"I've seen enough." The Karist commander, Novrost Jaxan, turned his attention to the backdrop. A spectacular purple-red energy storm dominated the heavens, frothing and writhing with cleansing intensity. Jaxan had never witnessed the Maelstrom at such close proximity before, and its majesty took his breath away. From afar it was beautiful, serene almost. Up close though, it was anything but, thrashing and writhing as if reality itself was enraged. It defied comprehension. It inspired awe and respect. He gave a wistful shake of the head. "Let's get back into the network."
Under the Novrost's feet, the deck thrummed. The view wheeled, stabilising onto the sight of the system's blue-white star. He rocked back on his heels as the ship accelerated.
No converts. No assets. No recruits.
The loss of another system without profit wouldn't be received well by the Heirarchs on Schar's World, never mind--
"Novrost--"
"Yes?"
"The station--I'm detecting life signs near its core."
Jaxan sighed. "And?"
A few dozen irradiated survivors. Too late to be saved.
"Not people, Novrost."
Jaxan's mouth went dry. "Go on."
"I'm detecting gravitic anomalies and traces of fifth-state matter…"
A feeling of elation swept over Jaxan.
They'd found a shoal of minnows.
*
"Why so pale, Edin?" Arkan slapped Edin on the thigh, the blow stinging the skin beneath his robes. "Fourteen'd think you'd never ridden the tunnels before."
They sat side-by-side deep in the bowels of The Light Eternal, a dredge-class liberation vessel, the whole craft shaking from the turbulence. Word of a minnow shoal sighting at an Edge-threatened system had come in to their stronghold world in the Pican system half-a-day ago. A crew of Keepers and Troopers had been hastily scrambled within the hour. Minnow capture operations were usually the sole jurisdiction of the Keepers, but in systems like Destria where anarchy reigned, the presence of a military contingent was not unusual.
Arkan elbowed Edin. "I said--"
"I heard you," Edin replied, his gaze not deviating from Master Keeper Granstern who sat on the bench opposite, face like thunder. "You know this is my first trip out of system."
Laughter skittered down the gangway from Arkan's fellow troopers.
Laugh, Edin thought. They've laughed at me my entire life, what difference does a few more days make?
He didn't know if he'd been sickly since birth, but from the earliest time he could remember he'd always been a weakling, unable to scale walls, or climb trees, or take a punch to the gut. Edin had known Arkan since the age of seven. Although Arkan was never out-and-out nasty to him, he'd been weak in his own way, easily swayed to mock or bully Edin if the circumstances were in his favour.
Like now.
For a time Edin had convinced himself he could toughen up, one day share in Arkan's dream of becoming a Karist Trooper, but that ambition had died, when, aged eleven, a bout of fever had left him bedridden for three months, ravaging his lungs and almost taking his life. It had been a dark time. Almost a year later, though, he experienced his first encounter with a real, living, pulsing Angel minnow and a shaft of sunlight had breached the shadows.
It had happened on the Day of the Third Revelation.
Swathes of brightly coloured ribbons hung between the white ferroceramic street lumens, while on the narrow packed balconies, celebrating Karists jostled for the best positions. Among the throngs on the laser planed granite thoroughfares, commune reactors filled the air with a na-cybel haze. The men and women who'd served on They Shall Know the Light, one of the great Arks that had recently brought peace to the Calestra system--Troopers and Kaddars, Engineers and Operators, Keepers and Shadow Walkers alike--marched through the streets in a long parade that stretched further than the eye could see.
Not that Edin could see far.
He was sat in a cumbersome hoverchair, trapped among a heaving crowd who'd stationed themselves on one of the seven corners of the Great Wheel junction. At that time, his lungs had yet to recover sufficiently to allow him to walk unaided for more than a few minutes, so he'd been forced to make the journey in his despised chair. The majority of his view was composed of celebrants backs and rears.
The thrum of a thousand bootsteps grew louder.
"What can you see, Father?" Edin glanced up and back as he spoke.
Behind the chair, his father craned his neck. His mouth locked in an 'o' of astonishment. "With my very own eyes," he muttered. "Edin, they've got a real Angel leading the parade! One, two, three . . . eight Keepers! It's being escorted by eight Keepers, Edin."
Edin strained in his chair trying to see the magnificent creature, but the day had been long, and his body held no strength. Down the street, away from the heart of the parade Edin noticed a lone Keeper ducking between the doorways as if he was looking for something. Edin slumped back, dejected. He felt the excitement skate through the knot of people around him. As the Angel approached, the crowd surged first forward then backwards like a hungry but frightened tide.
"I need some air," Edin shouted, throwing his voice over the din.
His father hesitated in his response. "Okay, son. Sure."
They edged out of the tight morass of bodies, ducked off the main street and into a shadowed alleyway. A stack of malfunctioning refrigeration crates, struggling to stay cool in the sweltering heat, spilled rotting food onto the ground. Further down the alley, a man in engineering fatigues scanning some holo circuit diagrams, cursed about electro-kilns, and Edin realized they must've been at the back of a street of bistros. The engineer killed his holo, then ducked back inside.
"Why don't you go back?" Edin said. It hadn't been hard to detect the disappointment bleeding off his father as they'd snaked away from the parade.
"No, no--"
"I'll be fine."
His father gave Edin a long look, then squeezed the back of his neck. "I'll be straight back as soon as the parade has passed."
Edin wheeled himself deeper into the alley, and the noise of the parade dwindled to a low murmur. Good, he thought. He glanced back at the razor of light coming from the end of the alleyway, then turned back to the shadows.
And flinched.
Not ten paces away something rooted around a cybel power node, its form difficult to discern, its movements erratic. Edin narrowed his eyes, transfixed. Was it a dog? A man? He couldn't tell. He edged forward--
And gasped.
By the Fourteen--
A living, breathing Angel minnow--well, not breathing as Angels didn't breathe--hid in the shadows, its two translucent wings quivering. It had punctured the power node, cybel energy crackling from the rift in the container. As the minnow fed the cybel energy into its gaping maw, a roughly triangular orifice with a purple light emanating from within, it shuddered. Its six eyes, a trinity of purple orbs on either side of its mouth, fixed Edin with an otherworldly stare.
Edin knew Angels sensed things gravitically, but, afraid, he wheeled back a few paces, leaned into the shadows anyway.
Satisfied Edin was no threat, the minnow returned its attention to its feeding.
For the next few minutes, Edin watched the creature with rapt fascination, half delighted, half horrified at the way it hungrily gnawed on the power node. Watching for longer he realized that the minnow had suffered some kind of trauma, its whole-body shudders indicative of distress. The creature fed as much for comfort as nourishment.
Inside, Edin felt a flicker of sympathy.
Perhaps I can get closer--
The loud bang of a door slamming ricocheted down the alley, and a man stepped out, cursing. When he caught sight of the minnow he stopped dead. "What the . . . ?"
Above the man's head an emergency light flickered, and Edin realized the minnow's feeding must've been causing havoc with the building's power system. The man wore a dirty chef's apron, his hair matted with sweat. He glanced around, before his eyes alighted on a ru
sted electrobroom. Grabbing the 'broom he raised it up so its stiff bristles pointed ahead, then slowly advanced on the minnow.
"Go on, off with you!" He jabbed at one of the minnow's wings, but other than giving the man a cursory inspection the minnow didn't react. "Go on, get!"
After a few more weak jabs to no effect, the man paused, glanced up and down the alley. He hadn't seen Edin in the shadows yet. Edin leaned back further, feeling like it was too late to reveal himself, like he would be seen as some kind of snooper if he stepped out now. Thinking he was alone with the minnow, the man stepped up his shooing efforts, stabbing the 'broom's spines into the minnow's hard thorax. On first glance, the minnow didn't seem affected by the man's more violent efforts, but looking closer Edin could see its wings stiffening--
A gobbet of raw cybel spat from its mouth, and suddenly the man was falling backwards, screaming, his 'broom clattering to the ground, one hand clutching a burnt and bloody shoulder. He scrabbled backwards, but the minnow advanced, not satisfied. The acrid smell of the cybel mingled with the smell of singed fabric and cooked flesh, and Edin dry-heaved, sickened.
"Help!"
The man had backed himself up against a pair of refrigeration crates, nowhere for him to go, and the minnow was almost upon him. Edin wheeled out from the shadows, swiped up the 'broom. "Hey!" He carved the end of the 'broom along the ground with an ugly screech. "Over here!"
The diversion worked, the minnow twisting round, but now it seemed more agitated than ever, its attention pinballing between the man and Edin.
What now?
He felt near defenseless in his chair--
"You, what are you doing?" The voice came from behind Edin, deep and authoritative. "Stay back!"
Edin glanced around to see a caped figure marching closer. A Keeper. The bottom half of his face was covered with the dark, tight-fitting mask of his gravitic vocalizer allowing only his eyes to be seen, but even with his jaw hidden it wasn't hard to see the Keeper's fury. He pulled a small commune from his belt, then popped the cap. A thin stream of cybel fizzed from the commune, swiftly surrounding the Keeper in a misty haze of energy. The minnow launched itself into the air, flapping past Edin's head, before circling the Keeper, mouth agape.
"What were you planning to do with that?" The Keeper nodded towards Edin.
"This?" Edin asked, looking down at the 'broom clutched tight in his white hands. "I was just trying to distract the creature." He looked back the other way to the slumped, trembling form of the man. "It was attacking that man."
The Keeper had gone down to a crouching position, placating the minnow while letting it feed straight from the commune. He leaned to one side to give himself a view of the man further down the alley past Edin. The man mumbled in low moans.
"I see."
"I wasn't going to harm it. I swear."
"Good." The Keeper fixed Edin with a long stare. "The Angels are our guides and our strength. They showed us the way to control cybel and granted us the strength to undertake our great mission. But you should never forget that they are wild creatures first."
"I won't" Edin said, and he meant it.
The Keeper raised himself up to full height, approached. He leaned close, whispered. "If you have the will--and the discipline--an Angel can make you more powerful than you can ever imagine." From his belt he pulled out a small vial of colourless fluid. "Now, we better patch up your friend, eh? You better tell him this is going to sting."
That day Edin decided his fate.
One day he would become a Keeper.
*
The journey to the Destria system took the better part of three days as The Light Eternal worked its way through the maze of tunnels that connected Edin's homeworld with one of the main thoroughfares of the Arm. When turbulence rocked the ship, the whole crew would shelter in the emergency raft ready for a hard-evac, but most of the time the Keepers and Troopers kept to their respective quarters. From time to time, gazing out at the passing tunnels, Edin would notice the ghostly imprints of lost vessels like the impressions of fossils in stone.
Time passed slowly.
He was not a Trooper.
Nor was he a Keeper--yet.
That day would only come when he'd completed his apprenticeship, proved himself in the eyes of his trainers--and most crucially--proved himself in the eyes of Master Keeper Granstern. His performance on this trapping mission would be critical. If he did well one day a minnow would be chosen as his charge, and he would say his solemn vows in the sacred Vault of the Keepers, deep in the heart of the Keeper's Sanctuary. At that time, his minnow would be little more than a feral pack animal, one hungry maw in a swarm, but over time, through diligent exposure to na-cybel and Edin's patient instruction, the minnow would grow into a ferocious adult bound to his will, who could be, if not controlled, then at least orchestrated.
Afterwards, Keeper and Angel would be despatched to the Edge.
Edin couldn't wait.
*
"Stop pacing, boy."
Edin stopped dead. "Sorry, Master Keeper."
Unlike the other apprentice Keepers who'd congregated in Analytics to monitor the progress of the liberation operations, Edin had remained in the Keeper's quarters, too nervous to watch proceedings. Master Keeper Granstern sat in the middle of an enormous elliptical station at the heart of the quarters, the surface of his desk brimming with resonance scanners, tracts on Angel physiology and behavior, holo-displays churning with tightly-packed data, na-cybel communes, and more. Edin approached, passing the long row of empty pens where the captured minnows would be kept. At the other end of the quarters, the Master Keeper's own adult Angel, Invictus, writhed in its own bigger containment pen. The EM shield confining the Angel shimmered like heat haze, giving the creature and the enclosure a slight blue hint. Edin shivered.
Master Keeper Granstern didn't look up, a gnarled finger running over the lines of an anatomy text. "Pacing won't make things happen any faster."
"I know."
"Our most capable and knowledgeable brothers and sisters of the Karist navy will secure the minnows shortly."
Was that a hint of sarcasm in the Master Keeper's voice? He'd been taught the Karist path did not involve politics. Theoretically, every Karist was unified in their objectives and the manner in which they would be achieved, but hints of division between the Troopers and Keepers had riddled the mission.
"I hope so," Edin replied, neutrally. "I still worry. Their capture is a relatively straightforward affair though, no?"
"Sometimes," Master Keeper Granstern replied, looking up. Over his right eye he wore some kind of ocular magnifying device, which he pushed up. "In a system like this one though things are rarely straightforward. The station may be unstable, on the verge of complete destruction. Or it may be occupied by pirates. And then there's the proximity of the Maelstrom to contend with."
"The minnows will be agitated."
"More than agitated. Unless threatened, aggression is not a part of their natural makeup, but the presence of the Maelstrom can do strange things to their behavior."
Edin knew well how the transformed cybel energy could not only alter their behavior, but also alter their very forms; the careful exposure of minnows to na-cybel energy was the very means by which the Enclave created the magnificent adults. "But the Maelstrom is still weeks away. We couldn't be here otherwise."
"Its influence spreads before it nonetheless. And no creature is more sensitive to its presence than the Angels."
As if to underline Master Keeper Granstern's words, Invictus thrashed against the shields of its pen. Its void gel morphed into narrow, serpentine shapes, elongating and twisting faster than the eye could track. Oily hues of magenta and green pulsed over its slick black form. The display of power made him both nervous and awestruck, and Edin wondered if the creatures were far more intelligent than usually credited.
Master Keeper Granstern added, "We still have much to learn."
Edin's gaze wandered
over the field emitters, cybel sensors, and curved instruments of unknown function, that thronged the Master Keeper's station. He had even more to learn. "They are mysterious, wondrous creatures."
"Indeed. Well, you might as well make yourself useful until then."
A feeling of exhilaration swept Edin. "What can I do, Master Keeper?"
"I need another resonance sweep of Invictus' anterior nodes." From the chaos of his station he plucked out a small scanner and an EM glove. "Here."
Edin fed his right hand into the stiff gauntlet, while he held the scanner in his left. Using his thumb he flicked on the glove, the field's presence indicated by the tickling sensation he felt in his palm and at the tips of his fingers. Slowly, he flexed his fingers, and the tactile feedback reacted accordingly, the sensations diminishing as he opened his hand, and intensifying as he closed it.
He approached the adult Angel's pen.
"Apprentice Edin--"
"Yes, Master Keeper?"
"Never forget that an Angel is a deadly creature."
*
On the fourth day, with the liberation vessel moving in lockstep with the battle-scarred station and its unlikely guests, Novrost Jaxan gathered the entire crew in the mess.
"Three hours ago, we received word from one of our deep-cover Shadow Walkers still based on Destria prime. This Walker informed us that the Foundation leadership still remaining in-system are aware of the Karist activity around Miller's Station. They have scrambled a taskforce with the primary objective of securing the station and stopping it falling into Karist hands."
Edin could feel the tension rise. Troopers and Keepers glanced between one another, their faces anxious. Far off in the depths of the liberation vessel Invictus broke the silence, letting out one of his eerie, otherworldly strains like the sound of the wind through the subterranean tunnels of Edin's homeworld.
Tales from the Edge: Escalation: A Maelstrom's Edge Collection Page 19