Chapter 1
Amidst the crags and deadly-sharp spires which crowned the uppermost Bowl of the Anmûst Desert Range, two figures stood side by side on a rock shelf; the only ones unwise enough to be out in such conditions. An almost day-bright splattering of stars and galaxies wheeled overhead, and the ever-present wind sought holes in their sandsuits with sneaking fingers.
Before them spread the biggest reservoir of Starsand for a hundred klicks around, goopily washing in its desert cradle. In the middle of the Starsand lake sat the garish brightness of Tol: a small-mountain sized ship, landed centuries before, kilometres away but hulking huge. Tol was topped by a gleaming HabiGlas bubble vast enough to protect its millions of inhabitants, and its dark mass, rent with jewel-bright spots of light, contrasted against the purpling mountain range which formed the other side of this vast tectonic bowl.
In the middle distance beyond the human figures – so soft and, by comparison with this harshest of environments, alien – stretched, rumbled and gurgled the Scylla Strait. Widely acknowledged as the roughest patch of Starsand this side of the Rim, many cast themselves at its mercy in an effort to break the record of largest Starsand wave ever surfed. Often, it was to their own deaths. Starsand – molten sand with a gel-like consistency and hidden depths – made for a tricky mistress to master. The dark substance jittered and juddered, unsettled and moody. Interference swells smashed together and created firework displays of neon, bright with the agitation of the light emitting micro-creatures which swam and lived in its upper layers.
Lucas took in the green-tinged night vision of his lenses, whose small field could only just encapsulate the vastness of the Starsand wave as it stood to full height. He zoomed in on where Kyra had appeared at its top, a miniscule black dot surrounded by a trail of bright blue as she tracked a path down its gigantic face, riding atop a force which, should she lose her balance, would pulverise her in an instant. The wave broke, hurling itself forwards as its top layer formed a huge barrel which swallowed Kyra’s dark spot whole, collapsing in and surging with impossible power towards the shoreline where they stood. Despite being kilometres away, the rock shelf trembled in response.
“Come on, Kyra,” he muttered to himself, pressing the lenses harder to his eyes as though that would cause her to reappear, “Come onnnnnnn.”
“She’s pushed it too far this time. Took off too deep,” Lucas’s companion remarked, his words barely audible over the roaring wind.
“C’mon Tank, a little faith,” Lucas replied to his oldest friend, tensing up as the seconds ticked by. If she’s been under this whole time, her suit will be in shreds… he made himself wait, watching Kyra’s vital signs from her sandsuit filter into his visor, her heart rate still elevated but – it was actually pretty low, considering what she was doing. Gods, that woman was unflappable. He was about to say as much to Tank when suddenly, all of Kyra’s flatlined. He slapped the side of his goggles, hoping it was a malfunction, or a feed interruption – the magnetic field around the bowl always played with their instruments – but the dials and colours stayed stubbornly flat. A moment later, he made a decision.
“Let’s go,” he said tersely, mounting one of the sandboards by his feet, anxiety rising like bile in his throat, the board emanating a green glow from underneath as it registered his weight and boot signature. He looked up in irritation at Tank, who’d made no reply. Tank’s jaw had dropped, and his finger stretched out towards the swell.
Lucas whipped around, following his pointing finger which highlighted the new spot of bright blue which had re-appeared on the face of the wave, far ahead of the crashing barrel following close behind. The swell line still charged like a cavernous and hungry beast towards the shore, though it had decreased a little in size, having smashed out much of its power while ascending the deeper layers of the rock shelf on which they stood, now about a kilometre distant.
Kyra’s suit vitals poured back into his view screen, as welcome as oxygen. He let out a huge sigh of relief and zoomed gleefully in on her – now significantly closer than she had been – so he could see her arms held aloft in victory, could almost hear her triumphant whoop. No one bonded with the extreme natural habitat they all scraped out a life in like Kyra.
“HooooooooEEE!” cried Tank, his face alight, “Fuck, that’s got to be the biggest sandbarrel ever! Fuck!” he exalted, punching the air. Though his mouth was covered with a bandanna, Lucas knew he’d be smiling his huge trademark gap-toothed grin. “She’s going to need a pick-up ASAP though,” he added, a note of caution creeping in.
“On it,” Lucas answered, stepping smartly back onto his sandboard and kicking off, the bindings sliding over his boots and locking him in place. It always gave him such a thrill, his illegally amplified creation ascending far beyond its intended maximum one-metre distance from the ground, soaring into the air and towards Kyra with incredible speed. One day, they would escape this place on just such a trajectory.
Kyra’s wave had almost faded out and she was on the brink of being tossed into the Starsand shallows. With the proper equipment that turgid section was fine for a minute, but it also contained vicious, viscous hot currents agitated by the magma flow which traversed the planet’s mantle, close beneath their feet. As the lifeblood of their community, the magma and Starsand mixed to become superheated, and – once cooled – formed Prasvar, their tribe’s most valuable export. It was the only way to coat one’s skiffs and other craft such that they could safely traverse the planet’s enormous expanses of Starsand, and provided much-needed fuel accelerator in flight cells.
Lucas relished the feeling of levitation as he rose from the crouch he’d adopted to keep his balance, circling the area where Kyra was starting to lose speed. He descended just as she came off her board; this far out from the shore, the Starsand roiled and glowed around her like black liquid-gel, flashing brightly with the phosphorescent and mineral rich nutrients so prized by those on Tol.
These shallows had led more than one unsuspecting surfer to their doom. There was no getting rescued from the cave system beneath, either. It penetrated deep into the planet’s mantle, where only the toughest Sandrykes survived the molten conditions; skeletal winged prairie creatures, whose skin was covered in the crystalline sheen of Prasvar. Lucas and his friends had tried diving once as children, inspired by Kyra – always the ringleader – and come so close to death it had scared even her. She had had them all under her spell, the trailing ragtag bunch of boys, her gemlike green eyes promising riches and glory, treasure beyond imagining, if only they followed her. Now, she was the only one in their group still attempting to beat the Starsand barrel record, to bring awareness and money into their small settlement which still, two thousand years later, clung to the edge of the Bowl like a stubborn barnacle.
Kyra hooked an arm up over her board, her legs kicking out behind her in a storm of laser- bright colour, and ripped away the portion of her suit which protected her mouth and nose. The starlight bent and wibbled strangely in the Starsand’s surface around her. She set her visor to clear, and Lucas was glad she kept it on; unprotected exposure at this proximity would render them both blind.
Lucas hovered lower, downdraught from his board’s twin propulsion ports creating circular distress-marks in the surface of the Starsand. His goggles bleeped out a warning as something shifted in the depths beneath Kyra, and another set of swells threatened, curving around Tol’s base like a bright green skirt.
“Did you see me?” Kyra’s voice crackled through his comm earpiece, which he’d insisted – to many an eyeroll – that they start wearing.
“Hell fucking yeah I did,” he said, leaning down and offering the tie from the back of his board. She took the tie and attached it to the front of her own, also illegally modified sandboard – altered for surfing such that they’d fitted it with a hydrofoil. It poked out from the board’s underside, wing-like, and allowed her to rise above the Starsand’s surface; it created much-needed distance between the bottom of her board and the choppier surface of bigger swells.
The alarm in Lucas’ goggles kicked up to “if you don’t do anything right this second, you’ll die” level as the colossal approaching waves swelled further. The frothing lines of blue neon at their crests formed the only indication of size, and underneath, the walls of Starsand had the threatening dark of the space between stars. “Hurry up, Kyra,” he said tersely, palms sweating. The first wave in the set rose to a height which even screened Tol from view, and Lucas felt the sickening lurch of being pulled towards those advancing, hulking masses, before the satisfying click of the towing mechanism sounded. Immediately his board soared upwards several metres, with Kyra’s towed lengthways. They were climbing further into the air when he spotted something huge and glowing ascending towards them from the depths, winglike fins protruding from its sides as it prepared to breach.
“Come on, come on,” Lucas muttered through gritted teeth, willing his board to go faster. Its engines whined with the extra load and speed expectations, and – against design – he set it to an almost vertical trajectory, gripping the top edge, Kyra draped across the length of her own board and hanging on for dear life. He forced himself to look away from the approaching spectacle beneath him. He hadn’t thought the Whâls would be out this late in the season, and if they escaped this one’s giant tooth-lined jaws, it wouldn’t be because he’d watched. He closed his eyes, praying to every God in the skies above them that they’d make it. On retelling, he’d leave that part out: religion, something Tol had imported along with its diseases was distinctly – if not not allowed, certainly uncool.
There was a horrible squelching sound as the giant creature breached beneath them. Lucas prayed that it had been born with smaller, stunted wings, or that something had savaged it at birth such that it was unable to attain the up-to-twenty-metre elevation which some of the bigger Whâls could reach before gravity reclaimed them. As luck had it, the first of the approaching set of waves broke and knocked the Whâl off course just as it breached the surface, and its snapping jaws closed with a fleshy ka-smack inches from Kyra’s feet. It fell back sandwards with an angry screech, crashing into the surface and creating a mighty firework-display of yellow and blue brightness, before fading quickly to black.
“Fuck,” Kyra said over the comm in the ensuing pause, just as Lucas’s board started to add an ominous rattling to its list of audible mechanical complaints. Blowing out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding, Lucas allowed the board to sink a little in altitude. Kyra heaved herself around so that she was sitting up. “That was a close one.”
Kyra looked back at the ugly alien fixture of Tol, brooding in the middle distance. They had a few moments of silence as the board lost more height and aimed towards the shoreline, Lucas’s relief giving way to shock and, finally, anger. They approached the rocks where Tank was hopping and jumping around like a mad thing; at first a flea-sized black speck, he quickly resolved into a full-grown man – well, almost – and a few seconds later, Lucas’s board collapsed earthwards with a weary-sounding sigh.
“That was unbelievable!” Tank shouted joyfully, pulling Kyra up off her board, giving her a huge bear hug. “You’ve broken the record for sure!” Kyra hugged him back and they rough-housed for a moment, corking each other in the biceps with much guffawing and celebratory whooping. Lucas finally dismounted, ripping his boots from their bindings and pulling his mouthpiece down. “What the fucking fuck, Kyra!” he exclaimed angrily, “the boards aren’t designed for anything that size; you could have gotten both of us killed!”
“Well, but I didn’t, did I?” Kyra returned, landing a particularly solid strike on Tank’s upper arm, “And they’re not my design,” she added, dancing backwards out of Tank’s considerable reach.
“How long are you going to keep doing this?” asked Lucas, fury rising in his chest as he pushed his goggles up his forehead; the wind had died somewhat, the atmospheric storm passed elsewhere. Catching Lucas’s eye, Tank stooped to busy himself with the boards, picking them up and withdrawing a tactful few metres away along the windswept shoreline.
“Aw, no more play?” Kyra whined at his retreating back.
Kyra looked back at Lucas with the insolent, flat-eyed stare she adopted when her father flew into a rage; it said she was going elsewhere in her mind, defensive, protective. Lucas ground his knuckles into his eyes, willing himself to calm down. He took several deep breaths. A few comets blazed across the skies overhead, trailing bright silver paint strokes.
“Your suit feed cut out for a minute. It was really scary,” he said after a minute, trying his best not to express his worry as anger, like his own father had.
Kyra watched him carefully, hesitating. Then her expression softened, and she stepped towards him, taking his broad hands in her own smaller, calloused ones. One of her flaming red curls had escaped its bind under her suit’s hood, and it trailed down her forehead in a loose tendril. Lucas resisted the urge to take it in his fingers. “I was really worried,” he muttered, looking down at her boots, suddenly ashamed of his expression of feeling.
“I know, Lucas, but,” Kyra let go of his hands and made a gesture of supplication, pulling off her hood so her riot of red curls escaped, cascading down her back. “I can’t explain my need to anyone that doesn’t have it,” she dipped her head, catching his eye. “When the swells are like this,” she paused, thinking hard, then shook her head, looked out at the roiling, pumping neon lines surging and smashing in the distance. “When I feel the ground tremble like that, it’s like I have Starsand running in my fucking veins.” Her eyes sought understanding in his, green with all the wildness of the open plains and huge, empty desert skies. “I have to get out there and see it for myself, feel the push and roar of the desert’s most amazing form beneath me.”
Lucas shook his head, reaching out and retaking her hands, “I don’t think I’ll ever get it,” he said, and a flicker of disappointment passed over her fine features, freckled and tanned with endless hours outside. “But,” he added with a helpless-sounding chuckle, “I’m not going to let you go out there alone, that’s for damn sure. Someone’s got to watch your six.”
Kyra’s wide smile unfurled, all white teeth and soft lips and the moment was suddenly so raw that he leaned in, kissing her softly; and then, as her strong arms slid around his waist, the kiss deepened, tasting of salt and starlight and everything in between, his hand in her hair and the other at the small of her back, so desperately relieved that she was alive, here, that he’d abandoned any attempt to pretend otherwise.
“Oooooooo,” Tank called, over the wind, “Kiiiiiissssinggg,” he chortled as they broke apart, Lucas vowing to give him the beating of his life as Kyra laughed.
“You know,” she said, lowering her voice so that the chuckling Tank wouldn’t hear, “when my suit shorted out? I could feel something out there with me. Just under the surface, right as I thought that barrel had munched me for sure. I think something pushed me out.”
“Yeah,” Lucas replied, mind trying to relive the incredible kiss while listening and forming words, “the Whâl. Maybe it was deciding whether—"
“No,” Kyra cut in, shaking her head. She looked out at the waves, as Lucas’s lizard brain lost the thread of their conversation, busily thinking up ways that he could contrive another situation where that kiss might repeat itself. He pulled himself together.
“So, what do you think it was?” Lucas made himself ask.
“I don’t know,” she bit her lip with a faraway look in her eyes, looking suddenly much older than her seventeen years, as strange and ancient as the wind-blasted plains which surrounded them. “But it felt old.” There followed a strange-feeling pause.
“Are you two lovebirds done yet?” Tank called, “I am starving.”
“Shall we?” Kyra asked, her eyes refocusing.
“Yep,” he replied, deciding to push away his misgivings, “Also, I think you did break the record, for the record.” He smiled, and she leaned in towards him. His brain filled with static. Just as she was about to make contact, she pulled back, yelled “last one there’s a rotten egg!” gave him a small push backwards, and sprinted away towards their transport, which was perched on a nearby crag. He tore after her in immediate pursuit, Tank yelling obscenities as he was left to carry the sandboards.
The galaxy whirled slowly, hugely above the gambolling almost-growns, reflecting off Tol’s upmost dome. Desert winds moaned about its perimeter, and Starsand slapped brightly at its base.
Chapter 2
Vast.
It’s the first word that squeezes itself through the uncomprehending static of my mind. I feel the sudden need to turn my head; it’s like my eyes aren’t wide enough to take in the full sweep of the plain before me.
Vast.
It had appeared as a slightly lighter patch of dun-coloured horizon among the landscape of thrusting sandstone peaks and crags beneath my transport, slowly increasing in size until the fleck itself expanded with an enormity of scale, which I still could not fully take in.
Vast.
The upended dome of sky arched away in shades of mauve and odd scatterings of diamond-bright stars as a dark knoll, barely visible in the middle of the rippled plain bordered by a ring of jagged peaks, grew in a way that seemed too slow. Checking over my instruments, I re-confirmed that I was in the right place. There wasn’t supposed to be anything this far out from the rim. And yet.
Vast.
The knoll slowly took on more definition despite the deepening purples which had started to fold over the distantly encircling mountain range. It bordered this mind-boggling vastness like a row of shark’s teeth, and I had to catch my breath at the simple, strange, alien beauty of it.
Vast.
I really am going to have to come up with another word to describe bigness.
Lana would have loved this place, artist’s eye immediately sizing up proportions, depth, palette. I barely had a chance to force my focus away from that wounded and painful part of my heart, before –
“Identify yourself.” The voice emanated from my dashboard. It was sharp and business-like.
“I-” I scrambled for my plexscreen, which contained detailed instructions on approach protocols, provided to me by the Executor, but I hadn’t expected any sensors to pick me up at this range.
“You have ten seconds to identify yourself.” The voice repeated, unambiguous as the snout of a plasma cannon.
Finally, my hand closed around the slick tablet, which had slid down the side of my seat. Of course, the one time in five years I took it out of its grip-case for cleaning, I wound up blindly rootling around for it like a bar of soap in turgid water. I thumbed through the menu-screens, scrolling, scrolling, scrolliiiinnnngggggggggggggggggggggggggggg, ah. There. The Last Will and Testament of Sir Reginald Dougdale. Sweat started sliding down between my shoulder blades.
You have been added to a list of cleared entrants to the Outer Zone. Your identifier signature is-
“I am Alpha-One-Alpha, code B. Isa Bonaventura.” I finally gasped.
There was a dreadful pause, while I imagined trigger-happy fingers hovering over big red buttons.
“Code received, you are cleared for entry,” the voice finally allowed. And then: “You are very late.”
“Th-thank you,” I stammered. Silence.
“Welcome to the Outer Zone,” I grumbled, collapsing backwards into the seat. But not before confirming that my transponder was muted.
***
Thirty minutes later, my transport hovered in front of a small entry gate which let into a sheer cliff of rock many shades darker than the planet’s surface, kilometres below. I could see, through the shimmer of a force-field, other small craft going about their business and rows of neon - framed docking stations.
The wall occupying my entire view formed one side of the knoll I’d seen kilometres distant, which had now resolved itself into a planetoid-sized mountain of rock, and looked like it had either landed here or failed to erode properly with the rest of the bowl. It was marbled with something silvery, which gave it the approximate appearance of raw wagyu beef. I stifled a nervous giggle, sure the inhabitants of this strange and lofty place would not appreciate the comparison.
On approach, I had seen that the massive rocky protrusion was topped with slightly reflective dome of what I could only suppose was Habi-Glas; incredibly expensive to manufacture. Its seamless appearance marked this civilisation as old. I twisted in my seat to crane up at its side, stretching away above me, flinching as the no-nonsense voice hailed me again.
“You are cleared for entry to Gate 5B. A docking drone will assist you.”
“Acknowledged,” I said, rubbing the crick in my neck and remembering the correct response to use over local subspace channels. Another point of dusty knowledge I’d had to unpack from the repressed recesses of my mind.
I coasted forwards and through the gate, trying not to feel like I was slowly cutting off one escape route after the next. I narrowly avoided collision with a delivery transport, whose tired (or drunk) pilot had leaned a little too far back on the joystick to manoeuvre themselves into their bay. Glad that my old fighter-drone instincts still seemed to be intact, a face appeared on my Hailer. Surprised, as use of Hailers was considered very informal, I accepted the call.
“Sorry ‘bout that mate!” a cheerful, whiskery man jollied, “Been a long haul. Hope I didn’t clip you?”
“No, I confirm that you did not,” I said, “No apprehension needed.”
“Nee bother,” he replied, and signed off, frowning slightly. Had I said something wrong?
Just a little too late for the promised assistance, a bright orange drone appeared to my left and pointed with a glowing set of guiders to a spot right at the back. Docking my transport, I clambered out on to the walkway which snaked between berths and stretched, giving an involuntary yawn. I looked around; I now seemed to be the only person here, surrounded by a plethora of craft in all shapes, sizes and colours, and the ubiquitous dust and grime of interspace docking stations. My guidance drone was nowhere to be seen, so I walked back to the front of the hangar to look out the entrance and take in the spangled sky, which had just blazed into life. The stars shimmered with atmospheric disturbance, seeming to gild the far-distant crags. It was incredibly beautiful.
“You there! What are you doing?” A loud voice called, startling me. “You shouldn’t be out here. Quick, get—”
A deep, loud boom sounded from somewhere deep in the ground, as though in response to a colossal fist-strike. It trembled up through the soles of my feet and rattled my jaws together, jostling the vehicles behind me like beads in a rattle. I grabbed for the railing, trying to steady myself.
As quickly as they had started, the tremors ceased and I looked back out the gate just in time to see mammoth, neon-blue-tipped ripples of black sand cresting and crashing against each other far below, and ricocheting in with explosive force on their way out to the bowl’s edge. Searing, star-bright trails of light splattered and bloomed everywhere like a basin full of phosphorescent water. My eyes started burning, but I squinted and tried to focus…there were tiny dark specks tracking down various faces of gigantic sandwaves. Were they people? A cold wind blew in and seemed to carry with it the faintest of wild cries and yips, right as the shimmering rim of a huge, golden crescent moon rose over the horizon. I closed my stinging eyes and strained my hearing, leaning as far out over the railing as I could, then almost lost my nose as with a screeching thud, the entry-gate door closed across the opening.
Heavy booted footsteps approached, and a pair of hands pulled me back from the railing. Feeling overwhelmed and nauseous, I turned and squinted, orange overalls resolving themselves in front of me, though my vision was swimming strangely. I rubbed at my closed eyes, bright spots of light appearing in the blackness.
“You’ll have that afterburn for a few hours,” the overalls said, “here, we’ll get you sorted out.” The overalls took my upper elbow and steered me away from the railing. “You’re an Inner, right?”
“If you mean I am from the Rim, then, yes,” I said, trying to reopen my eyes without much success as I stumbled along. “Some welcoming committee you have around here.”
“Watch your step,” he said as, with a few whirs and thuds, an inner portal door closed behind us. “Sit here for a moment. I’ll be right back.” The air smelled of thrust-cell runoff, and dust. I lowered myself onto a cold, metallic-feeling bench, feeling incredibly uncomfortable with how much trust I was obliged to place in a stranger from a rock on an alien world, which wasn’t even supposed to exist. Yet.
Presently, the footsteps returned.
“I have a set of lenses which will help,” he said, “If you’re going to be here for any length of time, you should just get something more permanent fitted. But these will help for now.”
I felt a set of frames ease over my ears and settle on my nose.
“Can you open your eyes?” he asked, gently. “Do it slowly.”
Half afraid, I cracked an eyelid. After an initial spike of pain and a small wince at the overhead light, my eyes readjusted. I breathed out, finally able to look up at my rescuer. He was tall and had a swipe of grease across his brow. A green bionic eye winked out at me, contrasting with his other, brown one.
“How’s that?” he asked, extending a hand, which I pretended not to see as I levered myself upright. “I’m Tank, by the way. But my friends call me Shale.”
“Much better, thank you,” I said, blinking in disorientation at the hallway we were standing in – it was pink. Everything was pink, even the pipes which snaked overhead, and the brightly-glowing strips of lightfluid.
“Pink?” I gestured vaguely around us, still feeling not-quite-there.
“Yeah, I think the Supervisor likes it.” He said with a sudden grin.
“Did you say Shale?” I asked, suddenly remembering the social cue I’d missed, “like the rock?”
“Yeah, ‘cos I’m such a flake,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching.
“Right.” I said, unsure if this was a joke. “I’m Isa,” I extended my hand, which he took in his own broad, tough-feeling one. “What was that?” I queried in the ensuing pause, gesturing towards where we’d come from.
“Never head of Starsand?” he replied, eyebrows slightly lifted. “This entire structure sits in the biggest bowl of it for hundreds of klicks.”
“No, I – this entire thing is a structure?”
“There you are,” said a harried voice behind me. I swung around and was greeted with the sight of a tallish woman in a shudderingly pink ruffled suit. “I’ve been waiting for you over at Dock C. Simona,” she said, gesturing to herself, “I’ll take it from here,” she flung carelessly over my shoulder as she took me by the upper arm. Still blinking hard, I allowed myself to be steered away up the corridor, then turned and nodded back at Shale in what I hoped would convey sufficient gratitude for his assistance. He raised his hand in a mock salute as we rounded the corner and my brain again caught up with my feet.
Simona seemed to notice my glasses as I turned back around. “Didn’t read your intropack?” She asked, eyebrows raised.
“Wha-”
“You need to be a better prepared,” she shook her head with a worried frown, “they’ll blind you if you’re not careful.” I didn’t know if she meant the glimmering sandscape outside or wearing my new glasses for too long.
“My things-” I started; “All taken care of,” Simona replied briskly, her fast pace increasing to an almost-jog, her whole demeanour conveying significant anxiety.
We rounded the next turn, and suddenly popped out into a huge, echoing hangar space which looked like a much larger version of the one I’d landed in. I craned my neck upwards, happy to behave like a gormless outsider: the whole far-away ceiling glittered with stalactites of what looked like the substance I’d seen marbling the rock outside, and vast ships hulked around the perimeter. It was like standing inside a gigantic, purple-black geode.
“Where is everyone?” I asked, accepting for the moment that Simona seemed to think she’d explained everything sufficiently, and not wanting to cause a scene. Yet.
“On deck,” Simona replied, “finally.” She added tersely, whirling around at the approach of a pearlescent, two-person sized egg which had come up behind us, the only other moving thing in that cavernous space. She placed her palm on its front and two oval-shaped entrances melted open on its sides, revealing a smoothly moulded bench seat, clear one-way viewpanels, and not much else. I clambered in at her terse gesticulation and it sealed itself and soared up towards the crystalline ceiling. I was marvelling at its apparently source-less levitation until a panel on the dashboard lit up with a pretty dark-featured face, and the vehicle juddered and lost several feet of altitude.
“Do you have them?” a smooth voice, alive with curiosity, emanated from the panel. My hands clenched around the sides of my seat, knuckles showing white at the sudden drop.
“Yes, I do,” Simona cast a vaguely accusatory look my way, as though the transport’s malfunctioning were my fault. Probably an overwhelmed fuel cell given the extra weight, acceleration and incoming call, my pilot’s brain mused before I shushed her.
“Oh! Hello,” the face turned towards me, “I’m Ines,” she said, smiling. It was such a reassuringly normal interaction, that my eyelids pricked a little. Get it together. You never used to be affected by jump-lag like this.
“Isa,” I replied, unclenching my legs from the vice-like twist they’d formed. You used to race through asteroid fields blindfolded.
“How much longer?” Simona asked.
“Five.” Ines replied, grimacing slightly, “better hurry. See you soon,” she added to me, and then seemingly as an afterthought, “try to just roll with what’s next, we’ll explain everything after.” She signed off abruptly. This seemed like the barest minimum I was owed for this unceremonious series of greetings, but there was also a part of me which was enjoying this feeling of being on a mad roller-coaster. It was like a sudden icy blast of fresh air and change after the claustrophobic, waiting-for-death stillness that had been my last six months.
My jaw clenched as the pod approached the viciously spiked ceiling, dodging around two rippling crystal columns and through a carved hole, just the right size for pods like these, I supposed. Not wanting to like her, I still had to admire Simona’s outward cool navigating tight gap after tight gap. Some time later, unsure what sort of distance we had traversed or what unit of measurement Ines had meant with “five”, we travelled vertically towards a circle of light, my head and shoulder blades pressing hard into my seat with the G force, at last popping out into blinding light. It resolved quickly into the inside edge of the Habi-Glas dome I had seen from outside – it arced away above us with a size and scale which seemed to bely the manufacturing ability of human beings. I felt, but did not hear, the roar.
A huge plaza stretched out before us with what I fancied was enough room to fit a small asteroid. It was heaving, absolutely packed to the brim with people all shouting and waving, white banners and flags dotted here and there with some kind of crest. We rose high above them all, and flew towards a floodlit, pearlescent columned palace which bloomed around one side of the square. Its frontage was entirely covered in creeping, flowering vines of some kind, and the overall effect was one of a luxurious, patterned shawl which had been tossed on the ground by a wealthy wearer, all peaks and horns adorned. I wondered if the pod had a cloaking mechanism, because no-one seemed to notice us as we soared overhead.
There was some kind of presentation happening on the raised flag-stoned terrace at the front of the palace. Dignitaries of all kinds were arranged in patterned circles, and a woman in the centre stood illuminated, all in purest white, her arms upraised and moving gracefully in the air, wide and fluttering sleeves falling down behind her like angel’s wings. She flowed and stretched, willowy limbs moving seamlessly, a long wave of rich scarlet curls streaming down her back. As we approached overhead, her body went rigid, and the surrounding people genuflected as one. The effect rippled immediately out to the crowd as one by one each of the thousands of people took a knee in a great cascading wave, the sheen on their clothing putting bringing to mind what I’d seen on the desert floor outside.
The sudden lack of soundwaves rumbling around the pod was disconcerting as we approached the side of the congregation on the terrace, descending to land gently behind a wide pillar. Simona got out and gestured that I should do the same, the heavy silence of thousands of held breaths pressing in on me from the direction of the plaza. My stomach clenched and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end with the same sense of prescience I used to get when there was something approaching, which my ship’s sensors hadn’t picked up.
We walked around the side of the pillar, on the same level as the dignitaries on the platform, and I looked out across the sea of thousands of bowed heads. The whole scene was so overwhelming, it was several seconds before I realised that I was walking alone. In the same moment, the spotlights which had been roving around the underside of the dome, picking out fluttering kites, all swivelled over and blasted me with their alien glare. The angelically beautiful woman, with arms still upraised and eyes rolled back in their sockets, turned around and pointed a long, graceful finger right at me.
The entire crowd exploded with a roar of sound so complete it rattled through every atom of my being. Every face turned my way as the woman in white descended from her plinth and made her way towards me. I was rooted to the spot, my mind returning to its previous state of uncomprehending static, offering up random snippets of memory from some of my fierier burnouts early in my fighter pilot training. Helpful.
She stopped in front of me and took both my hands in hers, and we stood with our arms outstretched as the scene around us quietened, the looks of surprised outrage on many of the faces of the dignitaries blurred. Her entirety of her eyes were blazing and golden as she took me in, and with no discernible iris, they looked like the hearts of two huge suns.
“You’ll see,” she murmured, and, as my mind was deciding whether to black out or designate the entirety of the experience as a lurid fever dream, she asked “Do you accept?”
I had the uncanny sensation that it was for my ears only. I felt the solid warmth of her fingers squeezing mine and took comfort from it as some wild and forgotten part of my mind, the one which had made me go cliff-diving as a teenager and then set the youngest speed record for blind subspace belt-skipping, nodded my head.
With a blast the cacophony around us returned, the strange visual blur disappeared, and she turned to the crowd, raising my hand in hers.
“We have,” she said in a deep and sonorous voice which echoed across the enormous space, “Our next Dark Sky Guardian.”