Silver Wordsmith: An author's journey |
Like the crew of the Oshken indicated in their call to Valyen, their ship suffered significant hull damage while they were prospecting the ice rings around the furthest planet in their system. By Valyen’s own estimation, even though she made it no secret that she wanted them off the landing platform outside her house as quickly as possible, it would take at least ten days to fix. In the meantime, most of the crew moved into the guest lodgings, with a few choosing to stay behind on the ship, while Kviye moved into Valyen’s room and her father stayed in the single guest bedroom.
There were fifteen of them in all, mostly a Winti crew with Samir, two Fusir brothers and a member of a species Kviye had never seen before called Mraboran. The first evening after they landed, Valyen’s mom invited Captain Mokob and his first mate for dinner at the family table. The Captain chose to bring Samir along as well. “I’m sorry, I don’t think we made enough for extra guests,” Valyen said flatly when she opened the door to admit the Wintis and their tagalong Human. “Nonsense, Valyen,” her mother said sharply from the kitchen, trying to soften her tone in front of the guests, “We have plenty to go around for everyone. Please come in.” “I have to say we really appreciate the invitation,” Mokob said. “We haven’t eaten planet-side in months and everything smells absolutely delicious.” “You mean you’ve been only on your ship that whole time?” Kviye asked. “Well, we did waylay at two space stations, which is a step up from floating around in the confines of our ship, but can’t compete with fresh ingredients taken right off the land.” The Captain and Nmala took their seats, awkwardly stretching their ungainly limbs under the table, while Uncle Dekan brought in an extra chair for Samir. “Thank you,” Samir said and Uncle Dekan grunted in return. Within the family, it was only Valyen and Kviye that were comfortable with Trade Thorian. Valyen’s mother could get by if she had to, while the others had no knowledge of it whatsoever, so the two of them served as translators during dinner to the best of their abilities. “I didn’t think it possible,” Captain Mokob said after a few bites, “But the food tastes even more delicious than it smells.” “You’re too kind, Captain,” Valyen’s mother said, tilting her head to the side. “Not at all. Nmala here does most of the food prep on board our ship and he’ll be the first to tell you how astonishingly good this is by comparison.” Nmala made a grunt that could as easily have been a declaration of a life-long vendetta as a statement of acquiescence. “Well, second to tell you anyway,” the Captain added with a slight shake of the head. “So that last world you’d visited. What was it like?” Kviye asked. “Oh, it was that small Human colony on the edge of Winti space, nothing remarkable. What was it again?” “Nkagan” Samir answered. “That’s right! It’s where we picked up this fine lad to join our crew.” The Captain put his arm round Samir and shook him a bit. “Is that where you’re from Samir?” Kviye asked, trying yet failing to not make her conversation sound like an interview. “No, I grew up on another world elsewhere in the HID.” “The HID?” “Right, sorry, the Human Interstellar Dependency – it’s the name of all the Human colony worlds. I grew up on an insignificant little rock in one corner of it, not that much bigger than what you have here, and ended up moving to Nkagan because they’re going through a construction boom right now. It’s a boom alright, the workers though hardly get any benefit from it. And then one day I bumped into old Nmala here at the pub after my shift and he talked my ear off about their little venture.” “Did he now?” Valyen said, looking at Nmala who seemed to only have eyes for his food. “And now been flying with the crew of the Oshken for the last few months,” Captain Mokob said. “So what is it that the crew of your ship does?” Kviye asked. “They’re scavengers,” Valyen interjected, not lifting her eyes from the fork that was approaching her mouth. “Hmm?” Must have having sensed her daughter’s tone but not recognizing the word, Valyen’s mother leaned into Kviye for a translation. “Valyen!” she chastised when she got the answer. “That’s alright. It’s a fair assessment a lot of the time. A little salvage here, some minor prospecting there, you know, little things to make ends meet. But it’s the comets that give folks like us our name is where the money really is. Comets are temperamental beasts. And they need a particularly bold kind of crew to tame. They’re not beholden to the confines of our stellar systems and often visit us from far outside the Known Reaches. And sometimes they bear unspeakable riches. Mostly its rare ores, sometimes organic particles used for research and medicines. And if fortune’s favour truly smiles on you,” Captain Mokob dropped his voice low and smiled, putting his hand into an inside pocket of his coat. “You may find yourself a lode of these.” Pinched between his fingers he held an instantly recognizable black orb with its shadowy halo. A little smaller than the specimen that had taken Kviye to space and now sat securely in her pocket, the sphere in the Captain’s hand called to Kviye with its familiar ominous song. Kviye glanced at Valyen and thought her friend looked like Mokob brought an actual bapa zhaga into her home.
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The ship that contained their newest customers was an ugly conglomeration of parts, the big belly suggesting that it may have once been a smaller cargo freighter. The hull was covered by a decades’ old patchwork of repairs, while the great arms that made it look like an insect appeared to be welded to the body using little other than the hope that the ship wouldn’t fall apart.
After a few minutes of the comet chaser hissing and creaking as it adjusted to their atmosphere, there was a low thud in the hull. The entry ramp lowered after getting jammed in place for a moment and two Wintis ducked their heads and stepped into the daylight. Built for few ships other than their own, the Wintis stood at least a head taller than most Humans, owing mostly to their long toes. Kviye had never seen them because Wintis wore boots up half their leg, but she had heard that the toes culminated in hooves. The Wintis’ eyes, which sat wide apart on a slightly triangular elongated face, were round and mostly black, with only thin slivers of white visible on the sides. Flattened noses with narrow vertical nostrils were surrounded by thick short fur that covered the bottom half of their faces, while the Wintis’ hair was generally short, culminating in a slightly longer tuft at the top of their head. Of the two Wintis that disembarked, the one on the right was taller, with lighter auburn fur that stuck out messily from his cheeks. The other was chestnut brown, had a flatter nose and a scar running from his brow past his eye and down the length of his cheek. He stepped down the ramp more cautiously than his companion, holding with both hands a metal rod wrapped partially in gauze that Kviye did not immediately recognize as a weapon. “You can put that neural devastator away or walk right back into your ship.” Valyen spoke in the language common to spacefarers. The Winti with the lighter fur looked around for a moment, then patted the other on the arm. “Apologies. My first mate has seen more than his fair share of pirates so he tends to be a little too careful sometimes.” The Winti with the scar didn’t take his intense gaze off Valyen but did place the rod into a metal holster behind his back. “I’m Captain Mokob of the comet chaser Oshken, and this is Nmala.” “My name is Morozo Valyen and this is Hon Kviye.” Kviye nodded, wondering if Valyen spoke for her because she mistakenly thought Kviye couldn’t keep up with the language. “If you don’t mind me saying, I didn’t really expect to encounter any Humans this far out.” Kviye and Valyen glanced at each other at the unfamiliar word. “Humans?” Valyen repeated. “Humans, yes,” Captain Mokob hesitated, “That is the name of your species, right?” A ringing rose in Kviye’s ears and a heat bubbled in her chest. Her mouth went dry but still she managed to speak in a tongue much rustier than Valyen’s. “You know of others like us?” “Why sure. You’re not a common sight, mind you, but,” the Captain’s eyes widened and his mouth opened into a smile that revealed his flat blunt teeth, “One of my crew is Human. I’ll go get him.” As Mokob walked back up the ramp, Nmala stood immobile, regarding them. The ringing in Kviye’s ears only grew louder, making it hard for her to hear her own thoughts as they raced through the endless possibilities of what the next minutes could bring. She glanced briefly at Valyen and found her frozen with cruel determination, a look Kviye had never before seen on her friend’s face. She thought that maybe if the weapon was in Valyen’s hands, both the Wintis would be dead by now and the ship blown up into scrap. “Hey Samir!” Captain Mokob shouted into the open door. “Samir.” A muffled reply came from within. “Ngado? … Could you get Samir for me?” Mokob turned back to rejoin Nmala on the ramp, resuming his smiling disposition right where he left off. “He’ll be right out.” Kviye’s fingers found Valyen’s hand and grabbed it and she appreciated that Valyen returned an assuring squeeze back. A young man, with a sandy light brown face partially obscured by dark grease stains, and with a head full of short dark hair wound into dense coils, stepped out of the ship into the light. To Kviye’s eyes, he was unmistakably one of them. His eyes lit up when he saw them, and he rattled off a sentence in a tongue that was unfamiliar to Kviye. Judging by Valyen’s silence, it was equally foreign to her. The man’s face shed some of its enthusiasm which was replaced by confusion. He spoke in the language again, this time making it sound like a question, but Kviye and Valyen remained lost. “Do you speak Trade Thorian at least?” “Yes,” Valyen answered, “Though I didn’t know that’s what it was called.” “Great, perfect. Sorry, I guess I shouldn’t assume you’d know StEC this far out near the Adaract Hive. Still, it’s nice to see some familiar faces. Though, I have to ask, are you okay?” He was looking at Valyen when he said it, and she narrowed her eyes before replying, “Me? Why?” “I’m sorry, I’ve just never seen a Human so pale before.” Valyen looked like she was about to dig deep into her knowledge of informal Trade Thorian when Kviye stepped in with her own question. “You mean there are others?” “What’s that?” She wasn’t sure if it was her accent or the fact that the words caught in her throat but she repeated, “Like us. Are there others like us?” “Humans? Oh, like … billions. On Earth and on the colonies and oooooh I know what’s going on here!” His mouth was agape in wonder as he shook the arm of his captain who’d watched the conversation with increased fascination. “This must be one of those lost tribes. The ones that lost contact after the Great Fire. I would have thought they’d found all of you by now but I guess not.” “The Great Fire?” Kviye wasn’t sure if she liked the taste of those words on her tongue. Captain Mokob’s honking laugh startled her momentarily. “Well isn’t it just the most fortuitous thing that we landed here? Looks like you have a lot to catch up on. And you,” he pointed a finger at Valyen, “Look like the person to talk business with.” “Your crew should disembark,” Kviye offered. “They can sleep in the lodgings behind the garage.” She gestured with her head towards the white building where her and her father had lived for the past few months. “What are you doing?” Valyen hissed at her in their native tongue. “Offering them a place to stay.” “But at your place?” “That’s not our place. That’s –” “Please, my apologies,” Captain Mokob interrupted. “We didn’t mean to intrude.” “You’re not intruding,” Kviye said. “It’s nothing really, my crew is fine to sleep aboard the ship. It’s where we live anyway.” “You can sleep on the ship, Captain. I need a break from all that metal,” Samir said, and elbowed past his Captain to walk down the ramp. Mokob looked over his shoulder and then back at Kviye and Valyen. “Believe it or not, it does look better on the inside.”
Within minutes of Kviye’s arrival in the kitchen, all the members of the family settled around the breakfast table. Kviye’s father had come in from his daily rounds looking for more work. He’d had a part time job running numbers for a woman who owned a butcher shop and a bakery, but most of the openings were to work physical labour at the docks, which at his age and his general lack of physical labour experience, having run the accounting of the family business since he was married, were generally off the table for him. Still, he’d come in with a faint smile and a “good morning” for Kviye and a complete lack of updates which she would later have to claw out of Valyen’s mom instead.
Adri also arrived by this point, as always walking in while trying to avoid eye contact and scratching behind his head, as if embarrassed that he’d slept in even though no one present would think of mentioning it. Even Grandma Morozo lifted her creaky bones from her corner chair that allowed her to observe all the activities in the kitchen and adjacent living room and took her seat at the table. “Lian, what is this?” Grandma Morozo called out, gesturing with both hands to the spread before her. “Where’s my drink?” “Ma, I thought we’ve been over this,” came the gentle resigned reply of Valyen’s mom. “We have, which is why I thought you’d learn by now.” Grandma Morozo smiled wryly in the direction of Valyen, who kept her lips in a tight straight line so as to suppress a laugh and maintain solidarity with her mother. “Ma, it’s still morning,” Valyen’s mom reiterated, unwilling to budge from where she was sitting. “What of it? If you live as long as me, god forbid, we’ll see what you need to get through every morning. Now quit wasting an old woman’s life and get me my drink, or I’ll do it myself.” Valyen leaned in to whisper in Kviye’s ear. “She would, too. Last time she took half an hour and almost broke her hip.” Just as Kviye snorted in response, Valyen’s mom slapped her hands on both her thighs and let out an exasperated sigh. “Fine. Far be it for me to expect anyone to be halfway sensible in this house.” They all watched her, Grandma Morozo nodding gravely, as Valyen’s mom grabbed a stepstool and used it to reach to the highest cabinet above the kitchen sink from which she pulled out a bottle of a slightly murky colourless liquid, and poured her mother-in-law a small glass, placing it heavily on the wooden table before her. As Valyen’s mom passed him on the way back, Uncle Dekan leaned back in his chair and asked, “Lian, you mind pouring me a little of that too while you’re up?” “Don’t you start,” she responded, making a show of holding the bottle as far away from him as possible. Grandma Morozo slammed back her drink in a single gulp, loudly smacked her lips, and followed it up with a throaty “aaah”, the slightest shine of tears now visible in the corners of her eyes. In about fifteen minutes, if Kviye’s previous experience was any indication, she would get giggly. This would gradually morph into rowdiness, followed by a brief period of belligerence after which Grandma Morozo would clock out for a nap that would take her through to lunch. Kviye always looked forward to the rowdy phase. “There’s a ship that’s coming in any moment now,” Valyen said while she still had food stuffed behind her cheek. “They radioed about an hour ago saying they’ve got hull damage so I gave them the go-ahead to land on our main platform We owe it to the Malkins to get those two tractor engines repaired as quickly as possible, since we’re about to have our hands full.” When they moved into the Morozo household, Kviye became Valyen’s right hand in the garage. There was no way she was going to miss out on this job – they hadn’t had an off-world ship land here since Kviye’s crash. “Any idea who they are?” Kviye asked. Ever since she confirmed that the ancient skiffs that served as transports on her moon had once been capable of spaceflight, it only strengthened her theory that their ancestors came from some long-forgotten homeworld. By Valyen’s expression, Kviye figured that she was not amused by the twinkle in Kviye’s eye at the prospect of a Human from a distant world possibly visiting them some day. “Captain sounded like a Winti to me,” Valyen answered with a shrug and shoveled more food in her mouth. Not ten minutes later, Grandma Morozo, a proud longshore worker herself, with the zhelteska fish tattoo on her arm to prove it, threw shade at the subsequent stock in her family by bringing up Valyen’s grandfather. “Mitya was a man who built his body on the docks. Had the arms the size of tree trunks and not mention what was in –” Before Kviye got a chance to see everyone’s face turn beet red except Valyen’s, who was somehow immune to all of her grandmother’s shenanigans, the house began to vibrate, causing the cutlery to dance on the table. Rowdy Grandma Morozo was going to have to wait – their newest customer was coming in for a landing. When she and Valyen stepped outside, the ship was already low enough to blot out the sun with its insect-like shadow as it descended towards the landing platform. Though still black and mostly featureless against the bright light, Kviye could tell it was in rough shape, and its engines sounded like they had the starship equivalent of bronchitis. The wind from the ship’s atmospheric thrusters blew Kviye’s hair into her face, while Valyen’s ponytail twitched angrily as she regarded the vessel with lowered eyebrows and narrowed eyes, tightening the arms that she crossed in front of her. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she grumbled through shut teeth. “What is it? What is that thing?” Kviye asked as the ship concluded the last few metres of its descent and landed in the yard with a groan of metal. “A comet chaser,” Valyen answered with cool disdain, “Only thing worse would have been a pirate ship.”
Behind Valyen’s family’s home stood another structure, made from the same white stone as most dwellings in the city of Zhakitrinbur. It served as a waystation for the garage’s out-of-town customers, and even the occasional space-faring ones. When Kviye and her father first moved in, the whole place smelled like a meal prepared years earlier by one of the off-worlders. Whatever aromatic thing had been consumed within those walls, it did not come from Tanfana. Now, six months after they were forced to sell their family home in Vingu, the house in which Kviye’s mother had passed, their new accommodations did not quite feel like home, but between the family meals, working with Valyen in the garage, and Adri, Kviye thought it was almost there.
Her own bedroom was at the very top of the building, so when she’d get up in the morning, the first thing she’d do is look out the window, and catch a glimpse of the bay peeking over the buildings of Zhakitrinbur. Today it had been the rich green of foliage and looked both alluring and foreboding at the same time. “Are you up already?” Adri asked groggily from the bed. “You know I am, go back to sleep.” Not needing to be asked twice, he fell back on the pillow and would be out until breakfast time. Kviye wasn’t sure exactly how it happened. Adri was younger than his sister by a couple of years, which made him and Kviye almost the same age, and they’d known each other since they were kids. It was his attentiveness as she was recovering through the worst of her injuries that made her see him in a different light, and now, though the nights he had spent in her bedroom were not exactly a common occurrence, they were becoming more frequent. His sickness, the same one that had taken Kviye’s mother, still hung over them like a shroud, progressing slowly though it was, yet there seemed to be an unspoken rule between them to never address it and take whatever it was they had day by day. It had worked for Adri and Valyen’s parents, before their father passed, so perhaps it could for them. For a moment, she watched him sleep, a messy head of straw-coloured hair that had fallen somewhat over his shut eyes, his light-skinned face not showing any of the grey splotches that served as prelude to his bad days. Instead Adri, tall, not quite frail but slight of build, with his small nose and ever-concerned eyes, even in his sleep, almost made her consider crawling back into bed and skipping her morning routine. He was going to have one of his good days. Her own days started a few hours before anyone else’s, even Valyen’s, who was compelled to put in some work before breakfast otherwise she was never able to relax during her meal. Ever since she was able to do move her leg, Kviye had devoted her mornings to exercises that aimed to strengthen it with the hope of getting back full use. The doctor said it was definitely within the realm of possibility and she was getting close, save for the pain at the end of the day. She had recently incorporated morning runs into her regiment, and worked her way up to five kilometres daily. From an irritating necessity that only served to remind her of the fate of the skiff, the runs quickly turned into her favourite part of the day. It hardly ever rained on this side of the continent, so after a few city blocks, she arrived at the shore, running along boardwalks, dirt paths and through dockyards, all overlooking the brilliantly shimmering green ocean of Tanfana. Soaked in the briny breeze coming off the water, she watched the city of Zhakitrinbur wake up before making her way back home, just in time for breakfast. “Good run?” Valyen asked, coming in from the garage that abutted their house to wash her hands. “Just some discomfort towards the end. Otherwise can’t complain. Oh, and Kolei told me to let you know he’s got a fresh catch of zholteska fish, in case you were interested.” Valyen rolled her eyes. “You tell a man one time three years ago that you enjoy the occasional zholteska and you subscribe to a lifetime of updates on the latest zholteska catch, I swear,” Valyen said, finishing up and then following Kviye in for breakfast. “Morning Kviye,” said Valyen’s mom as Kviye entered the combined kitchen and dining room to help set the table. “Morning Gos Morozo,” Kviye greeted Valye’s mom with the usual term of respect for elders. “Kvee, I thought we’ve been over this. She’s Gos Morozo.” Valyen’s mother nodded in the direction of Valyen’s grandmother, a grey-haired woman who was one of those uncommon people on Tanfana who were lucky enough to live to see their grandchildren grown. “Me you can call ‘Ma’.” “Thank you,” Kviye answered, knowing full well she wouldn’t be able to; to take the step of calling someone else by the name she’d always called her own mother would feel too much like abandonment. “Morning, Ba,” Valyen said as she gave her sitting grandma a hearty squeeze. “Morning, Ba.” Kviye followed suit, putting a big smile on the woman’s face. Never having met either of her two grandmas, this felt more acceptable. “Ah, see Lian, that must mean that I’m the favourite,” Grandma Morozo called to her daughter-in-law. “I just know that you would beat me with cane of yours if I don’t.” “Ah, that I might,” Valyen’s grandma noted seriously and then followed with a wheezing laugh. “Smells great, Uncle Dekan,” Kviye said as she grabbed two plates from the counter next to a gaunt man in a loose-fitting shirt with a beard that seemed equal parts well-groomed and neglected. Valyen’s mother’s younger brother moved in shortly after Valyen’s dad had passed away. His own wife had succumbed to the grey at an early age, so he was eager to abandon the house he would never raise his family in and moved in to help out the household and his favourite niece. Kviye knew Valyen would probably yell at her if she found out, or else she’d already noticed but said nothing because she knew it made Kviye feel better, but the reason Kviye took it upon herself to bring the food from the counter to the table, was to ensure she either picked up the smallest portion to begin with, or else an extra sausage or piece of bread accidentally made it from her plate onto someone else’s.
There was an emergency kit in the cockpit. It was one of the first things Kviye’s mother had shown her when Kviye had first boarded the ship, tapping on its metal cover and going, “If you’re ever in trouble, everything you need is in here.” Kviye remembered exactly where it was, but couldn’t recall what had actually been in it, as she’d never had to use it before, and right then she hoped it didn’t solely contain a picture of her parents as some sort of cheesy metaphor. The real problem was that even though it was located only a couple of metres to her left, the distance seemed insurmountable from where she was sitting. It was either force herself to move her leg or wait and hope for the best, and Kviye never considered herself as a particularly patient person.
Attempting to shift herself out of the seat, Kviye found that her other leg could still support her weight. Even so, the smallest tug trying to get her right leg free sent a stabbing reminder that something was very wrong with it. Without wasting any time mentally preparing for the maneuver, Kviye heaved herself out of the chair hoping that it would dislodge her. Her leg had been freed, but nearly so had her consciousness. Propped up on her arms on the floor, she threw up, and ignoring the new searing sensation in her chest, Kviye crawled forward, dragging her right leg behind her. Although she had known the ship inside and out since she was a child, in her state and with nothing to guide her but touch, she wondered if she would somehow veer dangerously off course in this simple task, and spend her last hours in the engine room instead. As it turned out, reaching the wall was the easy part, and now she had to leverage her body and one good leg to push herself up to the hatch where she kept the emergency kit. Finally, her fingers found the metal ring of the latch and after a few pulls, the slightly warped panel came open and she slid back down to the floor with the kit, propping herself with her back against the wall and her legs thrown out in the front her. Inside the kit, she felt a hand-cranked flashlight – a useful tool in theory but with her cracked ribs, an agonizingly complicated contraption. Through gritted teeth she wound the flashlight enough to survey the ship and confirm what her own imagination vividly suspected. The beam of light revealed gutted wires and protruding sinister shards of paneling. The passageway that led to the engine room was blocked by a mangle of metal and Kviye wasn’t even sure if there was any ship left on the other side. Above her, a gash in the cockpit a couple of feet across exposed the silver needles of rain illuminated by the flashlight. Inside the kit, she found the basics: bandages, painkillers – something she briefly considered but decided she preferred having her mind cloudy with pain instead of drugs – and other basic survival materials including a red flare. She considered the hole in the ceiling and the distance to where she sat and concluded that on a good day it was an easy shot. Only having one crack at it, with perhaps her entire life hanging in the balance, made for less than ideal conditions, but with Valyen’s calls barely reaching Kviye through the wind, the time for second-guessing was quickly running out. Kviye positioned the flashlight in her lap, pointing up at the roof of her skiff and the narrow window that was her target and held onto the flare with both hands. They were shaking. Beyond her hands, her right leg was bent at a nauseating angle. She finessed her aim trying to keep her breathing slow and steady without forgetting to breathe altogether, a task she failed several times and had to take a deep breath and reorient herself. Finally, she dropped into a steady rhythm, let out the slightest exhale, and released the flare, which, after bouncing off the edge of the hole, hurtled upwards, and went off somewhere outside the ship. As she lay back against the wall of her skiff, of her mother’s skiff, of the skiff of a hundred generations before her, going back to a people she now knew were intrepid voyagers, she wondered if the calls for her name were getting louder because someone was nearing the ship, or because she was nearing those who had come before her. --- The next time Kviye opened her eyes she was floating towards a bright light. The light was pouring out of an open doorway and Kviye thought that there was some poetic beauty in her version of the afterlife being Valyen’s family home. Of course, it had been Valyen’s home in Zhakitrinbur, on the east side of the single continent of the moon of Tanfana, circling a grey gas giant, and the floating sensation she was experiencing was her being carried along, one arm slung over Valyen’s shoulder and the other over the shoulder of Valyen’s uncle. Someone was standing in the doorway, black against the light, and as Kviye drew nearer the dark figure let out a yelp that was a mixture of horror and relief. As she was rushed into the house, Kviye recognized the person in the door as Valyen’s mother. Kviye tried to tell her that she was okay, but instead produced a sound that seemed to upset the woman even more, a hand coming over her friend’s mother’s mouth. Valyen’s younger brother Adri had poked his head out of his bedroom door, groggy with sleep and then startled wide awake by the sight of their approach. “Don’t just stand there catching flies. Go call a doctor,” Valyen ordered him. Adri said something Kviye didn’t catch and Valyen snapped in response, “I don’t know, I’m not a doctor, that’s why I told you to get one.” Now they were lowering her onto a bed, her body screaming in relief at the horizontal position and the slight sinking sensation of the mattress. If only she had also been dry. Then, remembering the blood on her leg and not wanting to ruin Valyen’s bedsheets, Kviye tried to rise. A firm shove to her shoulder forced her down, and the admonishment of “Don’t be ridiculous” sent her back into unconsciousness. Hushed worried tones reached Kviye through a dark veil. They were talking about her, like she wasn’t there, and for all they knew she wasn’t. It was just that her eyes were so heavy, she thought it would be easier lifting the skiff and throwing it back up to the stars than opening them, so instead she listened. Only when Valyen put her face close to hers and shook her did Kviye manage to pry her own eyelids apart. “Hey,” Valyen said. Her face was smeared with dirt, hair matted down to her face and somewhere during the rescue she got cuts on her forehead and cheek. “You look terrible,” Kviye wheezed. “Ha!” Despite the outburst, Kviye could see fresh tears form in Valyen’s eyes. “Good thing we didn’t drag you in front of any mirrors.” “Me? I’ll be okay.” “Damn right you are.” Valyen blinked away whatever was in her eye. “The doctor will be back in a couple of hours to set your leg. Other than that, and a couple of cracked ribs, somehow, you’re in one piece.” Kviye rolled her head back on her pillow to stare up at the ceiling, from which the memory of her mother’s photograph gazed down at her. Somehow indeed, she thought. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Valyen pacing. Her friend had been right and wrong about how Kviye’s voyage would go. Kviye’s breaking the atmosphere with relative ease revealed that the skiffs were meant to head into open space – it was probably where they’d come from in the first place Valyen though was right that in Kviye’s excitement, in her allowing her dreams to block out everything else, Kviye had underestimated what it would take to get there. Valyen knew something like this would happen. Kviye saw it in her face as the skiff took off from outside her garage earlier that day; that her friend had been preparing for this and worse. And now that it came for her, that she lay broken but alive in Valyen’s bed, there didn’t seem to be even an inkling of desire to tell her “I told you so.” Even if Kviye’s own mind now repeated it as a mantra, she knew she’d never have to hear it from Valyen. Even when they’d be old and grey and watching the sun set over the sea, Valyen would never even joke about how that time many years ago Kviye should have listened. And if she did, Kviye would still have agreed; that yes, she should have, and that she should have probably been better at learning from her mistakes. Yet there she now was, feeling with a sense of relief the little black sphere in her pocket, the one that had let her see the stars, and already calculating the ways in which she would be able to return. “I saw, them, Val. I –” Either not hearing or pretending not to, Valyen walked up to the bed and interrupted. “We’ve radioed your father. He said he will get out of Vingu as soon as he can.” “And the ship?” “The ship?” Valyen repeated startled, looking away for a moment and then turning back to Kviye. “There’s only spare parts and scrap metal left, Kvee. There’s no ‘ship’ anymore.”
Rain was driven in sheets against the windows of their home on the outskirts of Vingu. It was always dark here; a quirk not only of the ceaseless circling motion of the moon they called home around the grey gas giant that held them tightly in their grasp, but also of course the rain, which lent its name to the rainy season, which might as well have been a single continuous season, a constant mirage of dullness. Kviye wandered through her home in a fog. It wasn’t very large, two bedrooms, an office from which her parents ran their courier and transport business, and a kitchen, but it felt that she had been walking around it for hours, if not days.
Finally, she found what she was looking for – her mother was sitting at the kitchen table, her arms folded in front of her and her eyes cast down. What Kviye had actually been looking for was the kitchen itself, but finding her mother there, Kviye forgot what it was she thought she needed in the kitchen in the first place. Kviye was vaguely aware that her mother was supposed to have been dead, taken many years earlier by a disease called the “grey”, one that afflicted her people for centuries and was slowly erasing Humans from her moon and possibly the universe. Her mother was right here in the kitchen though, which meant it had all been a big mistake. She must have gotten lost on one of her delivery runs, and all this time she was making her way home, across undulating stormy marshes, and grass forests taller than any Human. She looked so very tired, so Kviye’s theory made sense. Her mother must have sensed Kviye’s lingering presence at the entrance to the kitchen because she looked up, her eyes sad and distant. “Kvee?” she asked, except it was not her mother’s voice, familiar, but someone else’s, and sounding oh so far away. “Ma?” Kviye wanted to come closer, but she couldn’t move; chained to the spot with invisible threads. “Kvee.” Again, her mother’s voice was paper thin, delivered to her across eons from another world. Kviye needed to cross that distance – the immeasurable expanse that had grown between them. “Ma. I’ve seen them. I’ve seen the stars.” Kviye wasn’t sure if her mother could hear her. She was right there in front of her, yet how could she make her words reach across the same expanse from which her mother called her. “They’re even more beautiful when you’re up there.” “Kvee?” “It was our little ship that took me there. It’s where we came from Ma, I know it. And it’s where we belong.” Her mother raised her hand, and reached out slightly, as if putting it against Kviye’s cheek from across the kitchen, and had she been able to, she would have known that it was wet with tears. “Kvee? Where are you?” “I’m here Ma. I’ll always be here, no matter where I am.” “Kvee.” It was the last thing her mother said, with a sense of relief this time, and before she, and the kitchen and the whole house disappeared, Kviye’s mother smiled. --- Kviye woke up in the belly of darkness. Rain was lashing what she realized was the hull of the skiff, and with the cockpit having been sheered open, many of the drops were making it onto Kviye. From somewhere within the tempest, that familiar voice called out to her. Kviye tried to take a deep breath in response, but the sharp pain shooting through her chest told her that the seatbelt restraints had worked as designed, and took some of her ribs with them. She groped for the buckle in pitch blackness – the ship didn’t even have the decency to catch fire in order to give her a light to see or be found by, or else whatever wimpy effort it mustered had already been snuffed out by the rain. Freeing herself from the harness had exhausted Kviye and her back and forehead were wet as much from sweat as from the raindrops that invaded what was left of the skiff. She thought that maybe it would be best to return to the sleep from which she was so rudely roused, but realized at the last moment that it was a terrible idea and tried to lift herself up from her pilot’s chair. She cried out at the pain that had gripped her right leg with a voice she had a hard time recognizing as her own. At least there’s still legs down there, she thought, taking deep breaths to keep herself from slipping under, glad for the first time to not be able to see her situation in its entirety. “Kvee!” The voice broke through the rain and wind – Val’s voice, moving further away in the wrong direction. Kviye tried to recall the last few minutes of her crash to figure out where she had finally brought down the skiff. She had been aiming for the marshes in the river delta north of Zhakitrinbur. Before that, she was kissing the stars; the beautiful stars. She was going to return to them someday. Her eyelids grew heavy and those perfectly stoic stars drifted in from the darkness to dance in front of her eyes. All she needed to do was reach out to them but no, it was too early to return, and certainly not like this. How could Val possibly navigate the rivulets in this light? Kviye wondered if the marshes here were deep enough to swallow the skiff whole and if the dampness she felt at her feet was blood, rain, or the landscape trying to reclaim her. It didn’t matter though, this was Val, she wouldn’t make any mistakes. She’d be looking in the exact right direction. Kviye just had to make sure she nudged her the rest of the way.
Hours later, Hilosh stood at the mouth of a recently unsealed tunnel while the elevator platform shrieked metallically as it hauled the bore machine and its load up to the surface. They said that it may have been in this very tunnel that the cursed black pearl had been found, or perhaps one of the adjacent ones. Either way, it seemed like today was not the day they would find anther one, but soon perhaps. As he watched the cargo shuttle take off in the direction of the orbital transfer facility, Hilosh permitted himself, for the first time since arriving at the mine, to believe that there was hope buried somewhere within these rocks.
“Hilosh?” His mask radio crackled to life with the sound of Viri’s voice. “I hear you.” “You, uh, better come up to comms.” What fresh hell could the meteorologist have cooked up to torment him with now? “Are you serious, Viri? I’ve got an extraction operation I need to supervise.” “Yarmar is already on her way.” Naturally, one of them had to have been contacted first; he just wished it would be him for once. “Alright, I’ll be right up.” He was hoping to at least catch up with Yarmar before reaching Viri, but she likely had a head start and he could only move so fast without attracting the attention a supervisor hastily leaving a worksite would garner. By the time he had taken off his gear, the whole time thinking ahead to when had to put it back on again and cursing Viri for his shortsightedness, and walked up several flights of stairs from the airlock to the comms room, he found Yarmar and Viri already huddled over a sector map display. “What happened?” Hilosh asked. “The Raire missed their check-in ping today,” Yarmar announced, turning away from the screen. “That doesn’t seem too bad.” It was customary for supply ships to check in with their destinations on a daily basis to confirm schedules, though this was an Anthar Kai vessel and Thorians were no strangers to following rules and customs only when it suited them. “Is that them?” Hilosh gestured with his hand toward a slightly brighter blurry blip on the map. “As far as I can tell, still moving and on schedule,” Viri confirmed. “So what’s the problem?” “Well I didn’t think there was one,” Viri replied. “At first. And then I got curious and reached out to them, twice.” “No response?” “Not exactly.” Something about the shimmer in Viri’s eyes put a cold hard chill through the mass of flesh at the back of Hilosh’s head. “I think you guys need to hear this.” At first, Hilosh appreciated the courtesy that the two of them at least waited for him to join up before diving into this next part, but when the message they received from the Raire actually played, Hilosh wished that they had instead neglected to include him, purged it from the system and let him blissfully go on about his day. The recording opened with growling noises – five distinct voices, not quite animal, that prowled in the background. Then there was a clash of metal followed by yips and a whimper that rose above the other growls until a new voice spoke directly into the microphone. “Akir.” It sounded like it was on the verge of breaking, pulled up from such a deep bout of despair that it threatened to drag Hilosh down into it. “Akir?” It said again and Hilosh thought it sounded more like a question this time. “Akir? Akir. Akir!” The voice grew in urgency until cutting out and dropping the room into silence. Hilosh thought he could hear not only his own heartbeat but that of Viri and Yarmar as well. Hilosh glanced at Yarmar and found her wide unreadable eyes affixed to the comms terminal. “What was that?” Viri asked, searching the faces of his supervisors for answers. “What is ‘akir’?” Hilosh asked and was surprised to find his voice come out as a hoarse whisper. “Not ‘akir’,” Yarmar answered, “‘Akhir’. It’s Thorian.” “Thorian?” Hilosh asked. “Not Trade Thorian. Native Thorian. Means roughly ‘why am I?’” “You know Native Thorian?” Suddenly the transmission they received had competition for being the oddest thing Hilosh heard that day. “Enough to get by,” Yarmar answered without looking at him, then leaned in to replay the message from the moment the voice rose to be heard above the inexplicable growling in the background. “Akhir? Akhir. Akhir!” The Thorian reached his agonizing crescendo to be rewound again and again by Yarmar. Hilosh heard Viri make a few laboured swallows and when Hilosh looked down he saw that Viri’s fingers had dug into the desk so hard he expected at any moment to hear Viri’s knuckles snap. Yarmar played the recording back too far. “What are those noises anyway? Some kind of animal?” Viri asked. Animal, yes, in the strictest sense of the word, Hilosh suspected. “Let’s just turn it off,” he asked and Yarmar obliged. Her gaze softened and she took a full step back from the infernal comms terminal. “Keep trying to contact them,” Yarmar instructed. “Every two hours. And if you get anything back, call us up before you even listen to it.” Viri sagged noticeably and let out a small feeble breath. “Thank you.” He continued to sit, while his co-supervisors stood; all in silence. Yet the Thorian’s final question and proclamation seemed to seep into the walls of the communications room and continued to play faintly into Hilosh’s eardrums. “So what do we do now?” Viri broke the quiet, perhaps to escape the same ghostly echo. Hilosh looked at Yarmar. “We work,” he said and she nodded in reply. “The ship is still on its way, and we have ore to move. When it gets here, that’s a problem we can deal with at the time.”
“I’m not going to lie to you.” Hilosh addressed his crew with no prior preamble, but had the whole room turn in his direction by the end of the sentence. “The next time we all see each other, we’re probably going to wish we were dead, but, you know, we won’t be, which is the important part.” Too many young faces here to laugh. “The Raire is about a day and a half out and I believe if we work at full burn from now until then, we should have a decent shipment ready. So we’re going to have all boots on the ground for this one, including Yarmar and myself. Oh, and except Viri. We need someone to keep an eye on things here and I don’t want him accidentally falling into a gorge when no one’s looking.”
This elicited a few chuckles from across the room and a nervous groan from the part-time meteorologist. “So get your fill, suit up, and I’ll see you all out there in a bit.” This could have gone worse, he thought. Oh well, the real test would be to see if by the time the Raire arrived, whether it would not be him that they would be tossing into the depths below. --- For the first time in weeks, Hilosh suited up into his outdoor gear, which was limited to heavy duty boots, gloves, a thin insulating outer layer, and a respirator that required a change of filters every few hours rather than a dedicated air supply. Light gear made for lighter work, and Hilosh admitted that all things considered, a Dead Space world could have been far more grueling than this. Thankfully, he hadn’t needed to head out of the barracks too frequently, an advantage of his position and what some would consider his advanced age, which was a good thing, because Aler would not have approved of those rickety guardrails. Hilosh’s wife warned him that if he wasn’t coming back in one piece, he shouldn’t bother coming back at all. When the doors of the airlock hissed open, Hilosh was hit with a cold he could immediately feel even through his insulating outer layer. The forceful wind made him glad even for the shabby guardrails. The ground under his feet vibrated with the workings of the bore machines that were emerging from their hiding holes. He switched his respirator’s comm channel to the one that received everyone’s chatter simultaneously at low volume, the kind of din that could drive someone mad but that he found oddly comforting. It allowed him to pretend that they were working in the open air with everyone freely hearing each other, to keep an eye on the general mood of the site, and to immediately be alerted to any emergencies. When he first told Yarmar about it, she laughed and said that only the chronically bored mind of an old man would be able to withstand such noise, but ended up adopting it anyway shortly afterward. It was a short walk to the bridge slung across the width of the gorge, and his boots left fresh footprints in the fine white powder that covered the brown, almost raw-meat-coloured stone. It wasn’t snow, and looked very much like salt, but no one here had been brave enough to confirm if it was. Hilosh had worked at sites where there’d be plenty of volunteers. The staff turnover at those was incredibly inconvenient for a co-supervisor, with much unnecessary paperwork. Though even here, where a general undercurrent of common sense prevailed, accidents were not unheard of, and the only medical help around for lightyears was someone who cut their teeth on a ranch and likely fell into this side business when asked if there was anyone in the room who knew how to do their best to reattach a leg and didn’t botch it up too badly after volunteering. His first task that day was to oversee the removal of their lowest rig, making sure none of the less experienced workers were crushed between the slowly moving machine and the walls of the bored tunnel. Glorified babysitting though it was – they only seemed to ever be crushed when no one was looking. Hilosh walked lower down into the canyon along the metal steps that doubled back on each other in a zig-zag pattern and could swear they were creaking harder after the storm. Perhaps a detail he ought to omit from his next letter to Aler. Truth was, the stairs had been there for decades before him, possibly through worse weather, and they would be there for decades after he was gone. Above him, and seeming that much further away when squeezed between the two edges of the cliff, was a murky sky that never revealed its true colours or shown them any glimpses of the sun. To his Vaparozh eyes, evolved on one of the brightest habitable worlds in the Known Reaches, it was an altogether murky affair. From what he knew, it was much like the sky had been over the Vaparozh homeworld – a planet that had been dying until a centuries-long exodus freed it from ninety percent of its inhabitants and allowed it to thrive again. Many Vaparozh, including Hilosh’s own ancestors settled on worlds on the fringes of Thorian space not fully claimed by the Empire and loosely managed by the Anthar Kai, only to find themselves seven hundred years later satisfying the last greedy gulp of the Empire during the War of the Last Gasp. And then hardly a generation would pass until the children – no, Hilosh stopped himself. The only children that mattered now, his only real responsibility, were the young workers he was coming to assist; the rest, anyone outside of this cold rock, were not relevant.
For a few moments after he’d woken up, Hilosh gave serious consideration to the possibility that he was dead. What else could have explained the doughy blanket of tranquility that he found himself wrapped in? Hilosh vaulted out of bed, nearly slamming his head into the shelves that overhung his cot and went straight to the window, where he found mostly darkness. It was nighttime on this inhospitable rock, but more importantly, the bolts of lightning were reduced to a few sparks glowing along the horizon. Any vestiges of remaining sleep left Hilosh and he marched out of his office, trailing behind plumes of fog from his warm breath in the frigid corridors and stairways of the barracks.
Stepping into the kitchen, he found Charosar already at work, with Yarmar offering herself as support. “You knew about this and didn’t tell me?” Hilosh asked Yarmar who was checking on a steaming pot of something nutritious for a change. “I figured you needed your sleep,” she answered unapologetically. “Maybe you’re right. But don’t go spreading word, alright?” “We’ll see,” she answered, closing the lid and moving to another pot. “Should be ready in about a half hour,” Charosar declared as she leaned into a knife with the satisfaction of a professional who had been kept from her true passion by so many days of rehydrated ration packs. “Twenty if you want to lend a hand.” Hilosh pulled off his fur-lined gloves and joined Yarmar at her side. “I’ll give the call to wake up the crew in a few minutes,” Yarmar said. “Then after they had their fill, we’ll head straight out there.” Hilosh nodded, slicing into a vegetable that had been frozen for far too long; nothing Vaparozh, so he never bothered to learn the name of it. As he toiled with Yarmar and Charosar over the hot pots and pans, for the first time in days he peeled off the outer layers of his clothing, revealing a frame the other two appeared to him to eye with some concern. It was what he always looked like, though, even in his youth when he’d have to finely adjust with his bare hands mining drills that weighed three times as much as he did. It was nice, for a change, not only to shed the fake skin of a shimchek, but some whole other person’s body type as well. Once they were done, and the food was delivered, Hilosh and Yarmar split up to attend to their duties. The crew hadn’t gotten a full night’s rest but with the food filling their bellies and the prospect of getting the job done, no one was complaining and the mood in the male mess hall was generally upbeat. Yarmar was across the door in the female mess hall – their crew was split about even, though she had all the Mraboran, and he figured the mood in there was a few degrees more cheerful than where he was. He never had the same way with words as she did, but in any case, it didn’t seem like they needed him much, as most of the crew was chatting away contently, with the notable exception of the Human, who sat in his own corner of the long table, trying to keep down the alien cuisine. Hilosh knew his own prejudices weren’t helping Ayra Santosi none either, that he wasn’t being fair, drawing this kind of inexorable association between two completely random Humans, who likely never met and hadn’t even been aware of the other’s existence. It was hard, though – Humans hadn’t exactly become ubiquitous around these parts and Hilosh encountered so few it was easy to imagine them as part of a small cohesive group rather than a species that numbered in the billions, much like the Vaparozh themselves. Still, every time Hilosh looked at Santosi, he imagined the one that had come years before Santosi, brought to this forgotten corner of space as if intentionally to set off the chain of events that brought Hilosh there. The turnover at this mining operation made it that there was no one on this rock left who had met her. Even the ownership of the facility had changed twice since she spent time here, guiding the bore machines, praying away the lightning storms, and freezing in her bunk between supply shipments, just like the rest of them, except for one small difference – somewhere in the dead lava tunnels that crisscrossed this once volcanically active world, she’d discovered a Drop. In the stories that were passed down about the glossy black sphere, its size varied greatly – anywhere from being barely large enough to power a surface-to-orbit shuttle to being suitable for a capital navy ship or a small lunar colony. The only things that were certain was that it did exist and that it was promptly pilfered, most likely by the same Human who found it, leaving nothing here but the promises of finding more. These were the promises sold to the next owner of the mine, and the next, and then to the corporation that Hilosh was working for, who then asked him, for the good of all Vaparozh, to volunteer for this post, not because he had some magic touch, but because everyone else was either too old and important or too young and full of promise. At least Yarmar was someone who could relate. She had a far more positive outlook, though, something he envied her for. Just don’t look at Ayra Santosi, Hilosh told himself, focus on the others, and do what Yarmar would do, which, he acknowledged, was useless advice, as he was no Yarmar.
Hilosh sighed and let his eyes wander past the window and up the wall to the ceiling. Everything here was constructed from the same dull grey lightweight metal. No matter how many rugs, tapestries or blankets, shipped in by successive crews who tried to make the barracks more livable, were hung on the walls and covered the floor, it still felt like the inside of a can of salted fish. Between the rationing of water that made showers a scarce commodity and filled the living quarters with a briny aroma and the darkness of his office, he half-expected that when he turned his head he would find not Yarmar, but a bug-eyed scaly fish staring dumbly straight ahead.
Instead, it was just Yarmar; a whole generation younger than him, although, who wasn’t these days? She gazed out the window with such determination that he could almost believe that she could resolve this storm just by looking at it. Her wide violet eyes, not uncommon in their species, looked deep purple in this light, while his own pale blue ones appeared dim, as if someone had turned off the light behind an empty pane of glass. The light of the storm in general was not kind to their complexion, erasing the darker ringlets that mottled their earthen green skin leaving them looking like monotonous blots of ink, particularly where the mass of flesh that formed at the back of their skull and neck drooped over their shoulders, spilling down slightly over their chests. Despite all that, he was perfectly content to hole up in his metal cave. Yarmar was of course right though, he had to do for the men what she’d done for the women. It wasn’t their fault that they were stuck with him. “If I go down and join the men to eat, how else would they know I’m working extra hard on their behalf by watching this blasted storm for hours on end? Probably know more about it than Viri at this point.” “Well that’s good, we might need a replacement meteorologist soon,” Yarmar said. “Why’s that?” “Because if the crew has to ration any harder, he’s first on the list to get eaten.” Hilosh chuckled, dislodging something in his throat that made him cough. “You’re as dark as a Mraboran,” he said. “Well I did work among them for years.” “Right, that must be why they love you.” Rocks; rocks made a lot of sense to Hilosh. People, not so much. He liked to think he knew more about rocks than Yarmar, but if he did, it wasn’t nearly as much as she knew more about people than him. “Oh, come now.” She paused, and he wished she hadn’t softened her voice. “They love you too.” “Yeah, maybe how I’d taste.” “See, easy habit to make, harder one to break.” Hilosh let out a laugh that faded as his thoughts returned to the weather outside. His mind raced to find patterns and hypothesis. No lightning strikes for three seconds? That was a good sign up until the skies would unleash another volley that would jump from guardrail to guardrail down into the open pit. A patch of sky that grew lighter towards the horizon? That meant the storm was running out of steam. And then, a few minutes later, it would grow so dark Hilosh suspected the sun itself might have gone out while no one was watching. Everything in his head was the storm, and so he didn’t even hear when Yarmar took her exit from the office, leaving him with the only company he’d kept in days. A particularly bright flash struck the ground beneath his window. Everything was good omens and bad omens and new omens he hadn’t yet ascribed any meaning to. None of them however slowed the approach of the Raire, or hurried up the storm, or transported all their mined ore to the transfer station in orbit. He remembered the words of his son, spoken with such disgust and embarrassment years earlier: “This is why we lost. This is why we’d been losing for centuries.” It wasn’t his words, of course, it was theirs, the Thorian educators in that fancy school of his. Hilosh thought it would give Rachek an advantage in the world. He was right, Rachek was doing well in the world, better than his father could have ever imagined himself doing, but it was still somehow the biggest mistake Hilosh had ever made. The second biggest had been agreeing to accept this position. Not having seen either of his kids in years, he figured he’d spend some if his later years in service to his people. And yet somehow it still felt like losing. Yarmar once again was right, it was sleep that he needed instead of insisting on this window-side vigil. He’d need the right presence of mind to tell their crew that they needed to section off more parts of the barracks, that they’d be bunking in even closer quarters, and that despite all that, they’d still need to lower the temperature a couple of degrees. In the corner of the office, there stood a cot, recessed underneath some shelves. It was one of the reasons that him and Yarmar had separate offices, since they slept in them too. He crawled underneath the thick rough blanket and, sticking his head inside until his breath sufficiently warmed him, fell asleep in minutes. |
Michael SerebriakovMichael is a husband, father of three, lawyer, writer, and looking for that first big leap into publishing. All opinions are author's own. StoriesUrsa Major Categories
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