–

– 51 –

There’s an edge. Every time I gear up, I hit a slowdown, so I know that an edge lays beyond. A sword slowing as it nears its mark. Seems it’s working on me more than I’m working on it. Like I imagine watching my own sun go nova: details sharpening in the final moment’s arrival, beautiful, beautiful always. Amazing steps of amazing effort in this hyperbolic downward frontline towards nothing-not-nothing. Seconds protract, the transmission of time condensed into a line, fiber into thread. The stun of conclusion when the line’s end appears.

Listening for a change, she hears nothing. Soleil is running without stopping, but there’s nothing. Then something arrives, and she can see nothing but the writhing scales, seamlessly enfolded within their grasp.

Stoically standing, she knows there is nowhere to hide. Eyes emerge in a draconid face, fresh and delicate, fascinating and fascinated. Then, the rumble of a strangely familiar-sounding voice beginning to communicate.

I noticed you, moving around.
I caught wind of you…
recognized you.
I ate your mother,
when I was born.
I ate a lot of people,
right away,
and grew.
It was emerge or die.
They were waiting for me.
They would have killed me.
I chose to live.
Yours is not the only mother I ate,
doubtfully the last,
with so many mothered beings in existence.
Now we meet.
I am Acamar.

Without thinking of the significance of her words, Soleil asked, “Did you seek me?”

The dragon admitted, “Yes.” This revealed to them a new understanding of their positions in the nature of their meeting. The dragon wanted to give her something.

–

– 52 –

Soleil recalled her lessons in the voice of her dragon teacher, Arkuda:

There is a common trait in new dragons – they are curious. They grant more boons in order to learn about the world. As hungry for knowledge as they are for food, they effect their part in this natural exchange by enabling capabilities. It makes them vulnerable, but they must learn humility in order to gain their maturity. New dragons have to learn their reality and become known in it. This means meeting life forms halfway. Older dragons grant fewer boons than the newly hatched, because they understand the consequences. New dragons make more mistakes with greater extravagance, and they have to make up for it. They have the ignorance of those newly born into power, which they must endeavor to grow beyond. Granting a boon is like giving away a scale, leaving a vulnerable patch. One doesn’t see scales missing, but the vulnerabilities remain, and add up. Some humans say we have that in common with regards to getting older.  If we appear to you somewhat like lizards, to lizards we appear somewhat like you. We are sufficiently alien, to everyone including ourselves. We are sovereign, and clearly so. Even to each other.

Soleil realizes this is only the second dragon she’s truly met. She’s not entirely believing what ‘e said about her mother. Is ‘e trying to twist her mind? She’s been out of touch with other humans. Just trying to get to her, maybe? There is something so familiar in er voice, but dragons are both strange and familiar.

The dragon asked:
What do you want to do?
We are inside one of your confusing doorways.
I won’t keep you here.
Is there something you’re going to teach me?

Looking into the dragon’s eyes was like looking into all the eyes that those had ever met. By choice or consequence, er gaze was thusly open to the Princess, completely surrounded by the movement of scales. With a wave of her hand, the fielded sled approached Acamar’s face.

The face grew defensively enormous as she appeared. The sled’s field flickered away, and Soleil, surprised, stood her ground for a full two breaths. Moving to perch on the edge of her platform, Soleil faced a black tooth her size. Forgiveness, she decided. Before you destroy any more of us, I want you to know we’re capable of forgiveness.

She leaned forward and kissed the tooth. It seared her lips like an acid caress, soaking through the heat of her skin. In the gigantic tooth’s black polish, she saw Acamar in a humanoid form, holding scale-clad hands to er face as though ‘e had lost a tooth. Stepping back, Soleil reached up to touch her lips. Under her fingers, they felt as smooth as the dragon’s tooth.

I’m giving you something that will protect you,
blackbird,
and you can fly free.
What you’re feeling, where you…
kissed me,
is a barrier of still nothingness.
It’s the kind of blank the mind reflexively fills
with something that makes sense,
to your degree of suggestion.
You can move among the planets as anything or anyone you’d rather,
Princess Soleil,
Magus.
Or you can show yourself.
See the barrier,
or not see it;
feel it,
or not feel it.
You won’t ever need to be rid of it.
You can never use it,
and always have it.
Just as I now keep what you gave to me,
our gifts to each other now given.
I will put you back on your way.
Can you remember your stars?

Though tired, she replied that of course she could…
Like she knows her mother’s face.

Remember your stars then,
and hold onto that.
There are people there to meet you.
Don’t be afraid.

The scales parted, receding and shrinking, to reveal the most familiar of skies. Alisandre was before her, small enough yet near enough to cup inside her two hands. It was moonrise over the edge.

–

– 15TH SEQUENCE –

–

– 53 –

In his office, Draig Claymore received a call over a particular dedicated line. He picked up and listened without saying anything. The caller spoke: “I saw something. And then it was gone.” It was the private investigator Derringer on the other end. Claymore appreciated the succinct summary delivered in nugget order of importance. As though this fellow had experience receiving important yet patchy calls.

Claymore responded, “It is also reported gone by my alerting sources.”

Though uncomfortable on many levels, Derringer told it straight. “It looked very much like the Princess in some kind of planet atmosphere cruiser.”

The General masked his reaction with nonchalance. “That’s weird.” His desk was very clean, so there was nothing nearby to grab. Instead he just stroked the surface of his totally clean desktop.

“The target slipped me either on purpose or by accident, after I declared myself. I got one scan and a series of images.”

“Okay,” replied the General. “I need you to send those to me before leaving the ship in its home, with logs intact. Then, go back to doing what you do. Continue as you were.”

“Thanks. I will.” Draig found Derringer’s dry candor refreshing. He ended the call. Swiping his hand over the clear surface again, he got out from behind the desk, heading toward his armoire. He donned a lightweight cover, and went to go have a look.

–

– 54 –

Arkuda begins passage via the Gateway Stair to the Level Plaine, Tabula Rasa. The way is framed in thought and realized in transformation.

Now, the sky is still dark. The many suns in the sky are distant, but if Arkuda can see them, they’re within arm’s reach. Sunlight penetrates the deepest vacuum of space, if not the lowest ocean. In darkness, the dragon Arkuda sees light, and is the light seen. This light endures as long as day, as long as life.

Arkuda knows all these places within reach of er being, though not the way that memory recalls a place already visited. They’re as near as the next step, part of the elemental world of this dragon’s existence. Worlds of worlds: draconid reality.

The dragon has chosen a place in er Seat: where ‘e is known in many ways, by many, and knows many. The seat is strongest around the root existence, but is also much wider; its nearness to root is defined by myriad relations.

In this place of Seat, ‘e can see er place of work: a certain conception of function which humans chiefly ascribe to, and which is an interactive process of the peoples of the Pan-Galactic Imperium, the currently flourishing connective. The time phase during which Arkuda has been deeply involved in Pan-Galactic endeavors has been as happy for er as the one in which er current name was given.

The dragon breathes deeply into er channels; a hundred pollens or so, the blending of breezes in tiny streams, a tinkling sense to each thing. Outlines of pre-dawn hue begin to dim yonder city lights beneath the rugged slopes, scars of a planet.

This particular place holds a meeting of factors which allows for a certain fluidity of being, a transformational autonomy. Dragons seek this the way people seek privacy. To everyone, dragons are so unlike, and yet so like; as familiar and unknown as one’s own molecules. They live under the tension of alien kinship, as a consciousness of something that is a part of other things (or do other things arise from dragon-being?). A dragon is a distinct person of memories, feelings, and parts, but also something elemental in all its aspects everywhere.

They are mysterious also to each other but share many understandings, the greatest of which can be achieved on Tabula Rasa, or Level Plaine. Arkuda feels an eagerness both warm and cool, like an elysian breeze. A drawing together is much needed, energetically speaking, for this dragon. ‘E wonders who else is of the same mind. Divides have grown.

The King Ascendant is unlike the recent scion line in draconid relational attitude. The Dragon Councillor is adapting through a difficulty of difference. Grant Vario was not inculcated with association until as an adult he joined the scion line as Soleil’s father, and he has never engaged in a Studious Tradition. At times he makes strange requests, believing that a dragon can know or do things ‘e cannot, or demanding unusual endeavors of discovery. Whether Arkuda can gain something on the Tabula Rasa to give to these inquiries is ancillary. ‘E’s going to see the others in the place where only they can go.

–

–

– 46 –

She could read the gauges on this Vedani sled: its levels were drooping past midpoint. As for herself, the Princess didn’t know anymore. Her level of activity had sunk into the background. It was helpful to imagine that her lungs, always moving, were her entire body. Limbs moved as a matter of course, the way her lungs breathe. Of course they must move.

It was necessary to focus awareness beyond her physical motions. Every star diagram she could recall rotated through her memory like a second geochronmechane in her functions. If she were to recognize a constellation backwards, could this little motorsled get her to the other side? Was there a proper flare on this thing? What about the possibility of making a short, directed hop? There weren’t any granola bars stashed in here, she’d have found them; but there was water, from a sippy hose in the dashboard.

The stream of songs in her thoughts pulsed louder, and she turned it up, letting her frustration at being lost imbue her movements with relentlessness. Like lungs taking draughts of sweet fresh air, so was each wind of energy to her limbs: brisk, ready to work until they couldn’t.

–

– 47 –

Everything can continue while thoughts still,
and there is no doing even in the doing.

ACAMAR ends a day in the moment when thoughts still,
the un-doing of things when doing is done,
when all things have been put away,
the course finished.

Swirling water in a a stirred cup flowed,
and slowed.
Thoughts settled like the dust of leaves to the bottom,
creating space of dreamless sleep.

There,
life,
whether known.
From the still expanse in the clear space,
where there is still breath:
my life.

At the river’s end it became something else –
the tumbling motion undid itself,
transformed under greater force:
gravity,
entropy –
to new form,
other form,
next phase.

The streetside stream falling to another level below.
ACAMAR:
a bottomless vessel that remains full,
where through falls the stream to settle,
a still flame’s column of air.

ACAMAR followed the end of the day,
the last thing said,
the final word.

No more conversation;
the babble of the brook succumbed to the faucet.
The liquid stopped moving in suspension,
the living flame stood still.

To exist in a hurricane torrent,
a flame surrounded itself with stillness.
Among least still of all things,
its motion outmatched,
persisted only through greater stillness.

Conceiving of their release and revival,
eightfold of flame and like brought me,
ACAMAR,
to life.

Surest of my existence,
they bore the knowledge.
I am their result.
I am their change,
I am brought of their resolution.
Their suppression became stillness,
and they found their return,
through me,
ACAMAR.

–

– 48 –

There were pockets of restful pause in the beat of the Princess’ ongoing search for home space. Though fleeting, she pretended that they weren’t, and they would last until they were over. Along the way, she’d successfully maintained contact with the invisible window-cluster anomalies, and for that, she was very glad.

It was possible that she was getting tired. Someone might panic at this point, which reminded her that she mustn’t. Transforming the panic resulted in thoughts both morbid and comforting. So what if she did get lost and die this way? Utilizing the consideration of an historian. The possibility was nearing; if disappointing, it was also simple. Her learning with the Vedani would come to no benefit. Hanging onto the levity of academic curiosity, she theorized about unknown true history, thanking her teacher Arkuda for the fortitude in this reactionary decision. She was still moving, still achieving one always-surprising jump after another.

Soleil thought on the old advice about staying in one place in order to be found. After the first jump, she knew she’d done something her Vedani team had not, and maybe could not. There was no waiting for rescue.

–

– 49 –

The private investigator was only five games into the poker table at Joe’s pub when he was handed a call from ‘Mr. G’. That was the first time he’d seen the dishes kid, who brought the phone out to Joe. Joe interrupted the deal at the table. “It’s a Mr. G, for you,” he said with a look that didn’t really want to know.

He stroked the grey felt on the card table as he listened. Derringer guessed that one of the other players was an eye for Mr. G, who this time turned out to be General Draig Claymore through a subtle scrambler. Derringer could recognize his thoughtful pause pattern through the bent vowels and inflections. Mr. G had an assignment for Derringer that he could do by himself, and was within his usual range of errands. He was essentially being asked to take an official vehicle out for a joyride to nearby hinterspace.

“I’d like to you to go to this coordinate; there shouldn’t be anything there, and nothing in particular should show on your shipboard. But according to reports, there might be something. If you register something, or anything, I’d like to you tell me. Go now.”

How did they know him so well? Besides being the government. Many’s the time he resisted taking one of their ships for a spin. This was like his reward for being a good boy, in that respect. The point he sought wasn’t that far away – Dalmeera-on-Florin was in nearest vicinity – yet it was sufficiently remote, in a strange direction. Derringer cranked it up and let it out, impressed by the standard specs on a government vehicle.

This zone was nice and clear, and Derringer took a soaring route, to widen his coverage, yes. Sometimes what you’re looking for is on the way to where you think you’ll find it – worth the fuel.

He neared the coordinate after about an hour, and switched from soaring to stalking: creeping paths alternating with observant pauses.

Weird… what is that? Something tiny, dancing in place right where there’s supposed to be nothing. Like a confused fly.

–

– 50 –

Still lost. Soleil was sensing the infinite-approach feeling of something impossible that someone was doing anyway. She had hope – she knew what the word was, and she still knew how to spell it. It did feel as though she might be seeing less and less. Finding a forward-move pattern combination was becoming a longer process, at least perceptually.

The doors, windows, walks, and passages of the Princess’ perimeter running route through the Imperial Court were flashing through her mind, as she swooped into her determined angles. Some of these windowpane clump-zones felt strangely familiar – as though they were places she’d visited before, though she knew that was untrue. Smells as well as songs floated through her thoughts, and while that might have been disconcerting, any sense of life she could hold onto was a sign she wasn’t dead yet. There was a whiff of Jennian magnolia.

She was watching for star patterns on the vehicle’s scanning scope when the gauge-size graphics display held onto something. She reverberated with a sudden shock of recognition on seeing the unmistakable keel fin of an official Pan-Galactic Imperial ship, close enough that it was here.

Soleil remembered throwing herself around her grandmother’s legs as a child, experiencing a similar impulse. But where there would have been a return of warmth, she felt a wave of sadness – like hitting a wall instead, with her grandmother on the other side. She didn’t feel comfort. She didn’t feel rescued, and she was one who knew well how to take her own counsel.

The Imperial ship turned on its patrol lights, and the greater part of her screamed alarm. Instantly she saw that her current freedom to act held keys to possibilities that would disappear once the ship recognized her. Perhaps it already had. Extrapolations quickly unfolded on bringing home her knowledge at present, and they all resulted in nothing but a higher death toll. Not like this, not like this.

The Princess’ eyes were crossing with confusion and admitted exhaustion. Instead of buckling, she screamed, throwing herself into finding the key maneuver that would take her someplace else. She actually wanted to get away from someone who would bring her home. Her will overpowered the sheer longing for comfort. Not like this, no!

Yes: everything in the tangled knot aligned once more, making sense for a brief flash. In that flash of time, she was gone.

–

–

– 42 –

“Scuse me,” said Leanders as he distanced himself from the others, into the corridor to receive a shipboard transmission via watch.  Once he was done getting specifics, he rejoined them and smoothly interrupted.  “One of our rocks erupted in a controlled blast. No visual ID and no further pattern.”

“What an intrusion,” said a bemused Raev. “Why not adjourn? I will go with you, Trosper.” The fellow who’d been giving the contractor’s debriefing (sparing Leanders the appearance of actual authority) stepped forward and nodded to Sturlusson.  “We’ll unlink. Bye,” Sturlusson said, striding past him, and Trosper followed his passenger out.

From where she stood, Arcta lifted her hand in farewell, and so did the two new hires. “Bye,” they said. Leanders watched them disappear toward the back beyond the tech platform.  “I’ll go with you,” the researcher said to him.  Arriba nudged Vadr with her shoulder.

–

– 14TH SEQUENCE –

–

– 43 –

If the Princess had felt anchorless next to her base ship with a team in an unfamiliar area, now she was without any fellows, coordinates, or return point. Deep space wilderness threatened to overtake her thoughts – what have I done? where am I? what did I just do? – but she didn’t allow it more than half a moment. She still had this sled; she still had blips. Yes, she still had blips. Her day was just starting.

Soleil retained her vehicle settings, trying to feel and see what she was getting at when she achieved this… jump. Effectively transgate relocation, by some totally alternate (and she hoped, replicable) means. She was in one whole piece!

There was no structure other than her vehicle, and no evident power-up besides her own motions, and whatever this was. She had been describing a shape. The shape had a kind of pulse that she was able to match. She was pursuing a connection between her control movements, the maneuvers of her vehicle, and the planar directionalities of the shape as detected by her readings. Did she eat any breakfast? Yes, she’d had a starchy roll. Vedani apparently enjoy creating their versions of human food recipes.

As expected, this cluster was different. Were these things alive? There was a living sense about them that made her feel a little cheerful – like the presence of a bird. Soleil only gave that half a moment too, as she could only really allow comfort with a rest point in sight. She imagined to herself that this would happen, that there was a good reason behind the sense of calm leaking through to her.

Play and exploration had been her catalysts for discovery, so she kept these forces forefront, pretending the sense of safety that had encouraged her. So far it was working, and she moved at a pace that she could sustain for some time.

The Princess noticed a new factor to the total. While she was wary of being misled by stresses under extraordinary conditions, she let it into her formula. There was something vaguely musical about all this – yet so vague in essence that she needed to give it clearer form. Soleil began recalling known songs to fit the musical inkling, anything she could hear clearly in her thoughts. As they bubbled up, those songs became her anchors. It felt more or less right and suitable, relations between things seeming clearer. Focusing through three layered songlines amid gyration looping maneuvers, she vaulted through again.

–

– 44 –

The Princess hadn’t given herself time to think for a while, but at least she was still conscious, if barely. She’d been hoping a horizon would arrive before she knew it. Since that wasn’t the case, forebrain awareness resurfaced in the way one would think to check the time. She wasn’t yet a third tired, and when she reached tiring, she could bring herself up again. There weren’t any hours in this process, and if there were they might even function differently, like space and motion. So she measured herself against herself.

Soleil became better at this sojourning. If she wasn’t where she wanted to be, she could look for a way onward, finding it somewhere between the elements that were now becoming familiar. Remembered songs arose more frequently in her concentration, chaining themselves one after another like a musical channel. She would clear her thoughts when they became too loud, quieting the mind until she desired new guidance. It was both refreshing and grounding to picture it like bringing her boat to the riverside as she traveled on down. She began to imagine a sunrise – then shook herself back into the reality of blackness and stars.

The songs coming to mind were like guidances in that they weren’t strictly self-selected; they were connected to the phenomena she was observing. Their hearkenings and correlations went unexpectedly from one to the other, from moment to moment in her life that gave her the next idea where to go. It was anything you could hold onto out here.

Sometimes, she let herself and the music stop. Silence of motion. When it came time to move, she moved.

Her imagined music grew in detail and volume; she began to trust it. The Princess even smiled, perhaps for no good reason. She dialed down her pace and turned a third spent to a quarter, having seen no signpost.

–

– 45 –

Things that work,
stop working,
at a time when the motion ends.
I am that.
As the sound trails away,
as the stream turns to a drip,
it is I.
What is the end of a day?
There came a time when you had to stop moving.

There will have been a finish line –
not pause,
but finish,
perhaps beginning again,
perhaps not.
A non-event,
non-occurrence,
the un-doing.

Swirls of powdered tea in a mug continued,
until they showed no motion:
one color in a uniform cup.
I am in the cup when the swirls are no more,
just then.
The motion that signals the end is my arrival.

You’ve seen me,
but did you know I was here?

–

–

– 37 –

Soleil had not a single reference point in this universe-sky… not one!  She was good at making sure she had some, which is how she noticed that she had none.  She kept her individual sled with the group, but with part of her attention she continued to search for her location.

Soleil mused on Uixtr’s word for their waypoint technology, a transanchor.  What words did they combine from her language, and why?  ‘Anchor’ has a clear meaning: it holds something in place.  A transanchor could be something that holds something in place to a different place, both anchor and transport.  This really did look like a totally different place from their usual exit.  How would a ship be so big that it had different stars on another side?  Behind her, the ship with its doors closed was invisible to sight as usual, and in her glance she marked three star shapes that framed its location from this direction.

The team paced, weaving in a kind of search pattern.  Soleil made sure to keep her return flags identified in view.  Since she didn’t know what they were searching for, she tried interpreting their pattern.  She wasn’t entirely sure they knew, either.

Ah!  There was something on her readings.  What was it?  Soleil tapped her console to alert the mission leader of the detection.  He returned a clear message: go find it, and figure it out.  A nervous chill washed over her, suspicions of a brewing situation not entirely wrong.  The others now monitored her instrument readings.

Faced with an open-ended quandary, the Princess decided to have some fun with this puzzle.  Freed from the constraints of flying formation, she did some strategic wheeling and whizzing – justifiable maneuvers with a dash of grace and whimsy.  She was chasing blips, after all.  When going back to the same coordinates didn’t work, she switched to disorganized logic.  Her freeform trajectories encountered two more instances of blips, which they pondered.  “Continue combing,” was the order given.

Carefully courting danger, the Princess decided to experiment further.  The glove control movements for her sled reminded her of the moves on the page given her by the three Kao-Sidhe.  Observing the approximate precision preferred by the vehicle interface, Soleil tried moving with increased gesture arcs and an adjusted speed differential.  With her moves, she could enact what to one part of the field was an unnoticeable torque, while in another part creating a visible and calculated rotation, and she could link these gestures smoothly from one to the next.  As she followed her readings, the motion reminded her of a giant invisible geochronmechane, the toy of sliding dials that only came apart after seemingly endless flipping, spinning, and switching towards a solution.

Soleil adjusted her base settings a little, just four of the obvious ones that she knew well enough.  This would skew the workings into different but still understandable directional sensitivity and scale.  Her Vedani teammates made no comment to interrupt her, though she knew they were monitoring her decisions.  Soleil knew there was no proof yet for what she was trying, and her included factors would probably fill a chalkboard, if the Vedani had chalkboards.  At least there were people nearby if something went wrong.

Her new settings acted stable, so she launched into a chain of movements.  The sled field could now read a sizable 75% of her kinetic input, and her movement allowances let her respond more dramatically to the unknowns when they appeared on her readings.  The team let her continue unremarked, and their silent, intense focus boosted her concentration.  Soleil moved her sled along the edges of the problem.  She hoped they were recording on all layers, as she appeared to be tracing something.

The Princess was mapping the shape in her mind as she moved around it.  It was a structural, locational convergence point made of sound or vibration, exhibiting edges and angular crossings – like a cluster of intersecting, emitting windowpanes.  It was able to hold together in the vacuum, throwing off the disturbances that clashed with the Vedani’s new alliance technology.  Parts of the cluster shook with varying degrees of difference, and she noted their frequencies against her own contrastingly reliable and consistent biological movements.  Going from this fast part to that slow part, she worked transitions between minor degrees of difference, linking similar resonances along her unified spatial path.  She pursued a definition of each glimpsed factor.  Directional multiplicities in magnitudes: the Princess tied them together in the moment with her presence of mind, motions, and timing.

Soleil thought it possible that the directionality of each windowpane worked like a signal dish, but she couldn’t divert the attention to study that with a handy detection.  Instead, as the order of this thing became clearer, she matched her movements to directionalities, and her rhythms to frequencies – finding what she could link most smoothly with her own body, the sled an extension thereof.

Soleil’s breath slowed, and time seemed to slow with it, as she examined the differences with greater fineness.  With her understanding, she glimpsed a path through the panes, like an eye opening directly in the swing of her rhythm.  With a burst of urgency, she surged into it – and then, she was somewhere else.

–

– 38 –

Facing conversationally inward, three ships anchored to each other moved together through space like a slowly twirling lily.  They were the only gleaming thing in sight.

The actual conversation was occurring aboard the ship displaying greatest authority, an instrument-bearing member of an Imperial Alpha fleet.  It would be very, very hard to tell that its identifiers had been altered.

Five people fit snugly in the equipment chamber.  Leanders, grizzled, stood silently, contemplating middle management while others drove their bargains.  He looked across at the one he called boss, repeatedly surprised by his presence.  Not just the unlikelihood of it; the man could turn nearly invisible unless he spoke, and he hadn’t spoken for a while.  Sturlusson was looking around the interior of the craft with an ear following the discussion.  It wasn’t the newest of Imperial ships – looked like it was made of routine repairs.  Nevertheless, it had squeaked over to this rendezvous with a bit of shine left on it.

Leanders was feeling relieved and even lighthearted after a series of simple stash drops.  Raev’s one fist was held clutched, like it was holding the strings tying everything together.

–

– 39 –

With the motion of the ship at stable velocity, the redhead in a skirt suit felt like she was sitting still; maybe a few hairs wafting.  She looked at the driver to her left.  “How long am I trapped in here with you?” she asked with dry amusement.

Derringer smiled serenely.  “Until we reach your destination, or something terrible happens.”

Karma’s head rolled back along with a smooth yet sudden acceleration.  “I wasn’t aware that this is how you drive.”

Through his mustache and dark curls, he beamed in no particular direction, then swiveled his head to look at Karma from an angle. “Right now is special!”

Her smile bloomed into a grin beneath astonished eyebrows. “I’m thrilled! And… so on.”

Derringer blinked softly, like a unicorn. “Good.”

–

– 40 –

Arcta Hydraia joined the others amongst the fold-down seats of the equipment chamber, remaining in the doorway. She wore loose high-collared jams in uniform grey. She felt a small, painful bond with this ship that saved three lives from a hatching dragon. She looked at the two she brought with her, wearing their Pan-Galactic Imperial uniform. The shorter woman with chestnut skin and deep brown hair pulled back in a ponytail wore a nametag that said R. ARRIBA. Her counterpart, tall, dark-haired, rail-thin and sallow, was labeled T. VADR. Their faces wore the look of stored answers after having talked things over between themselves.

Arriba focused on the guy in the corner who’d been addressing them. He stood feet planted shoulder width, arms across his chest. He had an unusual way of looking like nobody from behind sharp, blank features. “So, we can take our ship, the one we’re used to, with all our things in it?” As Arriba inquired, she waved her hands to indicate everything around them.

His black turtleneck and grey slacks didn’t appear to move a micrometer as he gave a one-inch nod. “Sure.”

Vadr raised his head from where it hung in contemplation. He looked up from beneath his eyebrows. “But now we’re ghosts, right, Trosper?”

“Not really,” said the man explaining. He swung an arm out to indicate the other three with them. “You have some people who care about you.” From her leaning spot inside the doorway, Hydraia curtseyed with gentility. Her shadow of a smile was rueful yet accepting. “You know, if it makes you feel any better, I’m a ghost too. But I guessed it was coming.”

Former Alpha Technician Arriba released a slow puff of breath. “New best friends. I’m glad.” She continued to ponder her answers, chin up. She fiddled with a seatbelt and used it to indicate her and her partner. “And the two of us will be on retainer?”

Trosper nodded again as he answered, “With none of the paperwork.”

A strange light kindled in Arriba’s eyes. “No paperwork?”

Trosper shook his head to the same degree as his nod. “No paperwork. A special bonus for being undead.”

T. Vadr looked at the ship like it wasn’t even floating around him. “Then why do I feel so alive?”

R. Arriba gave him a cagey look. “You might want to have that checked.”

Trosper let a smile grow by an exact inch. “It’s your choice. Choose your company, choose your consequences.”

Both ex-soldiers narrowed their eyes at each other, looked mean, and knocked on metal. “We’ve had a lot of those,” said R. Arriba. “He says, and I say, that this is okay.” Arriba put her fingertips on the ship’s walls, appearing to absorb life force from them, and become one with them. “We’ll just do this.”

Trosper did not nod or anything as he replied, “These are unusual circumstances.” Arriba thought she saw a flash of regret. “We’re unusual people.”

Vadr showed the depths of unrest beneath his eyes. “How lucky,” he said.

Trosper jerked his head down a fraction, sharp then slow. “All kinds of lucky.”

The two actually smiled. “The deal is good.”

–

– 41 –

The mustachioed one brought concealed exterior vehicle weaponry into plain sight. “Ohhhh, are we doing this?” Karma asked, sled-bracing herself in the rider’s seat. “Is this also something you do, one of your hidden qualities…”  She flashed the whites of her eyes at him. “…a propensity for space dust?”

Derringer did a little dance in his seat and shook a few sparkles out of his hair. “Cloudbuster’s League.”

Karma swallowed behind a playfully dubious look. “That sounds real.”

Looking like a master, Derringer picked a sweet target, a little lone rock. Its blast radius was already clear. With the most minimal fiddling, he loosed a clean shot. Karma inhaled smoothly with appreciation, her target-seeking eyes relaxed and happy as the beautiful shatter occurred before her direct gaze.

She turned to meet his dear look with a honey smile. “Oh, it’s real,” he said. “I knew the moment I made Cloudbuster’s League.  I know I’m not the only one.”

–

–

– 33 –

Fate betides thee in the crisp edge, as you and your friends have called it – where you have so often found and been found by each other – where it’s easy to meet and split – the place that is not nowhere, but near it.  I know where that is, and where you go.  I am the other one.  I am the tide of the storm-brought flood, and your footing will have no purchase.  Time betides thee, and the hurry of the moment.

–

– 13TH SEQUENCE –

–

– 34 –

Derringer had known many a season at the Oriya River Aerial Parkway, which is why he was given a ranger position for season closing without any real fuss.  People had their own way of doing things in the Pioneerlands.  In days of Derringer’s rambunctious youth, he won fleeting local fame for his between-stream tricks.  Nothing like what the big stars today were doing, but enough to make people cheer.

There was a handful of people left working here that still knew him.  They’d all taken higher up jobs except for Silas, who was still a season ranger.  They mainly kept people out of danger zones and cleaned up, attending to the rare emergency.  The gravitational engagement of these wondrous natural streams was nearly impossible to escape, regardless of trying.

When people looked up at the span-high, ten-long stretch of suspended branching waterways snaking through the air like crystal ropes studded with gemlike rocks – their faces turned silly.  Derringer wore that face now as he watched people readying to bust onto the river together, in season closing style.

There was boarder Elgin Conully and his co-athlete wife Kalana Olpan, with their camera crew.  There was no trophy competition on the aerial rivers, but it attracted champions from many sports.  Derringer thought he spied his old boss four levels removed: Ravl Pliskin, Plexus founder and inventor, in a kneel-down ovoid.

Among the spectators he saw fashion models, travelers, and the Aristyd locals for whom this was the beginning of the season for silvers.  In another month the waters would be chock full of the leather-shelled aquatics.  The feasting on silvers would be followed by runs of the soft-skinned goldens and the plated coppers, prized shellskins for fabrication.  Derringer continued to observe the people gathered.

He was near enough to discern faces at the starting line, but far enough out that his position wasn’t pressed.  There were about thirty people in his shouting radius.  Nearest him, a dark smallish man with a stretchy face displayed silly-look fascination.  He met Derringer’s eye and opened his arms, clearly loving the event.  Derringer tapped his ranger badge and tipped his hat in case he wanted to ask any questions.

After a beat, the man walked over.  “This isn’t your first Oriya closing, is it,” he supposed out loud.

“No sir, I’ve seen a few.”  Derringer let his silly-wild face show.

“Oh I’m not sir – I’m Gretz.”  They shook hands warmly.  “And this is my first closing, even though I have family on Aristyd.  It’s the natural wonder everyone always asks about.”  He pointed with his lips to one of the many eager starters.  “My cousin is running it this year.”  The two men were conversing right over the starting line pump-up speech.

“Welcome then,” said Derringer.  “It’s a thrill no matter where you’re standing.  I’m just here to make sure that’s not in the wrong spot.”

“Do you get plenty of your own time up there in the flow?”

“Not afterward, but I’ve gone up plenty during this past week-plus.”  Derringer tilted his face to include the highest rivers in his gaze.

“What do people do afterward?” asked the guest named Gretz.

“Besides clean up?”  Derringer shrugged.  “There’s a ping-pong table in the 3rd Span Lounge.”

“Ping-pong… really?”

Derringer saw that he’d awakened an itch.  He decided that he liked Gretz.  “If you’re up for an epic match, you can find me there in the wee hours.”

“I’m a wee hours kinda fella.  Be warned, I may take you up on that.”  Gretz unleashed an impish look.

“Warning heeded.”  The musical cue preceded the starting blast.  Derringer spread his arms out as a standing area reminder.  He half-closed his eyes as the distinctive and familiar twelve-string klaxon sounded, and cheers arose.

–

– 35 –

Inverting clearance is an operational maneuver similar to castling on the chaseboard.  It’s often the best move and it happens all the time, an allowed exception.  A recurring turning point, a strategic tradition carrying the weight of invisible sanction.  Arcta sheltered her confidence within this behavioral blind spot.  With a group in tow, Arcta walked as though none could stop her, knowing and not caring how easily the situation could turn, making their way to a dead man’s tomb.

Sturlusson’s verdict had been the worst that anybody anticipated.  It was swift, quiet, and ugly.  Stillfreezing procedures were costly and awful, reserved for those who would be on view of judgment for generations.  What would they get when they broke Raev Sturlusson free?  Arcta wouldn’t wait any longer.

The group with Arcta was more nervous, and knew even less.  This place gave them the creeps, including Brave & Fearless herself.  Don’t want to know any more, don’t want to know any more – the strange litany kept her focused as she followed her thread of information down the hall.  They passed through the newest construction zone, and into the newest room.

In the center of a platform in the middle of the room, Raev Sturlusson’s body stood as though he were chained.  Intersecting his body were twenty-four spectral plates operating from their opposing pillars.  The chains and braces that held him for the freezing process were gone, no longer necessary.  Head bowed, his hair hung down either side.  Not alive, not dead… unreal and too real.  Arcta took half a second to master her own revulsion.

“Break it open.”  The edifice was intimidating, as though they too might freeze if they looked for too long.  The forty-eight slim pillars stood around the edge, no greater than saplings yet menacingly horrible.  The technician with them gibbered in distress.

Hydraia took a Multi-Tool from a companion’s hands, and with a reckless sneer dragged her suit mask over her face.  Her voice cut through the mask amplifier.  “This is Raev Sturlusson.  Break it open.”  They’ve never known what they were doing anyway, using this ghoulish thing.

The Multi-Tool’s armlength blade glowed to cutting heat, and Hydraia applied it indiscriminately to the nearest pillar.  At this the others took action, pillar after pillar toppling in elegant atrocity.  Arcta handed the Multi-Tool back and stepped away.  She withdrew her firearm and shot the platform console computers, shot them to slag.

They all stared at the man in the center, dropping or setting down their tools in silence.  He teetered, and hands sprang out in the distance around him.  He took a step, and stayed standing.  He lifted his one hand slowly, palm toward his face, and gathered the sides of his hair behind his head.  Arcta Hydraia brought a hairband out of her pocket and stepped around him to tie it back.  The surrounding hands lowered and relaxed, and Hydraia faced Sturlusson from one side.

His mouth worked as he accustomed his eyes.  Then a word, barely audible.  “Cozy… as a frog in the frozen ground.”  He shored himself up, and barely wobbled.  Members of the group shivered repeatedly.  Raev turned to face all the unspoken questions.  “Maybe I’ll write some poetry about it.”

Arcta pursed her lips and pointed her chin.  “I’ll read it.”

Raev Sturlusson gathered them all in one look and dropped a loose nod.  Together they exited.

–

– 36 –

The rookie human sled pilot examined her gloves.  The dark, vacuum-to-fit plasleather was thick and flexible with its embedded and overlaid tech circuits.  The material itself was a matrix that delivered highest response from the fingertips and palms.

In Soleil’s spaceflight sessions with Vedani teams, she learned the movement orders for their one-person standing sleds, reconnaissance vehicles.  The gloves recorded and sent information, and kept the vehicle positioned to its user.  Soleil had been told that as a human she lacked at least one communicative interface between the Vedani and their tools.  They set those levels for her into a cooperative subroutine.  She listened to the drumming sound of the gloves on the handlebar podium.

The Princess hadn’t expected to be included on a mission.  She’d attained proficiency but not expertise.  Her thinking shifted, wondering if they were now intentionally placing her in a tragic situation.

The intense learning had changed the tone of her captivity, and at this moment that she was keenly aware of being a prisoner.  She was willing to go, but she wondered what would happen if she refused.  They wouldn’t have brought her into service without a reason, and it wasn’t graduation day.

Uixtr (pronounced “eks-ter”) was the Vedani man who’d been nominated to keep her clearly informed.  He was quite familiar from around the environment, enough so that it dawned on the Princess he might also have been in charge of keeping track of her.  He projected an air of ambivalent acquaintance, and spoke well in her human language.

“We have ways throughout space, established in certain places, that lead to certain other places.  That concept is familiar to you.  Our pathways are utilized in various and different manners.  Some of our waypoints, to use a familiar word, or transanchors to be more accurate, have been newly established with the help of our current alliance.

But now we’re finding a mysterious vulnerability that threatens the placement of the ship where we now reside.  This intrigues us, and it could concern you.  It may be coming from… your side.”  When Uixtr said that, Soleil thought about where she was now, where she came from, and what she was doing.  That opened a deep well of inquiry with invisible depths, into which she avoided staring.

“What is your current alliance?” she asked.  As the question left her, Soleil recognized how bold it was.  It was her puzzle solving reflex; she had actually been curious from a technical standpoint.

Uixtr blinked at her and curled his lips to smile.  “This type of transanchor is created in concert between our technologies, the work of certain dragons, and some unusual little people who can be difficult to define.”

Soleil wondered if Uixtr was hinting at knowledge of her recently gained acquaintanceship, and decided to give-for-give.  “Do you mean the Kao-Sidhe?”

Uixtr nodded a dawning acknowledgment.  “Yes, theirs is a critical contribution.  We don’t know what you may see in this situation.  That’s why we’re bringing you.”

With that, it was time.  Soleil geared up as in usual exercise, in familiar team configuration including Uixtr.  There was an addition of reserve experts, with whom she hadn’t practiced.  Together they exited from a different part of the ship, through a gate new to her.

–