He took down a piece of rock, pitted like the Vim datacores she’d seen near Xeh’s Crown.

  “You must decode some of the information from this datacore, Kivita. It will save much time and explanation on my part.”

  Kivita started to speak, but Navon placed the stone into her hands. The room faded.

  A smoldering starship on a Susuron beach filled her mind.

  23

  Blue-green waves lapped the beach as Kivita stumbled past smoldering debris. Ruptured bulkheads, cracked cryopods, and mangled bodies littered the sparkling sands. The ship lay on its starboard side, with half the port-side hull torn away. Deep scorch marks had penetrated the craft in two perfect vertical cuts.

  “Beamers,” Kivita whispered. The tingles burrowed into her temples.

  Hundreds of survivors gathered near the shore: people in maroon jumpsuits, soldiers in feudal polymail. Children wailed. Smoke billowed from the wreckage.

  One soldier in polymail and a purple cape turned and bowed to Kivita. He had Rhyer’s face, Rhyer’s eyes. Even his gentle smile, but younger. No wrinkles, no gray in his long brown hair.

  As her breath caught, the other people turned and bowed, and upon seeing Kivita, their grief lessened. Frowns became smiles; weeping became determination.

  Icy pain sliced into her skull.

  The beach shifted into a vaulted courtroom, like the ones her father had spun tales about: coral chandeliers, ply drapes, knitted grass carpets, and a pillow-strewn dais. Kivita leaned forward on her throne, which was worked in gold, rubies, and glitter wood. Sentries in gold-meld cuirasses stood at attention while two men wheeled a small cryopod into the courtroom. A woman in nursing fatigues followed, carrying an infant swaddled in golden cloth.

  Whomever Kivita witnessed this scene through stood from the throne and descended the dais. Her delicate, bejeweled hand caressed the infant, who began to cry. The babe’s hazel eyes and blond wisps made Kivita swallow.

  The nurse placed the infant into the cryopod. A strong throb emitted from Kivita’s brain. She knelt beside the cryopod, her vision blurring as if the viewer wept. Rhyer stood nearby with a worried face. Outside the courtroom window, a golden-hulled life capsule waited beside a small Tannocci-style vessel.

  Trying to fight the pain in her head, Kivita gasped so hard her throat hurt.

  “Navon? What is this?” she cried out.

  Inheritor ships hovered in the sky, and yellow banners fluttered in the air. Thousands of peasants waited in a city square below a sandstone podium. Her sight trembled, as if the viewer experienced great anguish.

  Kivita wished she could feel the emotions of those who’d recorded this data.

  Wished she could reach into the past and ask about the infant.

  Soldiers in old-fashioned steel armor led Kivita onto the podium, where a man with an axe stood beside a stained wooden block. Kivita tried to move faster, but the viewer walked to the block with agonizing slowness. A crisp breeze ruffled Kivita’s hair. Its earthy scent was unmistakable.

  “Haldon Prime,” she said.

  Kivita knelt before the wooden block. The executioner raised his axe. An overpowering contraction loosed from the viewer’s brain as the axe came down.

  A mind-numbing ache throbbed in her skull.

  Tears running down her face, Kivita tried to drop the stone datacore, but her mind reeled.

  An unmanned freighter with thousands of tons of cargo was 238 light years away. Blueprints for larger autohandlers with weapons zipped through her mind. An abandoned Sarrhdtuu colony was just three thousand light years away, using a Vim engine capable of reaching fifty times the speed of light.

  The pitted datacore left Kivita’s hand. She slumped over, trembling with sobs while she clawed at the grass mat. Gentle hands lifted her and placed her onto one of the couches.

  “Three hours have passed,” Navon said. “I did not pull the datacore away until I was sure you had seen what you needed to see.”

  Kivita sat up straight and glared at him. “Damn you. Why’d you let me see that?”

  Navon sat back down on the grass mat, his eyes grave. “I suspected, the first time I visited you in the infirmary, that you might be a descendent of Terredyn Narbas. When Cheseia told me the details—your ship’s name, your Savant talents, ignorance of your mother—I became certain. You are the very image of the ancient Susuron queen who lived a thousand years ago.”

  She tried to laugh, but it came out as a moan. “I’m not that old. Neither was my father.”

  “Rhyer Vondir was not your father.”

  She rubbed her temples and shivered. “Liar. You don’t know anything about—”

  “You know it is true.”

  Kivita rose and stalked to the circular door. “This is insane!”

  “Your father was Queen Terredyn’s Seneschal,” Navon said in a calm voice. “A skilled soldier and commander, from what I have uncovered about that era. I have no doubt he loved you very much, Kivita. Rhyer knew about the ancient law regarding Savants, however. I cannot fathom why he raised you on the very planet your mother was executed on, in the midst of your enemies.”

  Fists clenched at her sides, she paused near the door. Rhyer was her father. Had to be. She loved and missed him too much for it to be otherwise.

  “Your mother ordered you set afloat in space before the Inheritors captured her. I suppose Rhyer hid you in a secret location, in stasis, then returned under his new identity as an Inheritor salvager—centuries later. He must have spent decades at a time in cryostasis.”

  “Then why did the Rector hire me?” So hard to think, so much pain still in her head . . .

  Navon’s voice flattened. “The Inheritors destroy historical archives, so I doubt if any of their current leaders recall your mother. Rhyer must have learned something, to name his trawler after his queen and begin raising you himself.”

  Kivita squeezed her eyes shut to stop the tears. “Then who wants me? The Sarrhdtuu? They tried to kill . . . tried to kill her.” She found it hard to call Terredyn her mother.

  “The Sarrhdtuu are the Inheritor’s benefactors, Kivita. For some reason, they have supported the Inheritor’s rise to power, their wars against the Aldaakians, and their persecution of the Thedes.” Navon stood and sighed. “This is not how I wanted our first meeting to transpire. But you must realize your importance. Sar Redryll may have given his life so you could be safe, just as your ancient mother did.”

  “I didn’t ask him to.” Kivita stormed back to Navon’s side. “I didn’t! How do I kno
w this isn’t some trick? Using me like some sort of symbol for your cause.”

  His eyebrows rose. “Cheseia described the wormhole you found, leading from Umiracan to Tejuit. Was that a trick? The Juxj Star gave you the information. As a Savant, you used it.”

  “Listen. I’m Kivita Vondir. Father didn’t find me in some stupid life capsule. There’s no way I slept in space that long.” Her voice sounded weak in her own ears.

  Navon looked at the datacores on his bookshelf. “Beyond the Cetturo Arm is where your mother really came from. Where we all originated, I am willing to believe. I know you saw the coordinates for the Sarrhdtuu colony, the supply freighter. Will you be like the Inheritor prophets, who deny their people the truth while hoarding the best technology for themselves? Will you act like the Aldaakians, who keep searching for a Vim miracle to save their way of life?”

  Her breathing quickened. “No, I’m—”

  “Or will you regress back to the mercenary salvager, who sold the past to the tyrants of the present, so there will be no future for anyone?” Navon faced her, brows lowered.

  Kivita stumbled back, flabbergasted. Anger rose in her mind, but guilt flooded her heart. Sar himself seemed to be reprimanding her instead of Navon. Now he might be dead or floating in the void forever. . . . Like she might have done as an infant.

  Navon clasped her hands in a tender grip. “The most powerful forces in the Cetturo Arm know your name, your face. Wherever you go, you will be followed. Your powers are traceable through space, beyond any reckoning. I am not asking you to act as a symbol for anyone or anything.”

  “Yeah? Then what do you want? Cheseia didn’t bring me here and Sar didn’t do what he did just so I could find out who . . . who I might really be.” Kivita still didn’t want to accept it. The fact that the kind, weathered man who’d taught her to fly, who’d instilled a wonder for the stars, might not be her father crushed her heart.

  “I will not live forever,” Navon said. “The other Savants on board this ship learn all they can from me, but that is not enough. The Vim mirrored their datacores on a biological brain, constructed from nature’s hardiest materials. The perfect data receptacle. A brain can store, process, and retrieve information. It can pass this information on to each successive generation. There are talented Savants among us, but none that can match what you have already done.”