by J. S. Fields
“Do you know what it is to be Ardulan?” the transmission asked in Emn’s voice. The recorded Emn walked in front of the elds in her short, blue dress, the markings across her skin vibrant in the half-light. Miketh joined her, also wearing a dress short enough to show off the markings on her calf.
Outside of the recording, Emn began to chew on the andal, making sure to time everything just right. The soft, seasoned wood burst sap across her tongue and down her throat. The cellulose broke down almost immediately, giving her enough energy to reach the Neek planet. Enough energy to draw out the polymer from the ship with ease, if she wanted. She could feel it throughout the cutter. It pulsed with life, in time with the andal’s consciousness. And just behind her harvested energy was the lingering pain of the burned andal, tugging at Emn’s mind and begging her for help.
“Do you know what it is to be of Ardulum?” The High Priest of Neek came next, his golden robes changed to crimson, and stood between the holographic Emn and Miketh.
Emn let her mind sweep the planet. There was so little living forest left that she decided to settle on the closest burn. Some trees still flamed an internal ghostly purple, but mostly, there was only silence. She gathered the twigs and broken stems, the dead roots and crowns that lay too mutely on the charred ground. She gathered them all, hectares upon hectares. From the bodies, she pulled the cellulose in its long crystalline strands, leaving crumbling bones of hemicellulose and lignin behind. The crystallites themselves she gathered in widely spaced clumps, careful to keep the individual strands separate. She didn’t need all the energy all at once. It needed to flow slowly and evenly, and the process had to be automated properly. Emn mapped the path with her mind as she pushed at the cellulose chains to link end to end. Once she was able to take her mind from that task, she took the chains and braided them tightly together, first manually, and then, with a push from the digested andal, she sent the command across the planet.
This was the easy part. The beautiful part, she noted as the crystalline chains formed. She’d done as much as a first don, even caged with her mother on Captain Ran’s cutter. Emn had been bred for this.
“Do you even understand what they do?” Nicholas’s voice held a touch more sarcasm than it should have, but the holographic Atalant smiled as the Journey youth moved to stand next to Emn.
The group then turned to face the elds. The Neek and Ardulans took a knee and bowed their heads. Nicholas stepped to the side and saluted crisply.
Bonds formed. Energy released. Emn held the energy at bay as she double-checked the automation process. She pushed farther into the charred forest, monitoring the stripping cellulose and the binding of the polymer chains. Still simple. Still manageable. Skill, and nothing more. Forests of charred trees and smoking canopies crushed to dust in her wake.
“We do not ask for your worship. Those are the voices of the past,” Ekimet spoke in a whisper. “To seek the understanding of Ardulum is a noble path, but it is not for all beings. We understand our actions are confusing. Only the Eld can understand the andal.”
Trees cracked and broke apart into a brown powder, leaving curls of bark amongst the trillium and sedge. Energy swarmed, and Emn bundled it in sectioned rows. She was no child on a Risalian cutter any longer. Here, she collected and held a planet’s energy, focused and controlled, as her flare Talents allowed. Emn felt stretched, mentally and physically, but not uncomfortably so. She was trained. She was ready. She was Ardulan.
With her attention no longer needed for the bonding and with the energy continuing to flow, Emn turned her mind skyward to the ring of debris that orbited Neek. She mapped it—every piece—and earmarked the weakest points. She brought the pieces together, focusing on the ones that were intact enough and still had cellulose in their cores. When everything was mapped, outlined, and placed, Emn brought the accumulated energy up through the atmosphere of Neek and dangled it near the flotsam. She wasn’t the conduit—she would not channel it through herself—but the very act of holding the energy together strained her mind and threatened to consume her internal reserves. She waited for the message to end.
“We will not, however,” Ekimet continued, “allow harm to come to those who are of Ardulum, who choose to worship Ardulum.”
Atalant stepped forward. The shadow left her face, and she purposefully brushed some loose hair behind her ear with one hand, displaying all eight fingers. “Leave.” Her command was loud, likely blaring into the ships that had turned the volume up to hear the soft voice of Ekimet. “Leave, and you will not be harmed. Stay, and you will be killed. There will be no other warnings.”
The transmission terminated. Emn counted in her head, slowly, for a full minute—just enough time to ensure Atalant and the Heaven Guard were in place. When it was over, she took a deep breath, grabbed Miketh’s hand for physical support, and released the energy.
It burst forward at the broken ships in targeted pulses. Emn couldn’t see it, not through the hangar windows, but she could feel the effects in her mind. The energy hit the sections of biometal and broke them apart. She couldn’t relax, not as much as she wanted to, but it was a relief, at least, to push instead of hold. Careful not to let the chain reaction catch onto the flotsam—she needed to keep the metal strong—Emn chased each broken piece and hit it again. And again. Hundreds of pieces became thousands, and with another push, Emn sent the biometal out of Neek’s orbit and spiraling into the awaiting fleet. It streaked past the windows of the hangar bay, and Miketh’s grip on Emn’s hand tightened as, just behind the cloud of debris, a magenta acorn-shaped ship and fourteen settees appeared in blaring crimson.
Blood vessels began to rupture, and maroon dripped from Emn’s ears. She needed to pull back, wanted to pull back, but could not. There could be no breaks and relief in a miracle. Emn sent another round of waves, the chunks of biometal fracturing even more. After one final pulse, Emn paused to assess. The debris continued floating outward, and so Emn directed it back towards the fleet—surrounding the ships—before drawing some of the flotsam towards the planet.
For the first time, Emn said a small, silent prayer to the living andal of Ardulum. Then, she dropped Miketh’s hand and waited for Atalant’s next move. Emn’s automation continued on the planet below—pulling cellulose and linking chains together. Forming bonds. The accumulated energy grew as it rolled across the decimated forests. Emn drew the energy to her. She felt the heat flush her skin and watched Miketh’s surprise as the other woman shielded her eyes. More energy flowed to her, although Emn was careful to monitor its source. Still, she waited patiently, the acorn ship now out of sight.
Be safe, Atalant.
Chapter 21: Scarlet Lucidity
…lost in waves of frozen air and buried next to glaciers.
Here the andal battles near the tree line,
leafing out delayed, a struggle in ring porosity.
Not adapted to freeze or fire
yet lives.
May the andal guide us and teach us to remember.
—Ardulan poem fragment, author unknown, c. 4_12
JANUARY 27TH, 2061 CE
Atalant settled into the pilot’s chair of the Scarlet Lucidity, the taste of Emn still on her lips and Representative Hepatica flat in her pocket. The ship lifted from the pad with a slip of Atalant’s fingers, and then she was in the air, flying over the ash of andal plantations. Some trees still burned from the inside, the red and purple light appearing ghostly through the cracked bark. To be burned alive… Atalant closed her mind from the thought and condensed the mental screams as best she could as she turned her eyes back towards the heavens. Settees shot from the ground and joined her as she flew upwards. They surrounded the Lucidity in a tight formation, an honor guard more than a protective force. As a single, coordinated unit, Atalant led them higher to the lower atmosphere before bursting through to the upper. Finally, they surfaced into space—a tight diamond of crimson and magenta against a dark sea.
Atalant felt the pilots’ fear, e
ven through the persistently creepy andal telepathy. They were unsure, doubting, and a few were ready to turn back. She couldn’t lose even one to nerves, so Atalant opened her comm to the settees. “Most of you have flown with me at some point—though, I was more a kid than anything else back then. Yesterday, we fought those fires together. I’ve seen you all fly. I know you can do this.” Atalant pursed her lips, not wanting to say the next words but knowing they were what the pilots needed to hear. “I’m your Eld, and I am putting my trust, and my faith, in you.”
There was a moment of silence, and then Nicholas’s voice came over the same channel. “This is Nick. I’m the Terran that flies with Eld Atalant on the Lucidity, and I’m up here, scrunched into a very tiny copilot seat with one of you because I believe in her. She’s done some crazy flying since I’ve been part of her crew. But it’s not enough for her to trust us. We have to trust her, too, you know?”
No one else responded, but they didn’t have to. Determination replaced fear. Atalant led them further into space, closer to the first wave of pods. As she inched them closer, the light of the stars vanished from the viewscreen as the oval-shaped Mmnnuggl skiffs surrounded the settees. She pressed her thumb into a small, square pocket on the console. The Heaven Guard dropped from the Lucidity and fell back into the upper atmosphere for safety.
“Here we go,” Nicholas muttered over the comm.
Emn’s presence tightened in Atalant’s mind…and then the horizon exploded.
Emn pulled the cellulose from the forest, bound it, captured the released energy, and held it while it bucked against her. Atalant felt the push that spiraled the Ardulan ship debris from its orbit and into the enemy fleets. Sections of hull and shielding, broken into shrapnel, spun near the enemy ships. Ardulan bodies floated in between. The Mmnnuggl ships proceeded towards them, the flotsam bouncing off their hull plating. Atalant held her position and waited. A heartbeat. Then, another.
Atalant felt Emn’s strain as she pushed at the amorphous clouds of biometals, as she tore the cellulose out of the corpses’ digestive systems. Metal flaked and cracked—bodies bloated and burst apart. Entrails smeared across viewscreens, and jagged pieces of metal scraped hulls. There wasn’t enough debris to impair the smaller ships—nine broken Ardulan cutters, no matter how large, weren’t highly significant, but they were cumbersome, and that, for the time being, was enough.
It was chaos, but the larger ships did not move. The thin cloud of debris continued to expand until contracting and condensing into individual bubbles. The bubbles tangled amongst the armada, but still, the larger ships stayed, their hull plating and shielding sufficient protection against metal shards of any size.
Atalant waited until she felt Emn pull at the debris cloud, locking it around the Alliance ships. Now, they only needed a catalyst. Trying not to think about what the metal would do to her own ship, Atalant pushed the Lucidity into the center of the debris cloud, her shield of shrapnel becoming denser the farther she flew thanks to Emn. Then, she turned the ship towards the largest Mmnnuggl pod in range and fired the manual laser. She hit her target without damaging it, but she did get its attention. At the same time, buoyed on the three absolutely disgusting twigs of andal she’d eaten half an hour before, Atalant focused on the primary cellulose laser port of the nearest cutter. She could do this. She had to do this. It was just a Talent. Nothing creepy about it at all.
Except, the tingling on her skin was back, feeling almost unbearable this time, like needle pricks. Atalant took a deep breath and listened to the andal, letting its chatter distract her while she reached out with her mind, past her ship, and into the lead Risalian cutter.
She saw the laser port in her mind’s eye. She understood, somehow, its function. Its weakness. You don’t work anymore, she told the port, like it was sentient and would bow to her will. She felt ridiculous, even though it was the same thing she had done with the gun. Talking to objects. Commanding biometals. She was a Neek. She wasn’t a god.
You’re not a—
In the next heartbeat, as heat swelled across her skin and the pricks turned into jabs, the port melted.
Damn.
Again, she fired the Lucidity’s laser, this time at a cellulose-free Mmnnuggl pod. Again, it connected. The surrounding fleet responded. Ships moved into attack formations. Having avoided the initial wave of debris, the settees flew back into play a moment later as laser shots began to fill space. Atalant could see scorch marks on the pod she’d targeted, but little else. That was fine. She’d not anticipated causing damage with just one shot, even though cellulose weapons could make quick work of the hemicellulose shields as long as she kept at it while using manual targeting. Not that it mattered. It was all a stunt, anyway, that the Risalians were in on. Besides, she couldn’t cause any real damage herself. Microkinesis was what was really needed out here, and that was specific to the flares, or rather, one flare in particular.
I’m all yours now, sweetheart, she sent to Emn as she slid her hands from the console and leaned back in the padded chair.
Their connection tightened, filling Atalant’s head with complex images of crystalline cellulose and the battle around her. Emn connected to the Lucidity through Atalant, which gave the latter a unique view of the action.
Nice job with the cutter, Emn sent distractedly.
Atalant shuddered. I’d like to keep my “elding” to a minimum, if possible. It’s… I don’t like it, the mental-reaching-manipulation thing. Cellulose or not, it’s weird.
Emn didn’t get a chance to respond. A small pod raced above the Lucidity and fired three short laser blasts. Emn blocked them with the remains of a boarding ramp, which she then pushed with enough force to embed into the hull of the pod. Gas leaked from the opening, and the ship spun into Neek’s atmosphere. Nicholas whooped over the comm. A Risalian skiff approached the Lucidity, but never managed to fire. The skiff’s crew had already removed the cellulosic components from the lasers and hull, but—Atalant realized the moment Emn did—had left cellulosic cartridges in their food printers. Buoyed on a seemingly endless supply of andal cellulose, Emn jerked the printers from their housing and drove them into the skiff’s engines. The skiff, unable to alter its course, skimmed just above the Lucidity and crashed into a Risalian cutter. A sizable chunk of the cutter separated from the hull and spun with the skiff into Neek’s orbit. Emn salvaged them both, tore apart what she could, and pushed the pieces back into the fray. They were all empty of living beings, of course, because of whatever agreement Yorden had made with the Risalians, but Atalant still felt Emn’s smug satisfaction at the destruction.
Atalant watched the Heaven Guard weave through the larger wreckage, a mixture of longing and admiration in her chest. Small metal pieces scarred their hulls and threatened to crack their viewscreens, but they only pushed farther into the debris cloud. Skiffs and pods followed them, some firing lasers, some merely tailing. The settees avoided their fire. Their enemies carried no protection from Emn and had to rely only on their piloting skills and their ships’ maneuverability. Bait and chase games, however, were a common drill at practice, and the Guard performed the maneuvers flawlessly. They grouped and formed as needed, leading their tails through the debris and, with some help from Emn, leading the enemy ships into each other. Two Wen skiffs chased opposing settees, the teardrop-shaped ships shearing a heart shape around a Risalian cutter. The skiffs slammed into its top side and crumbled. Mmnnuggl pods knocked into each other like marbles as they too gave chase, their maneuverability severely hindered by their shape and the larger metal fragments, their scanners impeded by the swirling cloud. A small Keft vessel was compressed and flattened between two dredgers as it chased a settee between the two larger ships that were both attempting to target the Lucidity.
For a moment, it was perfect. Atalant wondered briefly about luck and planning, before everything fell apart.
The Risalians pulled back. It might have been at Emn’s request or command, but no explanation was forthco
ming in Atalant’s mind. In response, the Mmnnuggl pods, both large and small, moved forward and began targeting the flotsam. The rest of the armada remained suspended, as if debating which way the battle was turning. The Mmnnuggls, however, persisted. The smaller pods sped around the top of the debris cloud, breaking apart the larger fragments. They held their fire on each piece until the remnants were small enough to be inconsequential. Other Alliance ships joined in then, finally, and moved to the edge of the debris cloud, repeating the procedure.
“We ready for the next part?” Nicholas’s strained voice came over Atalant’s comm. “We aren’t looking so magical anymore.”
“Think so,” Atalant responded. “Hold on.” Can you reform any of it? she asked Emn. The Ardulan might not have even been able to hear her, but it was worth a try. They couldn’t lose now. They were too close. Everything was just too close.
Atalant…I… Fatigue saturated their link. I can’t form as quickly as they disintegrate. I didn’t prepare the automation in this manner, either, so I have to do each individually. I’m…I’m too tired.
Atalant watched on the viewscreen as settees courted target locks from tailing pods. Laser fire hit the Lucidity from multiple sides, and Atalant mentally pulled away from Emn. The Lucidity began to spin and shudder from the impacts, and smoke started to seep from the ceiling.
“Atalant!” Nicholas’s voice sounded throughout the cabin.
Emn’s panicked voice rang in Atalant’s head. They’ve obliterated the last of our flotsam, Atalant. There’s no more shielding, and you’d need a fleet of flares to just pull the ships into one another without help of the debris. Her tone changed from a simple report to something far more personal. You’re in danger.
Atalant silently agreed, but made no move to reengage with the Lucidity. If this was going to work, they couldn’t seem desperate or frightened. They had to seem invincible. Nicholas had spoken about how little damage hemicellulose lasers actually did against cellulose shields. She had time. A few minutes—nothing more. Nicholas—he was in one of those settees. He didn’t have much time at all, although that he was worried about her was touching.