The Revenants

by Jasper T. Scott

  “Dad,” Cassandra whispered. “You think we could get some of that meat? I’m still starving.”

  Darius nodded. “Me too. Let me ask. Tanik—”

  “You can eat after your lesson,” Tanik said, leaving Darius with the unsettling feeling that Tanik had just read his mind.

  Tanik led the Acolytes to a lonely camp fire with metal storage crates arrayed in a circle around it. “Sit,” he said, and waited inside the circle until everyone found a seat. Cassandra and Darius sat together on the same crate and both leaned toward the fire, warming their hands and faces.

  Arok was conspicuously missing from the group, but so was Dyara. Just as Darius wondered about them, he heard rustling footsteps and turned to see both of them approaching the fire. Firelight gleamed off Dyara’s black armor and Arok’s slick black fur. Arok was tearing meat off a long, glistening white bone that might have come from an Awk’s leg or wing. Darius eyed the Lassarian boy warily as he approached. Cassandra suddenly stood up, as if to confront him, but Darius yanked her back down.

  “Don’t,” he whispered.

  “Please, join us,” Tanik said as Dyara and Arok entered the circle of crates. They each went to sit around the fire, on opposite ends from each other, and then Tanik nodded and spread his hands to take in the group. “Welcome to Ouroboros,” he said. “Your Revenant training begins tonight. We’re going to start with a very simple awareness-building exercise. I want you to close your eyes and imagine yourselves floating high above this field.”

  Darius shook his head. “I’m not closing my eyes with Arok here. How do I know he won’t sneak up on me when I’m not looking?”

  Arok gave a sissing laugh. “You are wise to fear me, human.”

  Tanik gave the Lassarian a cold look. To Darius, he said, “That is the point of this exercise: to be able to sense such threats, whether you can see them or not. If it makes you feel better, I will ensure that he does not interfere with your lesson.”

  Darius wasn’t sure he trusted Tanik to keep that promise, but he gave in with a nod and closed his eyes.

  “Good. Now... you’re floating free of your bodies, soaring high above the field....”

  Darius saw himself rising above the field. He felt the air wrap him in its icy embrace, but somehow the air felt refreshing and not cold.

  He saw the shadowy field sprawling beneath him. Ospreys gleamed dimly in the flickering light of campfires, and white tents sprouted between them like mushrooms. Hunching black shadows sat around the fires—armored Marines—but they were blurry and indistinct at this distance.

  Darius wondered if he was simply imagining this from what he’d already seen.

  Tanik went on, “Now, reach out and feel. Imagine your awareness spreading, peeling back the darkness and washing over every inch of the ground below.”

  Darius imagined that, and the field came alive with luminous, human-shaped specks. Some of them were hunched and huddled around the campfires, others were walking through pools of almost utter darkness between the tents. Still others were spaced out around the perimeter of the landing zone on patrol.

  “What do you see?” Tanik whispered.

  “I do not see anything,” Arok said.

  “Because you are focused on yourself. You need to look out, not in.”

  “I see the people,” Cassandra said. “They’re shining like giant fireflies.”

  “Good. Anyone else?”

  Darius nodded. “Same here.”

  Dyara and Seelka murmured their agreement.

  “I still see nothing,” Arok said.

  “Then sit quietly!” Tanik snapped.

  Darius almost lost his focus with that interruption.

  “I lost it,” Dyara said.

  “Try again,” Tanik urged. “Relax and focus. This time broaden your awareness. You’re flying higher now, seeing more of the planet. You can see the mountains rising to one side of the field, and the forest valley below the waterfall. Find the crustaceans in the riverbed, and the creatures that roost in the trees. Reach out as far as you can, and see what you can find.”

  Darius saw the forest and the river. They were bright and shining with millions of tiny, gleaming points of light. There were birds in the trees, crustaceans and slithering, snake-like fish in the river. The trees themselves glowed dimly with life, all the way down to their roots. He felt the slithering progress of the fish in the river, and the rush of the cold water around them. Bird feathers ruffled in the wind, and the lonely cries of two-legged carnivores echoed across the valley. The scale of his awareness was vast and giddying, as if he had just become a god.

  Dyara and Cassandra both exclaimed excitedly. Seelka murmured something, and Flitter chirped.

  “Now bring your focus back in, down to the clearing,” Tanik said. “Find the people around you, and try to identify them by their thoughts.”

  Darius wasn’t ready to do that yet. Instead, he tried flying higher and expanding his awareness still further. As he did so, he lost sight of the finer details. The smallest creatures disappeared, and then the larger ones did, too. He could no longer feel them, but a faint, diffuse glow remained to mark where they had been. The exception was one dazzlingly bright speck, directly below him.

  Darius focused on that speck, and it resolved into eight smaller ones, arrayed in a circle. Two of them were far brighter than the rest, one which Darius instantly recognized as himself, and the other as Tanik. Darius kept pushing, higher and higher into the sky. He tried moving sideways, and the trees scrolled by below him in a bright, blurry glow. Clouds swept past, and the sun reappeared, peeking over a bed of cottony white clouds, their tips blazing with orange fire. Darius tried going higher still, heading for space. The sky darkened with his ascent, and stars appeared. From a low orbit the shining speck of the Acolytes still burned bright along the creeping black edge of the planet’s terminator.

  Darius imagined himself moving around the planet like a satellite, and the stars shifted around him as he raced along an orbital path. His focus remained on the planet as he flew over its day side, studying the surface. Arid bands of desert appeared near the equator, and frozen caps of snow at the poles. Everywhere else green forests and fields prevailed. Rivers and lakes abounded, and ragged gray mountain ranges rose like lumpy scars. On one of those peaks, in the middle of a semi-circular mountain range, a dazzling speck of light stood out. Darius turned his gaze to it, and everything else faded into insignificance. It was just a pinprick, but somehow it shined as bright as a sun.

  Darius’s view of the planet shivered and shook as he stared into the light. Indistinct whispers crowded his thoughts. Suddenly he felt watched, as if the light were looking back at him. The whispers stopped and the light vanished, leaving Darius to wonder what he had just seen. A chill came over him, and the shaking intensified.

  “Darius!”

  His cheek erupted with fire, and he blinked his eyes open.

  He was back in the field with Tanik’s snarling face mere inches from his own. Tanik’s hands were on his shoulders, and Darius’s body echoed with the sensation of being shaken and slapped.

  “What did you see?” Tanik demanded, his eyes searching Darius’s.

  “I...” Darius trailed off, rubbing his stinging cheek. What had he seen? “I think I saw another Revenant.”

  Tanik’s eyes narrowed to slits, and he withdrew with a frown. “Impossible. I would have sensed it if there were another Revenant here.”

  “You must have missed something,” Darius said. “It looked, or felt, just like us, but it was only one presence, not eight. I saw it halfway around the planet from where we are now, at the top of a mountain.”

  Tanik said nothing to that, but the others began murmuring among themselves.

  Beside him, Cassandra shook her head. “You said Revenants can communicate with each other instantly. Does that mean they know we’re here?”

  Darius sprang to his feet. “If they don’t already know, it won’t be long before they fin
d out. We need to leave right now.”

  Chapter 9

  “Sit down,” Tanik said, and Darius felt an invisible hand force him back onto his storage crate. “You said you felt one presence.”

  Darius nodded. “So?”

  “Assuming what you felt was real, what would one Revenant be doing all alone on an abandoned world? That suggests that he or she may be hiding here as well—or that it was not a Revenant at all. You may have sensed a surviving Keth warrior.”

  “That doesn’t sound any better,” Darius said.

  “Perhaps not, but I would have felt it if someone were trying to communicate across such a vast distance.”

  Darius frowned. “You said that about there being other Revenants down here in the first place, and I found one.”

  “That’s different. It is possible to hide one’s presence, like turning off a lamp, but you can’t shine a light from a mountaintop and still expect to hide it.”

  “Speak clearly,” Darius said. “Are we in danger or not?”

  “Not. Whoever is here with us, if they are here at all, they are hiding, too, and the minute they come out of hiding, I’ll know. We’ll have enough warning to escape. Besides, consider this, if this person wanted to be rescued, why not call for help sooner?”

  Darius didn’t have an answer for that.

  Dyara spoke into the silence. “Let’s say you’re right, and whatever Darius saw isn’t a threat. There’s another problem.”

  Tanik turned to look at her. “And that is?”

  “We were able to sense ourselves clearly during that awareness exercise of yours, and you said that you could tell from orbit that there weren’t any other Revenants here. What if they find us in the same way? We’re not hiding our presence—however you do that.”

  “The farther away you are, the harder it is to find someone,” Tanik replied. “But I am also shielding our presence as best I can, and so is Ouroboros itself.”

  Darius frowned. “How can a planet hide us?”

  “This is a particularly luminous world, thanks to all the animals here that evolved to use the light. Until a Revenant physically enters this system, I wouldn’t worry about them finding us.”

  “Unless one of them is already here,” Darius said. “We at least need to investigate what I saw. I’m not going to sleep until we do.”

  Tanik held his gaze for a long moment, but he gave in with a nod. “Very well.” Turning to address the others, he said, “You’re all free to get some food and sleep. Any of the Marines should be able to help you find the Acolytes’ quarters.” His eyes found Darius once more. “You’re coming with me.”

  “So is Cassandra,” Darius replied. After what had happened on Hades, he wasn’t going to leave her behind again.

  “I was going to take a Vulture....” Tanik replied. The fighters only had room for two.

  “So take an Osprey instead,” Darius replied. “Cassy is coming.”

  “Very well, but I’m flying,” Tanik said.

  Darius grabbed Cassandra’s hand and stood up once more, pulling her to her feet beside him. “Lead the way.”

  * * *

  Trista Leandra sat in the cockpit of her transport, the Harlequin, waiting for it to dock with fuel pod #16. As soon as her transport docked, a chime sounded from her comms and a prompt appeared from Drake Depot #926, asking how much antimatter she wished to purchase. Trista selected FULL and waited while the pod scanned her reactor to determine how much she needed. A moment later, a charge request popped up for a hefty four thousand seven hundred and twenty creds.

  Trista grimaced and reluctantly approved the charge. The cargo she’d delivered to Callisto had only netted a little under ten thousand creds, instead of the anticipated fifty plus. Making matters worse, her hold was almost empty on the way back. She’d be lucky to break even for this run, which left her back where she’d started a week ago, but with an extra week of bills to pay.

  Trista scowled. “At this rate, I’ll have to sell my soul to pay off our debts. What do you think, Buddy? You know any dealers?”

  No reply.

  She glanced at her copilot, Buddy, but the furry brown Togra was curled up in his custom-sized acceleration harness, his head tucked into the folds of fat that passed for his neck. His eyes were shut, his whiskers twitching periodically. As Trista looked on, one of Buddy’s legs kicked spasmodically. She frowned. Why should he be able to sleep peacefully while she was busy tearing out her hair? “Hey, mongrel. I’m talking to you.” She poked him between a bulging stack of fat rolls.

  Buddy opened one of his giant brown eyes and glared.

  “If I’d wanted to brave the void alone, I wouldn’t have bought you from that fly-infested meat market back on Polaris V.”

  Buddy bared his teeth at the reminder of his near brush with death.

  “That’s right,” Trista said. “You owe me, and that means you have to listen to my gripes and cheer me up when I’m blue.”

  “You’re black, not blue,” Buddy said.

  Trista frowned. “Don’t be racist.”

  “I’m not. It’s an observation. I myself am brown and white.” Buddy released his harness and stood up, floating free of his seat. He stretched languorously, arching his back first one way, then the other. He thrust his arms out straight above his head and Trista heard joints popping. After that, he slumped in on himself once more and absently scratched an itch lurking somewhere under his white belly fur.

  Trista looked away, out to the shining, ring-shaped fuel depot, slowly rotating around its antimatter-generating hub. The fuel pods were located a safe distance from the depot to reduce the risk of accidental or intentional incidents.

  Buddy began making annoying smacking sounds with his lips. That went on for a while before Trista took the bait.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I’m hungry,” Buddy replied.

  “You’re always hungry. There’s no food left.”

  “The depot will have something. We could flit over there in a tender and find a nice restaurant. What about seafood?”

  “Money’s tight,” Trista replied. She couldn’t afford to eat at a dive, let alone a nice restaurant. “Why don’t you go on a diet?” She poked him in his fat rolls again, and this time he snapped his jaws at her.

  “Watch it. I’m delicate.”

  Trista snorted. “You can say that again.”

  Another chime sounded from her comms. “Done already?” Trista wondered, but this message wasn’t from the fuel depot.

  “It’s a distress call,” Buddy said.

  “Yeah, I can see that.”

  “There’s a substantial reward.”

  “I wouldn’t call five thousand substantial,” Trista replied.

  “But look at the coordinates,” Buddy insisted. “It’s close. We wouldn’t have to spend much fuel to get there and back.”

  “Yeah...” The wheels began turning in Trista’s head, and she used her ESC to run the numbers. “Four hundred and sixty-seven creds of fuel to make the trip...” She trailed off, nodding excitedly. “This could actually turn us a profit, Buddy!”

  He gave a delighted chitter and rubbed his tiny hands together. Activating his mag boots, he aimed them at the deck to get down to his seat, but he was floating too high, and his boots were too small.

  “Help me get back down,” Buddy pleaded.

  Trista reached over and roughly pushed him back into his seat with a hand on his head.

  “Hey! I’m—”

  “Delicate, I know.” Trista disengaged from the fuel pod before her transport had finished refueling. Her comms chimed with a refund for the balance of fuel not transferred, and a trite safety reminder about not engaging her main engines until she cleared the pod.

  Trista tapped her feet impatiently while she waited for the Harlequin’s maneuvering thrusters to push them to a hundred meters from the fuel pod.

  “We really need this,” Trista said, thinking about her backdated docking fees, postpon
ed maintenance for the Harlequin, and the ship’s next loan payment.

  “Yes, we do,” Buddy agreed, and gave his belly a loud slap. “Seafood here we come!”

  Trista turned to glare at him. “Hey, we need that money for more important...”

  Buddy’s big brown eyes grew larger still, and they filled with a sudden sheen of moisture. His ears flattened against his head, and his lips began to quiver.

  “Oh, fek it, I guess we can spare a few creds.”

  Buddy’s ears popped back up and he grinned, revealing pointy white teeth. “Works every time.”

  “Yeah, and one of these times, I’m gonna punch you in the mouth and make you cry for real.”

  “Try it. I’ll bite your fingers off.”

  “Haven’t you ever heard that you shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds you?”

  “Haven’t you ever heard that you shouldn’t punch your pets in the mouth?”

  Trista barked a laugh. “Fair enough.”

  Chapter 10

  Darius stood behind the pilot’s seat in the Osprey Tanik had chosen. He stared at a holographic rendering of Ouroboros that Tanik had generated from orbital scans of the planet. The clouds had been stripped away, and the entire rendering was illuminated, but it was still hard to pick out any distinctive features from the landscape.

  “Well?” Tanik asked. “Where did you feel the presence?”

  Darius used a hand to manipulate the rendering, turning it first one way, then the other as he looked for the distinctive semi-circular range of mountains that he’d seen. At this scale he couldn’t see very much, so he zoomed in and tried again, but he still wasn’t having any luck.

  “Close your eyes,” Tanik suggested. “Visualize the planet.”

  Darius frowned, but he shut his eyes and tried reaching out in the ZPF. The planet appeared in his mind’s eye, bright and sparkling with life. He used his hands to rotate it and sure enough, he found the semi-circular range of mountains. This time there was no trace of the blinding presence he’d seen before, but he was certain that it was the spot.