“Turn it a little this way, so that it points straight at Hel,” Oalla tells me, proffering her hand closer and allowing me to move her wrist to the side. I turn it to get a slight degree change, so that I’m looking directly at the reflection of Helios.
Oh my God, it looks so weird, seeing Hel like this, in a reflection, and yet “live.”
The star is somewhat larger and whiter than Earth’s Sol, so seeing it this way really brings it home. It’s so different, so alien and cool blue-white. . . .
Out of nowhere, a sharp, existential memory of space vertigo strikes me.
Okay, I remind myself, it’s just another fireball in space. Just a round, white, fiercely blazing disk, burning against the slightly dimmer white sky. Except, there’s definitely some kind of living movement around the edges of its corona.
I notice tiny sudden flashes shooting outward from the disk, silhouetted briefly against the sky, then fading into the general glare. Honestly, I can’t really distinguish anything even now, only get an occasional sensation of motion, of blurred edges being weirdly alive. . . .
“What is it? It’s just too bright, I still can’t see!” I glance up at Oalla.
“Give her the blackouts,” Erita says. “I left mine behind.”
Oalla reaches inside her small clutch and takes out a pair of bulky sunglasses with special ultra-dark shield lenses. She taps them to activate some kind of tech. “This is military grade. Has advanced filtering and smart coating. I set it to blackout mode. Put it on and try again—this time, look directly up.”
I put the glasses on, and my world is immediately plunged into darkness. The sky appears night-level black, and Hel is a manageable sphere of pallor, no brighter than a lampshade.
And then I see it. A golden point of light explodes into a flare of extraordinary brightness on Hel’s surface. Golden white against bluish white. Tiniest difference in the nature of light. Only a hue variation to create true contrast. Warm against cool. The only way I can even tell this difference is because the visual device I’m using must be set to filter out and separate such hues.
“Okay, I see something. . . . What is it?” I ask. And then, even as I continue to stare, the golden flare—nothing more than a round dot, really—starts to move across the face of Hel. It flits like a firefly, swiftly, crazy-swift. And then it stills, but only after passing beyond Hel’s corona. It is now silhouetted against the black sky, where it sits, perfectly motionless, a tiny golden star. . . .
Until it flits again, moving sideways, with incredible speed.
The people in the courtyard around me staring up at the sky cry out again.
“Oh, God, what is it?”
My special sunglasses are set to block out most of the light, so I can’t see Oalla’s face. I can only imagine her expression as she tells me in a grim voice, “Keep looking.”
I do. And in the next moment I see another flare on the face of Hel. Another bright golden dot appears out of nowhere. . . . Winking into existence.
People equipped with devices allowing them to see it, scream.
It flits, it moves, it stills. . . . It hangs in silhouette against the sky, far across from where the other dot was, on the opposite side of the Hel disk, where it seems to blend in with the surrounding stars.
Wait, what stars? There can be no stars now; it’s daytime, and my night view is a special-filter illusion.
I blink, stare hard, impossibly hard. And my mind finally interprets the true picture.
Not stars—it’s all golden dots of light.
Hundreds of them.
They fill the surroundings of Hel’s immediate portion of the sky, flitting occasionally, stilling, freezing in place, like a hive of strange fireflies. They could be tiny dots in my retina, or some immeasurably huge objects more than a billion kilometers away.
I open my mouth and forget to breathe, as the cold realization washes over me.
“You see them now,” Erita says on the other side of me. “The crazy thing is, they don’t look much different than this, even when looking at them from the clear vantage point of space just beyond Amrevet’s orbit where we flew this morning.”
“But they are so impossibly far away,” Oalla adds. “They are emerging from our star. Coming out of Helios itself.”
“We first learned about it this morning,” Erita says. “The initial alarm call sounded at tenth hour, fifty-three daydreams of Ra. Original signal source was indeed Helios. The innermost planet circling Hel is Rah, so the signal was routed directly from the Rah Station’s sweeper sensors into the SPC’s alarm network. Interior Hel system patrols confirmed it. And then we confirmed it visually during the local orbital mission.”
I shake my head, refusing to believe, refusing to let it sink in.
I take off the blackout sunglasses absentmindedly and give them back to Oalla, squinting at the return of fierce daylight, despite the additional protective lenses in my eyes. And I continue to ask stupidly, even though on some deep, profound level I already know the answer. “So, these lights are—what exactly?”
Oalla looks at me with despair. “These lights are they. Our ancient enemy is here.”
Chapter 36
“Wait, how do you know?” I ask. It’s another stupid question, mostly to compose myself, to allow some normalcy into the impossible moment at hand. “I thought that no one knows what they look like. . . . Or is it that no one remembers what the ancients saw? Not even what kind of ships? Isn’t it right that there’s no actual record—”
“There is no official verified record of the ancient enemy, that much is true,” Erita says. “Either no one took pictures or videos of them when they first arrived in Ancient Atlantis—which is hard to believe—or more likely, none have been preserved to this day.”
“None that we know of.” Oalla’s frown deepens. “However—what we do have are some indirect descriptions and references in ancient literature and poetry. And they all reference bright and dire golden stars and starlight, and moving objects of impossible light—enough to give us a composite, general idea.”
Erita makes a little sound. “The stuff that I remember best is from children’s stories. Must say, I was bored to death with some of the sophisticated adult selections in our lit class, especially Cadet, Second Year material. Ode Everlasting to Atlantida just about killed me. . . . Anyway, I remember enjoying the fun adventure stories and myths in my spare time, about the little Starlight Sorceress, what’s her name—”
“Arleana,” Oalla says, shaking her head—even as the people in the courtyard and further along in the park exclaim as another bright flare happens overhead.
“That’s right, Arleana, Starlight Sorceress. The one who could sing and talk to the stars and make them obey her, and do all kinds of fun tricks. There were cute magic animals too, that followed her around.”
“Hmm, I don’t remember any animals,” Oalla says.
“Oh, there were animals.” Erita raises one brow. “The bird with the stupid long beak was my favorite, and the scarab that the bird tried to eat but couldn’t catch, ’cause it was so dumb, and some kind of crawling fat lizard or crocodile—”
“Okay,” I say, involuntarily shivering at the continuing anxious exclamations from the people nearby. “But what does that have to do with the ancient alien threat?”
“Not much,” Erita says. “I just remember that the Starlight Sorceress had some kind of magic enemy, and it was sort of like an evil star that didn’t want to listen or play with her, unlike the others. Or maybe it was something else . . . maybe a weird ghost made of golden light. I remember something about a golden ghost. Basically, the whole thing was a dumbed-down kiddie reference to the grownup records of the real ancient enemy. Everything, all of it, talks about golden light—exactly like that.” And Erita points up at the sky.
I exhale, and glance behind me where Gracie, Tuar, and my other guards watch me anxiously, while everyone else chatters nervously and tries to look up, with palms covering their e
yes.
“Right,” Oalla picks up. “So, as to your logical question, how do we know? My Imperial Lady Gwen, the details add up. These light objects move with what our sensors would interpret and describe as artificial sentience. In other words, they’re not natural solar plasma energy bursts of some sort. They exhibit an order and non-random organization. And they are of alien origin.”
I nod slowly, and my eyes return to the hologram flat reflective surface that’s still projected from Oalla’s wrist. But she’s moved her hand away, so it no longer reflects Hel from my vantage point.
“Here.” Oalla takes my own hand where I’m luckily wearing my wrist comm next to a lovely golden bracelet. She taps my unit and calls up a similar hologram mirror surface projection from my own wrist, showing me how to turn it on and off. “Now you can look at it yourself. Even if it’s not very effective.”
“Pretty much useless,” Erita adds. “Just a glare reducer. You can’t really see it this way.”
I glance at my hologram just in time to barely notice another tiny flash.
“We expected them to arrive in such form,” Oalla continues. “However, they still managed to surprise us. They came from the opposite direction.”
I wrinkle my forehead with effort. “How so?”
“All these centuries, we expected an extrasolar arrival. In other words, from outside the solar system, from interstellar space. . . . From Ae-Leiterra, the black hole that’s located at the heart of our galaxy. That’s why we put the Great Quantum Shield around it. That’s why the Rim missions, the patrols at the outer edges of the system. But they somehow bypassed all that. Apparently, Helios is the conduit, so they are massing in our solar system interior.”
I breathe for a moment in silence, contemplating . . . trying to tune out the people exclaiming variously at the sky around us.
“Why don’t we head back in,” Erita says. “Nothing new to be seen here, for the moment.”
We return inside the chamber of the Imperial Palace, and here I quickly explain to my friends—and Brie especially—in so many words about the extent of the alien threat. Gracie and the Cadets already know the basics from Fleet education, and my civilian friends have surmised enough from all our previous secret talk of the Atlantis Grail and Ra Disk being parts of an ancient ark-ship broadcasting to some distant potential enemy source. . . . But now, the threat is real and it’s here, and that’s the part they don’t yet fully understand.
My Bridal Court reception is effectively over. The Great Lapis Lazuli Chamber is half empty, since most of the Ladies have left in alarm and panic, forgoing any semblance of formalities—and hence liberating me from that elegant Hostess obligation of closing my Bridal Court—while a handful who are actual members of the Fleet in addition to being pampered nobility have been called to active duty.
The Imperatris, the First Priestess of Amrevet-Ra, and a few of the older ladies are still gathered in the central seating area, surrounded by guards. They are discussing the situation worriedly or making calls or checking the official news feeds on their personal devices.
“Gwen, come!” the Imperatris beckons me and the others. She immediately turns to Oalla and Erita with questions. The two astra daimon give a quick rundown of the real-time situation happening outside, and their earlier mission in outer orbit.
“So . . . it is true then,” Devora says with sorrow. “They have found us.”
“After all these centuries, yes,” Dame Tammuz says. “It is the end.”
Devora glances at her in horror.
“With all apologies for the grim nature of things, but you know I don’t mince words,” Dame Tammuz says. “My Sovereign Lady, I must therefore beg my leave. We’ve called an emergency IEC session, and all of this is going to be thoroughly discussed in the coming bitter hours.”
“My Imperial Husband and my Son will both be there—of course, go.” Devora nods her dismissal.
“Where is Aeson now?” I ask with a stab of worry, as Dame Tammuz rises. “Oh no, is he already gone? What about his SPC Commander duties, does that mean he is—? Is he in our Quarters? Let me call him—”
I start to tap the wrist comm number to connect to Aeson, then notice my incoming messages, and see the latest one—out of at least five from Aeson in the last hour. They all tell me not to worry, that “everything is under control,” and to call him when my Bridal Court is done.
No rush, Gwen, the last message says. Take your time, breathe easy, im amrevu, I will see you soon.
“We should be going too,” Gracie says, exchanging grim looks with Chiyoko and Laronda.
“Yeah, we’re supposed to report to Fleet HQ first—right now,” Laronda adds. “Not sure what exactly will be expected of us.”
“Unlike you two, I’ve only had desk duty, no actual flight assignments yet,” Chiyoko says softly.
Oh, God. . . .
I bite my lip with a new burst of anxiety, thinking of my little sister Gracie, fourteen years old, and active duty Fleet Cadet Pilot. And my friends too. And all the other Earthies out there who have pledged themselves to Fleet service.
I’ve always known that’s what they signed up for. But now it just feels so hollow, so weird and wrong.
“Gracie, please be careful,” I say, pulling in my sister for a quick hug.
“I will, don’t worry.” She gives me a brave smile. “Thanks for the crazy-daisy best Birthday party.”
“Sorry it had to end this way,” I whisper. “But seriously, please let me know—as soon as you’re able—what your assignment will be! Okay? Promise! I am worried. . . .”
But Gracie just shakes her head at me with a very grownup smile. “No, don’t. . . . It’s okay, Gee Two.”
I take a deep shuddering breath. Then I press Laronda’s arm and pat Chiyoko on the shoulder. Nervous glances pass between us.
Hasmik, Manala, Dawn, and Brie watch with heavy expressions as our Cadet friends take their leave, curtseying before the Imperatris and then hurrying out of the chamber.
“Crap, I bet they got him too. . . .” Brie suddenly checks her wrist comm for messages and nods. “Yup, they got Sangre. He’s been recalled to duty too, is letting me know he has to leave now.”
“Where is Logan?” I’m almost afraid to ask.
“Right now? Waiting for me in the car, as I told him. Being a good boy.” Brie gives me a sharp glance that’s almost a challenge. “But looks like I’m going to have to take a rain check on the remainder of his three months of service. Once a Fleet boy, always a Fleet boy. I guess it trumps Correctional. So, Lark, time for me to vamoose. Thanks for the fabulous party and entertainment, and see you around soon—if the aliens don’t get us first! At this rate, should’ve just stayed back on Earth and taken the nasty asteroid pill. . . .”
Brie nods to the others brusquely, then does the most awkward curtsey possible to the Imperatris, and heads out in determined fashion.
I turn to Devora Kassiopei. “With your permission, My Sovereign Lady, I must go see Aeson now, before he has to leave. . . .”
“Go,” she tells me gently, rising from her seat also.
I hurry back to our Quarters, surrounded by my guards. Erita and Oalla walk with me since they need to see Aeson anyway.
When we get there, the workroom is full of people. Aeson is watching multiple display screens at his desk, together with Xelio and Keruvat, while Anu and Gennio are running more data on another set of monitors.
As soon as Aeson sees me, he gets up quickly—just as I rush into his arms. There are no words between us, only a tight embrace for several long seconds, while I feel the strength of him surround me like a blanket, the hardness of his muscular chest under his shirt and jacket . . . and I listen to the steady, wonderful beating of his heart.
“Gwen . . . are you all right?” he whispers near the top of my head, even as I continue to hide my face in his chest.
“Okay now,” I whisper, looking up into his eyes.
“Oh . . . but you are so beau
tiful!” He suddenly notices, or at least responds to, my Bridal Court appearance; stares with wonder at my face with its subtle cosmetics that make me look magical; runs his fingers over my cheeks and my sculpted hairdo.
“Yes, and these two cleaned up to be quite stunning also,” Keruvat remarks, glancing at Oalla and Erita in their own high heels and finery. “Hope the Bridal event was worth it. Too bad it’s the end of the world, im nefira,” he adds to Oalla with a pained smile.
Oalla gives Ker a narrowed look. She comes up to him and gives the back of his head and neck a quick tap that turns into a caress. Then she leans over him and glances at his data screen.
Meanwhile, Xelio watches us and simply frowns, while Anu and Gennio give us equally grim looks.
Aeson continues to stare at me with a focused, unrelenting gaze, in silence, as if he wants to drown in me . . . to be lost and never to emerge and never have to face the grim reality. Eventually he takes a deep breath with a shudder and stands back, holding me at arm’s length. “Our ancient enemy found us, Gwen. The one thing we were most afraid of has come to pass. I am so sorry.”
“Aeson . . . I was outside and I saw them,” I say in a faint voice suddenly lacking breath. “The golden dots of light. Erita and Oalla explained some of it. So, what happens now?”
“We prepare to deal with them,” he says, pointing at the active data screens. “The Star Pilot Corps organization is on high alert, and I’ve recalled all the SPC Pilots to active duty, just as the IF Commander Manakteon Resoi has recalled all the Fleet Pilots of Imperial Atlantida. That includes all the Cadets—both the native ones and the ones newly arrived from Earth. . . . Other global organizations and the national military Fleets are mobilizing too. We’re monitoring events as they unfold from the proximity of Rah Station—for the moment.”
He nods at the largest monitor which shows a full-window, deep-space view of Helios the star against a cosmic background, taking up most of the screen. Even with the high-level radiation shield to filter the blinding, bluish-white solar light, it almost eclipses the golden dots sprinkled all around it like fireflies. Some of them are stationary; others move with sudden darting motion to transit across the face of Hel. . . .
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