The Man Who Talked to Suns

by Stephen Andrews

Only the sound of his own sobbing, and the unbearable heartbreak of failure touched Tannen’s consciousness. He thought of friends and family, worlds and ideals that he had unwittingly betrayed. He felt the weight of shame and failure crush him physically, and his body responded by slumping to the floor, disturbing layers of dead threads with a crackle. The ship kept feeding him images from outside, having received no orders to stop For a little while Tannen did not notice the scene changing. For a little while he was in his own universe. But what his emotions did not need, his mind could not ignore. There was movement. Tiny specs drifted towards the blueness. Like ants marching across a frozen pool, things advanced. Tannen noticed them and then focussed on them. He told the ship to examine one and it rushed at him as the ship added magnification and definition. It was a human figure. In fact it was more than a human figure, it was a recognisable person. Tannen knew the man that now moved away from the ship and towards the blue stain. His name was Faselle. He was an intelligence specialist. It was impossible to tell if he was alive or dead, but something took him slowly and deliberately towards the blue, and, Tannen assumed, into the space that enemy had prepared for him.

  All the others specs were familiar; people that Tannen had laughed with, debated with, ate with, drank with, and in one case slept with. His compatriots were being drawn across the alien atmosphere to a fate he did not envy. At the same time he could not understand why he had been spared, and it mixed relief and shame with the log-jam of emotions that crowded him. He watched as they each made contact with the blossom of blue. Each found his or her allotted space and filled it perfectly. On contact the colours around bled into veins of deep red, purple and orange and flowed outwards like ink on blotting paper, until eventually the blue had gone and the circle was defined by texture and shape, but no longer different in colour.

  When the last trace of blue disappeared, alerts sounded inside Tannen’s head. The ship was being moved. For a moment Tannen thought the ships sensors were mistaken — he could not see any movement — but the ship was not moving alone. The ship and the entire structure around it were twisting slowly. Tannen looked behind, and sure enough he saw atmosphere gently passing the open end of the structure. Sunlight began to penetrate a section of the interior, casting long shadows and edging further into the depths. Where it touched, the orange glow faded to the grey ash colour of something burnt. The massive box continued spinning until its own sunrise brightened the interior and Tash-eh Hruun’s star illuminated every point inside, and then with the sun centred directly on the opening, all movement stopped. For a moment nothing happened, and then a consciousness as grand as the space outside flattened Tannen’s ego and demanded his attention.

  “Listen to me, Tannen” it insinuated. “Listen to me, because I have a story to tell you. There is still a way to escape, and more than that, there is a victory of a kind if you want it.”

  Tannen was shocked, but he did not feel fear. The voice was Ansti’s.

  Chapter 24.

  Ansti had unravelled Ashur’s lies as easily as a parent reads an infant’s protests. They were painfully obvious to him. Lies oozed from Ashur’s pores and fouled his breath. They filled his soul with fears and conspiracies, and spat half-truths and self-serving diversions from his mouth. And most helpfully, they clouded his mind. Ansti peered deep into that unpleasant place, searching the interior spaces as a man might dissect a small creature. He used what the par-born had given him and opened the man’s mind to scrutiny. He found plans and subterfuge. All that Ashur had schemed to achieve was laid out for Ansti’s examination. It was clever. It was the work of a technically brilliant but morally ambiguous mind. Ansti took what he needed and used it. He brushed against Tash-eh technology and sent the vehicles in quietly to prepare the way. Where once he had sought revenge now he sought a solution, an end to that which had corrupted this man and destroyed so many others. The answers were there, and only a small change of plan was required to move from a greater war to a greater peace. It could be done, and Ashur had done most of the work for him.

  Taking the ship on Tash-eh Hruun was easy. Ansti disabled the crew and dropped in twists of viral DNA adaptors. It was not a pleasant experience for the crew, but it was necessary. The threads held them and changed the malice of their internal genetic weaponry into something ready to grow and receive. He took a little from each of the vehicles, a little of what made them sun-blessed and able to reach into dimensions humans could not guess at. He modelled it and bent it and sized it, until it could fit into a human psyche. He had to be careful, too much would simply overload a human mind and too little would leave it perplexed and unable to read its new senses. He gave each of the crew a gift; the gift of sight into the universe that surrounded them. Not the tiny visual and aural universe they had grown to know, but the real one; the universe of life between stars, and endless open possibilities unconfined by the laws of world’s.

  Ansti had matched the core of each individual with one vehicle. He had paired them, a pupil and a master, to undertake a new journey. In the moments when the people were locked by threads and thought themselves drowning in something sent by the enemy, he had reached for each person. He had touched them when close to death, at the point when nothing but living matters, and sent them a tiny glimpse of the universe as both he and the vehicles knew it. Every one of them had reeled at first. Some believed this was confirmation of their Faith, that they were meeting the gods of their imagination. Others believed that their mind was dissolving in the final throes of death. As each teetered on the edge, a vehicle had swept in and guided them. The vehicles had saved the psyche of each person, and counselled them to be brave. Look they had said, look and feel with new senses, and embrace that which evolution has denied you.

  Awe filled them. Like the blind suddenly given sight, they sensed something that had previously been unavailable. Some recoiled from what they saw. It challenged many things they had held true. Others blinked and tentatively stretched out new senses, feeling the vast teeming void. One or two, those who had been traumatised too much by the fight and flight of the recent past, simply collapsed inside. Their minds could not contain what they discovered, and they broke. For those that lived, the universe changed. New senses unfolded and they found wonders. What they sensed was beautiful and vast and without parallel, and astonishingly they each found a friend. The vehicles gently helped their partners to understand this new place, and guided them through. When each person had adapted and settled, the vehicles showed them something. They looked at the sun, the Tash-eh sun, and it bathed them in its photons and lifted a veil to show them paths; the paths that ships took. As options opened to them every human suddenly knew that these were not just vectors to look at, but they were options to be chosen. They could move amongst the stars.

  Just as the par-born had shared themselves and elevated Ansti to their environment, now Ansti and done the same with the crew. It was easy; all they had to do was look properly, and in looking Ansti knew they would understand. Each had been picked for their potential to become a pilot, and as paths and conversations with suns opened to them they knew how to move across the void. Each could take a place inside a ship and move it. Each had a vehicle to sooth their passage, erase their footprint and expand their awareness. These new people were not travellers in the darkness, they were part of it. They would leave no shadow. There would be no par-born torn into existence as they passed. The par-born had given birth to a new life, and in turn he had created something that evolution alone never could have; a way for people to expand beyond that which was human.

  Chapter 25.

  Tannen sat against a wall and stared straight ahead. The vehicle had drifted into the room like smoke drifting between the branches of a tree, and then formed to make something solid. Ansti had sent it after telling him about Ashur’s betrayal. He’d given Tannen choices, and the one had had chosen did not surprise Ansti. Tannen wanted to hunt for Ashur. He wanted the means to extract pain on the man he had trusted so much and
who had played him so deliberately. He wanted to hurt Ashur as he himself had been hurt. His anger boiled inside, a steam of rage ready to burst out of confinement. And yet, while his emotions demanded satisfaction, his body could not deliver it. He could barely move himself, let alone fight. So, Ansti sent a vehicle, and now it waited for Tannen to pull himself aboard. It was close enough to touch, but it could not lift Tannen. Here in this space it powers were confined within itself. Tannen would have to move himself.

  Tannen was fuelled by Adrenalin. It dampened pain and provided motivation. He hauled himself slowly up and on, and when he found the ergonomic space in the vehicle, he slumped into it and gasped heavy breaths from the exertion and the hurting. He slipped hands into recesses and felt the vehicle acknowledge him. It had already been briefed by Ansti. Now it simply need Tannen to confirm its mission. Fed pain killers and introduced to weapons and sensors, Tannen felt new life coursing though him. He had power now, and for all the brutality his body had endured, it had survived and kept his mind intact. Now he had only to think and his will would be done.

  He felt himself joining with the vehicle, its senses enhancing his own and the clarity and depth of its awareness washing him clean of the pain blurred sensation. His mind cleared enough to think and he sent the vehicle searching for the ship’s mind. It probed and hunted and found a husk of tiny robotic thoughts. What little intelligence it had been granted was disbursed now in individual systems. No one thing controlled the ship completely. It no longer existed as an entity. But there was enough left in its internal operating system to open doors. The one that had confined Tannen ground open and offered him escape from confinement. He drifted out on the vehicle above a carpet of black threads.

  Ashur’s room was empty, as was his place on the bridge and the other spaces where Tannen sought him. The ship was of no help and there was no one left on board to offer ideas or clues. So Tannen started a systematic search. He moved from stem to stern, from left to right and from high to low. His hunt took him to parts of the ship he had not been to before, including the personal space of his former crew mates. He discovered objects that hinted at the parts of personalities kept private: an instrument had never seen the owner play; a wall of images — favourite places and people; stark utilitarianism that screamed of a person seeking control. He wondered if any of these things meant something to the owners now, or if those people were even alive.

  The pilot’s room was at the centre of the ship. The corridor that led to it curved gently and as Tannen drifted down it, he felt his anxiety rise. So much had been lost and won here at the ship’s heart. It was the centre of his personal triumphs and tragedies, and the place where he had seen something new and alien form. The monsters on his emotional dark places thrived here. He halted in front of the door, remembering how he had once fought to gain entry, and knowing how easy it would be now. He sent an urge to enter and the vehicle pushed at a tiny little part of the ship’s shredded consciousness. The door hissed and crackled open, snapping little pieces of thread.

  The interior glowed sunset orange, as if the colours outside had penetrated inside. The whole space was the colour of smouldering heated coal, with highlights and deep shadows. The shadows tugged once again at Tannen’s fear. This time he did not try and persuade it to leave. It had been right before. And he was not alone in his changed reaction. The vehicle, which had been drifting quietly, hunting with its own systems for a man it had been told how to recognise, suddenly flashed alerts and sent Tannen a sense of triumph. Ashur was here. Tannen asked where? He could not see the man and there were many places to hide, and ambush would be easy. The vehicle pinged a marker into his vision. Ashur was in the pilot’s couch. There amidst a tangle of machinery, embedded in a coffin of the ship’s mind, was the man who had betrayed Tannen and his colleagues. Killing him would be easy, but first Tannen wanted answers, and he wanted the man to know he had been found out. Tannen wanted to destroy him physically and emotionally, to crush his spirit before he crushed his body.

  Tannen drifted closer. He’d set vehicle’s hair trigger weaponry to release the instant there was a hint of attack. There was re-assurance under him. The vehicle could sense a weapon being moved or readied and do so thousands of times faster than his own reflexes. He felt safer, but not safe. What was Ashur doing plugged into the ship? Tannen was close enough to see Ashur now. He was covered in the paraphernalia of ship empathy. Only his face showed, and it was a mask of twitching sweating micro expressions. Ashur’s closed eyelids fluttered with the movement of eyes underneath, his nostrils flared and dribbled mucus, and the corners of his mouth flinched. Tannen could see jaw muscles clenched tight and veins prominent on Ashur’s skull. Whatever the man was doing it was not comfortable.

  Try and reach him, Tannen asked the vehicle. There was a pause, an absence of anything, and then a sudden jolting sense of presence and an audible gasp. Ashur belched breath, and his eyes exploded open. He spat, and Tannen could see him trying to move under the machinery that held him. Ashur spent moments gathering himself, panting and blinking, and when his torment had subsided a little he noticed Tannen. Ashur turned his head as much as he could, flinching when salty sweat dribbled into his eyes. And as he always did in moments of crisis, Ashur spoke. His voice was husky and broken, he puffed words out through deep breaths, but there was still the expectation of command “Tannen… sun-shit… get me out… get me out. I can’t do it. I cant save us. I tried. He betrayed us. Ansti, has betrayed us. Help me Tannen.”

  Tannen looked at the man. He studied the flesh and wondered at the thoughts hidden within it.

  “What are you doing Ashur? Are you trying to make the ship jump?” He saw hope and perhaps fear flash across Ashur’s face.

  “Of course I am. We have to go. How difficult can it be Tannen? He’s taken the crew and left us. He found me Tannen. He tricked me into coming here, with a promise. He promised to show me how to be a pilot. He’s not human anymore. He’s… something else. Get me out Tannen, suns-shine-dark, get me out.”

  Tannen did not move. He regarded them man with a slow gaze. He drifted back a little making it hard for Ashur to keep him in sight and forcing him to twist his head uncomfortably. He inflicted pain on the body, and knew that pain in the psyche would follow closely.

  The shock on Ashur’s face pleased Tannen. He knew that the man had seen the vehicle, and he knew that Ashur would be asking himself what it meant. For a little while Ashur simply strained to take in the view, and then his head snapped back, releasing tortured muscles, but not easing the anxiety inside.

  “Tannen, how did you get that? Do you know what it is? It’s much more than we ever thought; it has power. You can use it to help me out and it might even move the ship.” Ashur let out a laugh. “That thing is not a medical couch Tannen, it’s a weapon, a ship, a link to suns. It’s our salvation. I thought he had taken it and used it somehow, but it was here all along. How did you get it?”

  Tannen, drifted back close to Ashur, so close that his leg bumped the side of the pilot’s couch. Although it hurt and his body protested with pain and a swimming nausea before the vehicle pumped more suppressants into him, he leant close to Ashur’s face, close enough to kiss the man, and close enough to see the detail of his eyes. He gazed deep, and saw confusion flashing across Ashur’s face. He smelled rancid breath and the sweat of exertion and fear. Tannen smiled a gentle smile before he whispered

  “Ansti, gave it to me”.

  Tannen held Ashur’s gaze, watched his pupils dilate and his body twitch, he saw the details of fear and pain and anger, and enjoyed them, before he sat up and moved away. He turned the vehicle toward the door and drifted towards it.

  Ashur saw him leaving. Although it hurt torn neck muscles, and every moment was a torture of fear, he watched Tannen go. He could not believe he would be left to die in the corpse of the ship, held in place by machinery too heavy to move. He could not believe he had trapped himself so willingly and attempted to play Tannen so crude
ly. Desperation took him and he called after Tannen. He pleaded and begged. He claimed that what he had done was for the good of their kind; a way to release billions of souls from enslavement. He twitched and spat and strained to release himself. Ashur saw Tannen pause at the door and turn the vehicle slowly. He watched as the man and the vehicle pointed directly at him. For an instant he believed his words had had affect, and a splinter of hope lodged in his soul. It lasted just a moment before all thought and hope was ended in a superheated blast of weaponry that melted the pilots couch and the body in it, disbursing the atoms that had been Ashur, back into the cosmos from where they had come.

  It was once said that a brave man dies once and a coward dies a million times. It was a metaphor for the fear of death. The writer did not know that it could be literally true. Ansti moved in the moments before Ashur was obliterated. He used the vehicle for focus and swept in to pluck Ashur’s being from his body. He took it in himself, preserved each facet, and kept it safe. Ansti kept the man’s essence alive inside himself. It thought and felt and functioned as Ansti knew it would. He nurtured it as a mother nurtures a growing child, ensuring it would thrive and live, and when he was certain that the man was alive, he greeted him.

  Ashur squirmed in confusion. He sensed himself and another, but all around him was blackness. There were no sights or smells or sounds, nothingness prevailed. Ashur tested himself, and found no breath. He could to touch himself. Fear began to rise. He imagined himself trapped and numb in the pilot’s couch, abandoned in some place like the one that had found them before. And then he felt the other presence move and wrap itself around him. It calmed him and centred him and fear was replaced by curiosity, until a familiar voice filled him, and he remembered all he had done to the man who now surrounded him and penetrated him.