I'm not a Star Wars fan (I know), but when I saw 'The Rise Of Skywalker', I was inspired to make something dedicated to marking the end. It's never the end though, because 'The Saga Lives On' in our hearts and in our minds.
Hello darlings! This one is for Brandon, who Leveled Up and got a second prompt for himself at the same time! Quick reminder that the Subscriber Drive is still going, and there are lots of great prizes for Leveling this month!
As always, thank you so much, Brandon. I hope you like this one, it's a little more introspective than the last one.
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“They called us sorcerers,” Talulah said, curled in her chair, looking out at the stars. As if calling them was the starting bell, the welcome they were waiting for, she could hear the stars singing to her in a voice that sounded like her ancestors. By the way Yaz’s eyes went distant whenever she looked outside, Talulah thought she felt the same. “They called us sorcerers, and they said we had escaped. That we were imprisoned.”
“Grandmother used to tell me,” Talulah continued, hearing her grandmother’s voice among the star-song that thrummed in her ears. “That we came to the world on fiery wings. That the Thunderbirds welcomed us as we struck sparks on the cold ground.”
“Old legends,” Greta said, but Talulah heard the way her vocice shook even as she passed out cups of cocoa. “Old stories. They can’t really be real.’
“We did just summon up our legends in starlight,” Yaz pointed out dryly. When she reached out towards the stars, gold-red light glimmered in trails after her fingers. She smiled, and Talulah smelled hot stone and sand. “My Papi from the old world, he used to speak of giants who raised a fortress of stone and blood. That the walls would hold against any attack. He never told me if the walls were meant to keep us out, or keep us in.”
“The maelstrom is supposed to be a story,” Greta said, and mimicked Talulah’s position, settled into her chair with her feet tucked under her. “Or it’s supposed to be an explanation, anyway. The maelstrom is because of the tides, but our legends back in Norway tell of a ship-killer. A monster that was there even before we came. If you were clever and quick, you could fish on the kraken’s back and come home with your hold loaded with fish. If you weren’t quite quick enough…”
“That’s why you called it up,” Talulah had been wondering. She didn’t know many of the myths of Greta’s people, but she knew enough to know that a kraken wasn’t the first Norse monster to come to mind. But it was a ship-killer, and they had needed a ship killed. “The kraken. I couldn’t figure it when I thought about it later. But now it makes sense.”
“Be careful and quick, little fish, little fish,” Greta said as if she was quoting someone. Her smile spoke of memories, soft with age. Ghostly blue sparkles painted the illusion of a tiny silver fish darting between immense, crushing tentacles. “Be careful and quick, and watch the turning of the tides, for the maelstrom does not return what it takes. What were yours? Your birds?”
“Thunderbirds,” Talulah said fondly, because they were familiar legends. “Heloha and Melatha. Her eggs roll together and make thunder, and he catches them before they can fall through the clouds. Grandmother used to tell me of the egg he missed, the one that fell to earth and cracked open. Our egg.”
When she spoke their names, yellow-gold feathers sparked over her cheeks, the barest brush of wingtips loaded with warm static. She closed her eyes, and she could almost see them again, swooping forward to protect their defenseless little ship.
“Sorcerers,” Greta said, and spread her hand. Her silver-blue fish darted through her fingers and she stared at it, entranced. “They called us sorcerers. What if- what if our legends are true? Every single one of them. If your Egg was a ship, and Yaz’s giants built walls to keep us in, or out, and my kraken was supposed to devour us?”
“But why did it not begin until now?” Yaz questioned. She closed her hand on her gold-red glimmers, and tossed them upward, before focusing hard. Attuned to her thoughts, the stardust turned to shifting, glowing sand that showed the sweep of eras. “The fossil record doesn’t show any of this.”
“What if there were already humans on Earth, but the sorcerers fell, and bred in?” Talulah theorized hesitantly. They were all women of science, and if the star-battle hadn’t been recorded, she wouldn’t have believed it happened. Command had yet to reply to her transmission of the video and the report of the attack. She figured there was probably a lot of shouting back in Command Central. “Lots of cultures have legends of gods coming to Earth. What if our gods and the sorcerers are the same thing? Alien ships that brought something new with them.”
“Prison ships,” Greta said suddenly. “What if Earth is a penal colony?”
“Seems like a stretch.”
“You have a better explanation? If there’s something about Earth that contains the whatever-it-is we can do, it would make sense. They put the sorcerers there where they couldn’t escape, but now we have.”
“And the ship that tried to destroy us?” Talulah was trying to keep her calm about that. About the silver-white ship that cut through the dark of space and tried to blow their little ship out of the black. “What about them.”
“Have you ever met a prison that didn’t have guards?” Yaz asked, dry as desert sand. “The real question is, what happens now that we’re out?”
To Talulah’s surprise, Greta had the answer.
“We practice,” she said with a smile as dark as the legends of her people. “So that if they come for us again, we can remind them why they imprisoned the sorcerers in the first place.”
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Star Light Star Bright:
Three woman took to the stars. Three women learned that the Stars hold secrets of their own that humanity has yet to rediscover.
Dead Space - Zack Gardner - SciFi - 3742 words - 2017
The breakneck pace that the Impervious365-X4 had maintained for the past three billion lightyears suddenly pulled back to a lurching crawl, its final destination within sight. The Impervious365-X4 shifted into a comfortable orbit of the blue planet, hissing precise bursts of compressed air to adjust its calculated course. Screens long dark flicked on, back-up systems powering up with a sleepy whine. Cool blue wall panels slowly illuminated the cockpit of the cumbersome vessel.
The A.I. system powered up all of its resources, leaving its hibernation state and returning its CPU and processing speeds to normal. It reinserted its empathy drive along with its short term RAM and ran a SYS check. There was something that needed to be done; something primary. Something urgent. Full interior and exterior cameras and mics rebooted, giving the onboard A.I. its senses back, just as the SYS check completed, flooding the AI's human-esque mind with feelings and memories.
"Oh dear," the A.I. stated aloud. Strapped to main control chair in the cockpit was one of the Portsuits, inhabited. The A.I. activated the control chair's functions, connecting with the Portsuit. It began to recount the events from three billion years ago, before the jump to lightspeed, as data simultaneously poured from the Portsuit into the onboard AI.
"Oh dear." It stated again to itself.
It was dark and he couldn't move. Panic wasn't far behind, but at least he knew it wasn’t far behind, so there was solace in that, right? He couldn’t even tell if it was darkness, or his eyes were shut. Everything felt fuzzy and off. He tried remembering how he got here and came up blank. He tried remembering the most basic of things and came up blank. Panic arrived just in time. If he could have made himself scream, he would have.
"Oh dear." He heard, his mind instantaneously clearing of the panic. He could hear - that was a start. There were the humming and soft grinding sounds of computers, the buzz of fluorescents.
"Now Master Fiore, I'm going to have to ask you to stay as calm as possible while I try to reconnect your senses." The voice held a thick British accent, prim and proper, but with the softness and monotone obviously making it a computer system. Aside from that, the voice was oddly familiar. Comfortably familiar.
Reconnect, he wondered? And suddenly there was blinding light and clarity, as vision returned to him. The luminescent of the control panel screens, brushed steel and plastics of the cockpit and the dull glare of the thick glass viewport. A massive blue and green planet took up half of the window, the other half a quick atmospheric fade to the stark black of outer space. He gasped at the beauty in spite of himself, hearing his intake of breath through the mic in the Portsuit.
"That should do for visual. And audio input/output should be up as well." The same disconnected British voice. "Can you hear me, Master Fiore?"
Fiore. That sounded right. There was a familiarity to that as well.
"Y-Yes. I am… I am having some difficulties." He said with a shaky voice, tinny over the Portsuit's microphone. “M-motor functions and… and I my, ah, my memory is - is blank.” He tried lifting his hand, looking down at his arm slowly responding, the sleeve of the Portsuit fading seamlessly into its bulky glove.
“Well, Master Fiore, you are a doctor of cybernetics returning from a long-haul run to an outrigger colony. Your full name is Amadeus Fiore, no middle name, the ship you are currently on is called the Impervious365-X4, and my name is-”
“Pervy!” Fiore almost shouted. “We called you Pervy!”
“Very good sir.” The A.I. stated dryly. “We had some complications upon the initiation of cryosleep whilst cycling up the hyperdrive. In response to that, you donned one of the ship’s Portsuits to use its hibernation function. Rather bold move, I do say, but at the time, the best option you had, Master Fiore.”
“Well thank you… Pervy.” Fiore chuckled. “I’m still having some issues with this suit. My mobility is shot. Can we maybe run a recalibration to the suit’s servos?” The Portsuit was a fitted spacesuit, meant to protect and enhance those on the longer trips into deep space. It was a fully enclosed suit, visor and helmet that could protect against the extreme negative temperatures, pressure differences and strains of zero gravity that travelers would come across. Not only that, the models that the Impervious365-X4 was equipped with also boasted full musculature support, full sensory support, full temporal uplink, and even a basic cryo-hibernation option. When equipped, the suit could jack into the brainstem access port all of the crewmembers had had surgically embedded into the base of their skull, at the hairline. All of the suit’s options, or whatever piece of equipment the suit was ported to, could then be controlled cerebrally.
“Certainly, Master Fiore, I have it running now. You should be mobile momentarily… But, sir, there are some other concerns that I should bring to your attention.”
“Oh yes, Ama, there are other concerns,” came a female voice, sultry, and as though whispered into his ear. He recognized the voice and the moniker. A memory of a feeling. On the tip of his tongue. He jerked his head towards the sound, of course, just the empty cockpit. Just him and Pervy.
“Of Course, Pervy. I-I appreciate your concern.” Fiore said, shaking it off. “It’s nice to know I have a friend such as you, if I know nothing else!”
“Sir, need I remind you, I have no real emotions or emotional attachment. I merely act on one of my prime directives as to the safety and welfare of the crew…” The A.I. responded cordially.
“Well that’s good to know too, Pervy, but it would have been better if you’da just taken the compliment.” Fiore laughed exasperatedly. Maybe he should have the A.I. run a SYS test on his access port. Or maybe the temporal uplink needed recalibrated? Who was that girl??
“Alas, sir, undeservedly so. It was all your idea to use the Portsuit – when all of the cryochambers were full.” The A.I. responded. “But, sir if you don’t mind, can I ask what happened just now? Your vitals spiked off the charts for a moment there…”
“Nothing, Pervy… Nothing.” Fiore knotted his brow and pinched his eyes shut trying to put it out of his head. “I’m fine now-wait!!! Chamber-s?! Pervy, cryochambers plural?! There’s more sleepers onboard??” Fiore shouted, leaping up from the chair. Was she there? Was there a She? “Show me!” He exclaimed, slapping the Portsuit’s gauntlet against the Open panel and rushing out the porthole as it slid open.
“To the left up here, Master Fiore,” The A.I.’s voice paced him as he ran down the curved-walled corridor. “Our course has us maintaining orbit for the next three hours until we reach our descent/landing trajectory… I will directly be beginning the rejuvenation cycle for the other passengers, but first, sir, I really need to-”
“Pervy!” Fiore shouted, halting suddenly in front of a labeled portal. “Open this damned door!”
“…yes sir.” The A.I. answered, the door sliding open.
Fiore scratched the back of his neck where the jack had been wired. It was still sore, having pulled the bandage off a day early. Kaela had gone with him, had had the same procedure. She sat beside him on the blanket, bare legs basking in the warm sun, her black hair tied back showing fair shoulders, olive skin kissed pink by the sun. He felt the heat, his shoulders already freckled and red, his auburn-red hair sweaty and tucked under a baseball cap. They would have to leave tomorrow, and she had so much left to tell him.
“Sir?” The A.I. asked, a note of concern in his voice. “Your vitals, sir!” Fiore shook his head to clear it, the tinted visor of the fitted helmet shaking in tandem. His vision making the dull blue lighting of the ship leave trails in the air.
“It’s nothing. I… I think it’s just a side effect from the long-term hibernation in the suit.” Fiore clutched his head and staggered into the hibernation room. The room shone antiseptically metal and white. Shower stalls and mirrored sinks lined one wall while the opposite wall housed personal lockers, airtight and secure for travel. Lined side-by-side the length of the room were the cryochambers, ten in total. All occupied.
“Master Fiore, there’s-”
“There is more Ama. You’re going to just love this.” The voice said teasingly inside Fiore’s head. He righted himself, shaking the helmet, trying to clear his head.
“Master Fiore, I must insist you pause for a moment.” The A.I. began. “Your vitals keep spiking, and there is a matter you must be made aware of post haste!”
“Pervy, I’m fine!” Fiore insisted, more to himself than to the motherly A.I. Was she in here? Was she in his head?! He headed towards the line of cryochambers, not sure which would be worse. “I just need to reacclimatize to being out of hibernation. Once that’s complete, my friend, I can doff the confines of this stuffy old suit and I will be as right as rain.”
The A.I. was silent for a change, to Fiore’s surprise. He glanced up at the row of dull blue illuminated tiles that ran the length of the ship (where they would all look when speaking to Pervy, as though needing a face for the disembodied voice) awaiting any sort of response. Having none, he shrugged and moved on.
Fiore stepped to the first chamber, peering into the translucent upper half of the brushed steel and glass sarcophagus. He didn’t recognize the middle-aged man in the chrysalis, nor the woman in the next, nor the next, or even the one after that. He stumbled to the next and stopped short, taking a second and longer look.
Grant took Kaela’s hand, interlacing their fingers and rubbing his thumb across her knuckles. They sat hand in hand on the public bench outside of the guest barracks, watching a stream of meteors flow in a belt around a titanic gaseous planet. Kaela glanced at the cybernetics guy as he passed, giving her a half-wave. That one was odd. He’d have to keep an eye on him. They were maybe a month into their sabbatical aboard the deepspace station, there to provide support, repairs and maintenance for the growing crew of the station. The crew of the Impervious365-X4 would be stationed there for just over a year, so he had better make sure to keep clear of the two of them.
“James? No, Grant. Grant!” Fiore said, slapping the glass of the cryochamber in triumph. “I remember that prick.” He slid his hand down the chamber and headed to the next.
The news had devastated him. Kaela had told him on the picnic they had shared, the day before launch. She had cried, and so had he, in spite of himself and perhaps in spite of her. She had said they could no longer see each other and begged him not to talk about it; not to talk to her any more. Despite that, they met again that night, in secret, and made love on the couch of his small rental, sparse of furniture and on its last day of the lease. She left as she had arrived, without a word, eyes sad and on the verge of tears.
“It was never meant to be – what we had.” She whispered bitingly.
He saw Kaela at launch, of course, but the formalities and preparations kept them apart. After the journey and the recuperation aboard the deepspace station, Fiore would see her in passing, usually with Grant. Her fiancé. Her fiancé. He had stewed about it for weeks on end, almost a month into their yearlong stint in deepspace. But then came the neuromail message, anonymous, that they should meet. That she needed to see him, now more than ever. That she had to see him in private; had to tell him something.
Fiore stroked the clear portion of the cryochamber with his thickly gloved hand. She slept peacefully under the glass, the memories falling back into place haphazardly. She was a beauty, silken raven-black hair down to her shoulders with contrasting olive skin, fair and smooth. Even after all she had done his heart still wrenched, trying to pull itself out of his chest, when he looked at her. There was only one more chamber left. His. Fiore plodded on, the Portsuit’s thick rubber bootsoles shuffling on the grated metal floor.
There had been the usual issues during the return trip takeoff, nothing serious, but now that they had cleared orbit and chartered a hyperspace course, chaos had ensued. The countdown had begun, and the cryosleep chambers were all but full, chemicals pumping and setting stasis for the crew. The last three pods were still open, hissing compressed air and other gases into the hibernation room. All three pods were buzzing warnings, touchscreen controls warning the occupant to initiate cryo stasis as soon as possible. The A.I. was there, obviously, and trying to placate the remaining crew. Kaela sat in her open chamber, shimmying up to the front in order to hop back out, shouting indecipherably. Grant stood over Fiore’s chamber, hands flying over the access screen. Fiore picked himself back up off the grated floor, rubbing his already-swollen jaw, murder in his eyes.
“I didn’t know though. You have to believe that I didn’t know what he had planned.”
Grant stepped away from Fiore’s cryochamber, the pod door closing and setting its locking mechanism. He roughly pushed Kaela back into her pod, initiating her pod as well. Fiore stood and swayed – he had not been punched in years, not since primary school... And never like this. The suckerpunch had knocked him down, his head connecting with the metal floor almost as painful as the surprise hard right from Grant. Grant looked at him contemptuously and sneered as he walked slowly to his own pod. Fiore staggered toward him, the room still spinning. Everything was muffled and fuzzy. He probably had a concussion from hitting the floor, and the throbbing in his jaw wasn’t helping. He could hear Kaela screaming at him, screaming at Grant. He could hear his heart beating inside his ears, competing for his attention. He could hear Pervy insistently in the background, urging him to do something, warning him of something… And there was another sound. Another sound most foreign to him.
“You’re almost there, love. Remember.”
The droll accent of the A.I. finally broke through the throbbing pain.
“Master Fiore, the jump into hyperspace is imminent. You need to prepare yourself. Your chamber has been tampered with, and I can no longer access it.” Fiore squeezed the bridge of his nose and pinched his eyes shut trying to push the pain away from his brain to make room for thinking. Grant had a smug smile on as his cryochamber latch locked into place, and Kaela kept screaming and beating on the curved glass of her pod. And that other sound... That other sound.
“Pervy, power up the cockpit support controls.” Fiore shouted, turning and running out the hibernation room into the curved-walled corridor. The A.I. paced him, a flash in the bluelit panel. “I don’t care about ship controls, but I want full access to UI protocols and Portsuit protocols.” He spun a corner, equilibrium still off, banging his shoulder into the wall.
“I want my Portsuit opened and powering up by the time I get to it!” He shouted, running full-tilt and leaping through the open port doors as they came. He was out of breath and panting wildly by the time he arrived at the Portsuit locker.
“Yes, but that sound. The other sound. Remember the other sound? Not me screaming, not the silly computer, not your half-assed survival plan… The other sound.”
Fiore had the suit on in no time and was doggedly running again, sprinting for the cockpit, attempting a software hack of the access screen on his left forearm that controlled the amenities of the Portsuit. He was already temporally jacked into the suit, but he would need a little time to create the uplink to the ship’s CPU. The A.I. had reverted to a calm countdown until the jump to hyperspace initiated. It would be close, if anything. It would be—
“The sound, Ama. Please.” She begged.
Fiore stood at the foot of this cryochamber, afraid to move to the head and peer inside. Afraid, and he didn’t know why. He gritted himself and prepared to move forward.
“Master Fiore.” The A.I. cut apprehensive silence so suddenly that Fiore jumped. “The matter we need to discuss. It will not wait.” Fiore sighed and stepped back from the pod.
“Go ahead, Pervy. Let’s have at it.”
“Your Portsuit, sir.”
“I know, Pervy, but everything seems to be intact. We’ll have to write the company a letter of commendation when we’re back on the ground, if they even still exist.” Fiore laughed lightly, trying to clear his mind of worry. “Who knew these dinky suits could hold out for that long, eh?”
“That’s the problem, sir. The support systems of the Portsuit such as the musculature support and the sensory support have maintained nominally, along with the temporal access port. However, the-”
“The hibernation function?” Fiore finished.
“…Yes sir.”
“Ama, please… It’s going to be okay.” Kaela whispered in his ear.
Fiore spun away from the line of cryochambers, making a beeline toward the shower area. The floor seemed to be swaying, like the old-time ships, the ones that floated on water. He almost fell onto the nearest sink, gauntleted hands gripping the white porcelain. He looked in the mirror at the Portsuit helmet, staring back at him: Tight-fitting helmet, airlocked at the neck, black visor, miniature auxiliary cameras at each corner.
“Pervy, what did you do?!”
“Master Fiore… Master Fiore, the hibernation sequence could only be held for a definitive amount of time. It was never meant-” The A.I. stopped speaking, hushed by Fiore slowly reaching for the visor release, a small catch at the base of the helmet.
“Master Fiore, perhaps-”
“Shut up!!!” Fiore shouted through clenched teeth, the mic gritty and screeching with his outburst. The A.I. fell silent again, and waited as the thick fingers of the Portsuit flicked the visor’s catch.
The visor slid up into the top of the helmet smoothly, revealing the interior of the helmet. Fiore gripped the porcelain hard, spiderwebbing the sides of the sink. An old blackened skull was nestled snugly in the confines of the helmet, dark gray and pitted with age. No flesh remained, just dusty bone. Fiore pinwheeled his arms, falling backward and landing with a thud on his rump. A skeleton. His breathing labored over the microphone. I’m all but a skeleton.
“Sir, perhaps I should…” The A.I. began. “When you were in stasis, I ran diagnostics on your Portsuit and found its… limitations. The temporal link to the suit allowed me to reverse engineer a new partition in the suit’s mainframe… Once that was complete and I could add to that partition with extraneous parts we had in the repair bay…”
Fiore was barely listening. He got back on hands and knees and began crawling back toward the line of cryochambers. Towards the last one. Towards his.
“Ama… Please, you need to understand. You need to remember.”
Fiore pulled himself up against the pod, and dragged himself toward its head. A skeleton!
“It took an extraneous amount of time, but I managed to copy over your entire memory catalogue, emotion directory and synapse response directory. And after that, it was quite easy to set up the musculature and sensory systems of the suit to respond to the suit’s cerebral controls.” The A.I. said proudly, as though expecting a pat on the back. Nothing but a bag of bones, in other words. Fiore cringed and pinched his eyes shut, realizing that he was not actually pinching his eyes shut.
“Ama, you need to calm down and think. Ama, please!” The voice crooned. But it was only a voice. Another ghost in his machine. Fiore took a deep breath (aware that he was not in fact taking a deep breath) and peered into his cryochamber.
A child, or a baby more like, was swaddled in a blanket sound asleep, frozen in time. It had smooth olive skin, an obvious attribute to its mother… And it had a light wisp of auburn-red hair, barely enough to be noticeable in the blue light of the hibernation room. The sound now echoed clearly in his memory as everything fell into place. Not Grant’s threatening rhetoric. Not Kaela’s panicked shrieks. Not the A.I.’s monotone warnings.
The baby cried, confused and frightened until the vapors from the cryochamber initiating its hibernation sequence lulled it into a doctored sleep. Fiore’s fingers flew over the access screen of the Portsuit, overwriting and rewriting new commands. He barely heard the damned A.I. begin the last minute countdown. He hashed out code and commands he knew by rote. His mind a million miles away. The baby. The baby was his.
Fiore fled from the room, before the rejuvination cycle could begin. He fled from the impending confrontation. He fled from the future he obviously could have no part in; from the past that he had just so recently discovered. He fled from the memories that were painfully searing into what his conscious still considered his brain. Fiore prayed that from the depths of the ship where he would hide that he would not be able to hear the cries of his baby as it awoke to a life back home. He fancied he could feel tears running down the pitted cracks in his ancient skull.
Once the Impervious365-X4 reached its target location, it began its trajectory descent back to Earth. The rejuvenation cycle began automatically, restoring the crew and awakening them - acclimating them back into normalcy. The crew of the Impervious365-X4 returned to Earth with the same number of human travelers it had left with, all those years ago.
