CHAPTER VI: SENATOR DIRANA SULEM

Community Outreach Pavilion, City of Hassoon

Jawhara, Capital of the Eobaria System

December 17, 2771

Dirana wiped away a few sweaty black curls that escaped her bun, then buried her hands in the soil and pulled out more bushels of Baalo. The versatile root vegetable’s natural color caught the sun just right and looked like a stem attached to bricks of gold. Dirana smiled and glanced at Jaya, standing stiff with a wicker basket, making sure her billowing formal attire wasn’t touching the garden.

Jaya saw the Baalo sail from Dirana’s hand and her eyes bulged with alarm. “No no no no!” She insisted as the roots plopped into the basket, puffing dirt into her face. Dirana chuckled as her Aksani legislative coordinator sputtered.

“What?” Dirana asked knowingly, “You’re Aksani, if you were in here helping we’d be done already!”

“I’m Tal’toa, Senator, I’m ocean Aksani!” Jaya beat the dirt off her silk shawl. “And I travel for a living for a reason!”

Dirana laughed and sauntered to the end of the garden, dusting her hands as she surveyed the Outreach Pavilion. To one corner lie the gyroscope, more of a monument than a utility, where guides led new volunteers through seminars describing their work here. The usual fare: sustainable agriculture, historical analysis, voter education and so on. Across the greens, a dozen or so ‘veteran’ volunteers killed time at the outdoor cafe, enjoying the new brick oven pizza bar. She looked back at Jaya, who fixated on her wrist mounted holo-planner.

“We should head somewhere with better signal, I’m getting a message from the Senior House.”

Dirana rolled her eyes. “Jaya, sooner or later you have to just be where you are.”

“Senator, our comm satellites aren’t responding. It’s probably just interference from solar rays, but they want to assemble to—”

“Senior House will be there in a few minutes. We can all feel better knowing our comm sats are still due for maintenance. Look around you…this is what the Senate was built for,” she gestured to the Outreach Pavilion and the city around it. “We’re fostering life and growth here, but part of the reward of this job is we get to see it.” Dirana backed across the pavilion, smiling at workers and visitors as Jaya followed. “In the past, change was slow. People who dreamed of it could only, well, dream. They seldom got to see it in their lifetime. We’re luckier. Now, when you’re looking back on your life, would you rather remember the times you checked your planner, or the times you saw what your job was really about? What life really is?”

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Jaya sighed, begrudgingly lowering the planner on her arm and standing shoulder to shoulder with her friend and stared in the mid distance. “…What moment of ‘what life really is’ should I be focusing on?”

“You might be the worst Aksani alive.”

Jaya bumped Dirana’s shoulder in mock-offense, “You must not have met those Iconite lunatics. Sorry ma’am, but I’ve had my fill of dirt worshippers.”

Dirana chuckled and folded her arms. “Okay then, try this — just look at the sky.”

Jaya tipped her head upwards, Dirana mirrored. “That up there? That’s where this all came from. All our curiosity, our daring, our sense of wonder, ever since we saw that great, big, starry everything, we never stopped asking ‘what’s out there?’”

Jaya hid it, but a smile crept over her tight lips.

Dirana smiled herself, watching Jaya gaze at the sky. She took a deep breath of clean air. “Now then, I’ll see what the House wanted to discuss. But we’re getting a thin crust first, agreed?”

“Uh…I see what’s out there, Senator…”

Dirana furrowed her brow at the horror on Jaya’s face. She followed her gaze and her jaw dropped.

A jagged, towering Scandar warship descended rapidly from low orbit.

“DOWN!” Dirana bellowed, grabbing Jaya and the closest volunteer and diving flat. “Cover your ears!!”

The shockwave hit first. A vicious, invisible wall of force rolling across the grassy landscape and shaking the towering stone and metal of Hassoon, throwing every standing body off their feet. Following on the shockwave’s heels, a hideous shriek rattled Dirana’s eardrums. When she checked on Jaya, blood poured from her ear, the Aksani’s drum ruptured. In tandem with the wail of the ship’s descent, a chorus of shattering glass roared across the entire city.

That wasn’t even an attack. This was just the fallout of a ship that size breaching atmo at terminal velocity. It hadn’t even touched the ground, yet it shook the earth and made the air scream. She likened it to lectures she’d heard on Earth’s prehistory; all it took was the impact of an asteroid, only slightly smaller than that ship, to eradicate most life on the planet. This probably wasn’t unlike what the dinosaurs experienced in their final days.

But they didn’t know it was coming for them, Dirana lamented to herself. We do.

But there was no impact. No explosion, no ripple of molten soil, no mushroom cloud…nothing. In an instant, all was silent. Dirana’s instincts kicked in, she checked the volunteer under her right arm, they were unharmed. She turned to Jaya, face tensed in pain as she clutched her bleeding ears. Dirana opened a pouch on her belt and drew cleansing alcohol and a clean rag, ripping off strips of fabric and soaking them in the alcohol. She turned the groaning Jaya over on her back and forced her face into view, speaking slow and firm, hoping at worst, Jaya might read her lips.

“This is going to hurt, I’m so sorry.”

With that, she twisted the rags into thin shapes and began wiping the blood out of her ears. Expecting to hear whimpers or see her flinch, Dirana instead saw Jaya eerily blank. No, not blank — shocked, as her gaze fixed upwards. Dirana risked a look above as well.

The Scandar dreadnought loomed right above the Capitol Tower in the heart of Hassoon, face directly towards them, perched like a hawk. Dirana slowly rose, the lone figure back on her feet in the Pavilion, and stared right back.