Victorious Cross

by Jesse De Rivera

  “What is that?” he finally murmured as the Runner began to descend toward the building’s base.

  “Enki’s ziggurat,” Gatina supplied, her tail swaying. “On this world, he’s still worshipped, and he turned one of his temples into our headquarters.”

  “It’s huge,” Victorio replied in a low voice.

  Knowingly Brasil grinned in his direction. “They say the folks who made it was trying to reach the gods themselves. It’s also called the Tower of Babel.”

  Victorio took in this information, his head tilting to the side. All of that sounded really, really familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

  At the base of the ziggurat was a massive arch, large enough for the Twilight Runner to ease through. To Victorio’s surprise, it was like an airplane hangar, and at least a dozen other ships rested on frames or landing gear. Only one or two were anything like the Runner, the rest were vessels out of every fantasy he’d ever known. Several looked so much like what pop culture had shown him spaceships to look like: geometric shapes covered in vein-like circuitry with wide thrusters, huge, fighter-jet looking planes, at least one thing that Victorio would have thought a wooden submarine; and the ship the Twilight Runner slowly eased down beside: a slightly curved shape, a pair of stylized eyes emblazoned the prow. A streamlined body tapered to a fishlike fin at its rear, curved upwards. It rested on a frame, and Victorio could see several people walking around it and giving the Twilight Runner their attention as it landed.

  One of the people outside of the Runner eagerly waved her hand, and she was the first that Victorio had noticed because she stood out. She was almost an inky shape against the tile that lined the floors, dressed from neck to the floor in a form-fitting, black dress, with black hair draping down her shoulders. As the gangplank for the Runner extended, she eagerly held out her arms to welcome the crew, and to Victorio’s surprise, Gatina jogged to her to close the distance. Happily, the woman (who reminded Victorio of the people in Hong Kong) plucked Gatina’s hat off and scratched the top of her head with long, pointed nails painted black and silver.

  “Aw, hey, Gatti!” the woman chirped in a sunny voice. “I’ve missed having my best, cutest witchy-kitty around so much.”

  Victorio would have expected Gatina to recoil from this kind of attention indignantly, but there she was, happily accepting pets and all but bodily leaning against this woman. Her eyes were nearly completely shut in contentment, and her tail lazily swayed. “Missed you too, Baihé,” she said, her voice rattling from purrs.

  “And, hey, Brasil,” Baihé added to him.

  He tipped his hat to her, then addressed several others who had been watching their approach. “Working on the Trireme?”

  “Purnima is helping Bakchos get some repairs done.” Another woman, this one an extremely tall, slender black woman with golden brown, natural hair in bouncing twists explained, “Apparently the last mission hit some snags.”

  “In that way that Bakchos couldn’t exactly walk back to the ship without help,” a new voice added. From his spot on the ship’s frame, a slender, lanky man with a wide, dopey grin and a mop of uncontrollable, curly hair waved at them. “I’m helping,” he said deliberately, then leaned back to stare underneath the ship’s hull. “You’re doing great, big guy, you know I believe in you.”

  “Really loving the emotional support,” a masculine voice replied loudly with unsubtle hints of sarcasm. “Means a lot to me, Rashad.”

  Turning back to Brasil and Victorio (Victorio could swear there was a shimmer over his entire frame when he did), the first man nodded and his smile grew. “See? Helping.”

  “We wouldn’t expect more, Rashad.” Brasil laughed, then leaned near Victorio to add in a whisper, “Rashad is the AI of that ship. That projection is a hologram. He can’t actually touch things. At least not often? The exacts confuse me.”

  “Brasil!” a new voice called, and before Victorio could turn to see the owner’s approach a man not much taller than Victorio was suddenly standing in front of them.

  Completely unaffected by the trim man’s appearance from seemingly nowhere, Brasil smiled largely. “Flash, ya right sonuva—” He paused, his blue eyes darting to Victorio, and he patted the man’s shoulder instead. “Aw, feckin’ good to see you.”

  He had traded out some curse word for a worse one?

  “Haven’t seen you here in months,” Flash added, his bright smile curving his brown goatee that contrasted with his acid green hair. “What’s been keepin’ ya?”

  “Keepin’ the multiverse in one piece, and you’re welcome for it, ya ungrateful sod.”

  Laughing, Flash gestured to his green and black bodysuit—one that immediately registered to Victorio as ‘superhero.’ “Oh, so I just sit at home with my thumb up me arse?”

  Victorio couldn’t clearly understand either of them after this. The Irish accents got so thick within Victorio’s space bubble, his eyes grew larger in bewilderment. So, if someone spoke to him in a heavy enough accented English, he couldn’t translate it anymore? Good to know…

  “Oh, my word, they’re in the same room again?” a new voice called from the top of the Trireme. An extremely short woman pulled herself to a standing position, staring down at the onlookers. A shock of violently fire-red hair sprouted from the top of her head like a rooster’s comb; she adjusted a set of heavy work gloves after moving up a pair of goggles from her brassy eyes. “Can someone break them up? I don’t think I’d be able to stand any rounds of bagpipes or golf.”

  Both Flash and Brasil spun on the woman and threw her looks like daggers. The expression was exaggerated on Flash’s face while he held up a clenched fist. “Whatya need is a round of beatins’!”

  As the group laughed, Victorio felt the odd one out. A man in dark clothes sitting near Rashad turned his head and gave a surprised chuckle in Victorio’s direction. “Purnima made a joke about the Scottish; different as their realities are, they’re both Irish.”

  Unaffected, Victorio shrugged. “What’s the difference?”

  “It’s like someone calling a Puerto Rican a Mexican.”

  Victorio’s first reaction was a strong snicker and a firm nod of understanding. Then he paused. Wait. He hadn’t said anything out loud before this guy had said something.

  The man with blackish-blue hair and southeast Asian features blushed largely, pulling himself up to his feet and approaching Victorio. “Sorry. Uh, the name’s Jayr. I can read thoughts. That was an accident.”

  “Freaky,” Victorio said uncomfortably.

  Jayr’s eyebrows suddenly raised sharply. “You’re the Spear Bearer?”

  “That time was on purpose!” Victorio snapped. “Knock it off. Not cool.”

  “Sorry!” he blurted, holding up his hands. “Sorry. Loud thoughts are easy to hear.”

  “Wait,” the woman with curls threw in. “He’s the Spear Bearer?”

  “He’s such a little Spear Bearer!” Baihé exclaimed, happily prancing up to him.

  He was not little. Blushing, he mumbled, “I’m not a kid.”

  “You look like Bearer pupa stage to me,” she said, clasping her hands in delight.

  The others gathered around Victorio as well, offering handshakes and proper introductions. Purnima slid from the top of the Trireme to the floor and eagerly ran up to him. To his surprise, the woman barely reached his eye level (and he noticed her boots had thick soles, too). The tall woman was named Adamine. She shook his hand but tried to give him space. The owner of the Trireme finally pulled himself out from underneath it and joined the group. The man everyone had called Bakchos was slightly shorter than Adamine, with a thin beard and neck length, brown hair streaked with a metallic-looking gold. He wore something like ancient Greek armor made out of tech-laced tac gear.

  “These two been watching your back?” Bakchos asked with a friendly smile, gesturing to Brasil and Gatina.

  “They’re good,” Victorio assured him, feeling so small among all the adults focused on him. “It
’s pretty cool they help me.”

  “I hope things aren’t too lonely with just you three,” Adamine said.

  “It’s why he insisted on meeting the Guard,” Brasil replied, patting Victorio’s back. “We’ll be takin’ him around the ziggurat. Showin’ him what’s what and who’s who.”

  “Aw, that’s rad,” Rashad said. “Welcome to the zig, man.”

  Instantly, Bakchos added, “Only cool people call it the zig.”

  “No one calls it ‘the zig,’” Jayr objected, curling his lip.

  “Uh, we just established that cool people do,” Rashad added casually.

  Between laughs, Flash said, “I will be calling it ‘the zig’ every day for the rest of my life.”

  Victorio grabbed a pause long enough to ask, “And uh, Flash, are you…are you like, uh…are you, like, a superhero?”

  Eagerly, Flash turned to allow Victorio to see all his black and bright-green bodysuit. “Flashbang! I’m not technically a Cartesian Guard, but I come in to help now and again. Since this lot just showed up on my plane, I figured I’d bother them on theirs.”

  “And weren’t you supposed to be resting because you’ve done enough helping right now?” Bakchos pointed out, as though noticing Flashbang was there for the first time.

  “Can’t,” he countered, stepping from one foot to the other and shaking out his arms. “Haven’t had more than an hour at a time the last week and can’t stop now. Not when we’re runnin’ out of time.”

  The air over the group immediately sobered, and Brasil ventured gently, “What’s happening?”

  “Called in help from allies of my team back home,” Flashbang said, raising his goggles to rub at his eyes—making the circles under them noticeable. “Evacuation of the last handful of worlds on one plane…”

  “It’s universal heat death,” Purnima explained in a hushed tone.

  “What’s that mean?” Victorio asked with a shrug.

  “Every single star in that entire universe is dying, Vicky,” Gatina whispered. “Old enough universes, it just happens—and it’s been happening for thousands of years, so most living things probably found some way to adapt. But it means anything that’s still alive will freeze to death once everything finishes fizzling out.”

  “There’s still a little time left,” Purnima continued. “The Cartesian Guard has been helping out everyone they can for weeks since we found that plane. Without Flashbang calling in help, there was no way we’d have even gotten this far.”

  “So, you’ve earned some rest,” Bakchos said, meaningfully poking a finger into the shorter man’s chest.

  “I’ve tried!” he insisted, stepping back. “There’s just still too much left. Can’t sleep. Sleep is for the weak.”

  “You mean sleep is for anything alive that wants to stay that way,” Rashad threw in. “I’m pretty sure that’s how that works.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be repairing the Trireme?” Flashbang said with a handwave.

  “She’s travel-worthy now,” Purnima answered. “So, we can join the evacuation again.”

  “You stay,” Bakchos insisted. “The rest of us can get back to it.”

  “I told you, can’t sleep!”

  “Brasil,” Victorio offered. “Think we can help with the Runner? I mean, just for a while?”

  “Thought you’d never ask,” he replied with a grin.

  A rumble went through the hangar, and the Cartesian Guards turned their heads toward the walls. On both sides of the room sheets of water flowed, and across them, an image of Enki formed. “Cartesian Guard,” his voice boomed through the chamber. “This is an emergency. All available Guard must heed this call. The evacuations of realm Terris-Alma 66 has reached the critical hours. There is little time before the last stars completely snuff out.”

  “Sleep is for the weak,” Victorio heard Flashbang murmur, this time a pang of misery in his voice.

  “Every Guard with vessels immediately rendezvous above Terris and get who you can out. I give you my blessing, and I will stall the star’s death as long as I can. Hurry, Guard. They need you.” The waterfalls tumbled into thin streams that lined the walls and fell silent.

  In an instant, the hangar burst into activity. Other groups ran in from every door of the hangar, crews from all over the multiverse rushing to their various vessels. Bakchos called for those around him to take his lead and jogged to the Trireme.

  As Adamine turned to follow Brasil, Gatina, and Victorio to the Twilight Runner, Purnima placed a hand on her arm. “You shouldn’t come with us,” she urged.

  “Every hand,” Adamine replied stiffly.

  “You don’t handle terminal planes well,” she insisted.

  “I’ll stay on the boat. There’s too little time to argue. Are you coming?”

  “…Every hand,” Purnima mumbled, moving beside Victorio.

  The next few minutes were a blur. Victorio fell in behind Brasil as he directed Adamine, Purnima, and Baihé to the Twilight Runner and they prepared for takeoff. Anxiously, Gatina readied spells, wondering aloud if her environmental protections could ‘stand up to that kind of cold.’ Purnima leaned close to Brasil to give him the coordinates of both this world Terris, and to where refugees were being delivered. Nothing about the tenseness of those on the Runner told Victorio that was going to be easy. It was clear on each of the Guard’s faces that a monumental task lay ahead.

  Gripping the railing on the prow, Victorio uneasily looked to Baihé, watching her deep, silvery, grey eyes focused ahead of them. “H-Hey…we got this, right?”

  A smile curled her full lips, painted black, making her porcelain skin all the paler. “We got this, Victorio. It’s just going to be hard, and it’s not going to be fun.”

  His face skewed in anxiety. He forced himself to ask: “We’re not going to get everyone out, are we?”

  Baihé’s perfectly sculpted eyebrows furrowed in pain as she looked back at him. “Oh, don’t think that. Don’t think that. We’re going to try.”

  Visibly he frowned. “Try,” he repeated low. “Okay.”

  He knew what adults meant when they said “try.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Blue Tides

  When the Twilight Runner made its way through to Terris, the midday sun vanished into darkness, and a terrified shiver went down Victorio’s spine. The boat had arrived over what Victorio would consider a far-future city, skyscrapers like clusters of coral and spiraling shells jutting out from its compact layout. The sky around the metropolis was discolored by some kind of force, a vague, ethereal barrier that kept back the cold beyond its influence. Outside its protective bubble, Victorio could see vast, untouched snowscapes, still and empty…and haunting. The city glowed with lights, but just beyond its barrier, all was dark. Not like night, not a bit of anything reflecting off the seas of ice and snow, just empty. Pitch. And what at first looked like a tiny moon in the black, endless expanse of the hollow sky suddenly registered as the sun: a flickering, feeble light barely reaching them.

  Even with confronting the Empty face to face over and over again that completely lifeless sky was the scariest thing Victorio had ever seen in his life.

  Much more comforting was the vast array of ships ascending or landing just inside the city’s barrier. There was the kaleidoscope of Cartesian vessels, and then the more uniform ships that must have been the ones Flashbang had mentioned before.

  Brasil brought the Twilight Runner down toward the roof of a building where crowds awaited. Purnima, Gatina, and Baihé stepped off first to coordinate those coming up the gangplank, and Victorio waited along with Adamine and Brasil to get ready to find space for the first load of refugees. Victorio peered over the side to get a good look at the desperate people Baihé was urging into some kind of order, and he tried to figure out what exactly they were. Their skin was pearlescent, with shades of seafoam undertones in their complexions; they were short, slender, and their aquatic-looking architecture made some measure of sense as he cons
idered the hair-like fins that ran down the backs of their heads. Many of them were also augmented; how exactly eluded him (whether some kind of biological upgrades or perfectly melded cybernetics unclear), Victorio could only recognize that many of the adults had different limbs or bodies that looked drastically unlike their faces.

  As the first families were led onto the ship, Victorio found himself taking a back seat to the Guard. He did as he was instructed, and it was the first time in several months now (wait, was it really months? He could barely believe it…) no one expected anything of him. It felt good to let go of some of the pressure, to focus on something else other than the Empty or being the ‘Bastion Against Decay’ or whatever.

  He was just Victorio the rookie for a while.

  Over the next couple of hours, the Runner traveled back and forth, bringing what tightly packed groups they could and returning for more. The stress of dealing with the refugees, especially when it came time to pause in loading each ship full, was getting to him. At one point he swore he could see someone standing straight up on the side of a distant building, but after a double-take, he saw it was gone. He wasn’t sure why the silhouette hadn’t registered in his mind as a Cartesian Guard, but it had to have been.

  In between runs, Adamine slumped over the railing, and Victorio finally noted just how exhausted she looked.

  “Not much sleep for you either?” he asked cautiously.

  Wiping the sweat off her brow, she shook her head. “Even staying on the boat isn’t enough to completely ignore how a dying plane feels.”

  Purnima had been saying something about that. “Does it bother you?”

  She smiled weakly. “I’m part nature spirit…I feel things about wherever I am…I probably shouldn’t have come, but I couldn’t let you all fight this alone…”

  “I could ask Brasil to drop you off?”