#
‘He’s waking up.’
Ogotemmeli heard the voices, still caught in the hum of Xam, and felt the slab of stone he was laying on slowly freezing with nightfall. He opened his eyes to Akwesida dropping beneath the horizon. A meddling mountain range reflecting the last of the rays from its frosty peaks. He had to fix the melody before the others retaliated.
‘What happened?’ he asked, looking into the concerned flame in Ishimwe’s eyes.
‘The marabouts have been binding elements into you for days,’ Ishimwe snorted. ‘We found what was left of you drifting towards Awukuda. The few Fidan alive told us what you did. You can’t push yourself so, Ogotemmeli, none of us can. You-’
‘I have to talk to the other Okyin and griots,’ he said. ‘What I saw...’
‘The Yaadan troops are about to turn Earth into a snowball, a delegation is on its way now. The Okyin is delirious with pain. The Benadan are fanning the flames. Whatever you’ve seen won’t make much of a difference. I’m of a mind to launch an attack as well. We all respect you Ogotemmeli, but this new red matter is too dangerous.’
The Yaadan chose that moment to land around them in a ring of frozen gases.
The Okyin Yaa looked around her, and then at him.
‘Night is my favourite time to visit your world Ishimwe. I am happy to see your High Griot is alive and back from his foolish mission, but I don’t see your troops—I was expecting thousands of warriors, not healers and citizens.’
Ishimwe snorted. ‘Awukudan are all warriors,’ she said. ‘You best remember that Adeba, outnumbered and far from home.’
‘Foolishness seems evenly shared,’ Ogotemmeli said.
The Okyin Yaa’s opened her mouth to speak, but he stepped in.
‘I loved her,’ he said. ‘Since we were children, we’d been inseparable. Don’t you think I want revenge? I was there when she died. You counselled against intervening, and now you counsel an assault? You want to destroy another world? Where our ancestors are still burnt into the ground? That will kill us all, on every world, and then what?’
‘The Akwesidan told you those things?’ Adeba said, ignoring his taunts. ‘Those exact words—destroying the Earth will destroy us too?’
That’s what the melody told him, but they hadn’t said it. Some said storytelling was a lie. So, he lied. ‘Yes,’ he said, looking into her eyes. ‘Those exact words.’
She paused. The Akwesidan were the oldest of them all. Ogotemmeli watched her face strain between her emotions, her traditions, and her own mind.
‘The Osrane are already attacking Benada, we’re taking losses. The planet is safe for now, but...’ She sighed, turning to Ishimwe. ‘He has to tell the Okyin Bena himself. I will not attack... yet, but only if he joins the fight on Benada. If we are to risk the planet then his life should be on the line as well.’
Ishimwe looked at him. He was still weak, but her honour depended on this as well.
‘He will leave with you for Benada,’ she said, turning towards Ogotemmeli. ‘You loved her, it wasn’t meant to be, but you did. We cannot take your pain for granted, but if Benada suffers the same fate as Fida, then the Earth is gone. I will land on it myself and set it on fire.’
#
‘ID Please.’ The officer’s eyes popped at the rank on the ID bearer’s card. How did a girl of twenty-four become CTO? And what was she doing at a cult fair? But it wasn’t his place to ask, so Kiania stepped into the crowd of cultists gathered on New Tiananmen square.
Letting her keep her ID as a courtesy had been a bad idea, as was letting her access her lab before leaving.
She shoved her way towards the chaotic central stage where various cult leaders and agitators took turns insulting each other for their followers’ amusement.
She stepped on stage unnoticed and did the one thing she knew would catch everybody’s eyes. She stripped off her clothes and held up a syringe of red matter.
The air was warm against her chest, but the intake of breath by the crowd sucked it away, leaving her in cold silence.
Was she supposed to say something? She hadn’t planned anything beyond the theatrics.
‘Drop the needle or we will open fire!’ a voice rang out from the security thopters. ‘You have a five second warning. Remember to rely on ChinaCorp for your every need! Five...’
She slammed the needle into her buttock.
This has to work, this has to...
Her insides took fire at once. She felt her liver melt, then her right lung, then her left, and her stomach. She dropped to her knees, her hands glowing, leaving molten imprints in the metal of the stage. She tried to scream but couldn’t, her open mouth blooming red with her vocal chords burning.
Her brown hair crackled and flew off, her eyes melting down her face. No, no, no, no! And the last of her synapses exploded. The red matter ran through her, gorging each of her veins for the world’s cameras to see.
The glow shrank until only a blood-red tear floated on the breeze and disappeared.
The crowd was silent. The thopter had stopped its countdown. The air tingled with static, and a slew of raindrops hit the stage in a single line, echoing like rapid-fire, and took the shape of a translucent, naked woman, floating inches above the stage.
It worked! she thought, barely remembering the agony of the previous moments. The thopters opened fire, bullets passing through her, ricocheting on the stage and into the crowd.
Instinctively, she pulled heat out of the air, dousing the thopters in flames.
She drew the elements upon herself, becoming a single drop of water, and floated upwards into the atmosphere, while the crowd poured out of the plaza, rampaging through Beijing to another tremor.
#
‘It’s snowing on the ship, Captain!’
Captain Niimi-Feng had seen strange things since being dispatched to Huǒxīng on the Ming Destroyer; but snow falling in space was the strangest.
‘Get ready to fire!’ he commed back to his 2nd Lieutenant.
‘It’s too volatile, sir!’ Panic registered in the lieutenant’s voice. They knew what came after snow. ‘If we wait until it solidifies...’
That’s the point, the Captain thought.
‘Start loading the weapon! Keep it aimed at where the snow blows thickest!’ he barked. We’ll have a second, maybe less.
The snow coagulated with a crunch, and an icy-blue being materialised, looming over the Ming, billowing frozen winds at the ship.
‘Now!’ Captain Niimi-Feng screamed as the giant brought down two destroyer-sized hands on the ship.
The red matter blasted the creature in the chest, just as its hands were about to smash the ship, and it dissolved into the ray.
His crew exulted on the com-lines.
I’m not dying today, he thought, just as a baritone note rang against the Ming’s outer hull. Oh no... the walls around his cabin dissolved, the note vibrating him out of existence.
#
Ogotemmeli sat above the battle, playing the strings on a Kora drawn from the rusty Benadan dirt, while an ice giant disappeared to coordinated blasts of red matter.
A small note of space dust rose from his instrument, and sped towards the Osrane destroyer, gaining size and momentum, and crashed into the ship, turning all its particles and crew to vapor.
‘They’re getting better,’ the Okyin Bena’s voice rang over his shoulder.
Benadan warriors rained from their planet in clouds of magenta dust, consolidating around ships and turning to stone, crushing them to diamonds. But far too many were cut down by the red matter.
‘The Osrane don’t care how much they lose. And they hardly stand a chance,’ Ogotemmeli said. ‘They’re unrelenting. Perhaps there’s something to learn in that.’
‘Have the Akwesidan grown addlebrained?’ she asked. ‘Or do they just not care?’
A hundred gaseous rhinos in brown and beige shades, charged down the plane of the elliptic, dodging blasts of red matter that hit other
Osrane battleships, disintegrating them.
‘Perhaps there is something to learn in that,’ the Okyin Bena retorted.
The beasts melted into the ships, poisoning the crew, and reforming outside as the ships collapsed to Benada’s pull.
‘Well, we can certainly destroy them,’ she said, rising, her hair a cluster of tiny golden meteorites in a halo behind her head. Something drew her attention.
‘Ogotemmeli. You’ve seen stranger things than I. What is that?’ she asked, pointing at a swirling mass closing in on Benada.
Ogotemmeli didn’t recognise the pattern of elements. It approached slowly, a swirling mist of browns, greens, and blues, a flurry of minerals reminiscent of...
‘Osrane!’ the Okyin Bena growled, launching herself at the being.
Of course! Ogotemmeli thought, shooting after the enraged Benadan queen.
Why would an Osrane do that? Was it a trap?
If he had known the flesh, perhaps an Osrane had made the opposite choice.
He released his energies, trapping the Okyin Bena in a ring of ice and fire just as she struck at the intruder.
#
The essence of former human, Kiania Hui Bon Hua-Figuerido drifted towards Huǒxīng. The memories of trees and lakes, the few holograms of falling snow she’d held on to since childhood, all drifted away from her in minute particles of H2O, chloroplast, and silica.
Her consciousness tugged her towards Earth, no matter how hard she tried to pull together.
ChinaCorp pacifier jets speckled the skies, dropping payload after payload on civilian areas. Rio was on fire. Had it only been less than a day?
A glimmer caught her eye above the planet’s curve. A full fleet of Destroyers was preparing for translation to Huǒxīng.
If the people couldn’t stand up to the company’s war machine, perhaps the strange elementals could.
Strange? Is that what I am?
Huǒxīng glowed ahead, but a storm rose from its orbit, wrapped in a golden aura, coming straight for her.
Whatever it was, she hoped it would listen first, she thought, before losing consciousness.
‘We should kill it.’
The Okyin Yaa wasn’t the first to suggest it. The death of thousands of Yaadan had left her wary, and the mix of elements floating in the plasma bubble was an easy target for their exhaustion.
Ogotemmeli felt drawn to the bubble. The swirl of matter hummed to him. It was hard to keep his flame burning; it wanted to change, to become wood, grass, gasoline...
He placed a hand against the bubble, and dissolved into a pure cold flame, the elements inside pulling closer to him, pushing against the translucent plasma.
He drew all the heat under the dome to him.
The plasma bubble exploded.
The Osrane burst through, pulling herself together in a flurry of blended hues, and hit the ground panting.
Kiania looked up, her jaw dropping, letting little puffs of oxygen into the Huǒxīng air.
They were all different, a chaotic mix of elements held together into ice giants, gaseous ghosts, rocky armours wrecked with storms of gas. But she was right, it was there in their shifting features, in the dress and ornaments, Luba and Oromo, Berber and Nuer, Wolof, Ndebele, and others. Those who’d survived the corporate satellite-mining, and now they had her.
‘They’re coming,’ she said desperately. ‘They’re coming.’
‘That’s a warning,’ Ogotemmeli said, turning into flame-lit ice. He reached his hand out to Kiania. Their elements mingled, his warm ice turning her traces of auric powder to gold melting on the floor, and they merged into one. A giant of bubbling water, waterfalls in its eyes, and the breath of a forest after the rain.
Do you hear me? he thought at the Osrane girl. He didn’t know her name, but he knew her.
Yes. She answered him. She felt her own weakness in the blizzard of the man’s power, in how solid he felt, grounded in his worlds, while she was one sneeze away from vanishing. And there is also a tune. What is it?
Salvation. Or I’m a complete idiot. Why would you do this to yourself?
It’s my technology you’re fighting. None of us knew what you were. We have nothing left, we needed the resources. I understood who we were fighting, worse, the CEOs knew all along. I had to do something. I made things worse. ChinaCorp is losing it.
What happened to us? The red matter changed our ancestors somehow. Why is it killing us now?
I don’t know. Everything we mine leaves an imprint. I don’t know for sure, but the elements recognise each other, and then they vanish. Jīnxīng... What do you call the second planet from the sun?
Fida.
Fida was just a test, I didn’t know the planet wouldn’t take it, then the earthquakes started. We... She felt a change in his emotions and paused, letting his feelings for Rakoteli envelop her. I’m sorry for your loss, I truly am, but we’d been losing people for half a century. All I ever knew was the war, my father died before my birth, my mother on one of the destroyers. I guess we all try to make up for something. But what about you? You can kill us anytime, why don’t you?
The song you’re hearing? I heard it whole. I heard what your mathematics showed you. If you hadn’t killed my only love, I wouldn’t have convinced the others. You’d be dead and so would we.
The melody aligned suddenly, and they saw Earth, gleaming, blue, green, brown, and then it was gone.
Did you see-
Yes, he interrupted. Yes, I did... I think I know what to do. I will need you, but...
But we might not make it?
We won’t make it. Not in that sense.
She thought back on the carnage she’d caused and the future she’d seen and nodded.
They separated, and the humming stopped.
Ogotemmeli turned towards his people, standing stunned.
‘For a moment, you had us all in a bind,’ Ewaso the Aabadan Griot said, his icy features twisted. ‘And... I heard something...’
‘What you heard is what the Akwesidan showed me. It ties us to them and them to us. We can’t let this war go on, we have to return somehow, we left the continent when it was broken, we have to return to heal it.’
‘Our ancestors sought elsewhere what was stolen from them. It’s when they dug their heels into what was theirs that we became an inspiration to others, and a threat to the corporations.’
‘Some of us must return, and find what we have left, only then can we leave this system, and become all that we can.’
The Okyin Bena laughed, a genuine smile lighting her eyes.
‘We’ll take care of the fleet,’ she said, the other Okyin acquiescing with resolute grunts. ‘You heal that dying planet if you can, but if we can no longer hold before you have, we will attack.’
‘If you fail so do we,’ Ogotemmeli said, turning to the other High Griot.
‘Xam,’ Karamata said.
The others chorused approval and knelt, placing their foreheads at their Okyin’s feet.
‘Your tales will be missed,’ Ishimwe told Ogotemmeli.
‘I’ve been told that once.’
‘Sing when you get there, for all of us.’
He smiled faintly and turned towards Kiania. ‘What is your name by the way?’
‘Kiania Hui Bon Hua-Figuerido.’
He moved his lips soundlessly.
‘Can’t pronounce that,’ he said. ‘Are you ready?’
‘I shot myself in the ass in public for this.’
Ogotemmeli laughed. ‘You would make a fine griot.’
They merged.
‘Gather your forces!’ the Okyin Bena yelled at the other Okyin, the ground cracking beneath her feet. ‘We’re gonna give the Osrane what they’re coming for.’
#
‘Take out as many ships as you can,’ Kiania commanded.
Six massive forces blew through the ChinaCorp fleet, slamming ships into each other, exploding bubbles of red matter absorbing industrial and organic matter alike.
>
Ogotemmeli heard new voices on the song, and Earth appeared in the distance. He remembered the stone towers built so many years ago.
That’s where they’d land.
They broke through the clouds over the earth.
‘Stop the carnage,’ he told the others. ‘Neutralise all ChinaCorp operations, their military and industrial bases, leave nothing, then join me.’
They broke off, and Ogotemmeli landed.
The land looked like a writhing snake, valleys and canyons of lacerations, like a slave beaten by a thousand overseers.
A dozen ChinaCorp pacifiers hit Mach 3 overhead. Kiania took over and scrambled the magnetic field around the jets.
They fell spinning and slammed their watery fist through the ground in a wide circle.
Water bubbled through the gritty soil, brown and muddy at first but the water washed out the mud. A small pond, and a few withering reeds. A start. But they would need the others.
Karamata and Afalkay, the Griot of Benada, landed and looked approvingly at the circle of Pacifiers.
‘The skies are clean,’ Karamata said, grinning.
‘So are the streets,’ added Waysira of Yaa, landing with the impact of a glacier along with Ewaso of Aabada.
‘Knocked ’em cold,’ Ewaso said, pounding an icy fist into his hand.
Maitera of Yawda landed last.
‘I might have polluted the ‘seas’ a little...’ he said, shaking his head at the blasted lands, ‘...nothing worse than what they were doing to themselves.’
The earth shook.
‘The battle has started,’ Ogotemmeli said letting drops of water flow away from their body, forming a liquid Kora and sat stringing an aqua-melodic note. ‘We know what to do.’
Waysira and Ewaso called their ice djembe and balafon, pounding deep bass, and light notes.
Another minor tremor shook.
Afalkay called a kalimba of red dirt, dissonant keys, twanging over the bass and ringing balafon.
A shekere appeared in Karamata’s hands, beads rattling a hip-shaking groove.
Maitera let his algaita appear from his breath, blowing a deep monotone in the thin tube.
They sat, the ground rising and falling in wavelets around them.
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