Bright Shards

by Meg Pechenick

  I stared at it, uncomprehending, then looked around at my crewmates and saw Hathan’s affectionate humor reflected in their faces. Zey was openly grinning. “Rikasa?” I whispered.

  “There’s been a last-minute adjustment to our route,” Reyna explained. “Your physician on Earth made a very strong case for the healing properties of fresh air and natural light. Apparently the Echelon saw the merits of her argument. We’ve all been approved for ten days of recreational leave. Soilside.”

  Hathan said, “You won’t be the first human on Vardesh Prime, but it looks like you’ll be the first one on Rikasa. If you want to be. We can also make directly for Earth, if you’d prefer. No one would fault you for being ready to go home.”

  “So which is it?” Saresh asked. “Ivri avanshekh? Or ivri khedai?”

  I looked again at the little blue icon, blurred now by tears. “Ivri khedai. I want to see another sky. With two moons in it.”

  “Rhevi Ziral,” said Hathan, “it looks like you’re going home. Take us to Rikasa.”

  PART THREE:

  IVRI KHEDAI

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Three months later I stepped down from the ramp of the Ascendant’s shuttle and onto the surface of another world.

  It was a beautiful afternoon on Rikasa. The sun, which was smaller and redder than Sol, burned brightly in a sky of deep violet blue. The air was dry, and the wind that brushed teasing fingers over my hair had blown across a forest before it reached me. It was scented with something like cinnamon and something like mint. I filled my lungs with it. Letting my hiking pack thud to the ground beside me, I dropped to my knees and placed both palms on the dusty red soil, feeling its warmth and solidity. Then I bent forward to press my forehead against the ground between my hands. “Thank you,” I whispered. In my distinctly secular life it was the closest I had ever come to prayer.

  Ziral, unsurprisingly, was next to descend. I heard a footfall beside me and turned to see her drop to one knee. Pressing her right hand to the ground, palm up, she bowed her head and murmured, “Sigils of my ancestors witness my safe return.” She stayed there, unmoving, for a long moment before getting to her feet again. I followed suit. Only then did our crewmates join us on the ground. I wondered to which of our rituals they had shown deference by waiting.

  I hefted my hiking pack again. After buckling the straps, I flexed my shoulders, testing its balance. I was carrying thirty pounds of gear. Rikasa’s gravity was nine percent higher than Earth’s. I was long acclimated to the additional two percent that was standard on all ships and starhavens in simulation of Vardesh Prime, but I could feel the drag of the extra weight, and I knew what it meant. Falls would be harder and faster here. I would have to choose my footing carefully.

  The pack hadn’t been part of the original plan. Our leave on Rikasa had been designated as strictly recreational. The planet’s main revenue source was tourism, and there were resorts scattered across its surface. The idea—for me, at least—had been to spend ten restful days breathing in the crisp mountain air and doing as little as possible. All that had changed three weeks ago. Arriving a bit late to officers’ dinner one night, I had overheard Hathan saying to Reyna, “The timing is remarkable. I don't see how you can refuse.”

  “Refuse what?” I asked.

  “The Outmarch,” said Reyna.

  “The what?”

  She explained. “It’s an Echelon training exercise. Twenty-five eight-man teams competing in an overland race across difficult terrain. The race is held once a year in ten different locations throughout our space. Coincidentally, one of the sites for the next Outmarch is Rikasa.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “It’s happening while we’re there?”

  She nodded. “I’ve been asked to join a team.”

  “What she’s not telling you,” Saresh added, “is that it’s a tremendous honor to be invited. It’s notoriously difficult to gain entry to the Outmarch. With only two thousand participants a year, the lists are filled years in advance.”

  I shrugged at Reyna. “It sounds fun. Why not do it?”

  “Because I haven’t trained for it. Most competitors spend months preparing for the specific conditions of the course. Every location has its unique challenges. Sometimes the race is held in the desert, sometimes on a glacier, or on a planet with high gravity or low oxygen. Only a few days are allotted for the race. It’s a mark of distinction to even finish it.”

  “It’s the making of a career to win it,” Hathan said quietly.

  Reyna glanced up at him and flashed her teeth in a brief vulpine smile. “I know.”

  “So,” I said, “the Outmarch is Echelon only? Not Fleet?” Something in my tone caught Hathan’s attention, because he turned to look at me, his expression speculative.

  “Occasionally, when numbers are low in a given location, the Fleet is permitted to enter a few teams,” Reyna said.

  “Are the numbers low for Rikasa?”

  “No. The planet is centrally located, and its climate is relatively temperate. It’s expected to be a soft course. The lists have been full for years.”

  “Too bad,” I said. “I’d do it if I could. I’ve got a hiking pack and everything.”

  There followed an odd little silence in which my companions carefully avoided each other’s eyes. It dawned on me that they were trying not to laugh at me.

  “Eyvri,” Saresh said gently, “while your ambition is . . . laudable . . . I’m afraid you wouldn’t be eligible for the competition. Whatever your level of physical fitness in human terms, the challenge is designed for Vardeshi at the peak of their strength. There are no roads or trails. The course runs cross-country over difficult ground. Typically participants will cover around a hundred straight-line miles in three days, but the real total will be much higher due to detours around cliffs, ravines, bodies of water, and so on.”

  “Well, I wasn’t expecting to win,” I said with unintended venom.

  Hathan said, “I think you’re forgetting the reason for our detour to Rikasa. The Outmarch stretches the definition of recreational leave to its breaking point.”

  “I don’t see why. What could be more recreational than a nice hike through the mountains?” Seeing the look he traded with Saresh, both of them openly amused now, I protested, “No, I mean it. I’m in pretty good shape. For a human. And we’ll be on Rikasa for ten days. I can probably do a hundred miles over rough ground in that time. I could set the pace for our team. It’ll be like a gentle stroll for you guys. Relaxing.”

  “Our team,” Zey muttered as he cleared away my salad plate.

  Strictly speaking, it was a breach of protocol for him to participate in the conversation, but that rule had more or less fallen by the wayside since we left Elteni. I answered him directly. “Sure. Teams of eight, right? If you exclude Reyna, who’s already on an Echelon team, and Ziral, who I assume wants to be with her family, and Daskar—” I faltered.

  “Who would certainly be capable, but probably won’t be interested,” Saresh said diplomatically.

  “That just leaves eight of us.” I made a dramatic flourish with the hand that wasn’t holding a wineglass. “Team Ascendant.”

  “You actually sound like you’re serious about this,” Reyna said.

  “I am! Look. I can sleep all the way from Rikasa to Earth. But we’re only going to be soilside for ten days. Let’s stretch our legs a little. Let’s go camping.” I looked imploringly at Hathan. “Khavi? You’re going backpacking on Earth. Why not get in some practice now?”

  He answered with another question, directed at Reyna. “How would the Echelon handle the problem of Eyvri’s security?”

  “Truthfully,” Reyna said, “I don’t think it poses a significant challenge. The diversion to Rikasa was last-minute, which works in her favor, as does the fact that the contest roster has been closed for years. There’s no room for last-minute entrants with an anti-Earth agenda. And this near to the start date, Outmarch Control should already be fully staffed
, which means they won’t be bringing in any new hires. I imagine the Echelon would screen everyone involved for any history of anti-alliance sentiment and close the planet to new arrivals. Beyond that, as one member of an eight-person team, she’d arguably be as safe as she was on Elteni.”

  He nodded. “In that case, what are the odds that the Echelon would grant her another favor?”

  Reyna looked pensive. “A twenty-sixth team?”

  “Strictly non-competitive,” Saresh pointed out. “And the optics are good. A human in the Outmarch would be a historic first. It’s an easy way for the Echelon to gain points with the pro-alliance factions, at virtually no cost to itself, since we’ll already be there.”

  “The optics would be better if she finished it,” Reyna said.

  “It’s a soft course,” Saresh said. “There’s a chance that she could.”

  “A slight chance,” Hathan murmured.

  I knew a challenge when I heard it. I grinned at him. “Like I said. A nice hike through the mountains.”

  “I suppose it’s worth asking,” Reyna said, still sounding skeptical.

  To my surprise, as much as hers, the Echelon quickly sent back their approval of the scheme. Reyna reported a little grumbling on Echelon channels from those who had been denied slots in the competition, but only a little. “You won’t actually be part of the contest, so it isn’t like a Fleet team jumped the Echelon waitlist. And—with apologies, Khavi—we love to laugh at the Fleet, and you’ve made it pretty easy this time. The window for course completion is three days. Ten is unheard-of. It’s just more proof that your conditioning regimen is a farce.” She paused. “That’s what they’re saying, anyway.”

  It was a few days after our initial conversation about the Outmarch. On receiving the good news from the Echelon, Zey and I had decided to celebrate with an impromptu round of one of the more arcane drinking games from my college days. I was hazy on the rules, so we were making them up as we went along, which might, in fact, have been pretty much the way the game was intended to go. After the first boisterous hand, Hathan and Reyna, who had been playing dice in a nearby alcove, abandoned their own game to join ours. It was Reyna’s turn to deal. She had taken advantage of a quiet moment to fill us in on the Echelon chatter.

  “That’s not fair,” I objected, picking up my cards. “The extension was for me. It has nothing to do with the Fleet.”

  Hathan said dismissively, “Forget it, Eyvri. The laughter of cowards is a blade with no edge.” The words flashed into my mind so quickly I was sure for a moment that he’d spoken them in English. I had to translate backward to find the original rhythm of the phrase in Vardeshi. I was no longer surprised that I’d found Hathan difficult to understand before the first Listening; of all my crewmates’ speech, his was the most figurative. I was grateful once again for the quirk of telepathy that had given me access to what was looking more and more like Saresh’s complete lexicon of idioms.

  Reyna snapped a card down in front of him with excessive force. “Cowards, sir?”

  “Yes, cowards.” Hathan traded a conspiratorial look with Zey. “Say what you want about Fleet conditioning. We know the real reason you won’t let us into your little footrace. You’re afraid we’ll win.”

  “A fear,” Reyna observed, “which, if it existed, would hardly be borne out by the performance of past Fleet teams.”

  Zey gathered up his cards in a single flamboyant sweep. “Well, of course not. Those teams were handpicked. By the Echelon.”

  Reyna eyed him narrowly over her cards. “Handpicked to fail, you mean?”

  “I think the implication was clear,” Hathan said.

  “Rigged,” Zey said gleefully, immune to implication. “Totally rigged.” He plucked two cards out of his hand and dropped them in front of Reyna.

  She pushed them back at him. “You can’t just discard the ones you don’t like. It’s not even your turn. No wonder you think the Outmarch is rigged. Stop laughing, Novi Alkhat, the rivalry is serious business. And the truth—as you’ll soon find out—is that the Fleet just doesn't measure up. Your endurance is no match for ours. The Echelon trains longer. And harder. And, frankly, better.” To Hathan, who was watching her coolly, dice poised to throw, she said, “Wait and see. Even with your seven-day head start, I’ll still cross the finish line before you.”

  Hathan rolled the dice absently in his hand in such a way that they seemed to flicker between his fingers. I recognized the gesture. It was a coin trick that appeared, briefly, in a sitcom we had watched during one of my earliest colloquial English lessons. He’d done it without looking. I hadn’t known he could do it at all. “Is that a challenge?”

  “I think the implication was clear,” Reyna shot back.

  He cast the dice toward her side of the table with an understated flick of the wrist. “In that case, I accept. The first one to cross the finish line wins . . . what? A bottle of Rikasan brandy? I’ll take your threes, by the way.”

  She extracted a card from her hand and passed it across, frowning slightly. “Too obvious. And too easy. It should be something . . . inconvenient.”

  “A week without night duty,” Zey suggested.

  Reyna nodded judiciously. “Good. But make it a month.”

  “Done.” Hathan reached his right hand toward her. She touched the back of her hand to his. I watched in perplexity until I realized that they were pressing their sigils together. An oath-taking ritual? Distracted, I almost overlooked the significance of their pact. Then I put up a hand in protest. “Hang on. I thought I was setting the pace for our team. Did you just stake the reputation of the entire Fleet on my ability to outrun Reyna?”

  Zey grinned at me. “Better hit the gym.”

  I did. So did everyone else. The lounge, typically the hub of evening activity on the ship, was virtually abandoned overnight. Now my crewmates spent their free hours in the fitness center or in Requisitions. There was a flurry of unearthing and testing and trading of equipment. Hathan, looking ahead to his backpacking plans on Earth, helped me check over my own gear and offered replacements here and there with an eye to reducing weight. I cheerfully set aside my solo tent in favor of a palm-sized device that projected a dome-shaped force field. The field was invisible, and my hand passed through it with no resistance. Still, Hathan assured me that it was actually there, and that in addition to repelling insects, water, and wind, it also maintained an internal air temperature of the user’s choosing. Suspecting that I was being pranked, I followed his instructions to position the force field over my sleeping bag, then abruptly upended my water bottle over it. He and Zey both laughed at my cry of surprise when the stream of water suddenly changed direction in midair. “Unreal,” I said, watching it trickle down an invisible incline and pool on the deck plates. “Does it work while moving? Can you carry it like an umbrella?”

  “Of course.”

  “Great.” I tossed my rain gear onto the reject pile. My water bottles and purification tablets quickly followed, replaced by a collapsible water flask with a built-in radiation filter.

  It was a good thing I was able to eliminate so much weight, because I was bringing a number of items the Vardeshi weren’t: special sunscreen and portable oxygen inhalers and sunglasses designed to filter out radiation my eyes weren’t accustomed to. Daskar had picked carefully over the array of options Anton had sent along before choosing the best pair. They looked, to my relief, pretty much like normal sunglasses. I also had a fairly substantial medkit, although Reyna assured me that that was just a precaution. “The Outmarch is meant to be challenging, but it’s not pointlessly risky. The location of each participant is tracked with a transponder, and their medical readings are continuously monitored. At the first sign of distress you’ll be evacuated from the course. We’ll all have our flexscreens too. There are certain unavoidable dangers, like falls, but on the whole, the program is as safe as we can make it.”

  Daskar concurred. “The most important thing for you will be to minimize i
nteraction with unfamiliar organisms. Don’t eat any new fruits. Don’t smell the flowers. And keep track of insect bites or stings. It’s good that you’ll be traveling in a large group. The larger wildlife should avoid you entirely.”

  “What about aquatic life?” I asked. Daskar looked nonplussed. Her frown deepened when I confessed my desire to swim, but she promised to look into the question. Choosing to be optimistic, I tossed a bikini onto my gear pile.

  I noticed a few of my crewmates making equally whimsical packing choices. Ahnir was bringing his mandolin. Reyna teased him about it. “Only the essentials, Ahnir?”

  “My definition of essential may not align with yours,” he said, unfazed.

  “It aligns with mine though,” I said. “It’s going to be pretty quiet around those Echelon campfires at night.” Rikasa’s climate was temperate, but its mountains were high, and the predicted temperatures resembled those of a New England autumn: mild days, freezing nights.

  “Campfires?” Reyna asked. I explained, and was immediately informed that the Vardeshi didn’t build campfires. Not only were they environmentally destructive, the heat was superfluous. Vardeshi hiking clothes absorbed the warmth of the sun during daylight hours and radiated it back at night. Curious, I requisitioned an outfit for myself, but I packed my own cold-weather gear as well. I was all too aware by now that the concept of warmth was species-specific.

  “And don’t forget your formal wear,” Khiva said as I turned to leave Requisitions with an armful of new clothes.

  “Formal wear? For the woods?”

  She laughed. “No, for the reception afterward.”