Udan Adan
Lamiya cradled Ona in her womb, protecting her with coil launched powder that chewed its victims alive. The Alkym corvettes banked away from her fire, dodging the brunt of her fury but running with flayed hindquarters. Like fleas their own weapons trifled with Lamiya’s protofiber hide.
“Torpedo,” said Eleth.
“Spray it down,” said Fuzon.
Eleth activated the thermal deprivation counter measure suite. The jet of crystals masked their energy signature while overwhelming the torpedo’s tracking systems, sending it into a frenzy as its guidance control failed to reacquire its target. Eleth calmly shot it down with a midrange laser.
“They’re trying for another split vector,” said Uveth.
Ona went to her console, careful to stay out of the way.
“Load port missile bay,” said Fuzon.
Ona looked around frantically, trying to remember which console operated the missiles. She ran, somewhat sure, to a control panel, realizing halfway there she was on the starboard side. She felt foolish when she saw Eleth at the port missile controls.
“I’m sorry,” she said, nervous.
“It’s okay, Ona,” said Uveth.
Ona stood where she was, watching the others working calmly, manning multiple stations with ease. She left the cockpit and sat in one of the bucket seats lining the cabin wall and waited.
Fuzon came back for her when the skirmish was done.
“One of them got away,” he said.
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “You’ll get the hang of it.” He sat in the bucket seat next to her. “The first couple of months are difficult for everyone.”
She wanted to believe him, but she couldn’t imagine any of these three veteran warriors struggling with anything.
“I couldn’t even channel my radiance into my rifle ammo til month three,” Eleth said from the hallway connecting the cabin to the cockpit.
“How do you do that?”
Fuzon laughed. “It’s the easiest thing you’ll learn.”
“We’re being too soft on her, Fuzon,” said Uveth, sitting at the helm.
“I want to learn the same way you all did,” said Ona. “Don’t go easy on me. Please? I want to learn.”
Fuzon looked her up and down, held her eyes for a moment, then nodded. “Let’s take her to the Phrastus Belt.”
Eleth’s eyes opened wide.
“Excuse me?” Said Uveth.
“You heard me,” Fuzon replied.
Eleth’s look of shock slowly morphed into a childish grin.
“What’s the Phrastus Belt?” Ona asked.
Eleth laughed evilly.
“Will I… die?”
“Again and again,” Eleth said. “This is gonna be fun.”
Uveth, now leaning against a bulkhead in the doorway, had her arms folded and was shaking her head. “I don’t like it, Fuzon.”
“It’ll help her catch up,” was his reply.
Eleth agreed, but Uveth was not convinced, and as she observed Fuzon’s expression, Ona began to feel a quivering in her stomach. But she looked from Fuzon to the missile controls and tried to steel herself for the trials awaiting her.
Eleth drilled her ruthlessly in between jumps. She took Ona to the long corriders beteen the missile tubes that ran almost the length of the shop, and there she hurled blast after blast of arc energy at her, pushing Ona to handle immense amounts of pain and to use her own unshaped radiance to absorb the attacks. When she finally returned a lash of lightning, striking Eleth across her face, Eleth came running and hoisted Ona onto her shoulders, then paraded her to the cabin, announcing that she was already getting it.
Later, while dozing in her bunk, Ona had a feeling she could not explain. She sensed that the others were speaking, though she heard nothing with her ears. She felt certain they were discussing her, or if not, then matters important to her, and her desire to hear what they were saying grew so palpable she began to see it as a pair of fists caught inside a net.
She strained against the net’s tangled cords, freed her arms and then spread the net around Lamyia’s long, muscular body. When she tied the cords of the net together, so that the net was closed around their craft, she could faintly hear the others talking, but could not make out the words. So she unfastened the cords and drew them tighter, only they slipped from her fingers and almost drifted away. She reached out in a panic, shouting with her mind’s lungless voice. The others grew quiet then, and when she had her net around the ship again there was nothing to hear.
Fuzon trained her next, surrounding her with intense heat, gradually raising the temperature so that her tolerance improved without her suffering.
Days went by before she heard them speaking again, but she worried what they might do if they discovered she could listen to their secret talk, so she practiced casting her net privately, choosing small areas of the ship to ensnare. She could hear the sounds of the microcosm then; electromagnetic hymns accompanied by Fusion’s dull drone and klaxons infinitely minute.
Uveth guided her in meditation. They found a small space near the FTL drive where the radiation shielding muted all audible vibrations. Ona was wary of using what she learned from Uveth when practicing with her net. She worried that Uveth would sense those techniques she taught Ona being used, or worse, that she taught Ona those techniques to entrap her, knowing what to be on the watch for. So Ona developed her own methods of quieting her mind, and in time the casting of her ethereal net was as natural as stirring the cream in her coffee.
They stopped at a world named Babbaccuban to resupply. Lamiya’s microfacturing equipment could reproduce basic munitions, fresh clothing and blankets, even the materials worn out by wormhole generation, but they could not print coffee beans, and Babbaccuban boasted vast tropical regions where the crop grew plentifully.
Fuzon and Uveth were bartering with one of the smaller magnates when Eleth grew bored.
“Let’s hike up there,” she said, pointing out the window of the small trade house's lobby.
Ona looked out the window at a tall spire of rock jutting out of the nearby jungle.
As they passed through the arcade outside the trade house, Ona took a chance to test her prowess, spreading her net around the veranda behind them where Fuzon and Uveth wrestled terms with the magnate. The heavy rainfall quieted to a whisper, along with Eleth’s recalcitrant small talk. Those two sources of noise pollution became separate from each other so that Ona could easily pick them put or listen to them side by side, while Fuzon and Uveth’s voices became loud and clear.
“We’ll stay for a week,” Fuzon was saying.
“That’ll do,” said a low, gravelly voice, most likely the magnate.
During that week they made a show of their association with that magnate, and on their departure, he supplied them with three crates of Rocinante Roast.
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Their last few jumps were uneventful. Ona continued to train with her fireteam, and she continued to practice her unique skill covertly. It wasn’t until their second to last jump that she heard the others holding another secret congress.
They had exited their wormhole, and Eleth teased Fuzon for being paranoid over activating Lamiya’s stealth and scanning systems so far behind the Surge frontier.
“The Onslaught travels far behind their frontier, Eleth,” lectured Uveth.
“And we can only detect them if we’re looking out for them specifically,” said Fuzon.
Eleth silently mimicked his words with insult in her violet glowing eyes.
Ona went straight to her bunk after unstrapping from her chair, and she woke from a strange dream of circles and triangles encompassing the stars only an hour later.
She knew the others were speaking about her, so she deftly spread her net tightly around the cabin and listened.
“This an initiation, Eleth,” Uveth was saying, “not a mere coming of age.”
“I know what this is, Uveth. I went through it too. Remember?”
“You seem to be the one who’s forgotten,” said Fuzon. “You made a fool of yourself at Udan Adaan, Eleth, and were almost not accepted into the trials.”
“We’re just asking you to take this a little more seriously,” said Uveth.
“Why does that even matter? Ona’s the one going to the shrine, not me.”
“But she seems to look up to you. Whether you realize it or not, you have an influence on her.”
“And?”
Fuzon’s voice sounded impatient, even frustrated. “She’s learning slowly, Eleth, and if she doesn’t prove useful to us soon we’ll have to abandon her. Solomon’s gambit will show definitvely what potential she has. If she has any skill that can help us find Imogen, we’ll keep her on. If not…”
Fuzon’s words made her ill. She drew away her net and closed her eyes, but she found tears long before she found sleep.
She woke for her shift in the cockpit and found Eleth waiting in the navigator’s chair. For once, Ona wished their shifts were solo.
“I know you heard them,” Eleth said.
Ona turned in her seat. “How?”
“You were trying to be sneaky. Sneaky shows, just in a different way. I’m something of a sneak myself, so I know what to look for. Besides, we all caught you the first time.”
Ona fought back her tears. “I’m trying to learn. I just…”
“Hey,” Eleth grabbed her arm, “you’re doing great! Really. Some of us learn slow, some of us learn fast, but we all get it at some point. And once you do, you’ll be dangerous.”
“But I don’t want to be left behind.” She let a few tears out, which she wiped away with her wrist.
“Ona, I am not going to let that happen. You hear me?”
Ona nodded. “What’s this shrine we’re going to? I heard Fuzon say I’m going to initiated into something.”
Eleth smiled. “Yeah, and it’s gonna be a wild ride.”
“Can you tell me anything about it?”
“It’s better if I don’t. Just trust me when I tell you it’s worth it, no matter what you gotta go through. Just keep us in your mind and remind yourself how badly you wanna stay with us.”
Ona sat quietly for a moment, struggling not to let her anxiety get the better of her. “What about these trials? And the Phrastus Belt? Can you tell me about them?”
“Well, the trials change every few years, but…” She rotated her seat to face Ona and leaned forward. The light from the control panels cast an eerie glow under her eyes. “The Phrastus Belt is where it all started.”
“The Surge?”
“No. The Tangent Lords. You don’t hear much about them around here, but in the Valerys Arm, and some of the further out sectors, their statues are everywhere.”
“What are they?”
Eleth’s lips spread in a haunting grin. “That’s the interesting part. They’re the future. I wouldn’t say this to too many people unless you want to be laughed at, but eventually, one day, all species change and become… more, and in between they exist as cosmic demigods for countless millennia. The Tangents came from their space through the Phrastus Belt three hundred years ago and attacked. They’re the ones who woke the Surge, and they were the first beings to fall to them. That’s how the Brethren Onslaught was made. Each Brethren is a Surgified corpse of a Tangent Lord.”
“That’s terrifying. It’s hopeless then, isn’t it? How could we beat something so powerful?”
Eleth’s grin faded. “We can, and we will.”
“But how?”
“You know how, Ona. It’s how we met you in the first place.”
“Imogen.”
Eleth nodded. “Solomon was the first Harbinger she kindled. Some say they were even lovers. He abandoned her, and never even set foot on Albion. There was a rumor that he braved the Phrastus Belt and went into the Tangent’s realm. Most people laughed at the idea, of course, but then one day he came back, and he was changed.”
“Changed? Is he like them?”
“No, but he’s a different man than he used to be. He’s got this intensity, and he’s far more powerful than any other Harbinger. He set up his gambit, the trials you heard of, in a nebula just inside the accretion filed of the Belt and disapeared again. According to his acolytes who administer the trials, he means to prepare an army to conquer the Tangent realm, because it’s the only place where we’ll be safe from the Surge.”
Ona’s mind reeled. “All this time I… I never knew things were so bad. I guess I should have.”
“Ona, you’re new to everything. And Fuzon isn’t entirely right about your progress. You’re doing fine. We just need more than fine. But I believe in you. Okay?”
“Okay. So I go through some rite, then some kind of boot camp?”
“Close enough.”
-----
The Phrastus Belt cut through space like a downward sword slash, and from its cloudy edges weird flames of pale gold and deep lavender spouted.
“Where is Solomon’s Gambit?” Ona asked, seated in the cockpit behind Fuzon.
He pointed to a distortion on the nav chart. “A blue nebula, called Sen’s Folly. But first, we’re going here.”
The gaseous haze preceding the Phrastus Belt yielded to their eyes as they passed through its thick outer crust and a bright red star shone in the distance. Spinning retrograde was a hycean world of diminutive size, surrounded by a swarm of missile satellites.
Ona leaned forward. “Udan Adan?”
“Yes. There are shrines to the Nine Great Souls there. They’re ancient shrines, from a time when the Tangent Lords were lauded as saviors.”
“Has no one defaced them?”
Fuzon seemed to be looking far away. “No one can.”
Ona looked at the missile satellites, but as they flew past them, she saw that each was in ruin.
Lamiya lanced through the planet’s atmosphere, hissing water vapor off her navigational force field.
Eleth and Uveth came to sit in the cockpit, giving Ona encouraging looks.
Then Uveth pointed ahead. “Oh, Fuzon. Look!”
Udan Adan, a world of endless waters, roiled beneath a blanket of brooding clouds that nourished roving herds of eschaton eels with heavy ion collisions. Ona saw a faint gold light beyond the thick cloud canopy. Lamiya plunged through the clouds and Fuzon levelled her out, then banked her to the West and Ona gasped. That glow that flickered softly beyond those leaden clouds was in fact a field of ghostly lanterns, each flickering like a candle flame that sprouted from nothing. They passed close to one of them, and Ona was surprised to see that it was easily as large as their ship, and the light looked both wispy and crystalline, like chandeliers of aerogel hung on invisible threads.
“She was here?” Eleth couldn’t believe it.
“Recently,” said Fuzon, his voice shaking.
They followed the lights, passing over great horned mountains rising from the planetary sea. Fading into the deep and gloomy distance, the lights vanished in the shadow of three spindly necks. Their texture bore the mark of degenerated flesh, flaked and flayed from radiation sickness, and Ona could only describe their heads as hideous, like the split, toothless openings at the ends of worms but plagued with frightened eyes that bulged aghast.
“Fuzon...” said Uveth.
He craned his neck and looked pleadingly at Ona. “We’ll come back for you.”
Her stomach knotted. “What do you mean?’
Fuzon brought Lamiya hard to port. Now they looked ahead to a fearsome stone mass of an alien shape. Bat-winged and tall it reared, stabbing out of the waters with its arms bent in struggle. Ona thought its broad horned head to be a war helm, but as they drew close, she saw its only garb was a cape that spread shadowy into the sea. Above that statue alone, an island towering, did the cloud canopy break to vent the sun’s red glow. Ona shivered.
One eye was carved into its brow, and beneath, where a healthy being’s eyes should be, were only empty sockets. The shrine rested atop the beast’s broad and sloping brow. Its head was tilted back so that the shrine sat on a flat space.
Ona looked to Eleth, but she was weeping, her gaze peering deep into another universe than the one Ona and Solomon’s Gambit dwelled in.
Lamiya perched only briefly on that forbidden brow. It seemed Ona’s feet were still airborne when the vessel fled. Since waking, the only fear she felt was that of displeasing her family. Now she feared the very ground she stood upon.