They looked nothing like the Royal palaces, or my people’s vast caves. Each of the white hovels was stacked on top of another and whatever else remained of their village was claimed by the kelrapi forest. The water was stale beneath us, unstirred and untouched for some time now.
Hoping to take her mind off the fact that we were sitting wirms in a grave town, I inclined my head back and pointed to the gold coil attaching my arm to the shuttle. She shook her head in reply. I reached to press a finger to her forehead and hoped she wouldn’t misinterpret my request to share her power to give me the extra strength I needed. It was never wise to share thoughts with just any female. Being forced to survive together had its advantages apparently, because she nodded in agreement and placed her hand over my arm.
As the Orona, Qeya could heal or take away life if she wanted to. Most Miners did not know what the Royal pair was capable of. I knew it firsthand. When she touched me, I felt strong enough to tear this ocean floor to bits, as if I could take on the demons that blew up our ship. I could see now why, when the Core Worlders invaded, they took out the Orona first. She was the key to everything.
I drank in the power her touch innately gave me. I knew most Royals had to concentrate to let down their inner walls before sharing their gifts. Qeya proved to be the exception to the rule. I clenched my fist even tighter, to maintain the field and nodded to Qeya. Wordlessly, she swam ahead and together we pulled. A heavy creaking groan echoed in the water and the tremors would be felt leagues in any direction, unfortunately.
I kept my eyes peeled, either way. Only a fool would assume this sea was safe because it was empty. The sound reminded me of the leviathan’s cry, the sort of sound that gets under your skin and never lets you forget. This was the noise that shook us to our bones and reminded me we were floating in a fathomless ocean we knew nothing of. Only that for some reason, no fish dwelled near the surface and the aliens that might have resembled us most, had abandoned their homes long ago.
Qeya winced but did not let go of me as we swam together. The closer to the surface we neared, the faster her strokes. With the added glow of her power in her eyes, she moved faster than I had ever seen her. And because I was bonded to her now, I felt it too, the gill-pounding, blood-curdling rush that made me wonder how she could stand to lose it, once she pushed it back behind her mental walls.
The water thinned and it was with some effort my body adjusted to land. For me, it was harder than most miners. Maybe it was because I spent so long alone and flying free in the ocean. I wish I could remember more about my life before.
Qeya and I shivered when our bodies pulled out of the gentle waves and into the night air. She slipped and I caught her by the waist, tucking her into my chest. My other arm was beginning to feel the ache and pull of holding the shield so long. But when I caught a glimpse of her face, I felt another rush of that sweet heat. Her eyes glowed like the surface of the first star I had ever seen up close. The heat was too much for Royals but we were made of thicker skin after all. My first tour on Datura 3, I spent much of my time on the observation deck, near the main controls, just looking.
Behind us I could hear Adi’s distant shouts. We had arrived some distance from the crash and campsite. Judging from her tone, we had made more of a ruckus than I intended. Yet at the moment I was glad we had miscalculated.
“Ohre,” Qeya gasped, pleadingly.
Lost to my high, I wanted to ignore her pleas and use her power to rip the world apart. I would make a new home beneath the sea, like the one I had been stolen from as a boy. I wanted to stop sailing and make a home there. And I wanted this Royal to be my female like I’d never wanted anything else.
What a dripping, leaking mess…the much smaller and much less cocky voice in my head reminded.
“Ohre, you have to let me go,” Qeya said, this time with pain laced through her words.
I let go immediately and felt the life fade from my limbs and my chest. At the same moment, the shuttle landed on the sands beside us. Only then did I realize I’d carried it with me out of the waters and dragged it up the uneven shore.
Adi was calling out in our native tongue now, something the Royals never bothered to learn, but I ignored her. My hands caught Qeya just before she collapsed onto the sand and I gathered her up. “Are you ill?” I asked her, already knowing the answer and cursing myself for being so greedy with her gift.
She should have sucked the life out of me.
“No, I will recover. It just took more out of me than I expected,” she replied.
Her eyes still glowed faintly when they rose to meet mine. Against the light of the moon she seemed ethereal and unattainable as the time I first saw her. I tried to speak but the words caught in my throat and I stared at her lips and remembered how soft they were. I remember what she tasted like, the salt waters of home world and the flower she was named after. It suited her, to be named after one of the most beautiful and poisonous flowers on our world. Because she made me not think like a miner, but like the wild sea creature I had been before.
“Promise me something,” she whispered and drew my gaze back to hers.
I nodded. She could have asked anything and I would have said yes, even if that meant cutting my own hand or clogging my gills. Her fingers pressed to my neck, grazed over the slits that allowed me to breathe under water with ease and I shuddered.
“Don’t send me back to the village yet. Let me stay with you and Adi for a few more days. I want to see if there is anything worth salvaging inside the Pioneer.”
I frowned, imagining not only the trouble Adi was going to give me for this, but the Royal King, her brother. But I felt a sick satisfaction when I thought of Tamn, the blood-letting Royal that Qeya chose over me. I could never forget when she ran to his arms that day in the Nuki’s village. It was the last day I ever set foot in Nukvar valley.
Only a Hunan addicted to his own torture would have said yes to her request.
III
Atone
Before the Core rulers invaded Datura, I was pulled out of the slums by Old Brien, in a last ditch effort to change my fate, he claimed. “Won’t be soiling your clan’s name, boy. You’ll only get a chance like this once in this lifetime.”
But I hated the thought of leaving the only home I could ever remember. I had never managed to get the hang of my land legs. For the first few years I would sneak back into the underground sea at the bottom of the caves we mined. Until Old Brien decided to uproot his entire clan and take them up to the heavens.
“Those Royals be getting too keen on our comings and goings. Might be best to sail the heavens instead. No freedom compares to the heavens, boy. Royals only care that we bring back the goods. The rest be up to us,” he had said.
Brien thought the heavens were better than the seas because he’d spent his boyhood there. I tried not to hate him for taking me away from my last link to home. Datura 3 was never home for me, not even after we were chosen to save the Royal family and journey to the edge. Nothing on board that ship was soft.
The engine was the round base and the ringed decks came after it, over a long connecting neck. The modular design allowed us to break it apart and rebuild as necessary. Occasionally a mining job could go wrong and because the ship was able to split apart into individual decks, any poisonous gasses or breaches were contained.
Datura 3 was a beacon of flashing lights as bold as any star. It was beautiful, according to Adi and Old Brien and their clan. They had built it, after all. Even the Royals were proud of it and tried passing it off as their own. But everything about the decks, the crude walls, was wrong. I was convinced we did not belong there. We were made for the sea, and to the sea I longed to return.
I thought I was alone in this feeling, until the first time I saw her. She went through the motions of her work, of her life, but she did not live it. I saw the truth in her face when she thought she had hidden it away. She, too, seemed to be made of water instead of land, like me. We both were awkward on lan
d and even more on a ship sailing the heavens. But in the third deck observation rooms, I had watched her float on air through the windows, smiling. She never smiled.
“Don’t twist it that way, you leaking Royal!” Adi growled when Qeya nearly disconnected the engine couples instead of connecting them.
“Sorry.” Qeya’s pale skin blushed and she frowned as she obeyed Adi’s modified instructions. Her golden eyes flickered up to meet mine and we shared a quick grin when Adi’s back was turned.
It was never boring for me, watching them work together on the Pioneer. We had managed to drag it over the sands the morning after lifting it from the sea bed. I was against using her gifts again, until Adi threatened to change her mind and send Qeya packing alone to the valley.
Once again, I linked minds and strengths with the Royal Princess. It was not half so hard to find control on land as the sea. Together we made lists of parts and supplies of what remained of the shuttle and what we could exchange with Second Deck. Adi’s face lit up like it she had discovered a fresh batch of chole dust when we finally broke through the encryption locking Pioneer’s controls. Thanks to Qeya, we were able to bypass the system until only our runes remained underneath the override of Royal code. Adi took the most joy out of that, I believe, watching something a Royal had claimed become ours again. Most miners would have felt the same. If I considered myself a miner, I might have agreed.
We hunched together over the controls as Qeya pulled up the last recorded communication link between Pioneer and Datura 3. She sat perched closest to the shell-shaped speaker, her knuckles bone white as her father, the former king, spoke with the shuttle captain.
“Have you found evidence of any hostile species on the surface?”
“None, Navigator,” the captain replied, his words fuzzed by the unsteady connection. “Looks good enough for colonization, I believe. And the miners say their scanners have picked up on more chole dust closer to the core. Lucky find that is, sir.”
“Aye,” the king agreed. A pause of static filled the following tense seconds. I turned to glare at Adi, who in turn was glaring just as fiercely back.
Colonization?
I was somewhat surprised. Had the Royals actually decided to settle after so many years wandering? Or were the tremors I had felt on deck been because we were running low on basic fuel? It had been some time since our last reaping.
“If that’s it then we should get back to work,” Adi said, turning to Qeya. The Orona hissed and whipped out her scythe faster than I could blink.
“No, we wait, miner,” she said hoarsely.
Adi, for once, said nothing and settled back against the navigation paneling of the cockpit. Sure enough, the crackling began afresh and this time, the shuttle crew sounded desperate.
“We’re under attack! The blast came from nowhere. We can’t outrun ‘em. Never seen a ship like this one. Are you seeing these readings?”
“What? What are you saying? Captain, answer me!” Qeya’s father demanded. “Our scanners have picked up no trace of ships in this system. It is supposed to be abandoned.”
The blaring warning sirens screeched behind the captain’s voice as he gasped a reply, “Too late! We’re going down. Blast clear of this place quick as you can.”
“Captain, we’ve spotted them. We’re under fire! Oh light, the children—” And then the king’s voice fell silent, interrupted by a crackling silence that could only mean one thing. It had been hard to tell how we managed to get away before we were obliterated. No doubt the alien vessel saw us as dead anyhow, floating free of our engine and crashing into a wild planet.
But why attack us so far into deep space unless they wanted to guard this world? It was the only explanation. The invaders lived too comfortably in their core-world ships. And no bounty hunters had tracked us in years.
Adi was the first to stand, reaching to switch off the recording, with a hard look at the Royal. “I don’t care to relive anymore of that day.” She brushed past me with a hard shoulder and left me staring helplessly at the weeping Royal. As I watched her trembling shoulders and heard her tiny keening wails, I felt something inside me snap. It made me grieve things I had no business grieving, and dwelling in moments best left buried in the past. So I leapt from behind her chair and followed Adi, trying to make as much distance between us and Qeya’s pain as possible.
Adi decided we should try and rebuild the Pioneer rather than modify Second Deck. She spat nails at first about letting the bleeding Orona hang around with us. But eventually, over the following days, she took to ordering her to pass along tools, and then she taught her simple mechanics, claiming she needed to pull her weight. I think Adi enjoyed having someone to boss again, someone to pass on what she knew. It gave her a reason not to yell at Qeya, at least, until she screwed up, anyway. The transmission had left all of us shaken more than we were willing to admit. We didn’t speak of it. Instead we concentrated our efforts to making the shuttle faster than before, and stronger, so it could withstand the pressures of traveling the heavens.
After the sun set, Adi worked using our infrablue vision and Qeya spent most nights pouring over the data pads and other Royal records she had uncovered onboard. I watched her, fascinated to see how her mind worked. Four nights after she turned up on the shoreline bordering the mountains that hid her valley, I finally asked her.
“What are you doing with those?” I pointed with the end of my blade to her little workstation.
She froze and her clear inner lids blinked. Her brows drew together before she answered in a solemn tone, “I wanted to make a record of everything, to connect the pieces. And I was hoping to find something more in the shuttle’s communication logs with Datura 3.” She paused when her chin began to tremble, and then added, “Maybe there was something they missed. I need to know why that other vessel shot us down.” She looked away and I realized she was staring at the empty pit of ashes where we had burned the rest of her extended family.
“Think that be wise, Navigator?” I teased her with her father’s old title, because it gave her something else to think about. Because it took away the pain in her face and replaced it with annoyance.
“I just think it’s important we know what we’re getting ourselves into, if we try blasting off this world.” She turned her attention back to the flashing screen, the glyphs casting blue shadows over her face, contrasting with the firelight.
“We?” I heard myself stupidly asking. She jerked up her chin to meet my gaze again, this time curiously. I hated the fact that around her, I was still acting like the uncivilized, undisciplined boy that Brien found.
Something like resignation filled her round eyes, something that looked too much like weariness. “I don’t plan on staying here long, miner. We spent too long on the edge. Now that our parents are dead, it’s time Arvex and I went back to Datura.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it really, not when she sounded so leaking determined, not when Datura was on the other side of the blowing heavens. Not when her family had been considering settling on this rock long before we crashed, apparently.
“What?” she said as she bowed her head with a glare.
“You really think, after all the time we sailed those heavens, the Navigator had any intention of going back?” I avoided mentioning the recording. “Think about it, Qeya. They made all of you train and learn, drilled those lessons into your water-logged heads, just so you wouldn’t ask too many questions. They kept you separate so you couldn’t see just how lost and scared they really were.”
She moved across the fire so quickly I only saw a blur of motion before she was on top of me, pinning me down, her retractable scythe blade against my neck and her eyes glowing as she hissed against my face. “You know nothing, miner! I have their memories in my head. Don’t you think I know what they were trying to do? I knew before I was forced to Ascend!”
She didn’t seem aware of my broad knife poking against her biosuit, just above the place where her second heart sho
uld be. But I had only ever heard rumors of what happened when a Royal ascended. I knew it was some kind of initiation into adulthood. But what Qeya described sounded a lot worse. If what she was implying was true, then she might have more than a few voices running around in her head. My eyes widened when I realized they all did.
Royals were given their parents’ memories usually by the adults’ choice. Every generation, since the beginning of their species, was able to transfer their thoughts to their children, to make them immortal and give them a way to become better rulers. There were ceremonies attached to the whole thing and a grand celebration afterwards. The children were prepared for this moment from birth, but if the line before them died too soon, the memories were forced on them. Old Brien once told me that lesser Royals couldn’t handle such a harsh transition. It could easily fry their minds.
“You all ascended when the ship blew,” I murmured, realizing.
Qeya flinched and her blade eased against my neck, not quite as biting as before. And then she collapsed on top of me, just as I shifted the knife to lay flat between our biosuits. Whatever fury had been holding her up was gone and she was once again an innocent Royal.
Her voice came much softer then. “I wasn’t ready for this. But the children… I should have celebrated my birth year by now. Sixteen is not as big a year, but it is big enough. I shouldn’t have ascended for another two star years, Ohre. Now they’re in my head, always reminding me what we left behind, every time I try to think of this place as home.” She started trembling, shaking from more than cold and I held her reluctantly.
“They never stop reminding me of Datura. It wasn’t so bad when the Orona died. I could almost ignore her voice, but now with mother’s voice, and all the females from her line… Ohre, I think I’m going mad!”
She propped against my upper chest, so I could look into her eyes again. I had seen hints of this conflict in her before last season. Now I knew the reason why.
Ohre (Heaven's Edge) Page 3