To Walk the Constellations Pt. 09

I nodded, slowly. I looked at her and wondered what secrets they had locked away. Meetra shook her head slightly. "You want to know where my name came from, don't you?"

I didn't have the courage to nod.

Meetra sighed.

THE STORY

"It was in the first days of the Alliance. The spark had started across a few worlds, and we'd only just managed to scrape together some sundivers. And the Hegemony had their entire mailed fist. They came at us with twelve worldkillers at once, to a little world called Malachite. It was a crystal planet: One where every lifeform had evolved on a silicate pathway. Crystal trees that soaked up the sun and communicated with one another using laser-pulses along their branches. Crystal-fox and crystal-caribou chased one another across crystal plains that waved with glassgrass and shone under the light of a blue giant."

"We had two ships – the Tiamat and the Manticore – and about four hundred members of the Alliance. We were the core of what could have been. There were influential politicians from across the Chain. Each of us was from a different world, or so it seemed. And the worldkillers were going to wipe us out. They moved into a high orbit, then to a low, to let us see them as they readied the targeted bombardment. I was on the Manticore and was the admiral of the fleet. Some admiral. Some fleet."

"I knew if the bombardment started, the bunker and the cave system would survive about two minutes. So I didn't give them time. I ordered the Alliance to activate their agrav generator – the system they'd use to launch their skiffs into orbit, to get them off world once the meeting was done They hacked their skiffs to add power to the generator and...I targeted the world of Malachite with the Manticore's FTL engine."

"Ah. You've never thought of what it might do? A stellar gravitational field is many, many times larger than that of a planetary one. The same energy that can create a collapsar for faster than light jumps for a few seconds can create a hundred G field for minutes. In those minutes, every lifeform not underneath the agrav shield in the rebel base was crushed. Trees that had lived for centuries in their own quiet, alien way, were crushed into powder. Glassgrass went extinct. The foxes did not even know what was killing them – nor did they have the time to worry. Those entities that survived the gravitational forces, those too tough to crush or too small to compress, then had to face the impact of twelve worldkillers, crashing into the world at extreme velocities."

"The Alliance barely escaped before the shockwave traveled around the world and struck their mountain holdfast. The last off the planet...the last man told me what he saw. A firestorm, miles high, blowing the glittering debris of an entire ecosystem ahead of it. A shimmering wave of fury and death, rushing towards him at a hundred miles an hour. His ship was nearly swamped...but he survived. Nothing else did."

"Malachite is a deadworld now. I...killed it."

"In the Hegemony, when a ship kills a world, they paint it black. It orbits a thousand kilometers form any other ship in their fleet, and it is christened with a new name. So, too...I got a new name." Meetra looked at me, their eyes bleak. "The Butcher of Malachite."

THE FEELING

I wanted to reach out. To touch them. But Meetra stood and walked away. "I've been preforming diplomatic missions for the Alliance ever since," they said. "That is why I am here – to ensure that Atom City continues to provide antiprotons to our fleets. Such as they are." They shook their head. "And now that I have met you, I believe that it is time to exert the upmost pressure upon Atom City. Your pilgrimage is a long way – there are more than eight hundred worlds between here and Home, are there not?"

I nodded and stood up, standing at attention. "Yes, Admiral!" I barked.

Meetra turned to face me. Their brow furrowed. "You don't need to-"

"Yes. I do," I said, seriously. "I'm from a world where people killed their eco through short sighted foolishness. Through...through fucking it up. But you didn't kill it because you could. You killed Malachite cause you had too. And, um, this may just me being from Stumble, but...I'd kill a dozen of anything that wasn't thinking to save a thinking thing. T-That might make me less of a Knight but, you know. Fuck it."

Meetra cocked their head.

"A-And, um," I said, then blushed. "And you...what diplomacy-fu do you want to do?"

Meetra chuckled, quietly. "Atom City has several artifacts of the Domain in their keeping. A river of mana to ensure every citizen is well fed and well cared for – that's why their leader can be chosen by card games and dice tricks, you know?" They shook their head. "But their most precious secret is one that I believe it is time to give over to you. We need you, Venn of Stumble. We need a Knight and-"

"Why?" I asked.

Meetra chuckled. "You've not seen what the Hegemonic Knights can do."

My hand went to my cyber arm. For a moment, I could remember the awful ease of my flesh arm falling off. The blade moved, there had been no pain. Then. Arm gone. Just. Gone.

"Yeah, I have..." I said.

Meetra looked at me. Their lips pursed. "No. You haven't," they said. "In a duel, a Knight is in many ways, balanced. But when facing others, when facing an army, a Knight is a terror. I've seen entire stellar fleets and ground attack forces be destroyed, utterly, by a single Knight. Weapons misfire. Artillery lands in the wrong spot. Intelligence is lost, or reported incorrectly. Drones turn upon their users. Starships burst as their antimatter cores detonate. It is a nightmare. The Alliance has learned, at great cost, that there are only a few ways to fight a Liminal Knight." They put their hands on my shoulders. "One of the best is to have one on your side."

I smiled at her.

And the feeling struck.

It was a sudden, echoing call, a ringing bell in my ears, a familiar set of hands on my shoulders. My eyes widened.

GOODNIGHT

"What?" Meetra asked.

I have to go. I have to find that feeling. I...was...is that... my mind didn't want to finish that thought, to have that hope dashed. But I knew that Meetra would never, ever, ever let me go off and follow the feeling. Not after talking up the horror show of a Hegemonic Knight, no sir. Because what I had felt...it had been another Liminal Knight. That was the only thing that could have made that sensation, that could have made my djinn sit up and take notice. I blushed and looked back at Meetra.

"I just realized...I...really should be getting back to bed," I said, nodding.

They smiled. "Yes. It is late. And I know that getting the engine from Baron-Administrator Arete will be like pulling teeth."

I sighed. "Oh!" I said, trying to sound casual, so Meetra wouldn't think I'd ended things suspiciously. "One last thing before you go: Why is it Baron Administrator and not, like, Baroness Administrator?"

"Oh, she has a cock," Meetra said, casually.

I stood in the dark for a long time. Oh.

Oh.

Oh?

But then, in the darkness, I readied my nerves. I turned, and I ran off. I scampered.

And I found that Meetra was right.

Being a Knight was scary once I started flexing the muscles Thale and I had been working on. I felt the cameras and the sensors that kept a watch out in the shuttle bays along the edge of Atom City and quietly edited them so I wasn't in any. I logged a flight plan with a shuttle, then shut down the alerts that would tell a living human person that the shuttle had been borrowed. I even altered the fuel manifests, so that once the shuttle returned, someone would have to go and measure the hydrogen by hand to tell that any had been filched. And since it was a short burn down to Atom, to where the feeling had echoed from...

I don't think anyone would notice.

I sat back in the seat of the shuttle as it quietly and smoothly burned away from Atom City. The onboard comptech ran everything.

I could have taken a nap.

I didn't.

LOCK

The shuttle I'd borrowed clunked and whirred as it attached up against the side of the MDT Station and I breathed out a slow, nervous breath I hadn't known I'd be holding. I felt my own mind kicking my butt – again and again and again. No one knew I was here, no one knew that I was running off on this hair brained nonsense. But I had felt the call. I had felt it. Echoing up from the belly of Atom's gravity well, reaching to me through space.

The call of another Knight.

And if the Hegemony was kept at bay by Atom City's fleet of antiproton skiff ships...

My mouth felt dry. My stomach roiled.

And the airlock opened.

I stepped into the narrow, industrial corridor. The station whirred and clunked and my senses were filled with the tech that threaded through it. Automated machines and teleoperated robotic presence both filled this place. Above me, I could hear the echo-bass rumble of the atom smasher. I could see tubes of metal sunk into the walls, carrying coolant for the phased cyclonic radiative systems, where blistering hot antimatter was phased, carefully, from a nearly incoherent temperature to something that could be bottled and slung into sundivers and starships.

I walked forward, my feet padding nearly silently on the grated floor, and tried to reach out with my feelings. But I sensed nothing but the radio crackle. The teleoperation hum. The buzz of the agrav. The faint rocking, shifting feeling of the deck. The whole station was rocking in the winds of Atom – the buffeting, thousand mile and hour winds of a gas giant. Even here, at the upper limits of the atmosphere, attenuated to nearly nothing, the wind rocked the station.

The airlock slammed shut behind me and clicked shut – an automatic safety procedure. It still made my lips dry.

At an impulse, I reached down with my new cyber-arm. The agrav emitter worked into my bicep sent a pulse of energy through my fingertips and my blade leaped into my palm with a click. I felt more secure with it in my hand. I walked around the corner and threaded through a series of corridors. I walked past rooms where machines moved racks of magnetic bottles from one notch in the wall to the next, where whirring engines did mysterious things in the art of antiproton manufacture.

Then I heard it.

A whispering breath. A voice, almost invisible, tingling along my neck.

I followed it.

Right. Left. My stomach knotted and I felt like I should call out.

Instead, I kept my jaw clenched. Something felt...off. In this dead station, thrumming with comptech, something felt deeply wrong.

I rounded the corner and looked into a midnight black corridor. The lights were off.

Then with a roar and a flare of golden light, a threshold blade formatted itself to life. The mono-molecular wire of the sword itself hung suspended in a field of golden, holographic guide lights. The guide light cast its stark illumination along the tall, powerful body of Lord Drak. His mask reflected the illumination back at me, while his cape rustled as his shoulders tensed. He lifted his head and his voice hissed out – a snarl muffled by his mask.

"You killed the Lady Enriquah."

I lifted my blade in a panic. How? How how how how? How was he here? My red guidelights flared on as my blade formatted – growing at what seemed like a snails pace as he advanced towards me. He didn't speak. He didn't say anything beyond that single growl. He just advanced towards me and, with a crackle, our blades met in a haze of electromagnetic crackling.

THE MEETING OF THRESHOLDS

Drak was terribly strong. He locked our swords, then shoved, hard. I went skidding backwards, my feet slipping under me, and then smashed, back first, into the top of the T junction. I stumbled and ducked at the same movement as he thrust and slashed in a single, economic swipe. There was no flourish, no fancy footwork, no flipping like Enriquah. There was just a movement that would have severed my head and my arm from my body – and left behind a glowing, cherry red scar on the metal. I turned backwards, facing him as I backed away, thrusting at his chest, trying to keep him back.

Drak parried, stepped inwards, and slammed his elbow into my solar plexus. The air rushed out of me.

His palm smashed into my jaw.

I saw white.

I hit the floor. My blade skittered away from me, slicing along the tube on the wall. By pure chance, the coolant sprayed upwards, turning to fog. Drak staggered backwards with a muffled groan and I gasped in some air as I turned, got my feet under me, and ran, using an agrav impulse to get my blade back into my hand. As I ran, I slashed – cutting a coolant line here, there.

The clouds only reflected golden light behind me. But it provoked a growl from Drak. "Running, rebel? That's all your kind is good for!"

I felt his power reaching out. My senses buzzed with the feeling of it – a rippling, electrical sensation that burned along the walls. LEDs flickered and popped with quiet hiss snap noises as the corridor under me rocked – and I felt the atom smasher overhead groaning as Drak reached into the machinery and bent it to his whim. Magnetic fields crawled along the walls and floors, causing the grating under me to ripple and quiver. I sprang backwards just a moment before the floor smashed into the ceiling with a screech of distending metal. The grating was mashed against the roof, leaving a jagged hole in the floor, leading down to electrical conduits.

Drak leaped from the roiling cloud and landed, catlike, before me.

I was too stunned to even step backwards.

His blade slashed down at me. I caught it on mine, stepped back, parried his upswing, priouetted away from him. His backstroke slashed through the wall with a spray of sparks. "Who has been training you?" he growled.

I snarled and then charged at him rather than even hint at giving up Thale. My shoulder slammed into his chest and we both stumbled backwards. He might have been strong, but he wasn't heavy – and my cyber arm had its advantages. I grabbed his throat with my left hand. He grabbed my wrist. I tried to squeeze – but my fingers refused to catch. He growled behind his faceless mask.

"A synthtech?" His hand tightened and pain exploded through my arm. "Pathetic."

He forced my arm down, then lifted his threshold blade to cut my head off.

I thrust out my pointer finger. The UV laser built into it blazed and struck his mask – almost directly on one of the concealed cameras built under the surface. Drak staggered backwards with a cry of agony, clutching at his face. I clutched my synthetic arm to my chest, then spun and saw an emergency exit nearby. I sprinted forward and the door opened with a thought. It led to a ladder, but by then, my arm had gotten more or less usable.

I scrambled up the ladder. Under me, I heard the clunk and clink of gloves and boots.

After what felt like an eternity of being sure a hand would grab my ankle, I reached the hatch.

It popped open and I emerged onto the roof of the atomsmasher.

THE LONG PLUNGE

The rooftop had wind baffles, massive sails that caught the wind for some extra energy. It also had so little oxygen that my clothing shifted around me. A breather mask deployed and clasped around my mouth as I looked out at the vast, roiling cloud field that stretched in both directions. I started to hurry away from the hatch – and got far enough away that I wasn't impaled as Drak came sweeping out. His cape snapped out and slowed his fall. It looked like he had used his threshold blade as a grappling hook and flung himself up the tube, arms locked in tight to avoid whacking them against the ladder.

I clutched my blade in both hands, glaring right at him.

Drak rushed forward, sprinting at me. His blade dragged along the hull plating of the atom smasher, leaving a line of molten metal. He swung his sword upwards and sent a spray of molten flecks at me. I rolled under it and thrust at his thigh. He moved just slightly too slow and I nicked him, cutting through armor and into flesh with the smooth, effortless grace that only a monomolecular edge could. He snarled, then swung at me – once, twice, three times. It was a brutal rain of blows, which I parried desperately, trying to keep my feet under me.

We locked blades again.

"Why. Won't. You. Die!?" He snarled.

"You first," I hissed.

Then I slammed Lord Drak with my agrav impeller. The impulse of focused gravitic waves pushed him backwards – sending him staggering. And as he staggered, I formatted my threshold blade. I swung on my heel. He lifted his sword – but rather than meeting a monomolecular blade, his sword met a sledgehammer. He sheered the rapidly constructed hammer off, but the head still had momentum. It smashed into his mask with a hideous crunch. The mask, clearly designed for such things, exploded off his head and he went flying backwards – most of the kinetic energy dispersed by the mask breaking apart.

He sprawled.

I panted, then reformatted my blade, aiming the glowing red tip at his throat.

And Thale looked at up at.

NO

His eyes widened.

"No..." I whispered.

"Venn..." He breathed. As if he had had no idea. As if...as if he hadn't seen me. The camera lens in the mask. I had a sudden, vivid flash, a memory of myself on Stumble – going unseen as Hegemonic troopers looked at me. The flash crumbled away. There was nothing for it. There was just the yawning, gaping pit. I stepped backwards, my blade drooping in my hands.

"No...no, that's not true..." I whispered, my voice choked.

Thale started to stand. He moved wobbly – his jaw was already purpling. Blood trickled from a cut on his temple. His eyes were out of focus. Those lovely, purple eyes. My throat tightened. I couldn't breathe. It was as if my oxygen mask was gone. As if I was sucking down this atmo, alone. I shook my head, and Thale blurred to nearly invisibility.

"Venn-" he reached for me.

I screamed and swung. The movement was reflexive. He jerked backwards as my sword sent a spray of sparks into the air. He rolled away, grabbing his blade from the ground. He came to his feet and I charged forward, swinging again and again. "No! No! No! No! No! No!" I shouted, again and again and again. He parried each blow – sparks flying. My arms went limp and I dropped my sword and his arms wrapped around mine as I leaned into him. My tears poured from my eyes. I couldn't breathe.

"No..." I sobbed into his shoulder.

Lord Drak Thale of the Hegemony held me.

And I liked it.

GLOVE

My fingers cupped Thale's cheeks. Seeing him in...in this uniform. With the cape. The black armor. The figure that I'd had nightmares about – but with the head of the man who I...

It was making my head spin. Nearly as much as the atmosphere. I could see a faint shimmer around his lips – a nearly skintight breathing aparatus. But then he gripped me and god he was strong in real life. He had been strong in the dream, but feeling his arms around me, feeling the steel hardness of his muscles through his gambeson, it made my knees go weak and my breath catch. In what felt like a scant few steps, he was at one of the emergency entrances and we were dropping down the ladder. His cape flared and somehow stopped us – the impact light enough that it only bowled me onto my back and dragged him onto me.

I panted. I hyperventilated, really.

He opened his mouth. As if he wanted to speak.