The Shadow Among The Stars: Book One of the Dread Naught Trilogy

by Dylan Sanchez

  Were Vort’s eyes capable of blinking, he would have done so. Instead he simply became still and regarded Runner with the swirling gray hemispheres of his three eyes. Runner shifted in his seat, feeling he owed some small explanation to his various compatriots while also suffering a rising anxious heart rate at the thought of sharing personal information. “Off-f-ficially, I’m dead. I want to k-keep it that way. Until ... until I’ve got something done that I, uh ... something I’ve wanted to do a long time.”

  Vort regarded this information impassively, mulling over the words before speaking. “... your family.”

  “W-what? What ab-bout them?” Runner’s brow furrowed.

  “Something happened to your family, and you supposedly died in that event.”

  Runner froze, the air pressure in the room seeming to shift as he became tense from head to toe. Vort’s skin faded to a mustard yellow tone. “... I WILL PRY NO MORE.”

  Runner’s eyelids fluttered, and he sighed. “Uh, yeah. You? Family?”

  “Oh, myself? My brood mother and birth mother live, while my father passed away some years ago. Disease.”

  “Brood mother-r? What does th-that mean?”

  “My people are born to a mating pair, then raised in clutches together in hatcheries by brood mothers. Earlier in our evolution we laid higher numbers of eggs with a lower chance of survival. Now brood mothers are simply an established part of our culture. The children of multiple mates are raised in groups through our larval stage.”

  “Hm, okay, that’s different. Humans, we’ve got Day-Care: b-basically while you’r-re at work someone can watch your kids for you. You close t-t-to them?”

  “Not in particular. My lack of familial obligations Aided my decision to become an explorer. I have three siblings with whom I had little contact as well. More happenstance than choice.”

  Runner’s eyes unfocused as he contemplated this. He thought briefly of his past and how it may have gone differently, something he hated to do often. He had been raised by loving parents alongside an older sister on a border colony, not long after initial conflicts with the T’hròstag had died down. Rumors of underhanded dealings and arrangements by the Planetary Arbiter were rampant, but Runner was too young to understand them. That ignorance proved to be of little consequence, as such problems found him regardless as he reached the cusp of becoming a teenager.

  The vigilante’s arm muscles involuntarily convulsed as he yanked himself from his reflection. He scratched his nose and spoke again to distract from his moment of soul-searching. “Y-yeah, I get that. Uh, Vort, you’ve n-never said what y-your people are c-c-called. It’s a-always just ’M-my People’.”

  Vort shifted slightly and turned toward the opening along the outside of the lounge. “Oh, well that’s because we are called—”

  The alien generated a sound, something like recording a thousand cicadas playing oboe onto a wax cylinder. The tone was about a second and a half long, during which sparks launched from Vort’s trunk that were dispersed by the energy field keeping out the rain. Runner blinked slowly as Vort turned back toward him.

  “I have not yet discovered an adequate fashion in which to express this in a way you would understand.”

  “Y-y-yeah, I do-on’t th-think I can h-help much with that.”

  The Qixing interview, which occurred directly after her interview with the Human press, went as well as Bryluen expected. She made an eloquent case for Dread Naught’s mission statement and gave a factual and brief response to each question posed to her about the team and their foe, providing the exact same information she had given to the Human press. While not the public face of the CSOE, Operatives were certainly its most iconic and were trained extensively in how to participate in interviews and make press statements when necessary.

  Operatives were so well-known for this training few news organizations sought a statement on a particular topic once an Operative had already provided one. No matter who asked, the information would be the exact same, even if the phrasing was altered or the format in which the information was provided changed. The more lurid forms of yellow journalism that still existed found this an endless source of consternation, as it meant they were unable to wring a believable controversy out of any mismatched facts or ambiguous phrasing.

  Later in the evening, Kirby stood out on the lounge balcony, mulling over feelings and concerns she was having difficulty sorting. She leaned on the rail with her elbows, her eyes tracing back and forth across the lush environment below. She jumped slightly as she heard the door open behind her. Nicadzim slipped out onto the balcony and walked up next to her, a burrito cradled in paper in one hand.

  “Heya, Nico.”

  “Good ...”, the big man looked at the sky. “... afternoon, Kirby. I thought I had felt someone would need company out here.”

  Kirby turned toward him, a brief flash of concern crossing her face. “You felt that? How d’ya mean, you can … read thoughts?”

  “Oh, no, not that, I just … have a feeling. You will be concerned about something you feel. I would not ask what, if you will not want to tell me. But I could perhaps still have helped.” He drew a carton out of one pocket containing several long, thin paper objects.

  “Oh, hey, is that—”

  “It will be something pleasantly calming. Not something you would have had before, I could assure you.”

  “... alright, you wouldn’t kill me, let’s light up.” Kirby reached into the carton and pulled out a neatly rolled paper filled with compacted powder. She stuck one end in her mouth and flicked the other with a finger, causing it to ignite with a tidy flame. Purple-tinged smoke began to trail up and away on a slow breeze.

  “So, now that I’m already smokin’ it, the hell did you get this from, Nico?”

  “I will find it one night when I am adventuring, nestled among some metaphors.” Nicadzim lit his own cigarette, a second smoke trail joining the first.

  “Yeah, I can already tell this conversation is goin’ over my head, but what the fuck made you think you should roll and smoke it?”

  Nicadzim looked at her. “Nothing, these were already rolled when I found them.”

  The cigarette sagged in Kirby’s mouth. “So you don’t … Nico, I can’t explain how, but this tastes ex-fuckin’-xactly like a boat reaching dock after a long trip.”

  The big man grunted. “These are not very creative. Mine seems to be a warm hearth on a cold night. I hope I will find a more interesting pack of similes some time.”

  “Well, I can’t say these aren’t relaxing. Never smoked a simile before.” Kirby took the cigarette from her lips, glancing at it a moment before putting it back to her mouth and shrugging. “Nico, every goddamn day you’ve got—and I don’t mean no disrespect by this—the craziest shit to talk about. And now I’m smokin’ a simile with you. How’d you grow up? It always been like this for you?”

  “I ... do not remember. I have just been me as far as memory allows. I knew of no childhood, family, anything. My … earliest memories—images, feelings, sensations I could not place. I know things, I speak and live between and among moments. My best explanation was that I have been wandering for years until I developed an understanding of me. I was trying to have a normal life but such things did not exist for me.”

  Kirby thought for a minute, gazing at the smoke drifting off and away from the pair of them. The contents of the cigarette left a residue of long, relieved sighs and the scent of dissipating homesickness on her lips. “Did you ever feel lonely, Nico? Do ya now? I mean, we all like you, but I dunno, seems like it might be lonely. I mean I know you do your best, but I sure can’t understand all you’ve gotta tell us all the time. No one else really gets it, ya know?”

  “At times, I would suppose. Now I just think of the things I have done and seen no one else ever will. I will meet beings that were unimaginable and see places that have been beautiful beyond imagining. You may not have understood, but this will not hurt. My experiences are not what separa
tes me. Time will divide myself from you.”

  “That would be the real fucked part of things for you, huh? I dunno how you keep track of anything, sounds like you bounce around?”

  “I embodied many, though I am only one. I was a raft on a boat of myself, scooping up the closest pieces of me and to try to fit me together as I went along.”

  “I can’t even start to imagine, sounds like sci-fi shit to me, but I’ve seen enough of ya to know that what you say must be what it is.” Kirby habitually tapped the end of the cigarette. “To me, you just seem to be a guy that blinks around some and has weird crap happen all around.”

  Nicadzim laughed. “I suppose that will be a fine enough description!”

  The jockey smiled, then looked out toward the setting sun. “So you don’t go through time all straight and neat like us other folk, huh? Do you see yourself older?”

  “Yes and no. All of me will be simultaneous. I experienced past and will experience the future of others at times. I aged but have stopped now. But no, I did not see myself older. All of me will age at once as if younger me has never existed.”

  Kirby and Nicadzim fell quiet for a time as their shadows stretched out. Kirby’s rail-thin silhouette soon began to melt into the dark wall of Nicadzim’s shade. The mist slowly cleared as evening approached, a brisk breeze picking up the vapors and moving them down the mountain range. Their smoke traveled with it in puffs and swirls that soon became dispersed in the distance. Nicadzim had been right: ground up simile was a relaxing thing to smoke, though she thought it could potentially depend on the simile. She almost mentally chided herself for even considering it—despite the fact it was happening, smoking a simile was clearly impossible. The whole point of a simile was to be a comparative linguistic construct so, once it became an empirical object, how could it still be a simile?

  With each puff there was no taste or scent per se, just her brain filling with things it could not otherwise rationalize—she got associations, impressions, the idea of images, and a set of sensations she had no words to describe aside from saying the cigarette was made out of a simile.

  Their cigarettes were almost burned through when Nicadzim spoke next. “What … is your early life like?”

  “Well, not too special, I don’t guess. Got a brother out there. Somewhere. Never ended up too close to my folks. Ma worked all the time, pa never knew what to do with kids, I don’t think. None of it clicked for me. Ain’t much wrong with 'em, their lives just weren’t for me. I was a big dreamer, expected a prince and a castle. Didn’t get that.”

  Kirby took a long puff, closing her eyes and letting the simile wash over her. For a moment, she was just coming home after a long journey. She wasn’t sure whether or not that feeling was from the cigarette. “Grew up, got educated, found what I thought was love at the time. Didn’t work out—I was young and dumb. Found somethin’ else after that. Then ended up in the Marines, and here I am. I skipped a couple things, but yeah, that’s pretty much the short version.”

  “You make your life sound boring. I will not think that you will live a boring life.” Nicadzim’s smoke stream tied itself into a square knot as it floated away.

  “Eh, it ain’t all that much. Runner’s over here bein’ a vigilante, you get looks at the future and warp around, Vort’s unique in this entire galaxy, and Bryluen is—literally—who I wanted to be when I grew up, while secretly knowing I couldn’t.” The jockey shrugged. “I learned to jockey walkers.”

  “You will be the only person to use the Marduk. You are the best jockey in the Marine Corps. Bryluen sought you out because you were extraordinary, Kirby. Vort and myself will be born to what will make us special. You earn who you are, just like Runner and Bryluen.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” She sniffed. “Sorry, I ain’t great at takin’ compliments. Thanks, hon. I’ll think about it, but some days I’m just gonna pity the shit out of myself. Force of habit.”

  A black line suddenly shot up in front of Kirby, and with a click became taut. Runner propelled up past them and onto the roof of Raven’s Landing at high speed. Kirby and Nicadzim both leaned out and looked upward. Runner’s face peered over the edge of the roof, a glint of mischief in his eyes.

  “I-I got it! It works! It’s beaut-tiful!”

  Kirby took her cigarette from her mouth. “Well hell, ’d’you make yourself a grapple?”

  Runner stretched out a hand so Nicadzim and Kirby could see it. His arm was clad in his armor, and a reel was attached to the back of his shoulder. The pressurized gun projecting the grapple itself was attached to his gauntlet so that when the hook struck something, the force drawing him up the line was on his back plate instead of pulling at his arm. “It’s so much fun! Took-k-k a bit to get it to come back right, but I got it! W-w-wanted to sho-ow you!”

  Kirby paused a moment. “You’re gonna use that on my chassis at some point, aren’t ya?”

  Runner’s eyes darted to the side for one moment. “It would wo-ork if I did!”

  “Alright, just warn a girl before ya go jumpin’ on her.”

  Bryluen’s voice came out of a concealed speaker mounted somewhere on the balcony. “Kirby, your pretty new alloy shipment just arrived for you!”

  Kirby looked around, reflexively trying to locate the source of the voice. “You got it? I didn’t know if the Marines would actually wanna let go of more of that shit!”

  “Well, I had to flash Supply Manager Nguyen, but after that he agreed.” The group fell quiet for a moment. “... Joke. The missus would obviously be pretty unhappy with me going around showing my assets. Nguyen and I have this running joke—have we not had this conversation? I really expected that to land better than it did. You folks need to pay more attention to your e-mails. Anyway, have fun towing all this inside, Furcotte!”

  Kirby smiled and put her cigarette out against the top of the rail. She waved to Runner and Nicadzim before jogging inside, across the lobby, and out to the landing pad. A cart carrying a pile of metal panels awaited her as the delivery drone ascending back into the sky. The plates were the same blue-tinted alloy used for her blades. The material was still under final efficiency review—though more enduring than traditional armor plating, it was costly and the financial feasibility of deploying it had not yet been determined. After Tāwhiri, Kirby had asked Bryluen to order it for the Marduk in order to stand against more examples of the beast that had injured her—an Ur-Rabisu, as it had been designated.

  According to Bryluen, Rabisus and Gugalannas received their names from Sumerian myth. Outside of self-identification, the CSOE usually named entities according to ancient Terran cultures. The Dreaded were being titled differently depending on their battlefield use—for example Sjorthursar was a term for a Norse Sea-Giant, the difference in myth system denoting it existed for a different purpose than the Sumerian-named ground troops. An En was a Sumerian High-Priest, while Ur was a word for ’first’, thus explaining the En- and Ur-Rabisus. Kirby found the subject interesting, but mostly had just wanted to know what to call the thing whose relatives she was determined to massacre in their next meeting.

  Feeling vastly more relaxed after treating herself to Nicadzim’s drug of questionable provenance, she set about detaching the Marduk’s armor plates in the workshop, swapping in spare parts for damaged mechanisms, and setting the lathe to tool the plates she needed from the new alloy. Meanwhile, Bryluen had gone back to her bedroom. She hung her jacket up and began to unbutton her blouse when a call registered on the screen in front of her bed. She turned to see the caller, then rapidly re-buttoned her top and put her jacket back on. Stepping up to the screen, she accepted the call.

  Rur’Thu’s face appeared, and he performed the diagonal head inclination that was effectively the Qixing equivalent of a nod. “Good to speak to you again, Dame Branok. There is something I wished to discuss with you, following up on our last meeting.”

  19. Belated Boons and the Bulwark

  Bryluen leaned on the short table below the screen. “
You’ve received our data on the Stone, I take it?”

  The Qixing diplomat took a deep breath. “We have received the readings, and we have teams searching for similar objects in our space now, yes, but it’s not much to go off of yet. Regardless, I am not calling about the Stone in particular. You may have heard of multiple attacks by The Dreaded on Gru’Thiall since we last met. We are still searching the mountains to locate the goal the enemy pursues, and while we have found nothing definite yet, we have encountered a disruption of much of our scanning equipment and some other technology in an area that likely encompasses the point the enemy seek. This is not something accounted for by the Stone you acquired, but we are looking into it as best as we are able, bereft as we are of our best methods of searching the mountainous terrain.”

  “Very well. As long as we find whatever it is before they do. You’ve dealt with a number of attacks in other places as well, I hear?”

  “We have.” Rur’Thu nodded at a slightly diagonal angle again. “A colony was struck, and while civilian casualties were as minimal as could be hoped, it was … found to be avoidable, had we redistributed some of our Interior Guard. The Sentinels responded quickly, but … the Colony Post was insufficient to repel the initial attack—the assault was larger than projected. The people are displeased. You ...”

  “... I was right, I know. How many?”

  “Excuse me, madam?”

  “How many died, Rur’Thu? How many of your people were killed that didn’t need to be?”

  Aoue looked away for a moment. “I, ih … thirty seven Qixing citizens, and one Ly Aulth traveler.”

  “Great.” Bryluen put a hand over her eyes. “How are the Ly Aulth taking it? They’ve taken issue with your border policies for years, I don’t think getting one of them killed is going to make them particularly happy, given all your security.”

  The diplomat sat back in his chair. “There is talk of possible travel restrictions, and some of the more extreme cartels are threatening intervention if anything further occurs.”