Sands of the Solar Empire (The Belmont Saga)

by Ren Garcia

  Lyra embraced her brother. “You are who you are, Bel. I think if Mother had given you every freedom, if she hadn’t plunged the knife into your chest, you still would have ended up with a coat and a mask. Perhaps the fabric might have been a different shade, perhaps the mask less prominent, but they still would have been there. Mother was very proud of the man you became. She loved her son.”

  Lyra joined him in the dirt. “Look at me and the costume I wear—this gown . . . Is my costume so different from yours? You followed your heart, didn’t let your dreams die, and ended up in the stars like you always wanted. Coat and mask—you are what you wanted to be.”

  Stenstrom smiled and wiped his face. “Virginia’s wedding. The planning is not finished, I’m told.”

  “I’m going to help her plan it, and so will Lucile. Though, a wedding at this time just seems…”

  “It seems perfect to me,” Stenstrom said. “Life goes on at our household—just as Mother would have wanted it. Her children’s lives go on. I think I’m going to stay for awhile, until I ship out again. I’d like to help plan my sister’s wedding.”

  “She’ll be very glad to hear that. I’m glad too, Bel—maybe it will be like old times. Perhaps later, we can go to the sand pit and wrestle like we used to.”

  He laughed. “Sure—I’ll beat you down now just like I did back then.”

  “That’s not how I remember it, sandface.”

  He looked around: the hills, the manor, the Merian ruins—home, yet no longer familiar, no longer what it was without Mother’s presence. He raised his hand and shook it, producing three MARZABLEs.

  “Here’s to our mother, and the richness she left to us,” he said.

  Lyra shook her hand, producing the same. “Here’s to Lady Jubilee, the woman who watched over us. The woman who loved us,” she said.

  They embraced, the shadows of the afternoon growing long.

  * * * * *

  Three months later, he became the Paymaster of the New Faith.

  Part 3 The Demon That Came For His Soul

  1 Missing

  The Seeker limped through open space, its progress painfully slow. They had managed, just barely, to get the Seeker going fast enough to break Kana’s orbit, leaving the inviting blue ball with all its safety and comfort behind. They were flying the ship backwards, as the improvised engine of the Westminster was located in a forward-facing bay. Stenstrom, A-Ram, and Taara stayed mostly on the bridge. That’s where they had lights and a bit of fresh portable air—the Macon setup, powered on, and happily spewed condensed oxygen. In such a condition, the bridge was halfway livable.

  They had completed several burns, using nothing but dead reckoning as their AM/PM compasses were off-line.

  Taara’s MOLLY’ed smarts were a godsend, and, if not for her and A-Ram’s MOLLY, they’d still be plummeting into Kana’s atmosphere.

  She was still at it, putting her soul more at risk with every use. “We’ll keep Kana in the window for a few more hours, then, at the Mersy ice swarm, we’ll bank to 2:30PM, do a long burn with the Westminster, and make a bee-line for Onaris, riding Druries Belt the whole way. We’ll course correct again once we’re there, use its gravity to pick up some speed, and then it’s on to Bazz for the final push.”

  Taara patted the golden chain at her neck, she gazed with wonder at the pages of pages of calculations she’d made on scavenged paper. “This thing is great, A-Ram! You’re going to have to fight me to get this back. I love this!”

  “What about the hoard of demons you’re going to have after you? You’ve generated quite a bill that your soul shall have to pay.”

  “Screw `em!”

  Stenstrom was unsure. “Taara, you’re positive you know where we’re headed?”

  “Well, come see for yourself.”

  They went in his office and looked out the windows. Taara had constructed a crude sextant-like device out of metal struts. She picked it up, aimed, and pointed to a large, whitish star hanging just starboard beyond the silhouette of the Seeker’s cranked wing. “That big whitish-blue star is Nu Torriander, Ole Scrub, as we call it—that’s Onaris’ and Bazz’s star. Now, that smaller white star hanging off Ole Scrub’s ear, that’s Lil Whiteface, Nu Torriander’s dwarf companion star—that’s what freakin’ gives us scorching hot summers on Bazz. Damn thing.”

  Stenstrom looked at Ole Scrub bright in the window. “Doesn’t even look like it’s moving, does it?”

  “Nope,” she said still staring through her sextant, “but it is, slowly but surely. Soon, we’ll be seeing Druries Belt. It’s just a big, long cloud of glowing gas they use to use as a navigational aid back in the day.”

  Taara laid the sextant down, stretched and gave a long yawn. “Wow, I’m bushed. It’s been a busy two days.”

  “I’m feeling pretty used up myself. Here, you can have my office, Taara. Stretch out and get some sleep.”

  He went back out onto the bridge, Taara following him. “I’m fine. I don’t need a separate room—I never had one in the Marines, so I really don’t need one now.” She went to her favorite spot at the Missive’s panel and removed her coat and her boots. She balled her coat up into a pillow and plunked down into the chair, feet up. “Ahh, this isn’t bad.”

  Feeling dead himself, Stenstrom flopped down into his chair. “A-Ram, why don’t you lock the helm and get a little sleep as well. We’re on-course, right?”

  “Yes, according to the last dead reckoning Taara made, we’re on course. We shouldn’t need a course correction for another twenty hours. I’ve got the helm’s alarm set. According to the charts, we’re heading into the wastelands between the stars. The chart has a bunch of vague references to artifacts coming up.”

  “What are those?” Stenstrom asked.

  Taara chimed in, her voice groggy. “Ice, dust, gas . . . just ‘stuff’ floating around. Our next burn, that’s an important one,” she mumbled, settling into sleep. “Nice long five minute burn, we miss it, we’ll go off into the Wildlands on the other side of Druries Belt. Bad things happen off in the Wildlands. That’s what we say on Bazz.”

  “Oh please. We won’t miss it,” A-Ram replied. “I’ve got the alarm set.”

  He locked the helm and stepped down into the bridge, finding a comfortable spot near the navigator’s missing seat. A-Ram recited a short prayer and curled up on the floor. “Night, Bel,” he said wiggling around.

  Nearby, Taara was already out, her little chest rising and falling, accompanied by a bit of snoring.

  “Good dreams,” Stenstrom replied. As he watched the two of them sleep, he drew his NTHs and laid them on his lap. He felt like he’d known these two his entire life and he wasn’t going to allow anything to happen to them.

  Taara snored a little more, and A-Ram twitched. The Macon blew fresh air, and every so often, a light blinked on the various consoles; other than that the ship was quiet. Stenstrom got out of his seat and set up his various bits of arcane protections: his silver candlesticks, pans, and various Holystones scattered about meant to warn him of danger. They were silent.

  After a time he allowed his mind to wander and his eyes to grow heavy. He was tired too. Soon, he slept.

  * * * * *

  He was pulled out of his sleep by an alarm ticking steadily. He looked around. The alarm was coming from the helm.

  “A-Ram, I think your alarm’s going off,” he said, trying to clear the sleep out of his eyes. He stretched and settled back into sleep.

  The alarm dug a galling trench in his thoughts and woke him up.

  “Didn’t you say the alarm was set for twenty hours hence?” He opened his eyes. “There’s no way we slept for that long. Right?”

  No answer. The alarm continued to blare.

  Stenstrom stood and stretched.

  “A-Ram, kill that thing, would you please?”

  A-Ram wasn’t where he was when Stenstrom had fallen asleep. The floor by the Navigator’s position was empty.

  The Missive’s chair was
also empty. Taara was missing too. Her Marine coat and her boots were there—but no Taara.

  He was alone on the bridge.

  “A-Ram! Taara!” he shouted.

  No answer.

  He went into his office, seeing the diorama of stars against the gigantic, blackened silhouette and cranked wings of the Seeker.

  Nobody was there.

  He saw a light snap on far away in the rear section of the ship near the wing, then it went out.

  2 Haunted

  Anger and frustration surged through him as he stood alone on the bridge. What had happened? Had A-Ram’s “demon” come for Taara at last, and taken A-Ram in the process, somewhere in the middle of twenty hours of sleep? And what of the bridge, the Astral Plane? Perhaps whoever had trapped the bridge had returned.

  Blast! He was supposed to protect them. They trusted him and look what he’d done—fallen asleep, and not just for a few hours, but for nearly a day! And, furthermore, they needed to do a course correction and burn, change the angle of the ship; otherwise, they’d soar off course: rudderless into the Wildlands Taara had called it, an empty, lonely stretch of space best left far behind.

  Space? What a poor captain he was. Space was a term for scholars and astronomers. Fleet captains called the open stretches between the stars “The Sea.” As Captain Davage would have put it, the Wilderness was a patch of “bad sea,” small, insignificant, passed over in the blink of an eye.

  Of course, stuck in his dead ship flying backwards, this patch of ‘bad sea” was an unending ocean. He turned back and stared at the lonely helm wheel locked in place. Without A-Ram standing there, or without Captain Davage, the helm seemed to him an alien and incomprehensible thing.

  The alarm blared.

  It was time to alter course and burn the Westminster’s engines. He had no idea how to accomplish either task.

  He checked the arcane detectors he’d set up. They were still in place. Whatever had entered the bridge and taken them had overcome several layers of arcane protection: his Holystones and bolabungs and his silver talismans.

  He went to the lift and cranked open the doors. Darkness from the empty shaft filtered into the lit-up comfort of the bridge. As usual, he heard strange noises and a general feeling of dread bubble up from the bowels of the ship.

  And, somewhere out there, in all of that, were Taara and A-Ram, his friends. He couldn’t delay; he had to rescue them.

  Forget the ship, forget the burn, their safe return was all that mattered.

  He should have never brought them here.

  He waved his hands and produced a small silver chest. Opening it, inside he found three oily Holystones with a shimmering, chromatic surface. These Chromatic Holystones were adept at locking onto specific people and zeroing in on them, the fun he and his sisters Lyra and Virginia used to have with them, hiding in the Manor grounds and then being discovered, the excitement, the laughter in the afternoon sun.

  The Chromatics were difficult to make and expensive and they only worked for a short time, but they should help him locate Taara and A-Ram. He grabbed Taara’s left boot and dropped one of the Chromatic Holystones down into it. The Holystone needed a few minutes, to “soak up” Taara’s essence. He took advantage of the time. He checked his NTHs, replaced the cinabarr strikers, and gave them the general onceover. The strikers were locked into place and sound, the hammers oiled and smooth, they should be ready to fire. He cocked the hammers and put two shots through the near wall of the bridge. The shots were nice and bright, emerald green just like they should be. So beautiful to look at and so dangerous as well. They passed through the wall without damaging it and continued on unseen until they dissipated.

  He sashed them. He checked his HRN:

  MARZABLES: ready.

  Holystones: fully kitted out, greens, reds, blues, the works. He was ready to go.

  He shook his hands and there, gleaming, was his locket with Lilly’s face hiding within; the demure smile, the hopeful blue eyes. He’d fantasized about bringing her aboard someday, giving her the grand tour of his amazing ship, arm-in-arm—his scuttled, haunted, and contaminated ship.

  He’d give anything to see her again, to give him courage.

  He placed the locket back in his HRN and moved Taara’s boot around, hearing the Chromatic Holystone rattle around inside like a marble. Enough time should have passed, and he dumped it out onto the floor. The oily surface of the Chromatic had dried up turning into a dirty-looking brown. Now, the Chromatic should point the way toward Taara for the next hour or so.

  It lay there on the floor next to her boot doing nothing. It had to work. It just had to. He leaned down over it. “Don’t mess this up,” he said and gave it a slight tap. The Holystone began rolling, picking up speed. It headed toward the lift at a quickening pace. He picked it up and allowed it to settle into his palm.

  Time to go.

  He steeled himself and plunged into the low-grav dark beginning the perilous climb down the groaning, sound-filled lift shaft.

  The shaft was rotten and noisy; groans, creaks, unidentifiable titterings and, other, softer sounds lurked behind the louder noises.

  So far, the Seeker had been, except for the bridge, a groaning mess haunted with shadows and twisting movements of the night that they’d rather avoid if they could. Stenstrom had tried to ignore it at first, but the sounds he heard coming from the bowels of the ship couldn’t be explained as simply the aches and pains of an old, silent ship torquing through space. His old ship, the Sandwich, was also a noisy, groaning vessel ready to sink in open space, but it never made eerie sounds like what the Seeker was doing. The Sandwich never formed words and made dire sentences.

  As he made the climb down the shaft, Stenstrom tried not to listen, but he could hear, plain as day: “….beeeeeeelllllmontttt…. wheeeeere’ss yooourrrrrrmooooooothherrrrrr beeeeeeeellmmontttttt….”

  He looked up at the open door to the bridge with its yellow cone of light pooling out into the shaft—it was a comforting sight.

  He had to concentrate; he had a job to do. He checked the Holystone. He felt it tugging. A few more levels down.

  He continued on, trying to ignore the sounds.

  “… Belmont! … Your mother died alone …” a voice whispered in his ear with startling clarity.

  The things haunting the ship were getting personal. He closed his eyes. “My mother died surrounded by her husband and her children, all except one.”

  His mother’s death, and his not being at her side, haunted him to the present. It was a place in his thoughts he tried to avoid—the guilt and recriminations. The voices brought her loss back to him fully, and the evil lurking in the shaft seemed to know that.

  “Where was her son?”

  “Doing what she asked me to do. My mother is at peace.”

  He had to say it to himself several times.

  “My mother is at peace. My mother is at peace.”

  The insufferable noises dogged him all the way down to Deck 7. The Holystone “knocked,” indicating he was approximately level with Taara’s position. He pried the door open, and plunged into the dark. The shadows and noises were even more pronounced in the corridor than they had been in the lift shaft. The air was cold and stale.

  The thought of Lilly, bright and pink and full of light, flashed across his mind. This dark abyss was certainly no place she belonged.

  He shook open a yellow Holystone for light and instantly dropped it in shock.

  Four towering figures lit up in the Holystone’s glow standing not three feet away. Four pairs of dark eyes boring into him. He drew his NTHs.

  When he looked back up, the four figures were gone; just the great darkened cavern of the deck lay ahead stretching out into the gloom. He panned around with his NTHs at the ready. He thought for a moment that he just imagined seeing the figures, but no—they had been right there. He had seen them standing there thin and tall wearing white course-spun robes stained yellow in the Holystone’s light. He didn’t
recall seeing their faces, for there hadn’t been time: only their eyes. Shaken from the phantom encounter, Stenstrom set the Chromatic on the metal floor. He gave it a shove, and it started rolling, slowly at first and then quickening down the corridor. He followed, NTHs ready.

  The corridor was like a witch’s dance, echoing with disturbing sounds and hidden noise. The previous captain, Captain Gona of St. Paris, had retired, it was said, because he thought the Seeker was haunted, and with a cacophony like this, who could blame him? Stenstrom concentrated on his friends: on Captain Davage, on dear Lt. Kilos, and the beautiful Countess Sygillis. This was once their ship; they walked these very corridors. They are still here in the dark somewhere; he tried to remember their goodness and their light.

  The Holystone continued on into the dank reaches of the ship, rolling fast with a fuss.

  He was moving through the long neck of the vessel. It was quite a walk to its rear section. Wait! Ahead, he saw a figure moving in the dark. “Who’s there? Answer me, who’s there?”

  A chiding laugh came back in return.

  He lifted his NTH and cocked the hammer.

  “Where is Taara?” he asked, not expecting an answer.

  One came: “We have her. We have your little girl.”

  “Return her at once!”

  Laughter in response.

  “Return her to me!”

  “HHHAHAAHAHAAHHAHAAA!!”

  There was a momentary respite of silence, then: “She belongs to us, as do you.”

  “Who are you?”

  “You know us …” a voice whispered.

  “Show yourself.” He whirled around, dropping the yellow Holystone and drawing his second NTH.

  “You want her back?” the voice asked.

  “Show yourself!”

  “Very well . . .” In the dark a figure emerged, thin and tall, leering and dreadful.

  Stenstrom covered it with his pistols.