Millions of humans and humanoids will be forced to abandon their planets, the first time Seeva’s ever heard of such an occurrence. Given the comm lag, the inhabitants who haven’t yet seen the beating daylight will be late in evacuating.
Seeva will be late as well.
Jaycken
Jaycken sails like the pirates of old, but across a sea of silver mercury into the gloaming: this moon’s dying sun, a red giant, ever expanding, ever growing … inching closer and closer.
For now, the sun submerges into a horizon of quicksilver.
The prow of Jaycken’s ship cleaves through the ocean of molten metal, spraying liquid stars into the twilight in their wake, but the droplets do not hover like water, they twinkle and chime before falling heavily and releasing plops that blend into the hum of gusting wind and the snapping of reefed sails.
Red-tinged light and searing heat shower Jaycken, who stands on the aftcastle of a three-masted carrack. Sweat beads across his brow. He intends to reach the port city on the mercury sea before dark, where his dad will be waiting, waiting for the goods this ship freighted from the Frontiersmen station in the mountains.
“Return to your studies,” Slyth, Jaycken’s Elemiscist tutor, says from behind him.
Jaycken can almost see the old man’s robes—composed not of cloth but of hundreds of diamond-shaped facets of framed, stained glass in yellows, reds, and browns—rustling in the breeze, his face as red as the sun.
Slyth continues, “Your best chance for wielding the power of the six original elements will come only if you devote a minimum of six hours study every day.”
Then, when I’m a hundred like you, I’ll have wasted twenty-five years of my life.
Jaycken suppresses a smirk, swings a line, rotates the helm wheel, and tacks into the wind on a veering course. Cargo groans and lines sway as the ship yaws. The eyes of the sailors around him beam in astonishment, in respect. The best new sailor they have seen, one who is not their own.
A sweet scent from the metal sea lines Jaycken’s nostrils, mingling with the acrid wind and odor of the salty men onboard. The waves below are thick and gelatinous, unlike water with its many smaller ripples; wind waves stream across the surface in scalloped lines, chasing after each other like shoals of fish.
Slyth grumbles and shuffles away, alone, his footfalls receding down into the hull. The old tutor would not be pleasant later. He was hired by Jaycken’s dad, Ost Leonbaron, to assist Jaycken in his studies and to help watch out for Jaycken and keep him safe as a Frontiersmen recruit at the station.
Jaycken motions for another sailor to take the helm and leans over the rusty gunwale, entranced with the unknowns in the depths that run to the horizon on this moon, Jasilix. So much wonder, so much untouched, so much unexplored. He sees his wavering reflection on the mercury: a young man with dark hair peering over the ship, fit, but not ordinary.
Jaycken loves the idea of sailing like the ancients, but mostly he loves the stars, the unknown: distant planets, adventures. He imagines himself as a futuristic knight riding in his white horse of metal with its fusion engine, its weaponry, imagines a beautiful princess in danger. He could rescue her and make new discoveries about the galaxy that man could not yet fathom.
That is why he joined the Frontiersmen at the station in the mountains, why he’s a recruit—albeit on a short leave to see his dad and help ship a few much-needed parts from the port city back to the station—for adventure and to help solve the mysteries of the galaxy and beyond, in spite of the danger for those harnessing the power of the original elements. And Jaycken cannot harness much of that power, being able to is rare. He’s shown no promise other than the minimum requirement every Frontiersmen recruit holds after months of study.
This whole boat and the entire look of the operation is because his dad’s company is shipping in the way the native inhabitants understand. His dad always said that you have to behave like the people you sell to, become one of them, at least in customs and appearance, to embody trust, to initiate the sale.
A sliver of some recurring dream Jaycken’s been having about a man standing in a pool of shadow jostles his thoughts. A gentle breeze. The man holds something in his hand. Jaycken struggles to remember more—details, events, or dialogue—but it’s all mist and fog.
“Jaycken.” Elargo, a broad man with weeds of stubble, sweat-caked hair, and a putrid odor emanating from his dingy robe, smacks Jaycken on the shoulder with an arm of sunburned leather. He piles rope as thick as Jaycken’s legs into a coiled mound. “There are two kinds o’ people in this world: those good men who work and respect authority and those who don’t. The thinkers. Thinkers get themselves and others into trouble. They’re weak. Men should be strong and work with their hands, follow orders. And if you still find yourself in a crap-beaten mood some wanderin’ day, you can pick on those beneath you. Unfortunately for you, you’re at the bottom now. Got to fight your way to the top, to stand beside your parents. Got to learn the ropes first. So, stop your thinkin’ and ponderin’ and keep sailing.”
Jaycken grins, a forced but friendly acknowledgement. He nods to the sailor and spins a gold ring around his thumb.
Not exactly the epitome of wisdom and knowledge.
Men onboard toss lines, slacken sails, and curse. Halyards clank to the rhythm of the metal sea, swinging under the pitching of the carrack.
Jaycken looks for Jennily, a young woman about his age with black hair that shines as if it has its own lights. Her parents are close friends of his family and want her to learn the art of intragalactic sales and shipping. She and Jaycken’s stepmother, Jasmonae, arrived at the mountain’s edge of the mercury sea on this loaded ship a few days ago, to pick Jaycken up and deliver their cargo to the port city for his dad. They would all meet the time-constrained Ost there.
Jennily leans against the starboard gunwale in the distance, entranced with the sea, her white dress like a sail rippling in the ocean wind.
A sunburned crewman with wispy hair trailing behind him walks past her and maybe says something too quiet for Jaycken to hear.
“You’re not moving fast enough,” Jennily replies, unfazed.
The man glowers but will not retort or admonish the family friend of his employer.
Jaycken shouts, about to ask what the sailor said to her, but something gurgles beyond the gunwale.
A backlit form swims beneath the silver wake, trailing alongside their boat. Wings spanning the length of ten men flap in the shallows—a water avian—one that defies reasoning and lives in the depths beneath the mirrored surface.
Jaycken’s breath catches in his throat as he studies the creature, the first time he’s ever seen one, although tales abound of monsters and beasts of all kinds lurking below. What other creatures ate, made homes, lived and died, and raised offspring beneath the fathoms of human sight?
Then another silhouette of wings joins the first, and another and another, until a school of water birds swim in shadows alongside the hull, as if curious about the world above. A form bursts from the surface, gold feathers dripping liquid mercury as it flaps against the air currents. A slender head shaped like a spear tip rises, and eyes like steel bricks settle on Jaycken.
A mirror albatross.
It must be studying his young face, frozen with stupefaction, must wonder what he is, why he rides aboard a vessel rather than lives within the comfort of the quick. Does it see curiosity, wonder, longing, or only a potential source of nourishment?
A thick splash erupts. The albatross’s wings could no longer carry it through the nothingness of air. Its form submerges as if being swallowed by metallic lava and rejoins its school.
A flock of other creatures like bats swoop down from the sky, dropping like stones, all burying talons through the quick, into one of the smaller albatrosses in the rear.
Jaycken cringes as more bats flap overhead, a niggling fear at the back of his mind. Flying things, a fear he’s had since childhood. The bats rise and carry the a
lbatross off, becoming a small blur on the horizon.
The albatross leader’s wings flap again below the surface, leading the shoal of its companions away, away from the sinking sun, away from the bats, into the shimmering waves.
Jaycken strides across the deck, wondering why he’s sailing an old ship, trapped in the past while organizations out there have spaceships, missiles, the ability to achieve and maintain lightspeed. Why his young stepmother, Jasmonae—not only two decades younger than his dad but also from a royal family rumored to have lost their wealth and wished to marry back into it—is here while his father is still working, always working, always traveling the galaxy and not to exciting destinations or for discovery, but for meetings and negotiations with the corporate organizations.
Jaycken’s not sure he ever wants to become an intragalactic business executive, not even after he puts in his years with the Frontiersmen, but, over generations, his family inherited and expanded an empire that now spans throughout the galaxy. Running that empire would be one of the most lucrative careers available. If Jaycken behaves and works hard through his years in the ranks of the military of the mind—how the Frontiersmen are known—then returns home, learns his duties and the way his dad’s system operates from the ground up, he will run the intragalactic empire in a couple of decades.
Jaycken, however, only wishes to become an Elemiscist, to work with the highest-ranking, most powerful Frontiersmen in unlocking the secrets of the galaxy. His dream. One he prefers over wealth, although he doesn’t share this dream with anyone, especially his dad. Only Jaycken’s abilities hold him back, keep him alongside all the other recruits. Slyth’s extra tutelage isn’t paying off.
Jennily waits by the gunwale, still captivated by the sea or bored. She’s either in her late teenage years or early twenties, maybe a couple of years younger than him.
Jaycken leans against the gunwale beside Jennily, clears his throat, and gazes out over the shimmer of the sea under twilight. “In a few years, I could be running this entire operation.”
Jennily remains silent, her hands folded inside a lacy cloth that covers her shoulders and arms.
Jaycken says, “I’ll create a voyage across the quick sea that’s an immaculate adventure: foods from across the galaxy, music, lights, and shows. There could be so much beauty on this water, especially at night. Moonlight. Starlight. People will come from all over the galaxy just for the experience.”
“You’re missing the entire point of your parents’ business. And you’ll never work hard enough to make yourself the real executive of something so vast. You never learned to work hard the way you were brought up, and you’ll have to have tutors guiding you at every step.”
Jaycken’s forehead tugs at his eyebrows in surprise.
A mental image a hunched old Slyth admonishing him for not studying the ways of the Elemiscists takes shape amidst the wonder clouding his mind.
“I can accomplish anything I set my mind to,” Jaycken says, “always have. Maybe you can be one of my tutors. I wouldn’t mind.”
Jennily doesn’t smirk, and her cheeks do not flush. “You’re not intimidating enough, not strong-willed enough to lead these sailors or the company. My parents were right.”
Wow, is she always this nice? “At the start of the voyage, one of the sailors laughed at me and made a joke when I couldn’t rig the mizzenmast. The next day I learned how to do it. No one’s laughed at me again.”
“You are confident. You just need to accomplish something yourself.”
Jaycken pushes himself away from the gunwale, wondering if he wants to talk to her at all.
“Jaycken, Jennily,” a voice says: his stepmother, Jasmonae, her black hair springing in coils around her pale face.
Jasmonae is wearing a violet v-rim, although she specifically asked Jaycken to remove his Frontiersmen’s v-rim during the voyage, to blend in with the locals, make them feel like he’s not such an outsider.
“There’s news,” Jasmonae says. “Something just happened.”
“What is it?” Jaycken asks.
“Your Frontiersmen reported that a sun in a nearby system has changed overnight. It was first visualized today as having turned blood-red and has started pulsing.”
What?
An image of a sun becomes the focal point in Jaycken’s mind, red streaks dripping down its yellow surface in beaded threads until it’s coated, enameled in blood. Then it starts to pulse, faster and faster. It becomes the center of everything, the center of the galaxy, the soul of a lost star. Not a red giant like the sun near this moon of Jasilix, but something else, something alive and hemorrhaging.
How could something like that happen to a sun?
Nothing similar has been recorded by the Frontiersmen in the History of the Galaxy.
Jasmonae purses dark lips as she listens to something on her v-rim. “The two inhabitable planets in that system are evacuating, afraid their sun might turn nova and incinerate them. Your father’s talking to the Frontiersmen to determine our level of danger and to learn why this has happened. Everyone in your mountain station is currently baffled.”
Dad has the contacts and clout to learn more information from Frontiersmen officers than I do as a recruit … But the Frontiersmen don’t even understand this phenomenon of a beating sun.
Jaycken’s eyes burn as he stares into Jasilix’s sun sinking into the mercury horizon.
Is it all a sign? Something that must be understood at the very least. Maybe the pulsing sun resembles a trophy, a medal. A calling, a challenge to discover its secrets.
Maybe this is my chance: discover the reason behind the change in the sun, rise above Frontiersmen recruit status. Remedy the situation. Me. I could matter in this universe of trillions.
“Is Dad at the Frontiersmen’s facilities?” Jaycken glances back through twisting masses of sails, lines, and masts.
That would be his dad’s first visit to the station where Jaycken works, and if his dad is at the Frontiersmen’s station now, Jaycken is sailing in the wrong direction, looking for him in the port city.
Jasmonae shakes her head. “Not there. We’ll see him soon though.” She points into the distance. “We’ve almost reached our destination. I’m sorry I told you to remove your v-rim, but you know your dad and his requirements.”
Never ceasing to fit in with each group they do business with, like chameleons changing colors. Poor Dad. He should just be himself, show his true face, and stop trying so hard. He’s accomplished more than nearly anyone in the galaxy.
“Kiesen’s coming too, to see Ost,” Jasmonae says. “He should be waiting for us at the port.”
Kiesen. Jaycken’s younger brother who’d yet to decide what to do with his life if that didn’t involve inheriting and living off his dad’s empire. Jaycken sure misses him though, his only real family growing up. Still his best friend.
Jasmonae and Jennily hurry off and disappear below decks as more of the massive sun slips below the horizon.
Why is Jaycken’s family here of all places, now, and why is there a port city on this moon if only mercury rolls across its seabed? Don’t humans and most humanoids seek water and not metal seas? Most towns on most planets are built along banks or piled onto shores beside water. Does all rolling liquid provide a sense of serenity, aid in survival, or bestow the wonder of another fathomless world? Does man ultimately wish to return to the home of his ancestors, the atavistic cradle of all life on the first planet?
“Step off when we dock,” Elargo says to Jaycken, lifting a locked crate from a pile already loaded onto the ship when Jaycken came aboard.
The sharp clang of metal on metal lances into Jaycken’s ears as Elargo and the crew stack crates on port side.
Jaycken rushes over to assist.
Elargo huffs, motioning at a swarm of haggling merchants and locals crowding an approaching wharf. They seem impatient, maybe even scared. Maybe they have also heard of the beating sun and are gathering food and supplies.
&
nbsp; “We set sail on the morrow for the last shipment. Better get whatever it is your young body craves tonight … out there. Slip away before your mother sees you. I heard you trying to talk it up with that young lady. Besides the pirates’ quarter, it’s fairly safe in this city. Plenty o’ police. So, don’t do nothin’, either.”
Does he really think I’m going to go find a brothel instead of visit with my dad and brother? As if I’ve done it a hundred times? Or once? The son of a rich man … that’s what he sees, what this upstanding sailor would do with wealth. And she’s my stepmother, not my mother.
A harbor rolls up to meet them.
Their ship is tied fast by the crew of disheveled men and women. Pillars of wood rise from the mercury sea and support piers that lead into a bustling city. Waves of quicksilver boom and splash against a jetty; liquid swells and folds over on itself, only to roll back into the eternal metal sea.
Rynn
The hidden bunker door swooshes up, hissing with the release of compressed air. Cold blasts Rynn’s glacial blue eyes, and her vermillion hair—comet-like; her dad said the color reappeared in their family every four generations—wafts over her shoulders. Fresh, clean air smelling of conifers runs in rivers through the entryway. Snow cakes the dirt walk outside.
“C’mon, Stareyes.” Her dad tugs at her mitten-covered hand as he steps out past a silver telescope longer than he is tall. He used to call Rynn Stardust when she was little. For the last decade it’s been Stareyes.
“I don’t want to go on another hike in the mountains.” Rynn pulls back, resisting.
“We have to go, now.” Her dad tugs harder. “You lost the fire, wood, water game.” He pounds a fist against his open palm three times, and on the third blow his fist settles out flat on his palm to symbolize water, as it had several minutes before.
The Forgotten Sky Page 2