by Ben Johnston
Spirit’s eyelids drooped again, this time pulling his ears down with them.
Anniya’s smile fell as well. “That’s enough power for a decade.” She held her hands at shoulder height, palms up. “What’s wrong with that, Mr. Lightfox?”
One of the shiny fox’s eyes opened wide. “Anniya, yearlight cells are military-grade. Military-grade batteries come from military bases.” He leaned his head sideways towards Anniya.
Anniya inhaled sharply, her nostrils flaring. “Yes, that’s true.” She looked away from the fox. “We’re going to be getting these batteries from the same place we got the chocsugar from last month. But its not a military base.”
Anniya held up a single finger. “It’s an outpost.”
Spirit closed his eyes and sighed.
Anniya’s mouth formed a line, her cheeks dimpling. “OK, I know what you’re thinking. But that stupid incident was, what, six years ago? Can we just forget about it. We've been over this more times than there are galaxies. I know what you’re going to say. And you know what I would say. So can we just forget it?”
Anniya looked out over the top of the forest. The jungle rang. A warm breeze blew by.
“OK, I can’t forget it, either. Go ahead, tell me, Spirit. What do you think I would say?”
Spirit turned his luminous blue gaze away from Anniya to join her in staring out over the nighttime jungle. “Anniya, you would say that you were only twelve years old back then. And you would be correct. You were a child then.
“But you are wrong about something.” Spirit looked up at her. “It was only five years ago, not six.”
Anniya chuckled. “That doesn’t matter. Anniya looked down at the lightfox. This important thing is that I’m not going to make the same mistakes I did back then.” She scooped her hand up to her chest . “Because now I’m older and wiser.” She raised her eyebrows. “Now I know what I’m doing.”
Without looking, she stepped off her high balcony railing.
Feet first, Anniya dropped through the night air. As the dark ground rushed up to meet her, at the moment of impact, there was a brilliant lemon-yellow flash.
Frozen, still, above a patch of clovers, stood Anniya like a dancer at the end of a leap, head looking down, arms raised, feet pointed. The air currents of her long fall suddenly gusted past her, flapping her cape and rolling out over the grassy ground. As the glow beneath her toes faded, her arms came to rest at her sides and she dropped a gentle inch, softly crushing the clovers.
All around the garden, lights on poles glowed to life, pulsing and cycling slowly through soft pastels. Still high above standing on the treehouse railing, Spirit looked down, closed his eyes and shook his head. The lamps up on the balcony around him began to fade, and as the last lights on the treehouse behind him went dark, Spirit too stepped off the balcony railing, falling into the soft light of the garden lamps below. He landed noiselessly and weightlessly, without disturbing a single blade of grass, next to Anniya.
Anniya reached over her shoulder, unlatched the board from her back and swung it around, letting it drop flat to the ground. It hovered, its crystals casting shifting patterns of pale fiery light onto the grass. She leaned down and picked up her large backpack, starting to put it on. “What would you suggest I do, then, oh wise oracle?”
Spirit made a very small sigh. “What I would suggest you NOT do is try to steal from a military base.”
Anniya snapped the backpack’s chest straps. “Outpost, Spirit. It’s an outpost.”
She reached down to pick up the satchel, the large hood of her black cape falling over her head as she did so. Standing, she swung the satchel strap over her shoulder, then, reaching up with both hands, she threw back her hood and began waving air at her sweating face. “Spirit, when have I ever listened to your advice?”
The little lightfox looked from Anniya to some point over her left shoulder, then lowered his shiny head. “Then why do you even ask?”
Anniya turned left, looking behind her at the point Spirit had looked at, her eyebrows arched. There was nothing there. Her eyebrows fell.
Placing a foot up on the board, Anniya swung her satchel onto her leg and dug around inside before withdrawing a long translucent rope. When she released the clear rope, it floated weightless in the air as though it was underwater. To one end of the floating rope was attached a red metal handle; on the other end waved several small straps. The see-through rope material also had little purple sparkles inside.
Smiling, Anniya held her hands up in front of her, reaching out to grasp the middle part of the floating rope. She drew the section towards her face, her eyes growing wider as her smile grew broader. The purple sparkles reflected in her eyes as she brought the section of rope up to her toothy grin. Then, with her eyes and smile at their widest, she bit down on the rope, her eyebrows making a V.
Suddenly, in one quick motion, she snapped the rope from out of her teeth, throwing it out and away from her. Her loose grip slid along the receding rope’s length until she snatched the handle at its end.
As the rope snapped out straight from Anniya, Spirit leaped a line through the air, past the rope to the straps on its far end. The loose straps instantly reached and whirled around the lightfox’s chest, each meshing and clasping together with the other straps to form into a close-fitting vest.
Now wearing a translucent harness vest, Spirit descended through the air to the ground, landing to stand atop the grass and clovers.
The rope was straight and tight, Anniya’s grasp on the handle firm. She leaned back, one foot on the floating board, stretching the rope, causing its lavender sparkles to glow.
Encircling her entire plot like a massive fence was a wall of hundreds of close-packed trees, their broad, massive trunks nearly touching each other.
Anniya looked down her main garden path at the wall of massive tree trunks at the end. She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes. The trunks emitted a dim green glow. Then, like enormous drapes being drawn open, the big tree trunks bent apart to form a narrow tunnel.
Like heat in the air, a red field shimmered to life around Anniya and the lightfox
With one hand still gripping the handle of the rope, Anniya reached under her collar and pulled out a pair of wrap-around glasses, clear, almost transparent. “Alright, Spirit.” She slid the arms of the glasses under her tightened hood, through her hair. The pale green tunnel of trees ahead reflected in both the glasses and in Anniya’s narrowed eyes. “Let’s go!”
They shot off with a raspberry flash.
As the tree tunnel closed and the soft lights on the poles faded away, a glowing red image of Anniya and the fox remained behind in the singing darkness. It hung there in the garden air for a few minutes like a sculpture made of light, softly disintegrating as if carried away by the breeze.
Chapter 2
Violet flames roared out from the jet engines on two small vehicles as they raced above a muddy road through the jungle night. The engines screamed a dissonant, two-part harmony as the drivers opened their throttles, causing the vehicles to accelerate and rise higher, their undercarriages glowing brighter, illuminating the wet ground as they rushed by.
Following on the broad road behind, hovering on a huge bed of light the color of a warm sunset, was a massive vehicle. Unlike the smaller vehicles screaming ahead of it, this monster made no sound. Aside from an occasional thump or snap against some overgrowth, this great vehicle rushed down the road through the night as quietly as a huge building falling through the air, its crystal engines propelling it with little more than the sound of rushing wind.
A woman with short blonde hair, seated next to the driver, high-up in the front of the big vehicle, watched through the front window as the two smaller vehicles ahead of them roared away. She turned to the driver. “Why are the jet-bikes pulling ahead?”
The bikes vanished out of sight down the dark road, their whines and engine roars fading to echoes in the jungle.
The driver gave a weak hal
f smile. “Yeah. New protocol.” With a slight shake of her head, she reached forward and flipped a switch. “Gets us into the outpost faster or something.” She shrugged.
The blonde woman sat back. “Why the hurry?”
The driver turned her opaque lenses to face the woman, then pulled the glasses up to reveal narrowed brown eyes swimming in a lagoon of eyeshadow. “Why the hurry? Oh, I don't know. Maybe because we’re about to be flecking attacked!?”
The blonde woman looked at the driver without amusement. “Selection is the biggest Vectan holiday. It lasts for weeks. The V’s aren’t going to attack you tonight. They’ve got to pick a new Premier. You’ve got time to prepare.”
The driver nodded quick little nods. “Oh good. I’ll let the Federation know that special liaison Turner from the ex Republic says that we’ve got plenty of time to prepare before we’re attacked by one of the universe’s biggest superpowers.” She stopped nodding as her face transitioned into a concerned look. “Maybe we can use all this free time to figure out how exactly to fight one of the richest nations ever without a flecking spark’s worth of units to throw back at them.” The driver's expression fell as she pulled her glasses back down and returned to the nighttime road.
The blonde liaison officer turned her head, looking over her shoulder into the massive cargo hold in the back of the vehicle. The hold was packed tight, floor-to-ceiling, with stacks of pallets holding large, black, hard-shell cases. And crammed into the rows between these stacks were dozens of Phoenix Federation troops. With only the rushing air and the occasional muted thump from the outside, inside the landship it sounded like a warehouse on a windy night.
She shouted back into the silent space. “Hey, Sergeant. What do you think of that?”
A tall, powerfully-built man leaned out from behind a stack of cases. “Honorary Republic Liaison Jennifer Turner, what I think is that our driver should pay less attention to politics and grand strategy and more attention to keeping this landship on the road.”
Chuckles and amused grumbles sounded out from the troops packed among the stacks.
With a grin, Jennifer turned back to the driver. “I think we’ve got more than a spark’s worth of units back there.”
The driver gave a begrudging smile. “Yeah, maybe.” She shook her head. “But we’re gonna have to make them count.”
Reaching to her left, the driver tapped three red indicator lights. The three lights turned blue. “That load of units back there, both the cases and the meatheads, they represent the end of our brave Federation’s reserves on Namoon.” She drew in a deep breath. “Sure hope we saved the best for last.”
Jennifer blinked then looked away from the driver, back to the cargo hold. “So that really is everything, then? The last of the supplies from the Republic?” She looked back to the driver. “But what about supplies from your other allies?”
The driver rotated her head bringing her opaque glasses to face Jennifer once again. “Other allies?” She threw a single laugh at her.
This time the driver slid her glasses down to the tip of her nose, peering over them at Jennifer. “Look dimmy, I know you were only a liaison officer, so let me enlighten you.” She leaned in. “The Republic,” she pointed at Jennifer, “your old nation,” she hooked her thumb at herself, “and our only ally,” she drew her thumb across her neck, “is dead.”
She let out a defeated exhale, pushed her opaque glasses back up her nose, and returned to the road. “All of your Republic’s old worlds have been absorbed by the league of nations. Our little Federation isn’t getting a flecking splinter of a shard. We’re faded, man. The Vectans are going to flow back into the galaxy next week or next month, it doesn’t matter when because whenever they do come back, they’re going to annihilate us. They’re going to wink us out.”
Jennifer’s brow wrinkled. “If Vectus tries to launch a new offensive against you, they would be risking massive sanction from the League.”
The driver laughed. “Sanctions?” She continued to watch the road. “You think the richest nation in the universe cares about sanctions? The Vectans will attack us, flash us to ash, then just pay the fine.”
Jennifer clenched her jaw. “Maybe.” She rolled her eyes. “But even if the League failed to stop them, then the Vectans would be risking a confrontation with the Union Army itself.”
The driver’s nostrils flared. “The Union? Are you being serious?”
Jennifer nodded. “Yes, the Union.”
The big landship blustered around a large curve as the road began to turn downwards at a gentle slope.
With a single laugh, the driver threw back her head in her chair. “For a lightmaker, you’re not so bright.” She rolled her head to face Jennifer, staring at her through those solid lenses.
“Brighty, first of all, the Union doesn’t have a history of throwing their glorious army into filthy local conflicts with piddly little one-galaxy nations like the Phoenix Federation. Secondly, miss Glinty, your old Republic’s worlds that the Union just absorbed, those were the poorest of the Republic’s worlds.”
The driver rolled her head back to face the road. “That’s how the Union flows, you know. The great and good and wonderfully fair Union isn’t going to give a dim little freedom-fighting nation like us a glinting splinter because they’ve just taken in a million starving worlds with a billion starving kids.”
Her eyes fell briefly to the blond woman’s glittering shoulders, then focused back on the road. “And at least one lightmaker.”
Jennifer looked away.
Chapter 3
A flash of orange, a rush of air, and a trail of flying leaves; the lightfox propelled Anniya through the moonlit trees.
Anniya applied back pressure on the harness handle, giving a tug to increase the tension. Spirit sent a surge of impulse down the rope, lurching them forward to violent speeds.
As they flew furiously over the tops of the ferns and bushes, Anniya watched the little fox on the end of the rope. He whipped through the jungle with blinding speed, flitting, jumping, and leaping through holes and openings in the plant life without leaving a single paw print or moving a blade of grass. He didn’t even disturb the leaves floating on the surface of the puddles. Not a ripple -- at least not until Anniya and her floatboard came rushing after.
Behind her protective glasses, Anniya’s eyes darted around following the zipping lightfox as branches, vines and small trunks swished by on all sides in a blurry, violent procession. She looked away from the lightfox, back ahead, just in time to get slapped in the face.
The broad, wet, and heavy leaf bent as it pushed against her glasses and the bridge of her nose, its thick green stalk flexing until it broke, folding into a kink with sharp corners, one of which drew straight across her left cheek, slicing a thin, clean cut.
Three little drops of blood dripped-out from the small slash, the high-speed wind blowing them into trickles: little red rivers that forked back towards her left ear to get absorbed by her hair and the edge of her tightly-drawn hood. Teeth clenched, nostrils flared, Anniya eased her grip on the handle. The rope dimmed as they slowed to a stop on the edge of a clearing of dry, hard-packed dirt. Spirit stood in place, wearing his harness and looking around the large opening in the jungle without much interest.
Placing one foot down on the bare ground for balance, keeping the other foot up on the floatboard, Anniya used her free left hand to open and throw back her hood. Then, holding her hand in front of her face, a small point of dim light appeared out from her palm between her fingers. The dim point grew, expanding into a disc-shaped, mirrored surface. The floating mirror in her hand glowed, illuminating her face as she examined her cheek.
The glowing disc vanished and she closed her eyes, taking in a long slow breath then holding it. As she held her breath in silence, around her the lively jungle rang and chirped. Gradually, she let out her breath, and when she opened her eyes, they glinted as though reflecting some unseen source of bright cyan light.
> Anniya peeled away a few stuck hairs from her cheek as she moved her sparkling gaze around the thick overgrowth that ringed the edge of the dirt clearing. Like a shattered mirror reflecting a sunbeam, her glinting eyes cast flecks of sky-blue light out across the hard-packed ground and onto the far plants and trees. When the light of her eyes fell upon a dense wall of overgrowth far on the other side of the clearing, she stopped scanning and she stopped turning. The cyan twinkle vanished from her hazel eyes as she gave a gentle tug on Spirit’s harness.
Pulled by a trotting Spirit, Anniya coasted on her floatboard across the dirt clearing, all the way over to the far side where the plants and vines made a dense wall. She hopped off her board and let go of the harness. The board hovered in place while the rope twisted slowly in the air, still strapped to the lightfox who was now sitting.
Spirit watched Anniya stalk-off into the thick ferns and trunks, her palms glowing with a shining green light. At her touch, plants bent away, vines parted, and small trees bowed down, falling, drooping, almost melting as they made a verdant path for her. Amid the chirping of the night jungle, Anniya’s plant-pushing added a creaking shushing to the ringing jungle night. Pushing aside a thick meshing of ferns, she paused, staring at the ground with a small smile.
“There you are.”
The light from her hands vanished as she reached down into the darkness between the bent-away ferns. Her hands fidgeted in the shadows for a few moments before bringing up and into the moonlight a handful of red berries. They popped between her fingers, oozing out a red watery syrup.
Applying the syrup to the cut on her cheek, rubbing it in well, Anniya washed away dried streaks of blood. As she walked back out of the thick brush, into the moonlit dirt clearing, the plants behind her stood back up, ferns rising to mesh back together and trunks unbending back to their original vertical positions.
Digging around in her satchel, Anniya withdrew a small towel. She wiped the berry syrup and blood mixture from her cheek as she looked up at the surrounding treetops. “Now where is that big tree?” She placed the towel back into her satchel.