To Walk the Constellations Pt. 01

I got to the exit gate that would lead to the outside world. One of Tiar's scrapper groups was coming back in and they were one of the groups that he doted on. They actually had two vehicles -- a truck heaped with tech and a scrap built bike.

A Hegemony shocktrooper literally dropped out of the air between me and the scrappers. Screams came from the gang and I lifted up my palms. But the Hegemony shocktrooper reached out for me. His hand gripped my shirt and yanked me up and off my feet, one handed. Effortless. He lifted me up and I grabbed his wrist -- and badly wanted to be put down. My fingers felt the heat of the black and orange armor -- and then I heard a series of hisses and suddenly, his hand detached. I fell down onto my ass and the Hegemony shocktrooper gripped his wrist, screaming, his face shocky and white.

His wrist didn't spurt blood. It just...looked like a door had closed on it.

Again, I heard that crackle: "Private Truff, your med-data says your hand just got amputated, what the fuck happened?"

"Nothing!" He screamed. "And my painkillers aren't pumping! Oh god!" He fell to one knee and his hand was still locked around my shirt. I screamed in horror and scrambled to my feet, shoving at the wrist. The fingers finally unlocked and fell into my hand. I gripped the severed hand and hurled it in a blind panic at the guy on the bike. I clocked him in the head -- sorry! - and he pitched over, his helmet cracked in half. Then I was on the bike.

I had no idea how to ride it.

-dawntech combustion engine with cranked ignition, acceleration controlled by left handle, brakes on the front-

I knew how to ride it. No time for questions. I cranked my left leg, peddling to trigger the engine. It roared and spat out carbon waste and then I shot off along the rubble. Behind me, I heard pounding feet -- but when I looked back, I saw that the Hegemony troops were slowing, stopping. The Liminal Knight was sweeping forward to stand beside them, kneeling by the one who's hand was gone. I felt the urge to vomit, but I choked it down, instead wheeling left around a hill of rubble and towards the candy colored beach.

Pebbles clattered off the trash-catcher that hung over the wheel as I zoomed along the beach, whimpering under my breath. I thought to myself: Ohshitohshitohshitohshitohshit.

I WON THE RACE

My bike puttered to a stop well before the Hegemony got there. My heart was hammering like I'd run the whole way, and I scrambled off my bike. I nearly dove into the water to swim there, but stopped myself. Just in time. I gulped, then found my raft. I had no pole anymore, my boots were thick enough and my pants were tough. I leaned off the back of the raft, wincing, and started to kick as hard as I could. The water was acid, but...it was weak acid.

I got to the airlock. I got inside. And I thought, I tried to think, like Tiar.

Okay.

He wouldn't hide it where I stayed. But what could he do that I couldn't?

He was built for pressure. Built for gravity. Built for crushing. I thought back, pictured his face, his neck. His folds of tissue. Were those gills? Did he have gills? I didn't know. But that was the only thing I could think of. I headed for where the ship joined with the water -- where flooding filled up slanted corridors. With one hand pressed against the wall and my leg pressed to the other wall and my other hand gripping the ceiling, I was able to root myself as I looked at the water.

"Okay," I whispered. "What is the common thread?"

You had to find a common thread with anything. Finding a common thread in busted tech let you find their commonality. Led you to the fixing it or the junking it decision. Finding a common thread in a murder story being spun by Rhales meant that you'd get to shout out who'd done it and get the pat on the head.

And the common thread with the miracles today was...tech.

The Hegemony shocktrooper hadn't seen me through her optics. The Hegemony shocktrooper who had grabbed me had had his armor turn on him, cutting his own hand off to spite me. I'd looked at tech and knew the tech. With the motorcycle, I'd thought of it and the knowledge for riding had pinged into my brain, like I'd been riding motorcycles my whole damn life. Okay. Okay. And I was in a mountain of tech now.

I glared at the water. "Lower," I said, pointing at it, trying to picture pumps and hissing valves and whirring gauges. I could see a ship being made to empty itself out, right? So, just...do it. Work a miracle, why don't you? I gritted my teeth as the water remained placid -- smelling of tang and salt. I gritted my teeth, then hissed. "Drop! Vent! Pump! Something!"

I heard shouts. Voices, carried by the bounce of corridors. The Hegemony had gotten to the ship, and they were checking the bridge. I imagined them pawing through my stuff. Poking around. Maybe even finding my...stuff. Ugh. My cheeks burned and fear crawled along my spine. "Drain! Come on! Do something!" I punched the wall beside me as hard as I could, utterly furious. And the wall opened smooth as a whisper, revealing a humanoid form, glowering at me with a single, cyclopean black eye. I grabbed my mouth to keep from screaming loud enough to draw every shocktroop in the ship.

Then the human shape resolved.

And I realized it was a...

It was an astrosuit. An emergency one, made for when the ship was venting and crashing. I grabbed the helmet and jammed it on my head, then grabbed the filmy foil wrap that made up the rest. It was stretchy and had a thick collar. As the helmet jounced around on my head -- too big for my head, fuck -- I started to strip off my clothes as fast as I could. My breath fogged the face plate as the sounds of footsteps and the shouted voices came closer and closer: "Clear! Clear! Clear!"

Checking rooms.

I tugged the astrosuit on and felt even more naked as it clung to everything like a coat of paint. Silver paint. I felt at once both totally tarted up -- shiny and chrome, like Techne. But I also felt naked. Like Techne. The collar locked and air circulation in the helmet started, clearing away the fog and filling my lungs with air more pure and clean than anything I had ever tasted.

"Clear!" A voice came from right around the corner.

I resisted the urge to slosh into the water. Instead, I moved slow, careful. I let myself slip under and then let myself drift down -- just as the light played over the surface, turning it into a mirror.

Clear.

THE TECH

Creeping through the ship underwater felt like walking through a maze full of ghosts. Particulates and bits of plastic shivered in the water, and when I moved, I moved slowly and awkwardly. I'd never been around this much water, and I kept worrying that I'd start feeling a sting and a burn, or a bit of wetness, or something even worse biting into me. Instead, I felt dry and cool, like I'd been transported bodily into another universe. For once in my life, I was honestly comfortable, and it was while I was sloshing around while being hounded by the fucking Hegemony and an insane Liminal Knight.

I checked rooms the same way the Hegemony did. I even muttered 'clear' to myself each time I glanced around. The helmet had some trick of making the darkness into actual light I could see by, though it did so with a monochromatic tint that made reading any lettering or signs impossible. Not that I'd be able to read them anyway, since it was all in Ancient. Unless my miracles decided to go to the difficulty of translation.

Or providing a guide? Or something?

Nope.

I spent an eternity walking and flailing, finding doors that were shut tight and needed to be worked around or just abandoned. Each time I found a door that refused to budge, I felt for sure that Tiar had gotten through somehow and that I was fumbling around in other rooms to no point and no purpose. But at last, I came to the very end of the ship. A light blipped onto the bottom of the helmet, so I could read it by glancing down. It was in Ancient, but it had one of those symbols that had survived Stumble's many mistakes: Radiation.

Uuuuuuuuhhhhhhh shit. Radiation was bad. Majorly bad.

Which, of course, was why Tiar, whose thick body was made to stand up to radiation better than a baseline human like myself, had chucked what was obviously the Thing into the room. The room itself looked like a huge maze of pipes and tubes and coiling cables. There was no big obvious glowing core that I could point to and say 'aha, that was the radiation!' Instead, there was just endless, incomprehensible machines, and no voice in my head providing the answers. Fortunately, the tech that Tiar had chucked in was obvious: It was a black plastic bag wrapped around a glow stick, which still shimmered a pale blue, casting a real color that I could see, breaking up the monochrome at last.

I risked it.

I floundered forward, moving as quick as I could beneath the ocean waters, and grabbed the bag. Then I pushed backwards, into the corridor beyond. The bag was cinched tight by a zip-cuff, but there was no way it was tight enough to keep out the water. And it had been dunked near active radiation. So, that meant the tech was tough enough that I could risk opening it. Right? I still looked over my shoulder, wondering. How slow were the Hegemony taking it. How cagey? Were they delaying going into the water, not wanting to put their suits back on?

Was the Liminal Knight even now strangling one to death with his miraculous powers? To put the fear of god into the rest?

I worried the zip-cuff off the slick plastic and opened the bag. Drifting out, gentle as a leaf, came a silvery handle, roughly ten inches long. It fell into my waiting palm without a single noise -- and yet it still felt like destiny slamming into the base of my spine. My eyes widened and all the miracles and the questions and the mysteries were clicking into place. It was like the wheels of time were spinning around my head, like the whole Chain was reaching out before me. I understood now. I knew, right in my gut.

I...

I was a Walker of the Constellations. I was a Liminal Knight, a Penitent of the Path. I was a Machine Whisperer and Sidereal Monk. I could delve into the miracles of the Domain and wrest my fate from the stars. I carried a Threshold Blade, and before me, all evil could fall. My fist tightened around the hilt and there was a stream of bubbles, hissing and shooting around my hilt. Then the bubbles faded and there was a true blade, almost three feet in length. The color was a ruby red, like the sun at sunset, and it looked straight enough to be drawn with a ruler.

MY REACTION TO BEING KNIGHTED

I started to cry. Big whacking sobbing sniffles in my helmet. I put my knuckles against the glass, snorting up snot to try and be able to breathe. Ugh. God. What kind of girl was I? Had Janus the Starcutter sobbed his eyes out when he set out to walk a hundred worlds, to strike down the Tyrant-Lord of Thalestar aboard the flaming mega-city of Jupiter? No! Had Tividius Rex been weeping and snotty when she hefted her Threshold Blade and formed it into the gravity staff that could crack a worl?

No!

So, Venn, get your goddamn feelings out of your ass and get to work. The Hegemony were going to find you. I shook my head, then started to slosh back. If I knew the shape of the ship at all, this corridor would go up against the skin. And they said a Threshold Blade could cut through anything! So, I sloshed and stumbled forward, nearly tripping and slicing myself in half on the glowing red blade. I wish I knew how to turn the fucking thing off. After what felt like three eternities, I finally came to the wall proper. But as I readied myself to cut, I heard a voice in my head.

It was the voice of the Liminal Knight. The other one.

In my head, his voice still had that huskiness to it. But without the muffling sound of the helmet, it made a tiny part of my body ache. It was a voice that felt pain -- pain that suffused it, deep to the core. That pain could be turned to anger, but...at that moment, there was no anger.

"Wait."

That was all. Wait. Not stop. Not die rebel scum. Just wait.

I looked back.

All the way back by the door leading into the reactor, the Liminal Knight stood. He had left his cloak behind and wore only his armor and his helmet. His blade was out, and it shimmered with enough golden light to illuminate him from a distance. The blade hung limply beside him, and his hand reached out to me. His voice whispered in my mind again. "You're like me...that explains so much." He started forward. "What is your name? No Penitent is ever named 908-101g..."

I turned back to the wall. I slammed the blade, tip first, into the wall. There was no sizzle. There was no burning. No melting metal. The hilt just suck into the wall. I hurriedly started to move the blade in a circle, but it didn't seem to cut. But...but it was a sword! A sword made of lasers. It had to cut! It had too!

"My name is Drak," he said.

I looked back over my shoulder, jerking my sword back, the blade crackling like an interrupted signal on a comscreen. It was a fake. My gut knotted.

It was fake. A fake sword.

"You don't get to know my name," I said, my voice tight. "A-And I'll fight you!" I lifted my sword, aiming it at him.

Drak shook his head. "No. You won't, 101." He was only fifteen or so more paces away. I stepped back without thinking. My back hit the circle I had tried to cut. And moving as smooth as butter, the circle fell backwards and I tumbled through the hole with it. My arms flailed and I screamed as the weight of the suit dragged me down and down -- and I saw Drak standing at the hole, reaching out for me. I saw cables shooting towards me, three thick cables. He was trying to save me. And then what?

I flailed. My blade slashed out and caught the cables before they caught me. The ends of the cables went flying off and then I was sinking even more, and the crushing feeling of the water grew fierce and fiercer.

But I'd gotten away.

BALLOON

The alarm ringing in my ears changed tones as I tried to swim, failed.

Whump! Something punched me in the chest hard enough to nearly snap a rib. I shot up. Up. Up. And then I emerged from the water like an air filled bag that someone had tied a rock to and then the rock had been cut loose. My back slapped back into the water and I groaned. I don't know how long I floated on my back, looking up at the smeary sky. Then something slapped onto me -- a net. Then I was being dragged along the beach, my now very round suit rasping against plastic.

"Well, Venn," a female voice said. "Thanks for that."

Techne? I tried to say the word, but instead it came out as a groan. Then a shadow cut off the sun and I saw we were in a narrow corridor of tech and metal. Then Techne leaned over me, and she wrenched my helmet off. Looking into my eyes, she clicked her tongue. "Never. Ever. Ever scare me like that again, you silly girl."

She kissed my forehead.

"My ribs are broken," I wheezed.

"Oh. Lets deal with that first."

Something pressed to my neck. Hiss.

Darkness.

SUNDIVER

I when I woke up, the Threshold Blade was gone. Someone had ripped it from my hands. I sat up, gasping, looking around, desperate. And then I knew it was in a small footlocker at the fit of my bed. My bed. My B E D. An actual, frigging bed. Like, the kind of things rich people had. I was so stunned that I barely noticed the corset wrapped around my chest. Wires seeped from the corset and threaded into my skin, pumping me with fluids and greyish sludge. My core, where my ribs and guts lay, throbbed. A deep, achy throb.

I put my hand to the corset.

Then I took in the room. It was rectangular and done in a pale white and pink scheme, and the walls were decorated with drawings that took my breath away: Strange creatures, done in a style that seemed utterly unreal, and yet, utterly charming. They danced and played before my eyes, caught in the single moment of their joy. It was nicer than anything I'd ever seen before, and it made me want to sink back into the bed and just enjoy the fact I could sprawl and not bump into walls.

There was also a door and a curved window. The window looked out into a strange blackness, filled with glowing white dots. Was it some kind of mural? The door looked like the wheel-locked hatches that clean rooms used, like the heavily guarded doorway that led into Tiar's river of mana. The door clunked and Techne's voice came through it.

"Hey, Venn? You mind visitors?"

I grabbed the blanket and tugged it up over my shoulders, to cover my incredibly flat chest, which my corset-thing did no favors too. The door swung inward and Techne stepped in, carrying a tray heaped with...food. There was pink and white and brown food, and not in the cube form I was used to seeing. They were in all kinds of weird shapes! The pink was circular and it had pink in the middle and brown around the edge. Multicolored food!? My mouth watered as Techne strutted forward and sat down beside me on a chair that hung off the wall on an extensible arm. She set the tray before me.

Her finger pointed down -- and I barely noticed that she was dressed.

"Prime rib," she said, her finger pointing at the pink food. "Mashed potatoes. A brownie." She pointed at the white food, then the brown food.

"Food has names!?" I gasped.

Techne shook her head slowly. I tore my eyes away from the food through sheer effort and looked at her. She was dressed in a thick leather jacket with a fur fringe and with a tight shorts that showed off all of her shining calves. She had changed her changeless hair, turning it from curls to long, tumbling dreadlocks that looked like each one was its own segment. Her eyes whirred and clicked as she looked at me and she grinned.

"You can eat, you know," she said.

I started to shove food into my mouth, grabbing the mashed potatoes -- so soft! - and I chewed and swallowed. It went down my throat like a sleek, soft feeling. It hit my belly and grew warm and my eyes closed tight. Techne laughed softly.

"You know, uh, there's a fork too." She shook her head. I licked my fingers clean, saw the fork, and blushed. I knew forks existed. I wasn't a savage. I picked it up sheepishly, as if I could uneat the food and be civilized.

Techne ruffled my head. "You goob," she said. "So. Basics. You're aboard the sundiver Tiamat. She's a three clicker, with enough ice cladding for a quad jump and enough antimatter and remass to nearly hit five percent C in a single burn."

"I have no idea what that means," I said, blushing furiously.

Techne smiled. "It's fast, tough, and badass."

I smiled at her. "Can..." I looked at the door and she clicked her tongue, shaking her head -- making only a faint whirr.

"Later, Venn. You're still swimming with enough nano -- Stumble cut your life expectancy to, what, fifty standard?" She smiled. "The nano's fixing up your lungs, taking the gunk out of your organs and clearing out any tumors that might be growing. They're also fixing your teeth-" Which provoked a sudden throb in my jaw. "-and your eyes."

"What's wrong with my eyes?" I asked. There was a weird snap and the room changed hue subtly and everything got sharper. I yelped, jerking back and Techne bit her lip, dimpling some rubber.