Emergence: Chapter 03

THE MERGING BROKE up swiftly. Holy Ones called to their pilgrims; Wholes reformed; volunteers surged forward to be among the nine hundred who would go to war. When the selection process finished, the rest of the skarastaja streamed out of the great cavern, following the ancient tunnels back toward their grottoes, leaving their comrades behind.

Senmatu watched from the Holy Ones’ ledge as the cavern emptied. A giddy excitement gripped her and she felt almost light headed.

At last! she thought. The time for the Children of the Sun comes at last!

When all but her Whole and the people’s chosen had departed, Senmatu called to her pilgrims and led the way into the tunnel that would take them back to her grotto. They ran with urgency, all of them eager to take part in the final preparations for war.

Even though those skydemons were gone, all smote in Talgor’s name, the threat of their return remained. The one called Tårik had said there were many more årdrakin where he had come from, living together in a great empire. That they might appear on Berwen and continue the carnage their predecessors had started was never far from the skarastaja mind. It was one thing to be eaten by a karnikur, to be destroyed at Talgor’s whim as part of the natural order. It was something else unholy and despicable to be eaten by a skydemon.

And so, Talgor called for their destruction. In His name, the skarastaja would go to war.

They ran on.

—oOo—

“Loading is ninety-three percent complete,” the Entity said. As always, it spoke calmly, not quite with warmth, and was almost an exact echo of Talgor’s Voice.

“What’s left to load?” Senmatu asked. “I want to launch today, while Talgor still graces His domain.”

“A train from Grotto Three will be arriving momentarily. Once unloaded, only the passengers need to make their way aboard.”

“Very good.”

Senmatu surveyed her surroundings. The facility her people had built under the wreckage of the Fortune had evolved greatly over time. Originally just a warren of tunnels and rooms, today it was a many-floored silo constructed of metal and shining lights, with computer systems that connected to the Fortune and the Entity.

The room she stood in was a large wedge, with blinking computer banks and consoles lining its three sides. This was the control center, and her people stood or sat at their stations, helping to monitor the loading progress.

The silo was a hub of activity. Her many scientists, engineers, horticulturists, warriors, and more directed groups of pilgrims to take up the tasks that needed doing. She watched on a display as swarms of people efficiently took crates of carefully packed foods and moved them down a chain of their peers to the central lifts for loading.

She looked to Bekuni, her senior Watcher. “Have the Wholes in the far lands been notified that we are leaving?”

“Yes. But they are at their mergings still,” Bekuni answered.

“The message will wait for their return.” Then, as she watched on a screen as a crate of food slipped out of someone’s hands and spilled on the floor, Senmatu added, “Entity.”

“Yes, Senmatu?”

“Please reconfirm the amount of food, water, and medical supplies we require to sustain nine hundred of our people for the duration of this first raid.”

“Printing the report now at the station to your left. However, with respect to food and water, I would like to try to convince you one last time to make use of the biomatter resequencers. They are all fully operational and can provide instantaneous sustenance without the need for extensive refrigeration bays, so long as your people contribute their biomatter to the system.”

Senmatu tried not to gag. This was something the Entity had tried to explain to her, about how the resequencers took invisible things called atoms and rearranged their positions relative to other atoms in order to create food, water, and even dishes. But in order to do that, it needed organic material to work with—which the skydemons had provided primarily from the waste their bodies produced when it wasn’t being used to power their armor. The ship provided the rest from its own waste, and they had also contributed matter from organic leftovers from traditionally farmed food they’d carried. The Entity insisted that the resulting sustenance and items were atomically indistinguishable from their real counterparts. She didn’t understand that either, but regardless, the idea made her stomach curdle.

“No, Entity.” Her tone was firm. “Talgor provides for us. We will use the fruits of the blooms, the fishes from the lakes, and our other traditional foods.”

“As you wish, Senmatu.”

She took the printout from the console and looked it over. It outlined the enormous quantities required, quantities that all twelve of the local grottoes had been having trouble coming up with as the time of the launch drew closer.

She eyed the display where her people were hastily cleaning up the spill. “How close are we to meeting these quotas?”

“Water: ninety-nine percent. Food: seventy-five percent. Medical supplies: eighty-four percent. I can update these figures once the train from Grotto Three is unloaded, but other than the water supply, we will fall short of the targets.”

Her hand tightened on the report, crumpling the paper. They’d received Talgor’s blessing for this raid, this war, but He wasn’t making it easy for them.

She set the report aside and addressed her controllers. “It’s time to transfer to the Fortune. Set your consoles to upload the latest data to the Bridge and meet me there.”

A chorus of “Yes, Holiest One” followed Senmatu as she left the control center, exiting via a door that led to the silo’s core. The core contained the central lifts as well as emergency staircases and catwalks that allowed the skarastaja ample access to each of the silo’s numerous floors and rooms. Leaning over the railing, Senmatu looked down. The silo disappeared into the depths, but save for the sounds of doors, hydraulics, and the occasional spoken command, everything was quiet. The pilgrims moved efficiently and without chatter. Loading the Fortune would be completed in no time.

The central lifts rose and descended through the ceiling. Senmatu opted not to interrupt their timing and instead took the stairs, running lightly up several flights until she reached a ladder leading to a hatch on the ceiling—the underside of the Fortune’s cradle. It irised open and she climbed farther up the ladder, passing through the cradle to yet another hatch and airlock that opened into the Fortune’s receiving bay. A hand appeared above her, offering to help her off the ladder and onto the deck.

“Thank you.”

“Holiest One,” the pilgrim said in response, his tail thumping against his leg, before he turned away to tend to his primary task.

Lines of pilgrims passing crates of various kinds from one person to another as they came up on the central lifts dominated the bay. The bay was actually small, just a bubble of space in the middle of the bottom of the hull. Large enough to receive all the lifts from the silo, and temporarily house crates, but not big enough to be used for more permanent storage.

Senmatu watched her people’s progress for a moment before entering a lift.

“Take me to the Bridge.”

This lift did not hiss or groan with hydraulics and counterweights, as the lifts in the silo did. It moved quickly and silently, so smooth that it seemed she hadn’t actually gone anywhere, until the doors irised open onto a shining circular room.

“Welcome to the Bridge, Senmatu,” the Entity said. “Command and control is currently being transferred to these stations from the silo.”

She nodded, and stepped up onto a dais her people had built across the deck. The dais allowed the skarastaja to gain access to the consoles that otherwise would have been out of reach, having been built originally for the height of the skydemons.

All around her, those consoles and their hardlight controls sprang to life with an array of color. Feeds lit up displays one by one, showing her the same data and pictures she had seen in the silo’s control room.

Taking a seat in the skarastaja-sized command chair that had been built for her, she said, “Show me the loading progress on the main viewer.”

The main viewer, a large curved screen at the front of the Bridge, flicked on, showing a graph with multiple lines crossing it, each one representing the different supplies they needed. Armor, weapons, tools, and maintenance supplies already read as finished. They had been loaded and stored on the ship for ages. The remainder, water, food, medical supplies, and people, were still ticking upward.

“Exterior view.”

The screen instantly changed, becoming a window that bright blue sunlight streamed into. Outside, at this height, she could see down onto the tops of the badlands hills and hoodoos, baked to extreme dryness in Talgor’s heat, with the sacred mesa rising up in the distance. The groove the Fortune had carved into the ground when it landed and hit its final skid was still just barely visible. Even though the debris had long since been cleared away, centuries of kooraju hadn’t erased the damage to the landscape.

This might be the last time I see this, Senmatu thought with a shiver, and touched her sundrop. Talgor, Holy Father, I pray I’ll come home again.

The Bridge’s main door irised open, letting her controllers enter. Senmatu turned her chair, watching as they went straight to their stations and touched the hardlight displays, manipulating the parts their short arms could reach. The Entity had done what it could to reconfigure controls for the skarastaja throughout the ship, but on the Bridge, the complexity of the stations limited what could be done. The hardlight displays were meant for more fingers than what her people had, and too many controls remained out of reach. The Entity would control most of the ship for them, but some things they were able to do themselves.

“Entity.”

“Yes, Senmatu?”

“Begin preparations for launch.”

“Initiating preflight systems check.”

A small vibration filtered up through the floor, up through her chair, and made the fur on her body stand up with excitement. Some of the displays at the stations changed, and Senmatu left her chair to watch the various progress bars as they crawled forward. The displays that fed the Bridge pictures of the pilgrims still working to load the ship showed how they suddenly seemed to redouble their efforts.

The only sound that broke the silence was the snckk of her people’s ohkugi as they breathed. The progress bars ticked upward. The vibration became a sustained hum that gradually faded.

Senmatu paced. This was the worst part, the waiting.

“Preflight systems check complete. All systems nominal.”

“Show me the loading progress again.”

The main viewer switched back to the graph. Water now showed as finished. The remaining supplies had jumped in progress but still weren’t quite done.

She closed her eyes and gripped the back of her chair, muttering a prayer under her breath.

“Grotto Three train has finished unloading and is pulling away from platform six,” a controller announced. Senmatu cast a glance at his station. True to his word, the display showed the maglev train rapidly picking up speed as it disappeared down the tunnel. The last crates were being carried off the platform.

“Ensure those crates and pilgrims come aboard as quickly as possible.”

“Yes, Holiest One.”

She turned back to the viewscreen. Slowly, over too many minutes, the lines crept toward completion.

“Ready to launch,” the Entity finally said.

Senmatu exhaled a long breath. Her hand went to the talon necklace.

We are coming for you.

“Launch!”

“Releasing cradle. Sealing outer hull. Thrusters engaged. Would you like to watch, Senmatu?”

Senmatu gulped. “Yes.”

The viewscreen flicked to the external view. The vibration through the deck increased, and hoodoos along the dry riverbed outside cracked and tumbled. Slowly, the land fell away.

“By Talgor’s grace,” she gasped, and her other hand gripped her sundrop. Sweat soaked the short fur on her palms.

The land fell farther away, until even the sacred mesa started to appear small.

The Entity said, ”Anomaly detected.”

Senmatu’s heart skipped a beat. Her ears barely registered the sound of the Bridge door irising open. “What’s wrong?”

“Maximum passenger count has been exceeded. There is a stowaway onboard.”

“What? How can that—”

“That would probably be me.”

Senmatu whirled, only to find Anori standing at the back of the dais dressed in full battle armor, with his axe hung from the back of one shoulder, a pistol at his hip, and a rifle clipped to his chestplate. His tail thumped and he bowed, his hand on his sundrop that still hung over his shoulder.

She crossed her arms. “What are you doing here?”

“I am to accompany you.”

Senmatu frowned. “The people’s chosen have already been selected. Nine hundred souls for the start of the war. There is no room for you.”

“This is our Holy Father’s decree. Besides,” Anori nodded toward the viewscreen, “I think it’s too late to argue.”

Senmatu followed his gaze. The blue expanse of sky was fading away, while the horizon had started to curve, and the land below had smoothed out into one large mass of speckled brown. As she watched, the sky darkened to black, the curve grew even rounder, and the planet’s rings—what her people had always called ‘the celestial path’—came into view. Her breath caught in her chest.

“It’s beautiful. This is Berwen?”

“Yes. Adjusting view. Reverse angle.”

The screen flicked to show them a new picture, this time of the entire visible disc of the planet and its glittering rings as they receded into the dark of Talgor’s domain.

“What are those?” Anori came up beside Senmatu and pointed. The disc was marred in places by great dark gashes that looked like someone had slashed into the surface with giant claws.

“I don’t know,” Senmatu admitted. “Entity?”

“The type and origin of the surface anomalies are unknown.”

“Hmm.”

It was difficult to look away from the viewer and the wonder that was seeing her homeworld from the outside for the first time, but Senmatu managed to turn her attention back to Anori.

“Anori, you should not have left your Whole—”

The Entity’s voice was calm as it interrupted. “Proximity alert. Six ships detected on an intercept course.”

The lights on the Bridge shifted to red.