New Light

by Ben Johnston

  Chapter 11

  Anniya twisted away. “They shot him, Spirit!”

  The little fox was still in the branches staring out over the dark valley. The dust cloud in the valley center had almost cleared, only whisps still hung in the air. And where the outpost had been was now a large circular clearing of tilled ground and craters with tangled piles of strewn debris along its great and messy perimeter. In the center of that circle in the middle of the forest valley, floating static and unmoving, black as vacuum in the night, was the Vectan dropship.

  Around Anniya, the jungle had resumed its regular nightsongs after the disruption of the shockwave had roused it. And aside from the one or two small bursts of explosive gunfire that crackled and boomed out from the valley, the forest and the night had returned to normal.

  The animals seemed almost to be getting used to the occasional chaos.

  Anniya lowered her head and dropped out of the tree. She walked over to her dead board on the leafy ground and picked it up, holding it in front of her face.

  “What a fracted night this was, huh, Spirit?”

  Spirit was on the ground by her feet looking up at the dark board she held in her hands. Its burnt-out hover crystals made ever so weak lines of fainter and fainter orange light as the last whisps faded away.

  Anniya’s head fell. “And I have to build a whole new board.”

  With a huff, she flipped the dead board over her shoulder and secured it to the strap on her back. Then, holding out her hands in front of her, and with a bright green light shining from them, she pushed aside the plants and overgrowth as she began the long walk back home.

  Part II

  Chapter 12

  The great orchestra of gleaming, ornate instruments blasted out the final three-scale cadence, then stopped to no applause.

  As the players set down their instruments with gentle rustlings and soft knocks to turn their transparencies back to the first page of the piece, around them in the great hall there was just the sound of hundreds of bustling servers, just the low murmur of discussion and anxious, hurried movement, tinklings and scootings of tables and silverware under the occasional shoutings of head servants and the subdued lights of the high silvery ceiling.

  On the highest terrace of the grand room, seated by a great curved wall of tinted glass, was a man with a hard face of square angles, and a head of light, graying hair. He sat at a long ornate metal table, three suns setting behind him through the filtered glass. Under his broad, strong brow, eyes, cold like a frozen lake, turned to look at a young man who had come to stand beside him. The man had raven black hair and gazed comfortably back at the premier with grass green eyes.

  The premier turned his attention to a glass of wine before him. “Chair Advisor Jonas Apolas, tell me about the Phoenix operation.”

  Jonas bowed. “Grand Vectan Premier Rechter, the galaxy is now ours.”

  “Was the operation perfect?”

  “Outstanding results, Your Excellency.”

  “Outstanding.” The premier turned his hard face away from his wine, laying his piercing gaze on Jonas. “But not perfect.”

  “Almost perfect.” The advisor lowered his gaze.

  Jonas stood there, head bowed, simple in his plain gray jacket. “Of the thousands of drop ship assaults, we had trouble with only one. But it was minor, with minor losses, and we managed to capture a rogue lightmaker. But I felt these minor details would be below qualification for your attention, your Greatness.”

  The premier stood, then proceeded past Jonas. “Come.”

  Jonas turned to follow the premier as he strode in a direct line towards the great and broad staircase which curved along the tinted glass wall.

  They climbed the great stairs through the smoky light of a filtered late sunset, up past the ceiling to emerge into a grand room full of plants and lined with express elevators. Beautifully crystal-clear, the entire ceiling of this uppermost space was completely transparent, showing the cold clouds flowing over and around them. As the sunset colors in the sky were darkening into evening, the great lobby’s city of lamps and its constellations of chandeliers glowed dimly.

  The premier spoke as Jonas followed him away from the stair landing, along a plant-lined walkway. “Almost perfect is imperfect.”

  As they walked, Jonas’ eyes reflected the dark leaves of the plants lining the path. “Your Greatness, this sounds like philosophy again.”

  They walked to the center of the grand lobby where there stood a tall black metal spire. The dark spike towered over them under the crystal-clear ceiling and the darkening clouds. The premier stopped and turned to Jonas. “So you think perfection is a philosophy, young Advisor?”

  He motioned to the foot of the towering monolith. There, at the spike’s base, was a large glass and copper planter box. The box held a perfectly spaced grid-forest of single-stemmed roses. The symmetrical stems all grew straight up to the exact same height where the vibrant flowers burst forth, each richly-saturated velvet petal of every rose was a perfect violent crimson even in the dying light of the evening sky.

  The premier’s heavy eyelids narrowed to slits, his eyes like lines of arctic sky seen through dark clouds turned their cold gaze onto the calm young man. “Perfection is real, young Advisor.” He turned back to the single-stemmed roses growing up from the dark, robust soil. “Tell me, what is wrong with these roses?”

  “The Imperial single stems?” Jonas’ fresh, sharp eyes carefully assessed the evenly-spaced and apparently flawless red flowers.

  “I see no imperfection.” He turned his eyes, green as the roses’ stems, back to the premier. “They are beautiful, my premier.”

  The premier’s face was ice and stone. “Are they perfect?”

  Jonas blinked. “They appear so.”

  The young advisor looked back to the evenly-spaced and closely-packed flowers, squinting. “I suppose you could point out slight differences in the locations of each individual rose’s thorns, or the shape of the stems.” Jonas looked at the premier with the hint of a smirk. “But that seems a bit ridiculous.” The premier was not smiling.

  Jonas crouched down to gaze over the tops of the roses. “Their heights are remarkably even.” Then, leaning-in close to the flowers, he pointed. “It is minor. Perhaps one might consider the slight bruising on the petal of this one rose. There in the back.”

  He stood with a dismissive smile. “Almost perfect.” He gave a nod and a bow to the premier. “I see your point, great leader. It is a good philosophy.”

  The premier’s eyes remained frozen solid on Jonas. “Gardener!” The premier’s gaze stood fixed in space, locked on the young advisor.

  Instantly, a nearby imperial gardener ran up to them. “Your Greatness.” The handsome, middle-aged man stood at attention.

  The premier replied to the gardener, his gaze still narrow and rigidly fixed on Jonas. “Head Gardener. Do you see anything wrong with these roses?”

  “The single stems, your grace?” The gardener looked over the roses. “They seem as perfect as Vectus, my Premier.”

  In the blink of an eye, a flechette sprang from the Vectan premier’s shoulder, shot through the gardener’s back, out the front of his chest, and returned to the premier’s shoulder. The gardener’s lifeless body fell forward into the planter box, crushing the roses.

  The premier turned to Jonas. “That is the result of imperfection.”

  He then turned to the body of the gardener in the planter box. He kicked the dead gardener’s dangling leg up into the box. “It is not a philosophy.”

  Jonas offered no further comment.

  The premier and the advisor left the body and the crushed roses in the ornate planter box, walked back along the walkways, and descended the stairs to return to the main state room. As they left the sky lobby behind, the dirt in the planter box around the dead gardener began to move, rolling and subducting like a boiling quicksand. The churning dirt drew-in the crushed roses and the gardener’s lifeless body, env
eloping it all to leave behind a fresh, dark surface of moist, fertile planting soil.

  The premier and Jonas returned to the large table by the curved wall of tinted glass. Outside, the late sunset light was barely visible through the great dark window. Below, the city of Vectus was a gleaming landscape of rising towers of sharp glass and metal. The silver ceiling Inside the great hall held the same subdued light as the filtered sunset, as did the lamps that sat on the hundreds of tables around the grand space.

  The premier returned to their table and sat down before a glass of wine, motioning for Jonas to sit before another glass. Jonas did so.

  The glasses dripped with condensation, little pools having formed around their bases.

  The premier spoke. “Everything around me must be perfect.” He raised his glass. “Especially things that I cannot replace.”

  Jonas raised his own glass. “To the premier and to Vectus.”

  He sipped his wine, then set it down. “Great Leader, considering that the Phoenix operation is now completed, if you would allow me to miss tonight’s gala, I wish to continue work on the Phoenix artifact. The Academy is close to finalizing the research on its new light.”

  The premier’s eyes shot to and fixed upon Jonas. “The slip light.” The premier’s cold eyes remained locked on the young advisor as he took a long, slow breath. “Yes. Very well. The Phoenix artifact is the key.”

  Jonas stood, bowed, then departed and ascended the stairs, leaving the Vectan premier sitting thoughtfully at his empty table, his wineglass quickly and freshly refilled.

  After stepping off the top of the stairs into the sky lobby, Jonas passed by the monument and planter box where earlier the gardener had been executed. He saw that one hundred new and perfect replacement roses had been promptly and cleanly planted in fresh soil.

  Jonas stooped down and pinched a bruise into one of the new petals before turning and walking away to the elevators.

  Chapter 13

  Taking in a deep breath of crisp mountain air, Christopher stepped out onto the open green meadow splashed with little patches of white and orange flowers. As he strode through the tall, wind-blown grass towards the placid lake in the middle of the mountain valley, behind him a company of scholars and technicians followed, trickling out of the sparse wood on the slope of the valley foothill.

  Christopher stopped and pointed upwards. “Well, would you look at that?”

  The sky was clear, streaked with lonely wisps of early spring clouds. The noon sun shone bright, although every few minutes the sun’s brightness would waver, dimming briefly, then returning to its normal shine, as if a cloud were passing over. The sun did this just as Christopher pointed.

  A tall, thin scholar walked up to Christopher’s side. “Yes, doctor Cernon. I see it.” The scholar shielded his eyes. “This planet’s sun must have taken a glancing blow in the last Ruin war. Looks like it’s finally starting to burn out.”

  Christopher turned a furrowed brow up to the scholar. “Not that, man. I’m not talking about the sun.” He shoved his pointed finger at the sky. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

  As the sun returned to normal brightness, up in the sky, a small glint of light at the front of a long contrail revealed a small craft flying down to their position. Christopher turned to the scholar.

  The tall, skinny man stared at the sky. “Is that a Union vessel, Doc’?”

  Christopher nodded, patting the scholar on his back. “I’ll bet you ten units it’s from the School. Anyway, let’s keep moving.”

  Christopher and the large company continued to move forward through the tall, soft grass towards the lake. They pulled along their floatcarts piled-high with boxy, shiny equipment to the edge of the water where they lined it all up along the grassy edge.

  The spacecraft landed silently nearby, touching down in the gently waving field before lowering a ramp. A dozen or so people walked off the ramp and out across the fresh meadow towards Christopher and company.

  He turned, looked at their uniforms, then greeted them as they walked up. “Ah. School auditors. Welcome!”

  Standing at the front of the group of officiously dressed, severe-looking people, stood a tall woman with blonde hair pulled back tightly. “Dr. Christopher Cordellia Cernon, School of The Union Archaeologist, First Class, I presume?” She held up her hand, phased up a transparency then held a stylus over the first checkbox of what looked like hundreds of checkboxes and looked at Christopher expectantly.

  Christopher blinked at the auditor. “Wow. First-class School accountants. You get straight to the point, don’t you? Do you want to maybe take a quick break before the dig? It’s a pretty lake. We’ve got some cake.”

  The woman made a checkmark then her eyes fixed back on him. “How much cake did you provision for this survey?”

  Christopher scratched his head. “OK, so I was just trying to be nice. I don’t think we actually have any cake. And it’s a survey and excavation. We’re an SSE company, but we’re directly School funded, so I didn’t think we needed to have accountants on site.” He looked up to the blue sky. “Especially out here on a Ruin-border world, even one as nice as this one.” He looked back to the blonde auditor. “And speaking of the Ruin, how did a single craft like yours even make it through?”

  The accountant drew in a quick breath through her nose. “We were originally four ships. We are the only one that made it.”

  “You lost three ships just coming here!? Why didn’t you fly with our convoy?”

  “We’re an independent audit committee.”

  “Oh, right. You guys are formed because of the collapse of the Republic and the Union taking-in all those worlds. So that initiative is bleeding over into special and circumstantial projects. Neat.”

  “Yes.” The auditor turned away from Christopher, walking a few steps over to the edge of the lake. She looked out over it’s gently rippled surface. A fresh breeze blew the cold of the water around her as she turned her back to the lake to face Christopher. “And exactly what kind of special project is this?” She raised her transparency and stylus again.

  “A dig. Specifically, we are about to make a shovel test pit.”

  “Dig?” The auditor looked at Christopher with a raised eyebrow. “Shovel?” She looked around at the floating carts of equipment lined up along the sandy bank. “What shovels, and where are you digging?”

  Christopher motioned for her to step forward towards him, away from the lake. With an uncertain look on her face, she took a few steps towards him. Then, suddenly, she saw Christopher and everyone and everything around them flash brilliantly white for a moment.

  She started, looking around. “What was that flash?”

  Christopher held his hand out in front of him and made a swirling motion with his finger pointed down. “Turn around.”

  The auditor turned around to look back at the lake, but where there had just been a lake only a few steps away, there was now a perfectly circular, lake-sized hole. With bulging eyes, she leaned slightly backwards, staring at the perfect and deep chasm. She shook her head, breaking the spell, then took a few more careful steps back away from the huge opening, then turned to look at Christopher.

  He was smiling. “Shovel test pit is just a saying. We used a phase beam.”

  The accountant’s mouth fell open. “A phase beam!” She looked straight up at the sky. “You mean that you have a phase projector platform up in space? How many units did this require?” She turned and looked back nervously over her shoulder at the canyon-sized opening. A hissing, rushing sound was coming out from inside it.

  Christopher’s eyebrows jumped. “It wasn’t cheap!” He turned to one of his colleagues. “Hey Carl, get the helix ramp phased out. I want to get down there and see if we need to phase-up pumps.”

  Christopher turned back to the auditor. “And yes, almost all our equipment is phastic, so you can multiply your cost estimates by five hundred.”

  The auditor’s mouth looked as though it migh
t never close again.

  Christopher patted the shocked accountant on her shoulder. “Oh, don’t sweat it. This is a Special Projects project! First class stuff, you know.”

  She did not look consoled. Christopher tilted his head then widened his eyes and opened his mouth. “Oh!” He snapped his fingers. “This is probably your first Special Projects’ assignment.” He gave her one more pat on the shoulder. “Get used to extremes.”

  Christopher walked up to the edge of the impossible hole and pulled out a spotlight. Adjusting the beam to narrow, he pointed it down into the dizzyingly deep chasm. The silvery light from the spotlight cut past layers of mist and rain. From the bottom, through the darkness, a small circle of glimmering pattern reflected his spotlight with a dazzling sparkle. “There it is, right at the bottom of the hole.” He turned and looked around at everyone, grinning. “Found it on the first try!”

  Amid the buzzing excitement of the company, he looked at the auditor. “So that’s lucky. That’s gonna save us a ton of units. Does that make you happy.”

  The look of shock had worn off her face and she now appeared slightly annoyed. “Yes, Doctor.” She made some quick notes on her transparency, then gave her head a quick shake before she raised her chin with a frown. “I’m quite happy that we won’t be wasting any more millions of light units digging gigantic holes on abandoned planets today.”

  Like a spiral staircase, a translucent ramp spun around the inside of the hole and went down into it. Christopher gathered together a group of a dozen specialists. The auditor gathered two of her best record keepers.

  Christopher and his specialists and the auditor and her record keepers all stepped onto platforms that swiftly spiraled them down into the darkness and obscurity of the hole, taking them through its rains and mists. Arriving at the bottom, slightly damp, they found it was well illuminated by the lamps that lined the platform ramp. They phased-up a few more spot lamps, then stood, looking up at the cylindrical opening then looking back down. All around them, hints of a reddish metal city glinted out of the darkness.