The train sped by darkened girders and lights in the dark tunnel. My guide was very untalkative, a total ice queen. We passed by a few areas that looked like stations, but we did so far too quickly to make out any platforms, the only visible parts of the stations left visible were the bright off-yellow lights that left a haze on my eye as we passed them before we rushed back into the dark.
Like cockroaches that got on combat stims, they then went again, skittering off on tracks through the dark tunnels.
It was a gut-wrenching, insidiously boring, no-good, very bad train ride. The chairs made my ass hurt, and when we pulled into the final station, my hips were all bent, and my back was sore. The guide was just as straight, prim, and proper as always, standing just after the train jerked to a stop and made her way to the door just in time for the doors to open.
I blinked at the light of the platform as I exited the relatively dark car. It was a similar station to the one prior, the brighter lights caused me to blink as if I had just spent a week in Junky’s belly like a goblin. Black Stone, bright light, and vintage metal station with wood benches and little coloured lines on the floor.
There were a few people here, and to my surprise, they were very similar to my guide, all tan to my pasty and pale, but with some difference in eye or hair colour, different dresses, but most wore the naval outfit, with a simple change in their cap and epaulets on their jackets.
They were all so… human-looking. It was downright uncanny. It was like they had never crossbred with any other people, as if they had never left their duty. It was a screenshot of a time that had long left this galaxy, a time where we were slaves in all but name, where we did our duties for our godlike creators who made us like what we did and kept the stock ‘pure.’
It was a time that dumbasses who knew nothing about the past would call the good ol’ days.
And it was in a way.
It had been so much easier, so straightforward. In a way, I could understand the position, you knew what you would do, it was in your head, it was something you had in your head, carefully put there by a being that needed something done and needed something or someone to do it.
And they had done it well, done it smartly, done it in a way that created the most stability possible, left people with a willingness to do their job and live their lot in peace while doing something they were good at.
No one knew what they were good at anymore, no one felt like they were living the life they should live, no one was content, there was little in the way of stability, and the freedom we had gained was sour grapes at best.
But here was a place with stability, with a sense of purpose, where everyone looked content and so very human. The perfect underlings, I suppose, that Humans would want right on their doorstep, the type the normal folk would want to talk with at least.
It was… One part terribly sad to look at what life could have been like, one part infuriating at what life is like for those born in the right place, and one part unsettling at just how dronelike they all are.
Everything had its place, and there was some beauty to that. But everything having its place also meant that anything that didn’t fall in line got hammered down flat.
A whole lot of them turned to look at me, taking in my hideous visage, and judged me. My guide ever with the stick up her ass, ignored them, and I kept pace with her.
More and more folks were around this segment, going around, checking every inch of the place. I saw one guy using some tool to check the floor, getting down on his knees and pressing a device down only to look at a dial, nod to himself, and move one panel over to repeat it again.
He had a less naval officer, more engineer look, suspenders and a grease bib-like swath of fabric on, even though he didn’t have any grease on him.
I told him, “Keep up the good work,” while we passed because I figured whatever he was doing must be at least somewhat important, and it seemed like a chore, and he just said, “Aye,” like that one drunk guy who thought he was a pirate.
That put a pep in my step and a smile on my face all the way until we got to a big open arch, and the smile on my face fell off.
Though it was the most jaw-dropping thing I had ever seen. Topping the sight of the superstructure, topping the red sands, and the domes of Luna.
It was like stepping out onto a planet. An honest-to-goodness open segment where I could not see the other side as it curved away into the horizon met us. Below were fields of floating greenery on small rectangles of soil, separated by what looked like water. A forest over one corner, a large lake segment in another. I could see rail lines over bridges that ran through a big central strip below and in front of us, leading not up to us but below to places unknown.
And above it all was an artificial sun, spinning like the spires outside and trapped in a dome that hung down from the ceiling.
“Please follow me, Captain Bandit, we have a schedule to keep.” My guide spoke.
I didn’t answer, I just gawked, taking off my hat to take in as much as I could.
Tiny smoke stalks rose up from tiny villages, people worked in fields, working the tools of their trade, and floated down the waterways on barges.
Here were a people that lived life as if the Throne had never been sundered. Here was a place of peace, the like of which had not been seen in hundreds of years, a stable life to live. Here was a place that fed the part of me that wanted to give up on the freedom of mercenary work and just focus on whatever I knew I was good at.
“Captain Bandit, I must-”
“Just a moment, mam, just… just a moment,” I asked, not so much cutting her off as a quiet plea.
She shuffled and just let me be.
I took it in, the peaceful slice of the universe. It spoke to me like a novel, a poem of simple contents. Almost happiness, I would say. A place hidden, like a grove in the wood, a place unburdened by the problems outside the Lighthouse.
I didn’t have a bad life, I had two caring parents who always wanted the best for me. Who had tried to prepare me for the future as all good parents did? I had friends that I had left to the wayside to get a job away from home with the wanderlust that always took hold of my family. Gotten a job and a patch of solid life that was so simple, if not as simple as this, and threw it all away.
I might not be here if a place like here had been there. Maybe I would have stayed with my parents or at my job.
There was a part of me that wanted this, and I let it get sated on the idea, held it in my grasp, and then let it go with a breath.
I should have sent a letter to them, now they would not know if I lived or died. Would not know why I stopped writing and disappeared in the dark. My mother would cry, and my father would hold her, but this legacy would end with me, and they would never find me.
But that was what it was to be Bandit, to carry it.
It was what I felt deep down every time I took a mission outside of my comfort zone. It was what had given my family its history: a line of morons like me who did big, stupid things and somehow beat the odds.
I had always known that I would do something truly stupid, but I couldn’t feel the horrible weight it should carry. I could not draw out the sober grit to make that sound like it was something important.
In a moment of Zen, I recognized that everyone before me, all the way back to the Bandit of Hearts, all the way back to the first of my line that had stolen the heart of a Terran of the Silver Legion and been given a spot at his side. And the one that had born him half Terran children, half human, half vat-grown trash and who had been a spark in the wind, one that he could never replace when she died.
Each of us had inexplicable luck and stories. Luck, stories and stupid hair-brained plans that should have killed dozens of Bandits before me and, with all luck, many after.
Bandits stole hearts, Bandits got money, Bandits wandered the stars to fill a hole in our hearts, and Bandits must think themselves the greatest of thieves because we stole ourselves out from under death's cupped hands through her bony fingers with a little luck. All to continue the same story, with different scenery and characters, each eventually settling down in a place that was like this so the next story could be born, so the next Bandit could come to a moment like this.
I was seeing my far future if I lived through this sitting in front of me, I just couldn’t get there yet, I just hadn’t seen enough, my story was too short, I guessed. I wondered if that was a part of us, programmed into us somewhere.
I put my hat back on, I had a guy to meet.
“Sorry for the wait, I’m ready to talk now,” I told my guide.
She just nodded, and I followed her to another lift, globular in appearance, with one flat side that held the tracks leading up into the sky a few hundred feet from the doorway. We walked in, and the door closed, the inner platform held on stable pivots.
There was only one destination; it began moving the moment the door closed, so smoothly I didn’t realize until I asked the guide where the button was, and she informed me in her neutral voice that we were already on our way.
It was a smooth ride, so smooth, the pivot whispered as we changed direction, from upwards to horizontal, but it was a short enough ride. We quickly slowed down, and the door opened, a catwalk extending into the pod for us to leave.
We walked on clinking metal catwalks until we found our way into a lounge filled with overly plush seats, draped walls and, all in all, what was a rather remarkable gentleman’s club, all dressed up in red. It even had a pool table, a dart board, and a bar with a waitress behind it.
This was not what I was expecting.
I turned to my guide and managed to get a “What is this place?” out in lieu of anything intelligent.
“A reception area,” she told me in a voice you might use on a kid to scold them.
“And I just sit here and wait for a bit?” I asked, astonished.
“It should only be 4 minutes, but yes,” she told me.
I nodded before walking to a big, cushy seat, then stopping and going to the bar. I pulled out the stool and ordered a shot of whiskey. Just the one, I was too sober for this, before riding up here, I had an existential fucking experience.
This job was bad for my health, I needed to get the crew to unionize, MC couldn’t fire all of us.
“Thank you, miss,” I told her.
“No problem, you could obviously use it. Don’t go worrying about the Keeper, he’s the good sort. Actually, you should have a second ready for yourself and a third for him, he always gets a bit tense after a meeting with someone he hates. Hold on a second, he should be out any minute.” She told me in a bubbly soprano. Bringing out two tumblers and fixing two drinks.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Her hands moved fast, maybe she was technical in nature, maybe most of them were, people with internal changes were a thing that you saw around, though most had small changes.
Farmers had plenty of internal stuff, but generally, they had special eyes and fingers to determine ripeness on top of everything internal.
Maybe she had something subtle, like full joint mobility and enhanced tendons. However, she didn’t strike me as a servant of any kind.
I was starting to get worried that I was meeting Humans, bad enough that it took me off my edge thinking about it long enough that I only noticed a pale man with frizzy hair like mine storm out from behind me and leave the lounge.
“Is it my turn? Or do I wait for someone to get me,” I asked my guide.
When she didn’t answer, I turned to look at the lounge only to be met with a total lack of my guide. She was totally gone; she had brought me here and left.
I turned to the kind barwoman who delivered the two glasses with a smile.
“My guide left, and so did the other guy, do I just go in, or do I wait?” I asked her.
She opened her mouth, then gained an expression like she was about to sneeze. She held it for a moment, and I covered the cups, but she didn’t sneeze, instead muttering, “I’ll never get used to that,” before gesturing to the door and speaking up, “Feel free to go on in miss Bandit, the Keeper is waiting.”
I nodded, picked up the glasses, and thanked her before heading into the office, past the drapes, and came to a much more baren room and saw the Keeper for the first time.
He sat in his chair, looking like a stern father figure concentrated into one man. He leaned forward in his chair when I walked it but just squinted at me.
He, like most of the other crew I had seen, was very human, although he was paler, not all the way pale, not me pale, not white paint. pale, for the rest of the crew, who had all been tan, and while he had a little brown left in his hair, it was almost all white.
He had hair on both the top of his head, the sides of his face and from the bottom of his face, forming a great big beard that framed a mouth with laugh lines and a pointed nose. His eyes looked like they had faded, like a painting left in the sun, so now they were only blue.
Like the rest of the important seeming crew, he had a jacket and cap with a strange insignia inscribed in a hexagram on the cap, but the epaulets were both the familiar towers of light.
“You look familiar… Do I know you?” he asked, his face taking on an unrecognizable tone.
“No, we haven’t, and I doubt you’ve even seen my picture, I’m not all that important,” I told him.
“If you say so, I think I’ve seen you somewhere, it’s on the tip of my tongue, I swear. Is that… Oh, by everything good, pass that drink here, I can’t stand this. Delilah is a gem. Let's talk, come on and sit down, I don’t bite,” he told me, waving me over.
I did, sitting down in a chair opposite and putting the two cups down, one for him, one for me. The chair sucked me in, and I didn't resist. It was comfy.
“I can feel that cheers!” he said, reaching out with his glass. I taped my glass to his, and we started drinking.
He took a deep sip and let it set in before he got to his end of the deal.
“Ok, so, you were here about a chit, right? May I see it?” he asked, holding out his hand palm up.
I reached into my jacket and held the river stone-shaped chit but didn’t hand it over just yet.
“Only if you guarantee you will hand it back. On your honour and name,” I told him.
He raised one bushy white eyebrow, “You would need a name to do that, and I’m going, to be honest, so many people come through I can’t remember them all, I doubt yours would do much. And you haven’t exactly given your name, you know.”
Well. I hadn’t expected him to know me, but I had assumed he would, at the very least, been briefed on me or maybe check his schedule.
“Bandit. My name is Bandit,” I told him.
A look of comprehension overcame his face, and he pointed at me as if he had just gotten a tidbit of knowledge unstuck from one of the cobwebs in his head.
“OH! No wonder I thought you were familiar, it was the sword!” he said, slapping his hand to his knee, “The last one must have been at least sixty years ago, seventy? Must be going soft in the head from old age.” He chuckled.
I stared at him for a moment.
As far as I knew, my dad was not in his sixties, and we only got the sword when we moved out, generally around twenty. My Grandfather or Grandmother I had never met would have been quite the old person if they were still around.
And this guy was claiming to have met them.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that, I’m old, you can see that with your eyes. Now I can promise you on my name and honour, I shall return the chit, now give er here.” he told me, wiggling his wrinkled fingers in a childish ‘gime gime’ gesture.
I pulled the chit from my pocket and placed it in his hand.
When my finger brushed his hand, I was struck with a sudden urge to pull my hand back, and I did like I had been burned.
“What the hell was that?”
He looked back up at me and away from the chit, “What was what?”
“I, sorry, it was nothing,” I told him, waving it off, he looked back down at the chit, not caring to make a comment, intensely studying it.
I waited for a while, letting him trace his fingers across the groves and press it into his palm. I didn’t know what he was doing, just that I needed to show it to him, so I let him sip a bit from the cup and waited.
I wasn’t expecting him to talk.
“You can feel it, too, can't you?” he asked in a tone that was both grim and sad.
“Feel what?” I asked him, not knowing what he was talking about.
“You can feel it, the planet. When you came here, you could feel the planet, couldn’t you? No, don’t say anything, if you can use your sword, you can feel it, I should have known. No wonder they never come back.”
“You're not making much sense, old man, feel what, and what does this have to do with anything.”
“Your dread is not a mystery to me; you were afraid of this place… weren’t you.”
I looked into his eyes and saw pain there.
“Start making sense, old man, what are you talking about.”
“Just… Just answer me, Bandit, you were afraid of this place, admit it.”
“Maybe, maybe not. What does it matter, and are you done with the chit?”
He scowled but nodded and handed it back, “Aye, though I suppose it must be fate you found one of those chits. And before you ask, because I know you will, I can’t tell you what lies at the other end.”
That seemed like a lie, a total contradiction. How could he figure out something about the chit and not be able to tell me about it? That and his talking about something he shouldn’t have made me suspicious. It made me not trust him.
I did my best to keep myself closed off and not fall into my former, more relaxed demeanour.
“Then what's so important about the chit that you can recognize it? It’s just a chit to me, nothing special about it, if it lacked the hexagons, it would be nothing but a funny pebble.” I asked wearily.
“You can’t tell because you can’t see it, but I’ll give you a piece of advice for the family of an old friend.” He started before dipping a finger in his glass and dropping the dots on his wooden desk. He drew a symbol; it obviously wasn’t the whole thing. It broke up at some points, even after a second pass, but the image was clear enough.
It was an eye held wide open with a series of five swirls in it, a bizarre symbol to be sure.
“Oh yeah? And what does it mean?”
“Danger, mostly. A danger that is sealed away and that shouldn’t be let out. This one is not one of those, but it's at the same location, if you stumble on a door with this, steer clear, it will mean the death of many more than just yourself if it gets out.”
“I’ll take it under advisement,” I told him, running through how likely he was to be lying, only to not see a reason for him to lie to me about it.
He barreled on, not waiting for me to finish my internal guessing.
“Just one moment, I’ll get you your equipment, and you can head back to your ship. I doubt ye care about little old me. Drink up.” he told me, whipping away the image with his sleeve.
I did, but the Keeper didn’t call for anyone, didn’t press a button or call over something, he just sat there and drank along with me. This place was already weird, but I suppose maybe the barwoman, Delilah, was off to go get it.
After we had gotten down to the end of our glasses, I decided to ask a question to cut through the awkward feeling of silence that lay over our table.
“Why are you called the Keeper? I get my name because I carry my sword, why do you carry yours.”
He raised an eyebrow, “you're asking me what a lighthouse keeper is? I’m one of the few people in the system that can tell you about artifacts. It’s me, Carcassonne, and the Sartones, and you want to know why I have my name?” he asked.
I didn’t know any of that, but I felt too embarrassed to cut in and tell him, filing the names away for later instead of asking.
He looked speculative but answered after a sip.
“Do you know what a lighthouse is?”
“No, I know this place is called The Lighthouse, but a lighthouse is not something I can think of off the top of my head.”
“A lighthouse was, originally, a building, generally on the coast, that had a big light in it so a ship in the sea could find their way and not crash on rocks or a coastline. People used to have to live there, alone for a long time, to make sure the light didn’t go out, and that was the keeper of a house, with a light, hence lighthouse keeper.
I keep this lighthouse, I make sure she is tended to, kept in shape, that all aboard do their part, and that all know that this place guards the rocks. So, no ship goes to its grave in the cursed place below without fair warning.
Usually, I would, but it's boring.
And I know I don’t need to give you the talk on it being a place of grave, horrid evil, but I will explain this: what you will experience below will not make sense to you, so you will need to follow these instructions.” He told me, sitting back and reaching down to pick up a bag.
It was new dark leather, a metal buckle latched the top down and had no noticeable wear nor tear. A simple strap so you could foist it over one shoulder like a big purse. It was gorgeous and probably cost me my annual salary before I took this job, assuming it was really leather. Knowing how big this place was, it was probably real leather, not the fake alt leather that my coat was made from.
He hefted it over the table, undid the latch and pulled the goods out.
“OK, here are the tools of the trade. This,” he said, pointing to a flat tablet-like piece of tech with a set of four short artifact antennas, “Is you Wayfinder, you put the chit in this compartment, and an Anchor chit in this compartment, this switch is labelled seek or return, to either seek an item or return to your Anchor. The compass here shows you what direction you need to move in, and this smaller compass shows what way you need to move, if it shows forward, you walk normally, backward you go backwards in the indicated direction. On the Throne, you Must absolutely follow this, even if it is off a cliff, trust the Wayfinder, and you will never go wrong with any terrain.”
He told me.
I stared at it. There was no way that worked like that. That wasn’t how the world worked, if you moved forwards, you went forward. What went up came down. It only got stranger from there.
“This is the anchor,” he said, pointing to an artifact brick, “Attached is its entangled chit, you will place that in your Wayfinder and the brick in wherever you wish to return to, like your Ship or Boat. I implore you, with every ounce of my being, to use it.”
It was, in fact, a grey brick with a familiar hexagon pattern, with a similar hexagon-covered stone-like chit, just like the one I had.
He continued.
“This is the most important, in my opinion, it’s a defence charm, it will help stop the bad mojo from hurting you. Keep it over your neck like a necklace, keep it pressed to your skin, no matter what, and you will increase your chances of survival by 500%.”
He said it like it was eminently reasonable as he spoke about it and said 500% like he wasn’t pulling the number out of his ass. Hell, maybe they took an exit survey.
The idea of getting an exit survey almost made me want to laugh.
The charm was a black feather with a thin cord thong and a tiny artifact bead to hold the two together.
He was speaking about it like it was a magic feather to ward away bad spirits. Like the stupid little feather could stop a bullet.
It exceeded my imagination, exceeded my ability to reason. It looked mundane.
I wanted to speak up, but he kept going on.
“And this is your present for coming here, it’s an SPS, it will give you your coordinates, so you don’t need to ask for them anymore when you go to different planets, it's like getting a tee-shirt for visiting somewhere, except more useful, you know? I visited the Throne, and all I got was this shirt, but made useful.”
I looked at it and couldn’t help but agree with him that was incredibly useful if it did what he claimed it did, it almost made me forget for only a moment how batshit the man before me was.
And then I accepted it and moved on, simply nodding to him because it was so good that I didn’t want to wreck the chances of getting that SPS. It was not something I knew existed, and finding my coordinates was a gargantuan pain in my ass.
“I will do all of this. Thank you, Keeper, for your hospitality and for the free drinks. If that is it, I’ll show myself out.” I told him, quickly finishing off my drink and reaching across the table to grab the loot.
“It is indeed Bandit, you can take your goodies and leave, I know how you lot get. Take care, I will see you in the dark. Oh, and your ingress zone.” He told me, quickly rattling off a series of coordinates. I nodded, marking them down in my memory for later. Rehearsing them in my head before getting everything in the nice bag. It was on the table, too, after all, and I certainly wasn’t against fashion.
I stood and took everything, tipped my hat to him, and headed out.
I made my way back to my ship, getting the chits sorted and checking the SPS on the hours-long journey to my boat, a boring ride that left the pit burning in my gut at the thought of actually leaving this place.
It had been a sight, but that wasn’t the bad part, every second of the return brought me closer to the fear I had yesterday.
I put on the amulet because, why not, it certainly couldn’t hurt me, even if I doubted it would help. It didn’t help my mounting anxiety at all.
I thought for a moment that I saw the Oracle in a reflection in the glass of the train, her words echoing in my mind along with the Keepers. ‘You can feel it, too, can’t you.’ It burned in my mind and ate at my gut, the lack of the steel expressions woman worried at my nerves. Anything would be better, anything, even the fucking super spy, gods. Anything would be better than sitting here alone.
After I got back to the Junker, it was a short time to stow my stuff and reorder my equipment to include my new bag. Some pouches got moved, which resulted in an easier time for carrying stuff, and they got put in the saddle bags for my bike.
When I left, I got my clearance so fast that they had to be waiting for me. Informed them where I was going, and I lifted off before I oriented myself to the planet, I called in again and waited, the lights spinning up around the segment, the lights that showed the entire system where it was turning into a warning. Alerting everyone in sight that the tomb was being opened for a moment, turning yellow to yellow and red, dozens more lights and a giant beam spinning up to show the universe the location of the soul, stupid enough to go into hell for some credits.
The shield of the segment flickered, then blanked out.
I took a deep breath, entered my coordinates into my computer, and nosed down and into the writhing storm below.
Hours had passed in a blur, I had been at the keeper's office what felt like a scant few hours ago.
My thrust pushed me forward, nose down. The Junker plunged into the swirling white-grey cloud that opened for me, and I tried to keep the image of it opening up like a maw, ready to swallow me whole, totally out of my mind.
I plunged.