The stars streaked by, glimpses of a long-gone time, perhaps a peaceful one. Inside the cabin, Solomon read in his cot by a dim light, searching ancient prose for that ineffable something that triggers an elevation in thinking.
“You’re up,” said Needle, walking casually through the arch into the cabin. He walked through the room to the galley, stretching and groaning as he went.
Solomon finished the paragraph he was reading, then marked his page and set his book on a small, stout nightstand that folded out of the nearby bulkhead. He then stood and followed Needle to the galley to get some water.
“Whatcha readin’?” asked the Sentinel. “The Bible?”
“The Akallabeth.”
“Ah. Good stuff. I’m more a Zoas guy, though. ‘Presently comes a famished bird and takes away the spider, and his web is left all desolate, that his little anxious heart so careful wove, and spread it out with sighs and weariness.’”
“That was a good era for literature,” Solomon had to agree.
“Yeah, the prefall stuff was always the best. The rebuild era just didn’t have as much emotional gusto.”
“They suffered less, so they had fewer things to write about.”
Needle took a tumbler from his cupboard and filled it under the nepenthe dispenser. “Then where are today’s poets? We’ve suffered plenty.”
“We’re too busy surviving, or colonizing, or fleeing our dying worlds.”
Needle chuckled. “No. We are too busy lounging on Albion. But not for long. I bet when you and I are gone, there’ll be an entire generation of literary geniuses.”
Solomon opened the door under the wash basin and grabbed two bottles of water. “Well, when we return, if the ship still exists, perhaps you can explore exo literature, since you find humanity's efforts lacking."”
“Exo lit? Heh. I’ve tried. It takes about as well as cross species reproduction.”
“You told me Sam appreciated Lawrence of Arabia.”
“Film’s different. Visual mediums tend to translate more instinctively. And Sam is different. He's an exceptional loner, like Lawrence. But the written word is harder to cross pollonate. It’s difficult to appreciate the nuances of a language that’s so fundamentally different, you know?”
Solomon shrugged. "We can still appreciate the concepts. But to each their own." He rose slowly to stretch, then went to the cockpit. His life, it seemed, had been lived mostly in the cramped quarters of Harbinger jumpships. His brief time in the highly visible apartment given him by the quorum now seemed a memory from a distant age, or a different life.
He settled into his chair, looking his book up on Needle’s digital data base so he could read while keeping his eyes on the nav computer, and began sipping one of his water bottles, which he then threw against the console in disgust.
“Did you grab a bottle of my nepenthe by mistake?” Needle said from the doorway.
Solomon said nothing.
Needle slid into the seat beside him. “You wanna be back there, in the fight.”
“I want to be anywhere but sitting in a chair, sipping on bottled water.”
Needle leaned forward to peer at his navigation display. “We could take a shortcut. I could plot us a few jumps through Rak’chta Rach’Khun, then ride the Silt Bridge to Conway’s Veil.”
Solomon turned his head, slowly. “How would that be a shortcut?”
“Because we have a mutual friend there who could speed us along.”
Solomon scoffed. “And why would Shah Rii help us?”
Needle playfully tilted his head. “Because she owes me a favor.”
“And how would she help us?”
Needle clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Oh, she’s got a secret, and I know it!”
Solomon’s look of scorn intensified, ever so slightly. “Do you even look at your nav charts, Needle? Rak’chta Rach’Khun is infested with Rathi pirates. And if we don’t run into any of them, we risk being caught by a kzinti patrol.”
The bothersome charm in Needle’s voice was absent from his reply. “And it would be a sad day for either, should they dare to cross the likes of us.” Then he leaned back in his chair and propped his feet on his console, and the childishness returned. “Come on, Sol. I know how to get through a rough neighborhood. I am a reformed convict, afterall.”
Solomon folded his arms across his chest. Outside, the stars wheeled by, fleeting glimpse of bygone eras.
“’To see a world in a grain of sand,” Needle said, “and Heaven in a wild flower. Hold infinity in your hand, and eternity in an hour. A robin red breast in a cage, puts all Heaven in a rage.’ One of my favorite poems. Prefall, of course.”
Solomon raised an eyebrow. “’We are led to believe a lie, when we see not through the eye.’”
“Ah, you've read Blake as well. That’s why I like working with you, Sol. And it’s about damn time it happened. So whaddaya say? Shall we brave the cops and robbers so you can get out and stretch your legs? To be honest, I’m ready for some action too.”
“Plot the course.”
“Ha haa!” Needle kicked his feet back onto the floor, leapt forward in his seat and merrily mapped the jumps.
“How long?” Sol asked.
“Well, we’re five jumps from Albion already... let’s see... from where we started... three weeks out by conventional FTL...”
“Four days?” Solomon made no effort to hide his impatience.
“We’ll be dodging pirates and crooked patrolmen in three. Then we hit the Silt Bridge and... yeah, four days.”
“Allright. Go and power down, or whatever you do back there. I’ll watch the scopes til we arrive.”
“No. We’ll switch off every twelve hours like normal. I’ll go crazy if I’m back there for too long. You’ll find me dusting bulkheads in an apron or naming all my furniture.”
“Very well. See you in twelve hours.”
-------------------------
Imogen kissed him on the cheek and held him tight. “Be brave.”
Solomon, eyes brimming over with tears, returned his queen’s embrace. “Become legend,” he said when she let him go, his voice hoarse and quiet.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
He woke with a start, his brow beaded with sweat. Needle was in the cockpit, singing.
With an independent air
You can hear the girls declare
"He must be a Millionaire."
You can hear them sigh and wish to die
You can see them wink the other eye
At the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo!
Solomon rose slowly, shaking off sleep. He had a few hours left before his shift, so he went to the galley. He'd brought a store of food, mostly dried meats and fruits, and a few leaves he’d found on an uninhabited moon that gave a surprising amount of energy and focus while chewed. Solomon ate a handful of nuts, then bit off a corner of a leaf, tucking it in the back of his mouth where he gnawed slowly on its tough fibers.
“You’re up early,” Needle said when he entered the cockpit.
Solomon sat in the navigation seat and enjoyed the lightshow of spherical warping made by their wormhole. Iron Catastrophe’s stealth and radial scanning suites prepped as they neared the exit, and kicked on once they were through. There was an odd series of blips, which Needle looked at more than passingly.
“What is it?” Solomon asked.
“Chewing that bangleaf again, eh? Must have had another bad dream.”
“What’s on the scanner, Needle?”
“Oh, not sure. Something bigger than I’d expect to find. Could be a Kzin-Ra fleet, or maybe a capital ship and escorts.”
“Why would they be out here with anything more than a standard long-range patrol?”
“I’ve seen it happen. There was always a reason, though. With the Surge on the way, I’d be surprised if they weren’t shoring up even their remote borders. There, see? A Rathi dreadnought, Va’Jita class. Those things are mean. My money says they’re cleaning up their act to impress Junior.”
“Junior?”
Needle cocked his head. “What I call Orak.”
“The ship’s gone.”
“Yeah. Must have bailed. I bet they did what they came to do, and we’ll have no trouble slipping through.”
Solomon nodded, then propped up his feet and leaned back. He thought of suggesting that Needle scan for the dreadnought’s FTL emissions, but when he reached out with his aura, the area around them was distinctly devoid of the oscillations common to occupied vacuum.
“What makes you think the Dial can help us find Hod?” Solomon asked after a few moments of silence.
“She knows where every important relic is. Why else would her husband be trying to hunt her down and kill her?”
“If you know where she is, wouldn’t he?”
Needle held Solomon’s gaze for a second, implying disappointment with a slight shake of his head. “You just proved my least favorite maxim wrong, Sol. There is such a thing as a stupid question.”
“There’s such thing as bad planning too, Needle. Now tell me, how can you be sure she hasn’t been compromised?”
“Because, Solomon Ben Gevurah, I have been keeping her safe. Hence her owing me a favor.”
“Solomon Ben Gevurah? Where did you hear that name? Only one person has ever called me that, and only once.”
“Now see, that’s a smart question.”
“And that was a smart answer. Now give me a useful one.”
Needle shook his head. “A magician never explains his tricks, Sol. You should know that.”
Solomon let his radiance free just a little bit, feeling smug over the golden light he saw reflecting on Needle’s hyperfiber face. “I don’t use tricks, Needle.”
“Oh, yes you do. There’s both more and less than meets the eye to both of us. Like it or not, Sol, we’re a pair.”
Solomon was about to laugh, but the ship’s proximity alert turned both their heads to the helm.
Needle punched a control, linking the navigation station to his station, then tapped a number of controls on a modular console he’d added himself. “Heh he, the little cat’s have been cleaning house.”
Solomon angled his eyes towards the console and saw what looked to be a large mass on the midrange scopes.
“Looks like there was quite a scuffle,” Needle said as the mass began breaking up.
“Where are all the big pieces?”
Needle tapped his modular control pad. “There aren’t any. Looks like the rathi government got serious. That’s a little unnerving. The pirates in this sector are a source of revenue; black market trade, bribes and kickbacks… this looks…”
“There,” Solomon pointed to a glimmer ahead. Soon the glimmer was close enough to be made out. A spray of fragments escorted shards of hulls and armor plating, no one piece larger than a human body.
“Sucks to be them,” Needle said.
More debris appeared a half hour later, all the same range of size, and then a long stream of dust.
“When I was scouting in Zar Zafaran,” Solomon said, “Barrus came rampaging through Haleon’s guards, trampling a dozen of them at a time. The Anunnaki came and held him down in sight of Lugh.”
“What’s Lugh?”
“Haleon’s fortress. Haleon keeps a dozen or more moons in orbit. They’re quite beautiful, as a matter in fact. Barrus pulled Ketermaru, Haleon’s favorite moon, right out of the sky and sent it flying to the tower where his daughters sang. Adon, one of the first four Archeus knights, came out onto their patio and fired a beam from its eye into Ketermaru and turned it into powder, just like what we’re seeing here.”
“But none of that was real, Sol.”
Solomon turned his head to look Needle in the eye. “In Ulro, the dream is real.”
Needle grabbed the helm controls and pitched the ship downward. A jet of micro debris shot faster than his proximity sensors could respond to.
“That was close,” he said.
Just then some larger scraps floated by. They were twisted and mangled, like they’d been torn by clawed hands.
“Could Adon have done that?”
“Any number of creatures from Ulro could have done that,” Sol replied.
“I can’t make out any shape.”
Solomon put his feet down and leaned towards Needle’s side of the cockpit, squinting his radiant eyes and peering through the window into the brooding gloom of space. In the tangle of the larger debris, he found a single piece that bore a mark; the death’s head sunburst of the Rathi Naval Vanguard.
“I think you might be onto something, Sol.”
“Shh.”
Solomon peered closer, squinting out of bodily habit. The marked debris rolled in its drift, revealing an amorphous, scuttling shape crawling on the scrap’s inner side.
“I see something moving,” Needle said.
Solomon strained his eyes to see more clearly. The shape was clawing with a cluster of spine tipped limbs while tearing with what looked like multiple sets of jaws. It was a long, undulant thing, black and pink, all of it glistening. It reefed one final time with its maw, then leapt away, floating swiftly through space, tailing clumps of conduit like viscera in its wake.
“Imogen’s tits,” Needle whispered. He quickly powered down all his ship’s systems, including life support.
Solomon looked through the doorway into the cabin. His armor and skullfort were stowed in the footlocker at the end lf his cot. Needle looked at him and shook his head. Solomon noticed that none of Needle’s prison body was illuminated anymore, not even his eyes. So he took in a deep breath and held it, struggling to keep his radiance suppressed without losing consciousness.
Another feeder emerged from the wreckage, darting silently like a micro meteor after the other.
Old battle instincts threatened the delicate equilibrium Solomon struggled to maintain. His power rose slightly, ready to be summoned. He fought to tamp it down without losing concentration on the meager oxygen he’d stored in his lungs.
Needle sat almost completely still, his few movements slow, with not even a faint ember in his eyes.
Solomon wrestled his warlike energies down, but he was too late. Another feeder had leapt off another piece of flotsam and was slithering towards them. It moved so terribly fast…
Its limbs grew in uneven clusters on one side of its serpentine body. From its right, only a single mechanical protrusion, shaped in hideous likeness to a human leg, gave it any bodily momentum. The clumps of arms helped pull it along in a gruesome limp along Iron Catastrophe’s nosecone. It searched mole-like along the hull, sniffing at the armor plating. Always it limped closer to the cockpit, heaving itself over the ship’s spherical laser turrets, coming ever closer, until Solomon could see its face; eyeless black steel punched into a featureless pink mass. The whole thing was slick with a shiny, viscous glaze.
Solomon struggled to keep his power from rising. He shot a panicked glance at Needle, who had completely shut down. He looked back to the ship’s canopy and stifled a gasp. The feeder was barely a torso length away.
Be brave, said his queen.
A light glowed in the distance, pulsing with anti-life and unnatural hunger. Few were they who saw even a lone satellite of the Brethren Onslaught with their naked eyes and lived.
Another feeder came from the void and caught the hull, then another, then another. Silently they limped and squirmed along the ship to the canopy where Solomon fought to stay his beating heart.
Be brave.
He remembered his dream, and the words he spoke to her before letting him go. He stayed his beating heart, dimmed his light to dark, and drifted out of thought and mind.