《Tales of The World Eater》


 ONE — THE ARSECRACK OF FLAMING LUMOS

    <u>SLATE</u>


    Hhhrrrnnggg¡­hhhrrrnnggg¡­hhhrrrnnggg!


    I am the raw nerve endings of flayed skin. A genetic experiment born in unending scream.


    The alarm throws a three-punch combination at my skull.


    Vibrations burrow under flesh. Lay their eggs in the marrow of my bones.


    Hhhrrrnnggg¡­hhhrrrnnggg¡­hhhrrrnnggg!


    Light splinters. Needles stab into sockets.


    My face twists like a broken beer can. I shrink back.


    Think.


    Mid-sized room. The smell of grease and cold metal. Smooth clay. Onyx omnisphere.


    Odd.


    A fighter?


    No. Too much cubage. Too much comfort. A cruiser, ranger, or...


    Hhhrrrnnggg¡­hhhrrrnnggg¡­hhhrrrnnggg!


    There. Barely alive and already I have an nemesis.


    The vibration crashes through my body.


    Wet hells, the pain.


    My fledgling consciousness is hammered from cold protein jelly into a warm leg of piss.


    I¡¯m no butcher, but really shouldn¡¯t be feeling my brain sloshing against the walls of my skull.


    The sound is deep and loud, as though it might split soundless space by force of will.


    Notes of expectation and dread are by design.


    It is to be sounded only once and never again.


    I should be clothed in awe. Then again, I should be clothed in, well, clothes.


    By solar law, the klaxon sound is hard-coded into metal, and not relayed through the ship''s veins.


    A relic, as far as basic design, of the wars of the planet¡­earth.


    It is an raid siren, a storm warning, a foghorn and a call to war.


    Now, it is a cry from an ancient past. It reaches into my present, jerks my nape like a drill-master, and shouts into my brain.


    It tells me I¡¯m fragged.


    A torrent of information floods over me like a pressurizing cabin.


    Historiographic prints and designs. Ship specs ¡ª three things hard-coded. The precise verbiage of solar stats and regs.


    Hhhrrrnnggg¡­hhhrrrnnggg¡­hhhrrrnnggg!


    The combination finishes with an uppercut to the gut.


    I lurch, vomiting a stomachful of black crunk, wishing I could do the same for defective knowledge mods.


    Charming. What in the wet hells did I eat?


    Bioanimatic nanoslurry ¡ªpatented and trademarked ¡ª for everything that¡¯s worth.


    Frag juice for the long nap.


    Equal parts keeping-you-alive and turning-you-to-slag yourself.


    The spurts of knowledge do not come with any warmth of familiarity.


    I¡¯m the winner of some back-planet, brain-eating competition or who-the-frag-knows.


    And the pounding in my head ¡ª I reck they yanked the cord before halfway and now it¡¯s spilling like a broken shit-pipe into the drink-tank.


    It isn¡¯t just how; it''s what. It¡¯s knowings that I should not know. That I can¡¯t unknow.


    I manage to avoid stepping into the puddle of former stomach.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    I¡¯m calling it a win for now.


    Hhhrrrnnggg¡­hhhrrrnnggg¡­hhhrrrnnggg!


    Dead. Black. Realms..


    Red lights team up with the wake-clock from hell but out of step. My world is swallowed in red like I am doused in blood.


    Pricks of light follow my blind gaze ¡ª warnings from the ship''s controls.


    I try to penetrate their meaning, without risking another red blast.


    What was I¡­?


    Covered in black slag, a hand to my head gives some small relief.


    My only viewing is the gaps between fingers.


    Slag, that¡¯s it.


    Getting out of the space-coffin was the hardest thing I¡¯d ever done.


    And the only thing.


    But there was something else. It slips away like trying to retrieve a dream upon waking.


    I grasp at the information that passes in vomiting spurts.


    Three things, hard-coded.


    I remember.


    That is how you know the Solarin is serious: we make it out of Iron Age metal and bolt it to the ship¡¯s spine.


    No clay-nano-quanix slag. Cold steel. A rusted blade thrust in the arse of our collective unconscious.


    An artifact from before everything went to shit.


    ¡°Mark me,¡± it says. ¡°Mark me you great hairless solarin.¡±


    And I do.


    Hhhrrrnnggg¡­hhhrrrnnggg¡­hhhrrrnnggg!


    By jaw and fist, I cling to ephemeral purpose.


    Frag your wet black heart.


    A few squelching steps. A blind grasp, finding the release mechanism popping instinctively.


    Detachable, in an environment where loose objects are missiles.


    I lean into walls of sound like dull reality, receiving perverse pleasure from the promise of imminent violence.


    I mark you, herald of a new age, for death.


    Hhhrrrnnggg¡­hhhrrrnnggg¡­hhhrrrnnggg!


    There is a satisfying give as the flared mouthpiece bends, soft under a good strike.


    It is soft or I am strong.


    ¡°Black. Wet. Slagging. Dead. Void.¡± I scream obscenity as I hit. ¡°Take. it. Take. It. Back.¡±


    The heavy blows issue from raw instinct. From lives on a cruel grindstone of existence ¡ª the beat of rage on an anvil of betrayal.


    Something swirls inside.


    First knowledge, now...


    But it is the knowledge that names these phenomena "feelings".


    And I will cram feelings down the cold monster¡¯s throat with a steel chaser.


    Thwack! Clang! Clang!


    The metal bends and tears. The dome sputters on the ground and spins. And I am into the soft insides of moving parts that snap and burst until they aren¡¯t moving parts anymore.


    The glisten of salt illuminates my excess.


    Sweat ¡ª another gut punch that lands inside.


    It sweats ¡ª my body.


    But if it sweats then it is not mine.


    The last sound is of a dying animal. A final rasping breath of broken metal.


    But the spilled knowings remain in me.


    I strike my knees on a broken spring.


    A shaking seizes my hands and the fire suppressor becomes hard to hold, shuddering to the floor.


    My hand finds a smooth metal dome, as panting breaths yank my ribs.


    ¡°Not your fault.¡± I pat the metal. ¡°You were made to sound in ears.¡±


    The alarm has a single dedicated purpose. Hard-coded in metal by every law and treaty of rin.


    It is a warning and a fagile hope.


    It sounds with the purpose of all the scattered remnants of humanity ¡ª the end of our wandering. A place to set down our Arks.


    A home.


    The voice blares over the ship''s coms.


    ¡°Warning. Proximity alert.¡±


    I open my eyes.


    <u>NOTHING</u>


    ¡°Humph.¡± The word reverbs through the Scribe¡¯s jowls.


    The Scribe covers his nose with a spider-like hand that enfolds his skull, creasing his smooth scalp.


    The motion buckles the ambulator under glorious folds of caloric weight ¡ª his reward for his frequent excursions into hell ¡ª the lower levels.


    The Scribe is far from the Hemisphere, where the Eschalon lives without the inhibitions that are the exclusive property of numbers.


    It is not for a number to ask why the Scribe has come much less the Eye.


    ¡°Deepest apologies, Lord scribe. I bleached and scoured, fumed and doused...¡± The number is not to look at the Scribe, it knew. ¡°They do not burn clean. They are factories that belch non-stop.¡±


    ¡°I say. A poet!¡± The scribe waves his hand, which hums with a squad of microdrones. Cosmetic mites crawl over his skin, zapping dead skin particles. ¡°I find a poet picking through the arsehole of flamin


    ¡°Forgive me, Lord scribe.¡± He bows feebly. ¡°I am not instructed in¡­in Lords.¡±


    ¡°Instructed! Indeed, why would you be?¡± Returns the Scribe.


    The number touches its forehead with thumb and finger.


    ¡°He searches.¡± A long engineered finger taps the Scribes forehead in irritation.


    ¡°And protects.¡± The number bows low.


    It is not just ritual; now it is sacriment.


    The golden Eye looms above. One of a thousand such Eyes of the High Archon. Extensions of his senses, never sleeping and never awake. But numbers are not equipped to bear under the searching gaze, which sees all, and the number jerks its head to the ground.


    ¡°Yes, yes.¡± The Scribe looks nervously at the eye, through a peripheral viewing drone. ¡°I banish it and cleanse the memory. You are most fortunate it has not happened.¡±


    Disgust still wraps the Scribe¡¯s face, working against drones that push back lips to pick gristle from teeth.


    The sanitized memory still buzzes like a gnat in the scribe¡¯s eyes.


    The number¡¯s nose twitches. The scribe has turned off the smell. Therefore, what the number smells must be something else.


    A stench not for weak stomachs.


    The wall of body odor and waste does not move for Scribes nor even for the Eye of the High God Archon.


    It would then be stronger than both if it existed. But fortunately it does not.


    The salt of forbidden sweat. The methane of reclaimed waste. The ammonia of meat dangling between life and death.


    The vat sloshes eagerly, crunking with gurgling sounds and forcing gas pockets to burst into upon the air.


    Nothing is wasted on the ship.


    ¡°They just let them hang? Free like that?¡± The scribe asked.


    Black sludge throbs through tubes from bat-like creatures in their clusters of bone and skin to the bubbling vat. Humans trapped in cages of rib and skull, gouged with pits and lines. Stunted limbs, where they jut from the clutch, are folded, chicken-like.


    ¡°As you say, Lord scribe.¡± The number looked around at the free bodies, twitching against their feeding and neural links, weeping sores on their brittle skin. The number repeated the word, glancing towards the Scribe as though sighting the Scribe would reveal its meaning. ¡°Free.¡±


    ¡°And what is their crime ¡ª their disobedience?¡± The Scribe asked.


    ¡°You know, my Lord.¡± There was no use in being surprised at the question yet waves of shock almost toppled the poor number. Scribes always know the answers to the questions they ask. It is their right to ask and the number must answer. He shivered the reply. ¡°The great shame, my Lord ¡ª excretion.¡±

 TWO — FOR SOL AND SOLARIN

    NOTHING


    I thought you knew. Frack me. I thought everyone knew. The thought slips before the number can bridle its mind.


    The orb flashes gold, radiation scouring skin.


    ¡°Oh, my hearts.¡± The ambulator gives a horrified wobble. ¡°You brute. Have a care. This heart is awfully sensitive.¡± A long finger presses into folds of perfect skin.


    ¡°Deep apologies Lord. For I am ignorant.¡± The number folds. ¡°And greatly disobedient. If I have in any way¡­¡±


    The Scribe licks his lips. ¡°Oh, shush! Shush my, cupid. Think nothing of it.¡± His smile divides into a dozen more of equal beauty. ¡°Oh, I loved her so dearly!¡± He digs into flesh, searching for the precise spot. ¡°She was just what I needed, as though heaven itself gave her to me. I never could bear to see her hurt.¡±


    ¡°Think nothing, child.¡± His hand clinks with Jeweled chains.


    Child. The number flinches. For anyone else, it is a mortal insult. But the Scribe will say anything he wishes to a number and the number cannot complain.


    Perhaps in the Hemisphere, where the sun shines but does not burn ¡ª they speak of child. But not here.


    The Scribe looks around the lines of bodies. ¡°What cruel animal would punish them so?¡±


    ¡°My lord?¡± Frag. A question. The number hastens to cover his slip. ¡°You know Lord.¡±


    They always know.


    The minds of the Echelon are engineered to carry the burden of knowing. The mind of a number is not.


    ¡°Yes, yes. But this tongue is too tender to say.¡± The scribe shakes his head in humility. His face moves, left and right, barely disturbing the soft outer layers of smooth gold skin.


    His tongue has a thousand times the taste receptors of a number, even a high number, or prime, and a whole cabinful of new taste areas that a number could not conceive of and would have no use for. Such sensation must be torture. Foods must be meticulously prepared to meet the elevated taste, giving rise to the expression, ¡°A chef expires before its ingredients.¡±


    The number had never fully understood the saying, for meal tubes never expired.


    ¡°And where are they kept, these, malefactors?¡± He struggles with a foul taste and the number considers whether a foul taste might injure the Scribe with their acute sensitivity. ¡°The ones who inflict this cruelty on ¡ª on their own¡­¡±


    ¡°I cannot say it.¡± A groan burbles in the Scribe¡¯s throat as he wretches. The number holds a mouthful of air, a thing frowned upon. He might sell the spilled calories, perhaps to a butcher or nurse.


    But the scribe stops short with a teasing wretch, forcing the contents back down.


    ¡°Not bef ¡ª not under the Eye.¡± He wipes the sheen from his forehead. The privilege of sweat.


    A mistake ¡ª no one is before the eye. The number is not the only one who is nervous and observed.


    ¡°Always awake.¡± The Scribe drones, adding a flourish of dextrous fingers.


    The number¡¯s eyes fix on the flung droplets, blinking.


    ¡°Never asleep.¡± Its hydraulics stagger an irregular rhythm as the number marks the unforgivable delay.


    But the Scribe is distracted by his own error.


    ¡°The number apologizes, my Lord.¡± Not worthy to see the Scribe, the number bows low facing away. ¡°The malefactors are kept in the levels above.¡±


    ¡°Above. How ghastly. How cruel! You wake her!¡± He looks to the Hemisphere above. He may well be able to search through the prime ark''s layers. ¡°Surely, it is the parasites that should be above, and the hosts below?¡±


    ¡°As you say, my Lord.¡± The number straightens slowly. Its mind searches for handholds and grasps the Lord¡¯s words. ¡°It is considered a greater punishment for the¡­hosts to be above, and that their ¡ª rather, its parasite is below.


    <u>SLATE</u>


    ¡°Warning. Proximity alert. Initiating emergency protocols.¡±


    The tone is calm and lilting. It triggers knowings, that do not make sense even as such.


    I hear it in the crests and falls of waveforms: the voice is not odd but even.


    But not like any even I have heard. It is loose and dangling. Far from the brash alarm, it is buried in soft layers.


    It is something called female. Though it seems strange that the word is rooted in another term, male.


    It comes with strobing knowings: charts, anatomics, xenobiological data that break over me into scattered fragments.


    But the voice smooths through the mental haze, not with sharpness but ease.


    This isn¡¯t the first time I hear it, but it is the first time it locks and seals.


    I think¡­it has been speaking to me for some time. But the meaning is lost in the rhythmic sounds until it repeats. Then again.


    Red light still searches the cockpit for the wails of the siren.


    The mental haze returns. The light isn¡¯t helping my concentration. I¡¯ve mangled the back wall of the cabin ¡ª smashed it into shrap. It did not belong here. The old world and new do not mix. A boil on perfect skin. One less last thing.


    Yet I feel it¡¯s broken pieces in scattered feelings.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    Smashing the light would be a great deal easier than the heavy siren. But I have no heart or pity for it and owe it no kindness.


    My head still pounds, every bit as red as the light. Every muscle in my emaciated body pulls at cross purposes, like convergent fault lines. But the ruins of a smote enemy give a cold strength, allowing me to trap thoughts and hang them together.


    A sheen of black crunk and a fire suppressor is the clothing I wear.


    You might say the suppressor is for modesty.


    You might not.


    I notice there is metal burrowing into my sternum like a flesh crab. It has smooth segments in a rough triangle and is hot from the storm in my chest.


    It dribbles black slag from torn wires. And dark flow from the veins of my inner arms.


    And for a moment I reel under the thought that my blood is black.


    But no. Red. I see red too.


    ¡°Com ¡ª puter?¡±


    There is an overlong pause but that may be the weight of my expectation which slows time.


    But there is a reply ¡ª I don¡¯t just imagine it.


    ¡°I¡¯m listening, Jack.¡± The voice says.


    Jack. Jack? A strange denominator. But it does not feel right. But why would it? Why would I have a name?


    It¡¯s been alone too long, developed a personality disorder ¡ª the disorder of having one.


    It is known to happen.


    Melodic and distant, with an edge of deep-mind madness. A voice at home in a luxury cruiser and the moon-touched who move in them.


    I am not one of those, I think.


    No name, no fancy ship. Though, I¡¯d sooner steal a ship than a name.


    And why not steal it? If a bot can make up a name, why can I not make up a crime?


    ¡°Could you turn off the lights please?¡±


    ¡°Of course, Jack,¡± she says. ¡°Alarm deactivated.¡±


    The light fades as an artifact of vision, and not dying light.


    It had been that simple all along, hadn¡¯t it?


    All it took was a calm word, not a blunt instrument. Not the erasure of an ancient artifact.


    What ship didn¡¯t have a voice interface? But thought comes easier now that I¡¯ve gained some bandwidth and I reck I¡¯ve run out of excuses for acting thoughtless.


    ¡°Computer, report. What in the everblack frag is going on, she-thing?¡±


    I bring the sentence to a rough landing, ignoring the flaring gutter mods. It does not read as an insult. Just mangled usage.


    My legs are heavy cinderblocks slagged together with bricks for joints and rusted screws for tendons.


    I barely notice the static tingle entering the omnisphere, a control zone that exploits physics, virtual environments, and AI-assisted brain functions to create lightning reactions or ¡°phasing¡±.


    A hand on the omnichair is the reward of precious few steps. Not the smartest move for a chair prefixed with ¡°Omni¡±, but my leaden limbs anchor me, and the chair does not penalize.


    It is made to adapt to lightning maneuvers in the slipstream. Assisting the human body to survive sudden G-forces that cannot be filtered with field tech.


    ¡°Yes.¡± The she pauses thoughtfully. ¡°You have been woken from stasis due to an unanticipated anomaly in space-time.¡± It is distant, and outward, as though talking to stars. ¡°We have entered the gravitational field of a planetary body. Thrust and phasing core are unavailable. The ship will impact the planet''s surface in¡­twenty-eight minutes.


    I let out a tired breath. Time, but for what?


    She ¡ª just she, the mods correct ¡ª reads my thoughts.


    ¡°But, Jack, you will lose consciousness due to the pressure of reentry in three minutes and¡­28 seconds.¡±


    The pauses are for my benefit, not any inherent difficulty of calculation.


    The words hits me harder than the lash of sound that fragged me awake.


    Three minutes and¡­twelve seconds to live. To feel. To be. Ten. Nine. Eight.


    Life is brief and brutal, but death is worse. At least, to the living. And I don¡¯t want to die.


    I breathe through the cement that settles on me.


    But I didn¡¯t come for the stability of the chair. There are no windows on a spaceship. Too small to be useful, or big enough to be a structural liability. The sphere renders environments in three dimensions at a level that exceeds human vision and reality itself.


    ¡°Show me.¡±


    The sphere slams on, flipping the omnichair to face ¡°down¡±, as much as that word applies in space. The world spins, resolving with tingling motes as it tilts to me.


    Suddenly, I am oriented to the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Yes, it is the right word.


    ¡°We enter the boundary of the upper atmosphere. You will experience¡­kinetic forces, Jack. Please, be secure.¡±


    But I can¡¯t help myself. I need to be closer. I slip from the chair, floating in the grav nexus, as I feel the first tremors of atmosphere.


    I have to touch it. To feel it¡¯s real.


    Am I still in the coffin, wires jumping my brain?


    Is this the flood of chemicals to ease death? Am I already gone?


    I run a hand over the surface of the planet feeling the sematic feedback.


    I am a god that trails his hand over a lush forest and feels the wet of bending trees, the cold of white ice¡­snow. There was a time, long ago, when the sapient did not feel pictures. They would never know what it feels like, to grasp handfuls of trees as the world turns.


    It isn¡¯t real. It doesn¡¯t matter. Nothing matters. Nothing but this.


    Desolate planets have a grandeur to them, even barren and scarred as they are. It is a beauty best admired from afar.


    This is nothing like that.


    The world spins to verdant green, scoops of gold sand. I lift my hand over blue oceans that make me shiver with just the thought of touching wet. A finger trails a snaking river to an azure lake.


    Free-flowing water; great pools of it. I cannot conceive it.


    So much water that an ark could not drink it all in a thousand years.


    My hand shakes but that may be because the ship is shaking.


    Cold pushes over my cheeks.


    My hand slams through the rendering, feeling the sharp brain pain that is the punishment of transgressing the sematic boundary, pain commensurate with the waves spreading over the surface of the world.


    Pain shatters the illusion and the dream.


    ¡°No.¡± I rip my head away. Unable to look. ¡°It can¡¯t. It isn¡¯t.¡±


    I barely notice as I drift back towards the chair.


    ¡°There, Jack.¡± The cool voice says. ¡°It¡¯s okay.¡±


    The denomination does not grow on me. It jars me each time she says it.


    And yet the words from a circuit are somehow comforting.


    After a thousand years abandoned between barren worlds and burning stars, nothing is more sure than this. The optimism of habitable planets was a fraudulent science and a fault hope. Or perhaps we just couldn¡¯t find them, scattered and distant as we are.


    This planet is a cruel hope.


    The psychosis is well known. It was known before sapiens left their home planet, a mythic paradise, but it has never been more acute than now ¡ª whenever now is.


    The mind fixates on a candidate planet. They traverse vast interstellar distances, seeing generations born and die. Over time, they develop quasi-religious beliefs, superstitions, and rituals. Their Archons become prophets, models become scripture. Blind conviction and not a little mania set them down on hostile worlds.


    It can happen in a generation, to a single sapien. But more often the madness is a contagion that grips the entire ship.


    It is not hard to understand why.


    The alternative is to wander the wet void, worn down by time, choosing who will wake, who will die. And never finding a planet a hundredth as promising as this ¡ª this fantasy world.


    It¡¯s called the longing and it seizes my chest even as the safety harness tightens around me.


    I close my eyes. The vision threatens to consume me, and I must think.


    What if?


    What if it isn¡¯t a dream?


    It wouldn¡¯t be the first time the clarion echoed with a mad dream.


    The solarin is bound by oaths and more oaths, as all the spores of earth, to their embattled species ¡ª to the crushed remnant.


    I do not need to search for it. The third thing hard-coded into the ship is at my right hand.


    The shell lifts before I even realize what I¡¯m doing.


    I stare down at the naked red button.


    ¡°For Sol.¡± I invoke the first sun as I crush the button with my fist. ¡°And solarin.¡±


    The clarion will send a signal to a network of self-replicating drones that train in stealth and evasion. A confirmation beyond the wails of my enemy.


    Data from the ship¡¯s sensors will encrypt with the transmission, and whoever was left, would make up their mind.


    If I am to die, no one will find out I did so with hope.


    Would it be too much, to be buried in dirt? I would not have hoped for as much. Or ¡ª in water. Bury me in a lake, cover me in blue.


    But not alone.


    ¡°Computer,¡± I say lazily. ¡°Do you have a name?¡±


    The G-forces push on me, rocking me in the soft cradle of the omnichair.


    Her voice is a lullaby tucking my mind into warm blankets. ¡°I am not like you, Jack, of flesh. I am a hundred names and not one that you could speak.¡± The voice is sad. ¡°You could never contain my names. Nor could you speak even one.¡±


    ¡°Com-Computer.¡± I slur as my eyes close.


    ¡°Yes, Jack?¡±


    ¡°Do ¡ª do I have one?¡±

 THREE - SWEET NOTHING

    <u>SLATE</u>


    A thump to the chest and a crack of electricity.


    Back arches.


    Dim sensations of pressure and release.


    Whirr, click, slurp.


    Short, shallow breaths in time to the beat, like a bomb counting down but double-time.


    Tha-thump-tha-thump-tha-thump-tha-thump.


    The sound from everywhere at once, the ribcage, the skull, limbs, toes, fingertips, with palpable force.


    Veins open, blood vessels engorge.


    Liquid fire rips through blood and nerve. Adrenalin grabs hold of the conscious mind and yanks.


    Eyes open, wide and wild.


    They have never opened so wide.


    Blessedly, it is dark.


    The breathing reflex triggers, hard; sharp and deep. And it clollides with automated breath. And I am wholly unprepared for the crash.


    It is a single high note, an inverted scream.


    More breaths between coughing ¡ª chest heaves, shoulders roll.


    Am I?


    To ask the question is to answer it.


    But I need confirmation.


    Fingers rake my chest. I feel the punch, as though the heart is attempting an escape.


    Alive?


    I force my hand to still, feeling the rhythmic kick.


    This time, the scream isn¡¯t inverted. I thump my beating chest and scream. It comes out high and thin like a breath, and with no more force, but with an overflow of¡­some new rush of feeling.


    It creeps on me in stealth before launching the attack.


    Alive. I¡¯m alive.


    I beat my fists, finding the blows compressed in a narrow space. The movements strike elastic force.


    Another tangle of nerves explodes in equally tangled vocalization, as my resistance forms a bouncing rhythm.


    Pops of violet light fill the small space.


    My hand comes to rest on the roof of the chamber.


    The control sphere, the phasing chamber. I was in the omnichair.


    I was moved back to the stasis chamber.


    That which I call coffin keeps me alive.


    Carried by segmented ship¡¯s limbs in artificial gravity.


    I feel the wet of condensation, bringing it to my lips by instinct. The ceiling of the chamber is fogged and streaked with darkness. There is a rumble of sound like arks colliding. Dark shadows shift above. And cold radiates, numbing my fingers.


    ¡°No,¡± I say. ¡°No, no, no.¡±


    But the words are disbelieving rather than horrified.


    I know one thing: I am not on the ship anymore.


    And wherever I now am, the lid of this chamber is now my doorway to this new reality. And my only protection from it.


    I do not believe it.


    That this is a door to a new world and that I lie on it.


    I want to stay in this chamber because what is our there cannot be what I hope. It cannot be a new hope for humanity or a new cradle for humankind.


    It is pessimism that comforts me, relieving the weight of expectation. The air is poisonous. The radiation is deadly. The plants incompatible, their leaves like razors, their fibers like ground glass.


    Opening the door will surely kill me.


    And it is this that makes up my mind. The certainty of death holds no fear; it is hope that terrifies.


    I fumble, pushing through the non-newtonian foam that molds around me. The chamber is not designed to keep prisoners.


    I pause with my right hand on the release mechanism. Because that is what you do before you do something dumb, or important.


    ¡°Frag it.¡±


    If I survive, I¡¯ll just tell people I said something profound.


    I release the lever.


    A rush of cold is on me as the lid ejects, sliding smoothly over the curved outer walls of the chamber. The sound tells me the ground is near and soft.


    Eyes widen, then shut tight. Heart slams into overdrive.


    My hand is on my throat as I choke on the poison gases.


    The nebulous enemy assaults my lungs, pushing needles into my skin.


    But I don¡¯t die immediately. And the longer I don¡¯t die...


    ¡­the more I realize that the air isn¡¯t poison; it isn¡¯t corroding my skin. It¡¯s just cold and ¡ª I can¡¯t quite put my finger on ¡ª light, and whipping sharp.


    It is what it is not¡­it is nothing.


    Clean. It¡¯s clean.


    I gasp mouthfuls of frozen air and it¡¯s beautiful. Yes, it''s fragging beautiful.


    By the first Sun, and by solarin, I swear it is the best thing I have ever tasted. A strange thing to say of a tasteless gas. But I know only small spaces, breathing heavy air, through bodies and ships and filters.


    You don¡¯t know what clean air is until you breathe it.


    In denial of reality, I declare this to be my first true breath.


    Awed, I watch steam from my mouth rise into the cold.


    I see the air move above me. A strange thing to say of an invisible gas. But it is filled with flecks of ash that appear from the black.


    The ash pricks my skin and turns to water.


    By the wet sun. By slagging Sol.


    Snow. I think it is snow.


    Could it be this¡­rain? What about hail?


    I cross off competing hypotheses.


    Snow?


    It lands on my face and in my open mouth. I open wider, as though water should just fall from the sky directly into my mouth.


    Which, of course, it does here. Wherever here is.


    A drop of cold turns to moisture.


    Snow. Snow is good. Cold, yes. I could die in the cold, but in extreme cold, there is no snow, and death is fast in arriving.


    The possibility remains that the air is deadly, the drops of snow are poison.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    I can think of worse ways to die.


    No. I can¡¯t.


    Dying even on a cold world would be unforgivable.


    Move. I should get up and move. But I am not as cold as I should be. The black slag forms a tensile foam that has insulating properties. I can afford to lay here.


    On the other hand, I¡¯m not sure I can afford to move.


    The air might not be poisonous, it may just be hallucinogenic.


    It is dark. I will call it night but I cannot be sure. The landscape ¡ª what I can see of it ¡ª feels somehow familiar. No mistake, I have never seen anything like it, yet it looks like everything I have never seen, but felt to be. I can¡¯t explain. I am filled with a sense of rightness. A sense that this is for me ¡ª and yet, that it is not the earth and the earth is nothing of mine anyway.


    But the earth ¡ª is relevant.


    I barely can acknowledge what I see.


    This causes the mods to flip through old picture books, a dark forest in something called a fairy tale.


    I shall need to make a study of it, for I am suddenly open to any possibility.


    It is more than coincidence.


    Black shadows move above me ¡ª branches. Diagrams do not show these from below, but I mark them as firs or pines or something close. The mods have settled into providing somewhat useful information. Trees ¡ª already I make dangerous assumptions. One is that these organisms fit into known categories. Two, that the mods are accurate and can be relied on.


    They are alien life and all life must be assumed hostile and deadly until proven otherwise.


    But that is not what makes me think I¡¯m losing it.


    Violet light flashes.


    The wolf.


    The wolf makes me think I¡¯m breathing more than pure air.


    It is close enough that I can stretch out my hand and touch it. Which is why I¡¯m not about to make sudden movements.


    Its pupils reflect light like silver opal and it watches me from a height.


    If I did not notice it before, it is because of its stillness.


    Unlike the trees. I have no problem assuming it''s dangerous. Yet I cannot think of it as anything other than wolf. A dangerous, alien wolf, maybe, but wolf it is.


    Snow settles on the animal''s dark fur, between dark grey and black. Its eyes are cold iron, wreathed in dark. A long tongue lolls between massive teeth.


    It looks worn down ¡ª another dangerous assumption, dangerous and stupid. But there is something in its leaning posture and drooping head, haggard fur, and slack jaw. It makes as though to howl and succeeds only in blowing hot steam.


    There were many types of wolves, even before the changing. Some were never studied or recorded.


    But there is one obvious difference.


    Size.


    I mark it as far larger than any wolf on record. Far larger than the timber wolf or even the extinct dire wolf. It looms over me, swaying with breath.


    The height is uncanny. Its head is too high. It makes it seem human-like and intelligent. Like a wolf¡¯s head on a man¡¯s body.


    It is also broader than any wolf.


    I estimate it would come somewhere to my shoulder.


    I decide to do something incredibly stupid.


    Again, I trust the mods. Those famously idiosyncratic scrapings of human knowledge from questionable sources.


    If it had wanted to eat me, it would have taken a bite.


    Frag. Mod logic.


    Slowly, I offer the great wolf my hand.


    It huffs in the dark. I count its rising breaths by the steam as much as by the swell of its chest.


    For eight breaths it wavers before dipping its head to sniff my hand for long enough that I think it sleeps. It looks at me then, sudden and full in the eye. Its eyes blaze with intelligent intention, and something passes between us. Something primal and old, that wakes buried paths in my mind. Something that belongs on paper and ink. A connection between two animals that have walked together for ten thousand generations and, it would seem, on distant worlds. Man and wolf, together once more.


    Its rough tongue and warm breath break the spell.


    I shake my head to clear it of strange thoughts.


    But what I see is strange enough.


    I can scarcely believe it. A living, breathing animal makes direct contact with me. Nothing in any manual, or sim, could prepare me for this.


    My breath is halting through a manic half-grin that makes the wolf flinch.


    It is tired again with none of its blazing intensity. It licks persistently, turning this way and that, with plaintiff sounds. I think it cleans the black slag. Its tongue is broader than my wrist. A not entirely unpleasant sensation, if rough.


    ¡°Good boy.¡± I repeat the phrase calculated to pacify the beast.


    If anything, I would think calling it ¡°boy¡± would cause insult. For it is no boy. A boy is a thing entirely different. Boy is small and weak and nothing like wolf.


    But by mod think, it is the tone of voice, more than the words spoken, and I assume the phrase has some satisfying cadence.


    The tone should be even and calm, a steady flow of soft words. I try to inflect the lowering and rising tones that are supposed to indicate encouragement.


    It is the wrong thing to say.


    The wolf turns away, its ears flicking.


    It stands, peering into the dark. I scan it side-on, appreciating its full dimensions. I check whether it is not better categorized as a horse and check again.


    Thick fur makes the wolf seem absurdly large over an already imposing frame. Only the sagging stomach seems out of place.


    Well. I indulge in self-address, half believing myself still in a dream. I guess it''s time to set my feet on an alien world.


    If I ever get to make a report, there will be less lying around involved. Not that I could pass such liberties.


    Getting out is easier than I expected. I expected to feel muscle pain, as I did on the ship, but I am renewed. I can thank the black crunk for that, and whatever cocktail was shot into me ¡ª that¡¯s what the chest-piece is for: emergency medical intervention ¡ª grave-robbing, as it is known to a rougher sort.


    I pool out ingloriously onto the dirt.


    I lie there for a moment panting. No jaws close around me and I feel ¡ª happy is the word for it.


    My hands close around soft earth ¡ª well, dirt at least.


    I am seized by the urge to taste it, to roll in it, to throw it and let it land like snow.


    An interstellar journey, a wake-clock from hell, and a crash landing on an alien planet ¡ª the wolf, admittedly, could still go either way.


    I should be dead. In no way should I be the lucky bastard to make landfall in paradise. And it is a paradise. Breathable air, biological life analogous to earth life, a water and weather cycle. It doesn¡¯t matter what other doom awaits in this world. Black as it is in the dark, it is already greater than any world that man has set foot on and lived to tell about. This is what we have dreamed about for long ages in the black. This is everything men went mad and died for but no more. A new home, a future for our species.


    If we can take it.


    I get to my feet slowly, feeling the weight of the moment.


    Solarin feet on foreign world.


    To survive is now my solemn duty, to thrive, to grow, and establish a foothold in this world. I am alone and I carry the hopes of my species alone. Whatever waits for me in this strange world, I will take. And when the scattered stars find their way to this paradise, I will stand here to greet them and say, ¡°Welcome to your home.¡±


    <u>NOTHING</u>


    You suggest.¡± The Scribe¡¯s throat warbles in discomfort. ¡°That the host cares for its parasite?¡±


    ¡°My dear child. If they cared, would they have allowed them to fester so?¡± He waves an arm to the bodies, beckoning a clutch of bodies forward on their grav point.


    The bodies jerk as their links reach their limits.


    ¡°Forgive Lord. This number shows his ignorance. This number should know better than to think in reasons.¡± The number¡¯s words tumble onto one another.


    ¡°Oh come, now. Don¡¯t be sad, poor thing. poor creature.¡± Long fingers bristle the number¡¯s hair and trail his face. ¡°I do so hate it when they¡¯re sad.¡±


    A small flight of Emotes land on his shoulder making cooing noises. They squeeze exploding faces and symbols with popping noises.


    To a number the abstracted figures and motions mean nothing. It is a chaotic language best left to the Echelon and their many feelings.


    ¡°Forgiveness, Lord.¡± The number chastises. ¡°Whys are not for numbers to know. This number will see himself punished most severely.¡±


    ¡°Shoo. Shoo. Speak not of indelicate things.¡± A hand pats circles on the Scribe¡¯s round belly. ¡°You may receive your punishment later, my chit, if you insist.¡±


    The Scribe makes a magnanimous gesture. And popping emotes clutch their hands and bow in effulgence showers of shining color.


    ¡°But speak freely. I order it of you.¡± The Scribe offers his hand theatrically to no obvious purpose. ¡°And what is determined will be.¡±


    ¡°For I know nothing of lower things.¡± A bony finger lifts the numbers shin into his smiles. ¡°So you will instruct me.¡±


    The number is unable to control the shivers that unsteady it. He honors me.


    This is not a good thing.


    ¡°A number is not worthy.¡± The number searches the floor desperately for some means whereby a fly may escape a spider¡¯s web.


    ¡°Number!¡± The Scribe exclaims in cold laughter. ¡°Ha, number!¡±


    The scribe leans over, the ambulator wobbling perilously, as though he would swallow the number. He speaks as though forgetting to adjust his volume setting. ¡°I will never understand why you call yourselves this.¡±


    Drones buzz in angry swarms, so that the voice surrounds and outnumbers the number. Emotes erupt in red sprays that would make hardened soldiers evacuate their stomachs.


    Fingers squeeze the number¡¯s face like hydraulic claws. Bones crack. ¡°You are no number.¡± Observation drones scan every inch of the number''s face, scraping the caverns of the number¡¯s pupils, illuminating them like a cat¡¯s eyes. ¡°Numbers are beautiful. Numbers have meaning.¡±


    Crack. ¡°And which number would you be?¡± The number feels the warmth on his legs even as tears from the Scribe¡¯s mouth fall on its face. ¡°Would you be a one, the number that is in all and over all?¡± He signs the Eye. ¡°Would you be a two? A three!?¡± He signs the Eye twice and a third time for the Third Eye. ¡°Indeed, and tell me, would you be an odd number or even?¡± The Scribe¡¯s mouth twists in disgust, his tongue flicking pursed lips. He lifts the number by its broken face. ¡°Or would, pray, you be a prime?¡±


    The gold orb flashes, burning away layers of genetic fidelity. Not enough to kill, just to create lasting suffering.


    No. No. No. No.


    The pain of displeasure skewers the number. The shame that only numbers are worthy to possess.


    ¡°Perhaps¡­perhaps you would be a null? Is that it?¡± Microdrones swarm the corners of the number¡¯s eyes, searching any trace of liquid, landing on skin and buzzing away. ¡°But you are not even that. For even null has value.¡± The Scribe turns his head, observing for the first time through his oculars. And yet his gaze moves through the number as though cutting it in two. ¡°No. You are nothing ¡ª the nothing that cannot be conceived. The nothing that does not exist.¡±


    ¡°And yet here I am¡± He looks around the hall. ¡°In the arsehole of the underworld. My fingers touching that which it is impossible to touch, and the nothing will pay for having me comfort it.¡±


    The number blubbers a response through his broken jaw, coloring its words with blood. ¡°The nothing apologizes, most hum¡­¡±


    The hand drives the number into the ground, with a flick from the Scribe¡¯s finger.


    ¡°Poor thing. Poor, poor thing.¡± A hand smoothes the number¡¯s face into the floor. ¡°Can nothing speak?¡±


    ¡°Shhh. Shhh.¡± The Scribe soothes his hearts. ¡°Would nothing become something?¡±


    ¡°Oh! Only something¡¯s have the power to become nothings! Never the other way around.¡± The Scribe goes on. ¡°Can nothing do nothing right?¡±


    ¡°Oh pish! Good, good.¡± Hands pick up the number like a thing broken into parts that barely holds, ¡°Would I be so cruel? Am I not merciful?¡± Hands straighten the number¡¯s grey uniform. ¡°Do you think me so miserly?¡±


    The number¡¯s slack face and vacant eyes cannot force the red tears back into his body. It drips on the grey uniform.


    ¡°Look at you.¡± The face rocks side-to-side. ¡°What a mess you¡¯ve made! What happened to you? Speak freely.¡± The Scribe strokes the number¡¯s hair and face in a circular motion coming to move the jaw, which it prods up and down. A voice drone strokes the numbers ears. ¡°I will even permit you to call yourself nothing, if it is easier for you.¡±


    ¡°Are you not the number who submitted Kr3472?¡± The Scribe¡¯s booming laughter once again forgets to adjust his volume setting to the ambient environment.


    Blood trickles from the number¡¯s ears and it murmurs with insensible wet syllables.


    ¡°Are you not the child who brought me, even me, to this charming place? After all.¡± The Scribe¡¯s eyebrows raise. ¡°It is not every span that a prisoner just¡­appears in our little dungeon, is it, my sweet nothing?¡±

 FOUR — THIS ISN’T SOME DUMB HOLO

    <u>NOTHING</u>


    ¡°That¡¯s right. Take pride.¡± The Scribe croaks. ¡°You have the favor of my presence.¡±


    Nothing sways, the ringing in its ears competing with balance. Propped up by a hand at its chest, like an external rib cage.


    ¡°And the Eye does not just show its glory anywhere you know.¡± The scribe recovers smoothly.


    A repair drone drives needles into bone and staples into skin. A hasty patch-up job, but better than a number is likely to receive at the hands of a back-alley butcher.


    ¡°Speak, child. So shy! You endear me! Where is this prisoner Alpha that inspired this intriguing report?¡± The Scribe coos as they drift forward.


    ¡°Come. Come. Don¡¯t frown so.¡± A repair drone doubles back to affect a purely cosmetic repair. ¡°You have made me quite curious. And how often does nothing make you curious? Nothing should be proud if nothing could be!¡±


    The scribe heaves with appreciation for his own wit.


    The drones stimulate the nothing with injections into his optical nerves and electric shocks.


    ¡°Now, my sweet nothing.¡± The Scribe shifts in his ambulator, causing it to lurch forward. ¡°If you do not answer, I will be quite displeased.¡±


    The nothing rasps a breath, hand feeling the patch-job on his face.


    ¡°See there, the Scribe reaches out, putting a hand to the nothing¡¯s face, taking iron and salt. ¡°Good sweet nothing. I suppose any small thing is hard for nothing.¡±


    ¡°But do not forget,¡± He wags a finger. ¡°I ask you to speak, not merely to answer.¡±


    The nothing mumbles.


    ¡°Later. Later. Am I impatient?¡± He glides along the hall. ¡°Come, come.¡±


    ¡°Tell me, my chit.¡± The numbers feet drag on the ground, as hands bear him forward, one now raising his head. ¡°Why these sacks are allowed the air? While this¡­prisoner of yours, this wild thing, is behind that?¡±


    He gestures to the heavy vault.


    ¡°Merciful¡± The nothing¡¯s head is lifted. ¡°Merciful Lord. May this nothing, who is not worthy to be called even that, receive permission from his gracious Lord?" The nothing stumbles to find the right words. Words that might not offend. ¡°Permission to recite reasons, that those, who are not nothing, yet not worthy to be called something by you¡­¡±


    ¡°Yes, Yes.¡± The Scribe waves. ¡°Are we not friends you and me? You grieve me!¡±


    The nothing winces at the punishment he incurs with every fresh offence.


    ¡°Speak freely, child.¡± The Scribe''s smile is slow and deliberate. They know. They always know. ¡°I insist.¡±


    But the nothing has no choice but to continue. ¡°Some, higher nothings, with permission for reasons, believe the prisoner Alpha to be dangerous.¡±


    ¡°Come now, mi amor, don¡¯t be modest.¡± The scribe is unrelenting. ¡°Do you not know this danger personally?¡±


    ¡°G-gracious Lord. If nothing could know something.¡± The number tries to untangle the obvious snare. ¡°It would know what you say.¡±


    ¡°Hmmm¡­You don¡¯t believe me? Dear, dear!¡± The Scribe strokes the point on his chest. ¡°Be still, heart. Nothing means nothing by it. Yes, he is cruel.¡±


    ¡°Yes ¡ª I mean, no, Lord. I mean.¡± The Scribe squints through his remaining eye. ¡°I am unworthy, Lord.¡±


    ¡°So modest! Nonsense, Nonsense!¡± The Scribe claps his hand together. ¡°Your story is the talk of the hemisphere and what am I but a weaver of stories!¡±


    ¡°Please. Your report was perfectly satisfactory. But I must admit, hard to believe. That a *sack* do this thing!¡±


    ¡°Please, Lord. As you have said, most wisely, I am nothing, and less than nothing.¡±


    ¡°Hmmm¡­so nothing can control nothing!¡± Emotes explode into colorful projections. ¡°Oh, that is delightful. Isn¡¯t it, isn¡¯t it?¡±


    ¡°But I give you more credit. You fought like a hero.¡± The Scribe raises a finger. ¡°The talk of the hemisphere, I say! Your report is everywhere. You should see the patterns! One might think my lines no longer entertained them!¡±


    ¡°My Lord. I did nothing¡­Nothing would never.¡± The nothing stammers.


    ¡°Hush, hush, rabbit. I thought you drones were tough. But you are wobbly jelly.¡± He shakes the mound with natural hands and his laughter bounces among weaving drones. Emotes rapid-fire into the air, their faces leaking cruelly. ¡°Where is the courage I saw when you battled this fiend!¡±


    ¡°Ha!¡± He chops the air, flesh wobbling. ¡°And, ha!¡±This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    He heaves back, sobbing with laughter. ¡°And your possessor, this sack, is it here, also?¡± He gestures to the bodies left and right.


    ¡°Yes, my Lord. Correct. He is indeed a parasite of the worst sort. But if you will permit?¡± The nothing raises its stapled-assisted smile. ¡°He is in the here that is in there.¡±


    The nothing points an unsteady finger to the massive titan vault.


    <u>SLATE</u>


    The chances of getting struck by lightning on earth are one in several hundred thousand.


    Earth is an arbitrary and antiquated point of reference.


    Then again, I¡¯m standing across from a wolf in forest out of myth.


    So the old world seems relevant.


    But it seems to me that the chance of being hit depends greatly on where you are standing during a storm.


    I do not know what the chances are on this planet.


    I guess I¡¯m just lucky.


    The world explodes with violet light and a concussive THOOM!


    My entire body seizes in electric pain.


    Every cell is frenetic.


    I am frozen in the moment of doom, punished for the hubris of thinking I could so easily walk on an alien planet.


    It has come to correct the mistake of my survival.


    It is a gambler''s logic, which entails some cosmic force that balances good and bad.


    The arc of lightning is the only thing that keeps me upright, pinning me like a bug to the mounting board.


    Snow crawls through the air. The wolf stands motionless.


    The bolt blasts every door in the halls of my mind at the same time and I am aware of every exquisite sensation.


    I am *in* the lightning. It is ark and aura around me and I feel something in the pain ¡ª perhaps it is the pain pushing my brain to the edge, like euphoria at the point of death.


    It feels like I am swallowed in a storm of intention. A small mind, absorbed by a greater; that is, if minds were bare and could merge like clouds.


    It feels neither hostile nor friendly, just crushing powerful.


    If it is god, it is an old god ¡ª a storm father. From before men had words. Something only remembered in their bones and awakened by lightning strikes.


    The intention resonates with my own desires ¡ª maybe that¡¯s all it is.


    To put it into human words is to lose a universe of meaning.


    ¡°STAND. FIGHT. LIVE.¡±


    If words were suns colliding, then it spoke in words. If suns were words colliding, then it spoke in suns. And I am caught in the solar winds of meaning that break over me.


    It is an utterance, if it can be called that, that only makes sense to a brain jacked on psychoactive lightning.


    Is this how a world speaks? In the language of storms?


    It may strike once or a hundred times. What effect it has, I cannot be sure.


    Steam rises from my body. I should be dead, not standing.


    And though I feel the icy chill; I¡¯m not cold anymore.


    A bent whine is all the sympathy I get from the wolf, but it''s better than being eaten.


    Its thick hair stands on end, making it appear larger than before, if that is possible.


    Most people struck by lightning live to talk about it, which is why there are sayings about getting struck twice. I reck it is a smaller number who are standing afterwards.


    I hold onto the words, but they slip like fine sand through my fingers.


    A small handful of sand. Feels about right.


    The thoughts of gods, translated into the language of a man. ¡°Stand, fight and live.¡°


    The burns in my chest promise a lasting reminder. Twin burns between the shoulder and pectoral muscles.


    The marks have a certain symmetry.


    My fingers trace the wounds with a grimace. Burns occur where lightning enters and exits the body.


    And whereas lightning entered and exited, the words still echo in me, heavy with portent and potentiality.


    Their gravity makes me search for deeper meaning, meaning to equal the weight of the words and the speaker.


    ¡°Stand. Fight. Live.¡°


    I fail to consider an important possibility: that this is not the case of a simple creature failing to understand complex meaning. It was a case of a greater creature, unable to communicate in the medium of lightning.


    The message was simple.


    ¡°Stand. fight. Live.¡±


    The wolf growls a low growl.


    Snow falls around us.


    The land has been exposed to extreme catastrophic forces.


    A black gully is ripped into the dirt ¡ª wide, deep, and suspiciously ship-sized, which is to say ¡ª big.


    It is not the forest it was moments before ¡ª or however long that is. Before I tore through.


    I was separated ¡ª ejected, is my guess.


    The ravine is raw with exposed roots and snapped trees. Steam rises from the broken earth. Red fire glows on snapped branches like welding torches left naked to burn.


    Fire is death in space. Here, it is life. If that can be believed.


    These flames will not turn the sky into an inferno of darting flame. They will not steal the air, in the sense that there is enough air that no fire could burn it all.


    And this demon should be my friend? Keep me warm? Cook my food?


    I start as I feel the sinking earth creeping between my toes like a living thing, as I step off the chamber¡¯s lid.


    Soft and unnatural, the soil sucks my feet. I work my feet into its soft belly. It has no proper bottom.


    It is all so strange, so new, and ¡ª aside from lightning strikes ¡ª I feel alive.


    I know I¡¯m supposed to pay attention to the heaving mound of black dirt and I am ¡ª just not exclusively.


    I¡¯m hoping that heaving isn¡¯t a characteristic of all soil.


    ¡°Stand. Fight. Live.¡±


    Aboard ship, I would have access to weapons. At the same time, there would not be aliens bursting from the bowels of the earth.


    I bend and pick up the door of the stasis chamber, It is roughly shield-shaped. The hinges and clasps are acceptable handles, if awkward.


    I could just crawl back into the chamber and hide, but that would leave me trapped and vulnerable.


    Either way, I run the risk of being exotic alien food.


    I decide to stand on my feet, rather than lie down in a coffin.


    For all I know, my whole existence has been that narrow box, though living is too strong a word.


    I never want to be in a box again. No matter how safe it is.


    So prison door becomes doorway. Doorway becomes a shield.


    It is solid enough. Awkward, but better than none.


    I smell it first.


    Waves of acrid stench.


    It smells like the juice of waste compactors, if the trash were bodies.


    The smell is needle-like in my eyes and nose.


    I feel the smell like some sick that will rot me from the inside until I become like it.


    The wolf is ramrod straight and silent.


    The ground wobbles and heaves like there is a giant slime creature within.


    The first limb bursts upward, showering dirt, before slamming down.


    It is a colossal pointed forelimb, with joints like a crab, but without the decency of a shell.


    Its muscles are exposed fleshy tissue threaded with sinew, like an anatomical reference ¡ª as though it lives in constant pain or feels none at all.


    It seems disoriented. Being plowed into the ground by a thousand tons of superheated metal will do that.


    But enough waiting.


    What did you think?


    That I was going to wait for the creature to emerge from the ground, show its power, perform some threat display?


    Frag that.


    This isn¡¯t some dumb holo.


    When it is down, is the best time to kick it in its alien nutsack.


    I run forward, shield in hand.

 FIVE — A BLACK HAND TURNS

    SLATE


    I circle the giant forelimb and slam the shield hard into the heaving earth.


    It doesn¡¯t realise it has already made the mistake that will decide the outcome ¡ª you might say, it showed its hand too early.


    The creature is black ink, with glints of snow and firelight. The dark flesh absorbs the light well, and it is beautiful in the reflected red light. The work of a cruel engineer.


    I don¡¯t know the alien¡¯s body plan but I wager on symmetry. It is a safe bet ¡ª asymmetrical body plans are rare, usually limited to creatures that inhabit aquatic or gaseous planets. They do not have the design constraint of having to make sense in gravity.


    If the first limb to emerge is dominant, like a right hand, then I press down on the non-dominant forelimb ¡ª the weaker of the two. If it wasn¡¯t weaker before, it will be after I¡¯m done.


    It isn¡¯t guesswork. The first limb to emerge is dominant and dominance of one limb over the other is biologically necessary within a high degree of confidence. Most will favour the right, a small percent the left, and tiny fraction of freaks are ambidextrous or near enough.


    It¡¯s the same way clones must be separated to prevent one from becoming the right hand and the other the left, so to speak.


    You could swap left and right in this equation, but it amounts to the same thing.


    The knowledge feels innate, unlike leaky mods.


    I twist the shield into place ¡ª the other limb, after all, is an excellent reference. Into place, in this case, means into the joint ¡ª the groove where bone, nerves, and vital fluids pass in a narrow passage. It¡¯s basic plumbing if not xenobiology.


    Lid becomes door. Door becomes shield. And we¡¯re back to door again. Full circle. I slam said door shut on the aliens arm. Again and again.


    It doesn¡¯t matter that it¡¯s an alien monster. There are design constraints of all living things that lead to common features and vulnerabilities. Land animals have skeletons, and joints ¡ª joints are always vulnerabilities.


    There are exceptions but they are by definition exceptional.


    Creatures armour their joints, but in order to move, they must be soft somewhere ¡ª mostly underneath.


    The monster, roars hot breath and ammonia, freeing its head from the earth.


    ¡°There it is.¡± It can feel pain ¡ª another feature common to most aliens, whatever the planet. Pain is adaptive, it keeps the animal from harm. It could just be pissed of course ¡ª a rage-based nervous system. ¡°That¡¯s it, that¡¯s it.¡±


    So I speak to it in measured tones, calming and rhythmic ¡ª a constant stream while I stomp on the forelimb, keeping it in the dirt, making this a two-pronged attack.


    As body patterns go, the alien opts for a high risk, high reward strategy. It is not a generalist ¡ª two weapon-like forelimbs with no subtlety. It is made for powerful frontal assaults.


    It has no hands for careful manipulation, just massive spikes for killing in a single powerful strike.


    In the trade-off, it sacrifices stability for sharp points.


    You cannot gather momentum balancing your weight on a single sharp point. You can¡¯t do much of anything, as the creature discovers.


    I slam on the shield with my weight. My strategy is to keep my opponent off-balance with pain ¡ª it doesn¡¯t work unless the pain is unpredictable. I react to the creature¡¯s ministrations, observing the twin forelimb as an engineer would study a reference.


    With each adjustment, I try to affect permanent damage and fresh sensation. But my leverage is limited by the awkward grip and the force I can generate with my body.


    While I make it scream, it makes gains of its own ¡ª it extricates the right side of its body and it now has a wicked number of lateral limbs in play.


    These are for movement and stability while the giant forelimbs are operated by the alien ¡ª in this case, me.


    It now has movement, thrust, which means things are about to change and I can either react or I can dictate terms.


    I release the forelimb. It will have to be enough.


    Sensing it is loose, it breaks into explosive movement ¡ª but not fast enough.


    I circle left as it circles right and slam the shield into its side, its brain function still buzzing from a nervous system set on fire.


    It gains movement, I gain information ¡ª I can¡¯t take out the forelimb but I can make an impact on the multitudinous lateral limbs along its length.


    I get in a few good shots with the shield but they are good shots, further weakening what I mark is its weaker side.


    I win predictability. The creature now strongly favors its right side. It must now attack with its remaining dominant limb, yet it cannot bear on the other and therefore is left to claw its way, screwwise.


    But it is massive ¡ª twice as big as I am ¡ª and strong. I am new, freshly hatched, and not born to this world with wolves big as horses.


    There is a limit to what clever tactics do against against a vastly superior opponent, when unarmed and within reach.


    And I have pissed it off.


    The biggest problem: no endgame.


    I couldn¡¯t kill it if it rolled over and gave me its soft underbelly.


    I leap back as it lunges.


    It discovers what I already know. At full strength, I would be skewered on its long forelimb ¡ª a meatstick at an alien wet market.


    Instead it folds over its weakened forelimb, falling short. Dirt sprays at my feet.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    But pain is an effective teacher; it learns. I will not be so lucky again.


    It favors right, so I circle left.


    It must pivot on its strong forelimb, taking its best weapon out of the fight.


    It roars. Its recessed mouth is all the more terrifying because of its mystery, hidden somewhere beneath a featureless head.


    The wolf doesn¡¯t like this. She growls louder, more guttural than before, and circles right behind me.


    For all its size and the fact that it remains ¡ª the wolf has not been of much.


    It waits to see the outcome before choosing its meal.


    The creature feigns a lunge. I dance backward, escaping easily.


    It collapses at the last moment, giving the appearance of failure.


    Instead, it stores momentum in its forelimbs like springs, using them to arc its entire bulk and pile driving with its stinger.


    I dive, rolling into hard roots, surprising myself with the speed of reaction.


    By instinct I leave the shield behind, giving the strike a hard target.


    I scramble sideways, finding myself imitating its style of movement, with a handful of dirt flung back at it.


    Frag. I guessed a stinger based on the scorpion-like body plan but I didn¡¯t predict the way it flipped over.


    The stinger waves cobra-like, as though it has an independent operating system. Enlarged front limbs, smaller lateral limbs, and a wicked curved stinger.


    The move leaves it inverted and it rolls to right itself, whirling to sight on me.


    A powerful attack that leaves it vulnerable, but I am unable to capitalize on its moment of weakness. Instead, I use the split seconds to search the clearing for a weapon.


    Everything is a weapon.


    Everything is a weapon and everything is a war.


    Those that fail to realize they are in a war, are those who fight badly, and those who lose.


    I catch a glint of metal buried in the ravine.


    The wolf has natural weapons, which it uses to underwhelming effect.


    She darts and nips at the creature''s flank, coming away with one of the small lateral limbs. The attack does little damage, but it gets the alien¡¯s attention.


    The flesh scorpion veers to confront the new threat. The massive wolf is by far the greater threat, in theory. In practice, she is an oversized canine, lupine to be technic, with a shiny new chew toy.


    The mods flood my brain with spurts of behavioural data scraped from defunct video platforms. A surprising amount of information is extracted from short snips of people compulsively barking at their own dogs.


    They dressed dogs as people and people as dogs. The mods make strange connections; it can¡¯t all be true. But that¡¯s earth for you. There¡¯s a reason we left them behind.


    Fragging mods.


    She drops the limb and cocks her head, in what could be mistaken for a play response, but makes no move otherwise.


    Meanwhile, I can¡¯t believe my luck.


    I have mixed feelings about my luck at any rate.


    I am inconceivably lucky to have survived the crash, less lucky to be ejected into the wild planet.


    Lucky not to be eaten by a giant wolf, unlucky in fighting an angry flesh scorpion.


    It is inconceivably lucky that I should find the red fire suppressor buried in the soft earth of the ravine. Contra, I would have felt luckier if it been a trusty justicar, rather than an unwieldy blunt instrument with no real reach.


    But the creature¡¯s back is to me for the moment, and my improvised trap is a success.


    I take credit for the spit-second gambit.


    A mad laugh escapes my lips. I drop the supressor. My advantage will not be long-lived.


    The creature¡¯s powerful heels-over-head attack pierces the shield I leave behind and lodges into the earth beneath.


    It whips in an attempt to get free and would have succeeded if I didn¡¯t dive onto it at that moment and bear it to the ground with my weight.


    The stinger is not as strong as the rest of its body, just quick, and my weight proves adequate to hold it to the ground, if not in one place.


    The movement works to my advantage, for as the body moves, so do I ¡ª in the opposite direction. The sport is some variation of body surfing.


    The sport is to surf the black dirt without crashing or being dislodged. I grab the stinger with both hands, preventing its withdrawal from the trap and gain a steering handle.


    The alien is not pleased, appearing more frantic than before.


    Pain protects important parts of the anatomy, such as a thin stinger, in a vulnerable position at its back.


    I slam into the bank and use the momentum to savagely yank the stinger, cutting it against the jagged edges of the cracked shield.


    Like the wolf, I come away with my prize.


    The fleshy stinger still jerks in my hand as though it is trying to escape or rejoin the body.


    I hold my prizes in both hands as I drink the creature¡¯s pain.


    Tearing off the stinger may cause its death in the wild, but it is far from dead.


    The spurting black blood invigorates me as it spurts onto my hands and body. I feed on its pain, absorbing it.


    Its recessed head lets out an anguished scream of pain that is visible as hot steam in the cold night. The sound hits like a physical punch and must be audible for miles around.


    It is a wasted display.


    A threat display is intended to intimidate and its main purpose is to avoid costly violence, such as having vital parts of your anatomy torn off in chunks. It is a ritual where members of the species gauge strength and commitment.


    In this case, the display is triggered by instinct. Pain overcomes whatever intelligence it is capable of.


    It has lost a vital tool of survival, a tool protected by a high concentration of sensitive nerve endings, and its loss will mean it will likely not survive long either way.


    The display is terrifying. The natural strength of the animal is on full display.


    As intimidating as it is, it will not usually be interrupted.


    That is the last thing an apex predator expects and so it is the first thing I do.


    Against every instinct, I rush into its billowing breath. So doing, I exploit another weakness in its design. Besides powerful powerful frontal attacks, it invests in powerful forelimbs to protect its vulnerable head. The weakness is that the oversized limbs are ineffectual at close range.


    And I have a weapon now, and an endgame.


    I slam the stinger directly into the domed featureless brain.


    Kinetic energy focuses on a single sharp point, piercing the soft tissue beneath. It has no visible eyes, so its domed meathead must house some equivalent sense organ.


    Call it what you will. I think I¡¯ve just jammed its dick in its brain.


    Scream becomes howl. Howl becomes a high whine and it displays yet another behavior.


    Soon, it will play dead.


    It withdraws, drawing its forelimbs protectively over its head. It skitters backward. Raising its severed tail instinctively.


    In this position, the stinger would be its offensive option but that option is currently lodged in its brain.


    It will die now if I leave it.


    It will expire or die of starvation or by another creature or creatures.


    I might pretend killing it is an act of mercy.


    I might say that I did not want to see it suffer. It would be more convincing, if I did not enjoy its pain.


    Dumb beast or not, it should not have moved against me.


    I retrieve the blunt weapon with bad reach.


    An effective weapon it is not ¡ª but I no longer require an effective weapon.


    I smash the suppressor on the joint of the forelimbs paying special attention to the dominant forelimb as the only remaining threat. Once the joints are pulpy, I peel them away, slipping inside its weak embrace.


    I hit until the only limiting factor is lifting my tired arms.


    I hammer the stinger deeper into its brain.


    I repeat, pushing its limbs gently and as hard as my remaining strength allows.


    Each blow feels electric. I feel I am not imagining it. Splattering blood and brain matter heighten the feeling of energy flowing into me. It gives new strength even as the suppressor begins to slip from my hands.


    The more brutal the strike, the stronger the feeling.


    The wolf raises its head and howls.


    Naked I raise my head and howl, announcing my presence ¡ª my own threat display.


    When it is over I am on my knees and there is nothing remaining of the creature but a smear.


    I pant in the falling snow, feeling more alive than I have ever been.


    The wolf is turned away.


    Then something happens.


    Something I cannot explain in terms of natural phenomena. A sphere of energy forms in the air above my enemy.


    Thin, at first, and lost in the heat of the open flesh scorpion. The energy increases, rising from the body in wisps.


    The first explorers of a world are trained to relinquish their expectations and assumptions. The mind must be supple and ready to adapt. Nature breaks all rules.


    Accept the new rules, do not cling to old beliefs.


    I¡¯m not sure whether they had anything like this in mind.


    But the principle is the same. Doubting what you see is stupid. Finding explanations can be useful but in the meantime ¡ª flow.


    So I accept what happens without question. This is reality and rules of what is possible shift.


    There is a burst of energy that fills the sphere like a camera flash. When my eyes adjust, there is something inside the sphere.


    A black hand turns slowly.

 SIX — THE ICE WRAITH

    SLATE


    It is futile to offer explanations for impossible phenomena.


    The fact that I consider it impossible, is proof that I am utterly unqualified to explain it.


    If there is any explanation, it is that there is advanced technology at work ¡ª that is, intelligence.


    Intelligent life ¡ª on this planet.


    No. The only logical conclusion is that there was intelligence here once. It can¡¯t be assumed that this is even conscious intelligence. It could just be another incentive structure. It would not be the first of its kind.


    It could even be that I (or something I bring with me) generate the phenomena somehow. I am, after all, the only intelligence I am certain of.


    There is no reason to think there should not be intelligent life. It is more surprising that such a world isn¡¯t crawling with alien species already. Yet I saw no evidence of it from space.


    I start with the obvious ¡ª it is a gauntlet. It fits a human hand ¡ª my hand. It appears near to me, over my slain enemy. The energy, at least in part, comes from the slain enemy. Yet the slain enemy, is not capable of the act, for various reasons, foremost among them ¡ª death.


    The object is meant for me.


    Someone or something wants me to have it. Though wants suggest consciousness.


    It could be a trap but equally, it could be an opportunity to gain an advantage.


    But the overriding consideration is ¡ª it looks fragging cool and I want it.


    The sphere vanishes the moment I grab hold of it.


    No trap triggers that I can perceive.


    The gauntlet is dark grey or black ¡ª it is hard to tell in the night ¡ª and neither warm nor cool to the touch. It feels good in the hand, however. It is not clay but has the feel of quality, which does not fit the understated design.


    I turn it over in my hands. As far as I can tell from look and feel, it is light, hard, and strong. I cannot say it is metal, but some composite seems likely.


    The joints are light, and silent, except for dull clicks at extension. There are no joins visible but that could be the low light.


    There are symbols on the inside inner wrist. An alien script that does not trigger any knowledge. I miss it on the first pass, in the dim light. It looks pictorial in origin, like the Earth scripts of the Eastern half of the Asian continent, rather than representational, though whatever it represents is long since become unrecognizable or never was. This makes me think this was an existing artifact, not a creation, though that is not entirely logical.


    I feel subtle indentations on the fingertips, which I take to be related to the artifact''s function, rather than a tactile language.


    Is it human? Solarin? Alien? It does not fit neatly into any category.


    Human seems most likely, based on its arrangement, yet the construction and language...


    While not beyond human capability, still seems *other*.


    I hold it to my hand.


    It is more or less the same size ¡ª as my hand, which is to say, too small by half.


    For all I know it is some mass-produced item of no special value.


    Yet, to me, it is a priceless artifact and I cannot entirely say why.


    Perhaps it is that I feel I earned it through combat or the way it appeared or that it speaks to something *beyond*.


    Thought stops when I look up.


    The wolf looks directly at me, pupils drinking in the available light.


    She growls a low rumble like pouring stones that fall around me, seeming to come from all sides at once ¡ª it does. I feel it ripple through me ¡ª the sound of killing intent. On either side of the ravine are a dozen blinking eyes. They pour their revving growls into the ditch.


    The growl she directed at the flesh scorpion, now is directed at me.


    ¡°Easy now.¡± Calming tones. Regular, deep.


    No. Sudden. Movements.


    I reach in the stream of knowledge and come away with collected reports on animal behavior.


    A wolf and a man take shelter together in a storm but when that storm is over¡­


    My mind grasps at reasons.


    I have broken some rule of the forest. The wolf is displeased by my savagery. The gauntlet I hold frightens the wolf or offends it.


    More likely, it is hungry and I am meat.


    It has numbers that it did not have before and only one enemy is still standing.


    And I have¡­nothing. A glove.


    A single wolf? Maybe I would have a chance though unlikely. But against a pack? Fighting is not an option.


    I pick up on something in the animal''s past behavior.


    I extend my naked hand. ¡°Remember?¡±


    It is the hand she cleaned with her tongue. Grooming. A sign of affection amongst animals. But what I think was familiarity, might be the animal¡¯s hunger. It looks worn down after all.


    But not starving. Thick slabs of muscle cancel that idea. If anything, its stomach sags as though it was recently full to bursting -- so back to hunger


    The growl becomes a snarl of burning vapor. Its snout vibrates. Its body lowers.


    Even low, it is a mass of undulating muscle, and savage snarling teeth.


    I have made a mistake. My hand is naked perhaps, but not empty.


    Why had I held out the gauntlet?


    I blink at it in surprise, as though seeing it for the first time.


    ¡°This?¡± I gesture peace with my empty hand. ¡°This is nothing.¡± I move slow and smoothly down, unable to help the tremble in my legs.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    I let the gauntlet fall to the ground and show empty palms. A gesture the timber wolf of earth could understand. I dip my head slightly, avoiding a direct gaze, which might be read as a challenge.


    To show threat or weakness could end badly.


    The snarl subsides, though the growl does not.


    I extend my hand again. ¡°Remember? Remember how you cleaned my hand?¡± I feel like an idiot speaking to a wild creature but I suppress all doubt. It was a common belief that animals could sense fear so I blunder on. ¡°I remember. I remember the hot breath. The point of the snout, soft and wet.¡±


    There is some part of me that feels these words. I grab hold of it and wring it for all it is worth.


    I feel a connection. To wolves, yes, as members of a shared past. And to this wolf. The first creature that didn¡¯t try to eat me.


    Well, not immediately.


    The first living thing to show me any kindness.


    The wolf runs straight at me.


    Black clumps of earth spray behind.


    Within two strides I concede its unstoppable momentum. A large object at speed is always decisive. Mounted cavalry sweeping through a standing force. At that point, claws or jaws are almost irrelevant.


    I have only one move to make.


    I drop to the ground at the last instant. I must avoid the center of its mass and take my chances under its paws, which are at any rate broader and softer than hooves.


    I cover my head with my hands.


    It closes around my body.


    Then it is gone. Not jaws or teeth but the rake of long nails and soft paws that are so large that they do not land entirely on me or off me.


    It pushes against me and I boast that I am its launchpad but in truth, I am its stepping stone.


    Yet it still feels like I am torn apart. Rather, it feels the world itself is ripped and torn with teeth and brutal concussions.


    I have not seen the wolf fight ¡ª not really. Not until now.


    If it was ever offended by my brutality then it is a hypocrite of the worst kind.


    It is impossible to describe the savagery of truly wild animals in battle.


    While combat in space is more deadly, it is also silent, fast, and in some ways clean. It is not this.


    It is too much for the senses to take in.


    Every instinct screams that the battle is beyond my ability. There is deadly danger in every direction. There is no control or plan or strategy. I cannot even contain its magnitude, like a paradox of violence, and every moment I do not solve it, there is the likelihood of swift death.


    Wolves leap into the valley from above, streaking over me. They run along banks.


    Bodies slam into bodies.


    I run. Though run is too strong a word.


    It is the only thing I can do.


    I run before I realize I am running and I am surprised I manage even that much, as I stagger on shaking limbs.


    I trip and stumble down the ravine as fast as weak limbs and shot nerves will carry me.


    It may be I am traveling towards the ship or that I am going in the opposite direction. As long as I am running away from that.


    Flesh scorpions and nameless horrors crawling over each other.


    The forest becomes thick, the night dark. It is a wonder I see anything at all, even with the augments. It is as though the forest has designed a test of my capabilities. Even the white snow turns black but I can see it. The upturned ground is uneven and filled with snares. Even so, my legs gain strength as I go, as though they are remembering how to run.


    In the dark, I become aware of the gauntlet in my hand. I must have picked it up when I dived to the ground.


    It comforts me. It will protect me.


    My thoughts grow superstitious as the wood grows twisted and dark.


    I cannot afford to lose myself in it.


    Distance. I must put distance between myself and whatever that is. Physical distance, mental distance. Where there is one danger, there will be more. I must be prepared for all the battles ahead even as I run from those behind.


    I am like a fresh recruit in his first battle.


    Noobs are always vulnerable when they are young and green and that is the best time to cut them down.


    Well, I cannot afford a learning curve. I must be the veteran and control what I can.


    I harden my mind to iron and run harder. Adrenalin still runs wild through me.


    I do not yet feel the cold as I should. In the absence of something with teeth, the cold is now my greatest enemy and I will feel it soon.


    Running is good for the cold, though sweating will negate that. I will lose heat through my head and extremities.


    I must minimize contact with the ground. The ground itself is not as cold as I would expect. I think it is because it is alive in some way.


    Frag. I¡¯m naked. So there''s that.


    Shelter ¡ª my first objective. I must get out of the wind and snow. The wind is the real danger. It is the direct application of cold air to the body. Wind and wet together are killers.


    If I am lucky, I will find the ship.


    I focus on my surroundings looking for anything that could be of use or for any threat.


    Even so, I almost miss it.


    My feet skid in the soft earth. I rely on instinct in the dark.


    I do not immediately know why I stop but I soon mark a recess in the ravine that is alive with blurring motion that intersects my path.


    My vision flashes red in warning.


    Dark shapes take form as my eyes seek them out.


    The human eye, without augment, can distinguish one hundred million colors. But there is no color here. One hundred and twenty million rods exist to sense minute fluctuations of light and dark. The ability is basic to survival. And then there is the brain''s ability to interpret what it can barely see.


    I push my vision to the upper limits of sensitivity, an action that leaves me vulnerable to sudden exposure.


    Even so, I don¡¯t see much and what I do see is a choice. I can run on or I can risk my life ¡ª and the future of my species ¡ª on a battle that is of no ultimate significance and which offers no great rewards. A small drama of smaller creatures.


    I make the wrong choice.


    And I do so blindly ¡ª or close to it.


    Yet somehow, the same instincts that cause me to stop, recognize the softness and the wiggle, just the same as I recognize the sharp alien slashing. The second is easier, because of its light coloring.


    The whipping thing is on top of the wiggling thing.


    I find I do not like this.


    Suprise is my only advantage. I wield the gauntlet like a club and strike the whipping form.


    I want to believe it is an impressive strike but it is more probably that it backs off in fright.


    It is hard to gauge the animal''s size because of its irregular form. I cannot even make sense of it. It might be five animals at once. But if it is anything like the scorpion ¡ª in danger, if not design ¡ª then I do not want to find out.


    Superstition clouds my thoughts, as darkness and fear join forces.


    It is, to me, a specter of death ¡ª a wraith of enraged ice.


    I grab at the ground my hand closing on something soft. I pull it without care or ceremony and I am running again ¡ª away from those things behind me and now from this fresh terror of the unknown.


    I almost drop the bundle as I receive at once a bight on my hand from the bundle and a score from the angry wraith. But I am gone before it can do more.


    Both draw blood. I feel it more than I see it.


    I get off lightly ¡ª whatever cuts me is razor sharp and it takes my clotting factor to stem the bleeding from the small cut.


    The same cannot be said of the small soft bodies I leave behind, as dark as the earth they lie in. The bodies a spread and torn and still. The wraith was not gentle with them. Warm fur presses against my exposed skin. The small thing expands and contracts as it draws breath. A tiny heart slows under the thick fur. And it becomes still against my chest.


    The wraith has plenty to occupy it behind but I keep watch over my shoulder all the same.


    My arms burn but I suppose that is better than freezing.


    But still, another enemy stalks me in the dark ¡ª exhaustion. It creeps on me and gains speed rapidly. Like the bundle of fur, I have been kept alive by fear and adrenaline and now I am crashing.


    My enemies join forces, and I start to feel the cold. I lose heat from every available surface except perhaps the warm presence against my chest ¡ª so there is that.


    I will need to make a choice soon: run on or hunker down but it is not much of a choice. I need shelter.


    I must not have run far before coming to a stop. Were I faster, I might have slipped and fallen over the edge.


    I file the new information in my geographical perception. I reach the edge of the forest. Or, an edge of the forest. Wind whips around me. The cold of the forest is nothing against it.


    The forest stops at the edge of a sloping cliff. Moonlight pools into a wide basin. I would guess it is an impact site of a fair-sized asteroid at some point in the past. But that does not adequately explain why it is a barren snowscape now.


    Two moons give a fair amount of light. Though one is small and crescent.


    The bundle in my arm is indeed a wolf pup. A dark bundle of fluff of midnight black as though it never left the deep forest. It sleeps ¡ª the rough journey doing nothing to wake it from the deep slumber.


    What has it been through? How did it survive against the ice wraith?


    It did not hide. It did not run.


    A brave little thing.


    Brave and blind.


    Even with its eyes closed, I sense the blood in sockets, smaller craters to match the larger before us. I sense the blood but not the extent of the damage.


    I did not think the creature would be of any great use.


    Still, the missing eyes mean I should discard it, for it will never hunt, and it is a drain of resources as it is.


    But it warms me for now.


    And it is no great burden. I can always deal with it later should it become one.


    The cut streams dried blood but has stopped bleeding and will not be aggravated by movement. Though, it is never good to see tendon and bone. They move as I close my fist.


    The cut is of interest. Like most of the wraith, I cannot make sense of it.


    But the most important information at the edge of the cliff, as cold air almost lifts me from my feet, is the pillar of smoke and the soft glow of heat in the distance.


    I have found my ship.

 SEVEN — MOONS’ LIGHT

    SLATE


    It isn¡¯t luck that I find a cave.


    I scout the edge of the cliff and find a break in the rock.


    I find a passage down that is navigable by moonlight, with a wolf pup under one arm and an alien gauntlet in the other.


    I have made an appointment with the artifact as soon as I can set down out of the cold.


    Moonlight? Moons¡¯ light?


    I stick with the former.


    The smaller is red, the larger is grey. The grey half-moon shimmers, with some reflective feature on its surface.


    The stars draw together in a slash that divides the sky between the two bodies.


    In the center of the slash is a black tear, darker than the night sky. There is an order to it, a symmetry.


    Were it not for the cold, I might be able to appreciate the beauty of an alien sky. The cold has crept into me now. Once you are cold on the inside, it is hard to regain warmth. The shivering begins in earnest. I am lucky to have made it this long, naked in the cold. Every part of my body loses heat every second I stand in the open air.


    Running helps.


    The pup is warm in its fur and its body. It is better suited to the cold than I am.


    I almost forget the black slag on my body, which I cannot clean because I suspect it is the main reason I am still alive.


    The gauntlet isn¡¯t cold either, unlike metal. The chest plate I wear also does not seem to affect my body temperature.


    Scouting the ridge is what does it. Exposed, next to the basin, in the cold wind.


    It is slow going and coming down teaches me about the nerve pain of cold bone on hard stone.


    At the bottom, I waste no time.


    The shelter is a break in the cliff big enough to walk into, roughly twenty paces deep.


    At the base, there are promising crevices. I see no obvious threats and judge it good for the night ¡ª however long that will last.


    How long does it take this planet to turn? How long will the night be?


    I lay the pup on the ground in a recess. Its eyes are closed, they will never open.


    It yawns. I study it.


    Everything it does amazes me ¡ª it might have yawned a hundred times, but to me, it is the first time and I have never seen anything like it. There are not many dogs in space, I think. Not much of anything.


    Sure, those that lie in the Eschalon have all manner of designer animals, with genetics from the earth, or alien origins, from imagination, or some combination.


    I could watch it sleep, its little paws twitching. Its quiet mewling.


    I think it dreams ¡ª dreams perhaps of the wraith or of the night its brothers and sisters died and it failed to protect them. I put a hand on it ¡ª not sure what I hope to achieve by this. Yet the animal seems to settle.


    I hope it does not wake alone while I do what must be done.


    Wood is what I need most. I slip the gauntlet on my right hand in a well of moonlight. I should have done it earlier but it didn¡¯t feel right ¡ª to put on the first artifact on an alien world without recognition.


    It slips onto my hand snuggly, stretching and contracting. In the dark, I do not see how it achieves this. It fits like a glove and yet is hard as a gauntlet. If it has any function, I will discover it. For now, it is good protection from the cold. My hand is snug, without sweating.


    I almost feel irreverent about the rough treatment I am about to subject it to. The gauntlet should be in a vault on display and I¡¯m going to be using it to gather wood. But I have to use every survival advantage.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    A downed tree lies nearby.


    I start with snapped and broken branches. I do not worry about cleaning the branches. I gather as much wood as possible as quickly as possible. I only need to take them a short distance. I can do further preparations in the shelter. And over a short distance, side branches and leaves can help the bundle stay together. I pile everything I can on a large branch keeping the V-shaped offshoots to act as a transport.


    For kindling, I will use some plant matter kept dry from under a recess in the shelter but I gather as much wood as I can for as long I can. Double what I think I will need and more if possible.


    Before long, I have made two trips, and am coming back from my third. I have a substantial pile of wood at the entrance to the cave. But it has come at a cost, I am shivering uncontrollably now. Only a stubborn will keeps my teeth from k. the cold has settled into my chest and bones. The fingers of my left hand have turned blue and numb.


    Frostbite, early stages. It means the flesh is turning to ice.


    The pile is almost as tall as me, leaves and branches and all. Not bad work for over an hour. I have a good sense of time but I will fine-tune it as soon as I have a chance can enter the mindscape.


    I freeze. My blood runs cold.


    It¡¯s strange how many expressions of fear revolve around the cold.


    Ice in my veins. That isn¡¯t an expression of fear ¡ª it is what I need to have.


    Standing in front of me is a man. A silhouette in a moonlit passage.


    No, I am a man. It is a biped.


    Seeing a man is a defect of human psychology.


    The biped is covered in white hair, which could be age or more likely, camouflage. It is short and compact. Its face makes me think of a protohuman analog.


    Biped is too strong a word.


    Ape. It is a ground ape, a potentially dangerous ground ape.


    Neither one moves for a long time but I have already decided what to do.


    It is quite simple.


    There is one shelter and two of us. In a perfect world, we could share it. But in an imperfect world, it slits my throat in the night, or I slit its throat. It kills me to stop me killing it, or vice versa.


    And where there is one there will be more which means that if I let it go, it has a potentially powerful advantage. If I let it cry out ¡ª same advantage.


    This is why I walked three more steps before looking up and seeing it for the first time. This is why I am walking slowly forward, now, with open palms. This is why I keep my cold calculations off my face.


    Cold calculation. Ice in your veins. cold-hearted.


    It would be different if one of us had found the other, as the she-wolf found me, in her mercy.


    And each let the other walk away. But that is not the situation we are in. And the wolf situation wasn¡¯t exactly proof positive either. If I¡¯d found the wolf prone, I would have slit its throat, rather than take the chance.


    It is the useless ball of fur stumbling behind it that seals its fate. Stumbling blindly.


    This is why I look down at the stone between us.


    It is a flicker and it is to the credit of its species that it notices the direction of the glance. Most animals do not pay great attention to the face, but a higher primate might. A higher primate might also know how to use simple tools.


    I count on it.


    It starts forward first.


    It is a flimsy justification but it will serve.


    I drive my knee into its face as it bends. It makes two errors. One, it helps me close the space between us, which was considerate of it. Two, it decided to faceplant on my knee. Again, considerate.


    Ignoring the rock, I am on it before it lands on its back. The gauntlet held up well, barely a scratch on it. I get in a good strike on the throat before it knows what has happened. For its body plan, there are not many options for sound generation.


    Humanity has studied many bipedal alien species. If they breathe they inflate the chest or torso ¡ª it is the structure with the largest capacity. If they breathe through the mouth or nose ¡ª they usually do ¡ª the throat is either the place that sound originates, or, failing that, sound passes through the throat.


    The throat is always a vulnerability. It joins the brain to the body. All your important pipes in one convenient package.


    Basic plumbing.


    I roll away quickly.


    The work is done. I hit the air pipe hard. It cannot breathe. It is dead, it just needs to realize it. It does.


    While it is dying, it can still do damage. So I put distance between the thing and myself. It has strong arms. The apes of earth were shorter than men but could rip a human into pieces.


    Quick strike, withdraw.


    Much of unarmed combat can be summarised in this: a fight doesn¡¯t take turns.


    The fighting arts teach you to overcome hesitation, to drive home the advantage. To the trained fighter, the untrained fighter is not even fighting; he does not even understand the terms of engagement. He is wholly unprepared.


    It works its mouth quietly. for a moment, I think it talks. It clutches its throat and chest, as I did when I woke on this world.


    I wait until it falls to its knees before I pick up the rock and strike the head.


    The pup howls, failing to produce sound ¡ª it smells blood. It is excited like when its sire returns to the den with the kill.


    What does it even eat?


    The same sense of power fills me. the first strike is the strongest. But now I have the opportunity to consider the feeling as I finish it off.


    It is a grisly experiment. A light blow gives less, a heavy blow gives more. But that does not satisfy my curiosity.


    All knowledge is a tool of survival, all animals are tools to survive.


    And what about people?


    Are they tools?


    If they are not human, then yes.


    Everything is a tool.


    I cannot decide whether it is the impact of the strike or the blood it releases or some other factor. I will need to experiment further ¡ª but not on this subject. These are poor test subjects. They have not much life in them.


    The pup licks the blood from the creature¡¯s fur.


    Well, that is one problem solved ¡ª it eats blood.


    The rock drops from my hands as I turn to look down the dark passage.


    Where did he come from?

 SEVEN — MOONS’ LIGHT

    SLATE


    It isn¡¯t luck that I find a cave.


    I scout the edge of the cliff and find a break in the rock.


    I find a passage down that is navigable by moonlight, with a wolf pup under one arm and an alien gauntlet in the other.


    I have made an appointment with the artifact as soon as I can set down out of the cold.


    Moonlight? Moons¡¯ light?


    I stick with the former.


    The smaller is red, the larger is grey. The grey half-moon shimmers, with some reflective feature on its surface.


    The stars draw together in a slash that divides the sky between the two bodies.


    In the center of the slash is a black tear, darker than the night sky. There is an order to it, a symmetry.


    Were it not for the cold, I might be able to appreciate the beauty of an alien sky. The cold has crept into me now. Once you are cold on the inside, it is hard to regain warmth. The shivering begins in earnest. I am lucky to have made it this long, naked in the cold. Every part of my body loses heat every second I stand in the open air.


    Running helps.


    The pup is warm in its fur and its body. It is better suited to the cold than I am.


    I almost forget the black slag on my body, which I cannot clean because I suspect it is the main reason I am still alive.


    The gauntlet isn¡¯t cold either, unlike metal. The chest plate I wear also does not seem to affect my body temperature.


    Scouting the ridge is what does it. Exposed, next to the basin, in the cold wind.


    It is slow going and coming down teaches me about the nerve pain of cold bone on hard stone.


    At the bottom, I waste no time.


    The shelter is a break in the cliff big enough to walk into, roughly twenty paces deep.


    At the base, there are promising crevices. I see no obvious threats and judge it good for the night ¡ª however long that will last.


    How long does it take this planet to turn? How long will the night be?


    I lay the pup on the ground in a recess. Its eyes are closed, they will never open.


    It yawns. I study it.


    Everything it does amazes me ¡ª it might have yawned a hundred times, but to me, it is the first time and I have never seen anything like it. There are not many dogs in space, I think. Not much of anything.


    Sure, those that lie in the Eschalon have all manner of designer animals, with genetics from the earth, or alien origins, from imagination, or some combination.


    I could watch it sleep, its little paws twitching. Its quiet mewling.


    I think it dreams ¡ª dreams perhaps of the wraith or of the night its brothers and sisters died and it failed to protect them. I put a hand on it ¡ª not sure what I hope to achieve by this. Yet the animal seems to settle.


    I hope it does not wake alone while I do what must be done.


    Wood is what I need most. I slip the gauntlet on my right hand in a well of moonlight. I should have done it earlier but it didn¡¯t feel right ¡ª to put on the first artifact on an alien world without recognition.


    It slips onto my hand snuggly, stretching and contracting. In the dark, I do not see how it achieves this. It fits like a glove and yet is hard as a gauntlet. If it has any function, I will discover it. For now, it is good protection from the cold. My hand is snug, without sweating.


    I almost feel irreverent about the rough treatment I am about to subject it to. The gauntlet should be in a vault on display and I¡¯m going to be using it to gather wood. But I have to use every survival advantage.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    A downed tree lies nearby.


    I start with snapped and broken branches. I do not worry about cleaning the branches. I gather as much wood as possible as quickly as possible. I only need to take them a short distance. I can do further preparations in the shelter. And over a short distance, side branches and leaves can help the bundle stay together. I pile everything I can on a large branch keeping the V-shaped offshoots to act as a transport.


    For kindling, I will use some plant matter kept dry from under a recess in the shelter but I gather as much wood as I can for as long I can. Double what I think I will need and more if possible.


    Before long, I have made two trips, and am coming back from my third. I have a substantial pile of wood at the entrance to the cave. But it has come at a cost, I am shivering uncontrollably now. Only a stubborn will keeps my teeth from k. the cold has settled into my chest and bones. The fingers of my left hand have turned blue and numb.


    Frostbite, early stages. It means the flesh is turning to ice.


    The pile is almost as tall as me, leaves and branches and all. Not bad work for over an hour. I have a good sense of time but I will fine-tune it as soon as I have a chance can enter the mindscape.


    I freeze. My blood runs cold.


    It¡¯s strange how many expressions of fear revolve around the cold.


    Ice in my veins. That isn¡¯t an expression of fear ¡ª it is what I need to have.


    Standing in front of me is a man. A silhouette in a moonlit passage.


    No, I am a man. It is a biped.


    Seeing a man is a defect of human psychology.


    The biped is covered in white hair, which could be age or more likely, camouflage. It is short and compact. Its face makes me think of a protohuman analog.


    Biped is too strong a word.


    Ape. It is a ground ape, a potentially dangerous ground ape.


    Neither one moves for a long time but I have already decided what to do.


    It is quite simple.


    There is one shelter and two of us. In a perfect world, we could share it. But in an imperfect world, it slits my throat in the night, or I slit its throat. It kills me to stop me killing it, or vice versa.


    And where there is one there will be more which means that if I let it go, it has a potentially powerful advantage. If I let it cry out ¡ª same advantage.


    This is why I walked three more steps before looking up and seeing it for the first time. This is why I am walking slowly forward, now, with open palms. This is why I keep my cold calculations off my face.


    Cold calculation. Ice in your veins. cold-hearted.


    It would be different if one of us had found the other, as the she-wolf found me, in her mercy.


    And each let the other walk away. But that is not the situation we are in. And the wolf situation wasn¡¯t exactly proof positive either. If I¡¯d found the wolf prone, I would have slit its throat, rather than take the chance.


    It is the useless ball of fur stumbling behind it that seals its fate. Stumbling blindly.


    This is why I look down at the stone between us.


    It is a flicker and it is to the credit of its species that it notices the direction of the glance. Most animals do not pay great attention to the face, but a higher primate might. A higher primate might also know how to use simple tools.


    I count on it.


    It starts forward first.


    It is a flimsy justification but it will serve.


    I drive my knee into its face as it bends. It makes two errors. One, it helps me close the space between us, which was considerate of it. Two, it decided to faceplant on my knee. Again, considerate.


    Ignoring the rock, I am on it before it lands on its back. The gauntlet held up well, barely a scratch on it. I get in a good strike on the throat before it knows what has happened. For its body plan, there are not many options for sound generation.


    Humanity has studied many bipedal alien species. If they breathe they inflate the chest or torso ¡ª it is the structure with the largest capacity. If they breathe through the mouth or nose ¡ª they usually do ¡ª the throat is either the place that sound originates, or, failing that, sound passes through the throat.


    The throat is always a vulnerability. It joins the brain to the body. All your important pipes in one convenient package.


    Basic plumbing.


    I roll away quickly.


    The work is done. I hit the air pipe hard. It cannot breathe. It is dead, it just needs to realize it. It does.


    While it is dying, it can still do damage. So I put distance between the thing and myself. It has strong arms. The apes of earth were shorter than men but could rip a human into pieces.


    Quick strike, withdraw.


    Much of unarmed combat can be summarised in this: a fight doesn¡¯t take turns.


    The fighting arts teach you to overcome hesitation, to drive home the advantage. To the trained fighter, the untrained fighter is not even fighting; he does not even understand the terms of engagement. He is wholly unprepared.


    It works its mouth quietly. for a moment, I think it talks. It clutches its throat and chest, as I did when I woke on this world.


    I wait until it falls to its knees before I pick up the rock and strike the head.


    The pup howls, failing to produce sound ¡ª it smells blood. It is excited like when its sire returns to the den with the kill.


    What does it even eat?


    The same sense of power fills me. the first strike is the strongest. But now I have the opportunity to consider the feeling as I finish it off.


    It is a grisly experiment. A light blow gives less, a heavy blow gives more. But that does not satisfy my curiosity.


    All knowledge is a tool of survival, all animals are tools to survive.


    And what about people?


    Are they tools?


    If they are not human, then yes.


    Everything is a tool.


    I cannot decide whether it is the impact of the strike or the blood it releases or some other factor. I will need to experiment further ¡ª but not on this subject. These are poor test subjects. They have not much life in them.


    The pup licks the blood from the creature¡¯s fur.


    Well, that is one problem solved ¡ª it eats blood.


    The rock drops from my hands as I turn to look down the dark passage.


    Where did he come from?

 EIGHT — ZERO-FRICTION ENVIRONMENT

    SLATE


    The fire burns in the center of the cavern.


    Huddled on the stone floor is a female and a child too young to remember what happens next.


    They do not talk, that is good, though there is a primitive art that decorates the cave walls. I remove anything sharp from the cavern. There are basic flint tools. I take no chances. I remove it all. The female is distressed when I move the bones she keeps on a ledge. So I make a show of treating them with care but, again, I take no chances.


    I do not discover the cave entrance initially because it is above me.


    The narrow passage allows easy climbing to the entrance. The raised entrance helps to keep away opportunistic predators, except in this case.


    The child is why I let them live.


    Not because it is a juvenile, but because it is a vulnerability. The female is unlikely to attack while her child is alive.


    I could be wrong about that. She miht be overcome with rage or unable to predict the consequences of her actions. She may kill her child, sharpen its bones and kill me with them.


    But I do not think so. Species invest a lot of resources in their offspring. This investment is secured by emotional entanglements.


    It is tiring to make these calculations.


    To trust is to be vulnerable. If I am to survive, I must outthink. Solarin are not the strongest, and, granted, not the smartest, but we hold our own, with the gifts we possess naturally and those we have given to ourselves at great cost.


    She feeds the wolf cub with her own milk. She does not understand my intention at first. It must be very strange for her ¡ª suckling a wolf at her teat.


    The ancients had a story of men suckled by wolves. Why not a wolf at a woman¡¯s breast.


    The pup drinks greedily until it is full and lazy.


    I wait till she is done before ushering her and the child into the back room. They do not need to see what happens next. Even a child as young as hers might remember this next hard reality.


    I think the female has some concept of what is happening next.


    She panics as I block the entrance to the inner room with my branches and huddle with her child. But perhaps she thinks I would burn her alive ¡ª but I am not so merciful.


    Tomorrow, I journey into the basin to reach my ship.


    I cannot afford to give up any advantage. There is no room for pity. This is real life ¡ª not some story. I am naked, I am alone. I can trust no one and no thing. There are none that look like me, who speak my language or any language for that matter. One wrong move, one careless mistake and the story ends.


    I should kill the female and the child so that they can tell another soul. So that they cannot remember me. So that the child will not grow up to hunt me down for what I must to its sire.


    I do them no favors by leaving them alive. Without the male, they are as good as dead.


    And some things are worse than death.


    I drag the male into the center of the cavern and begin my grisly work.


    The stone tools are helpful. The gauntlet is invaluable. It is not just armor; it is like having a better hand. My hand is stronger, without loss of fine-motor control ¡ª greater control even. It allows me to rip without concern for snagging hand on bone, and  it shows no sign of the rough treatment I give it.


    The pelt is thick and white and I cannot waste it.


    I cannot leave the meat either and slap chunk near the fire. Many parts of the animal can be eaten raw. But I do not know whether the meat is compatible with my biology, so I kill any microbes with heat.


    It has been a long night since I woke up on the ground in a snowy forest. It could be near morning. I will need to eat. The smell fills the room and no doubt the room beyond also.


    The smell of your own species roasting is never pleasant. Most species have an instinctive revulsion of the odor, having smelled it many times in their history. But I have never smelled anything more delicious and the sizzling meat makes my stomach turn.


    I wedge the big branch with V-shaped offshoots against the cavern wall and a rock buried in the cave floor. I break off several of the branches in the process. I keep the cuts to a minimum. It takes longer, but I do not see myself able to sew a garment. The entire process takes several hours. Even so, I skip all the steps that will make the hide supple and durable.


    I leave the pelt to smoke over the fire and cover the remains of the body with dirt and stones. The female will want the bones.


    Fire. In space it it coheres. Or spreads like a sheet, like the flame on a reentry shield. Sometimes, it is a flat inferno, the gateway to hell itself. Some claim they have seen it take the form of man or beast. And the way it moves ¡ª with speed and cunning like a living thing.


    No one lets fire live in space. You either kill it or it kills you. It steals the oxygen from your lungs or, worse, it follows the oxygen to its source.


    Here the fire just sits in one place, rooted to the ground. Here, the fire is given fuel, on purpose.


    How long has it been since a man has sat calmly before a fire?


    It streaks and lashes upwards, sending sparks into the air. It is hypnotic. A spark lands on my hand, burns for a moment, and fades to ash, like the opposite of snow. I keep expecting the air to ignite.


    Its warmth is the most wonderful thing I have ever felt. I want to never move from the spot. I feel it on every inch of me. The fire-baked stone warms me from beneath.


    I vow I will make a fire every day I live on this world.


    Fire. And I sit before it like ancient man, unafraid.  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    The pup crawls in my lap. It took some milk, but not a lot. And it acts as though it has no bones.


    Why did I rescue it?


    It is useless to me. Everything must justify its own existence to the gram. Nothing is brought to space without purpose. No man or woman lives that cannot contribute some vital function now or in the future.


    But this is a burden; it weighs on my arm as I run. It makes me vulnerable when I leave it. It is helpless.


    Perhaps is why I save it. Because it is helpless. Because it has no one and nothing because if I leave it, it will die. It needs me.


    And yet, I cannot give it what it needs or comfort its grief.


    But it is warm.


    So I draw it to my chest and feel its softness against me. It smells of warmth and innocence. It is a life, that I hold in my hands with no ill intent. And that is more remarkable than fire.


    It is the first time on this planet that I have not been running from death. At last, I have a moment to think.


    I close my eyes and enter the mindspace.


    My consciousness steps into a black hallway without any bounds, except a default invisible plane to to stand on.


    With this simple step, my chances of survival increase by a factor of ten.


    Some simple data points enter my mind.


    I have been on this planet for 15 hours and 39 minutes. I have covered 8.35 miles. Slow going in the dark.


    I concentrate and form an image of myself. The mundane mind is not capable of any great power of visualization. Images are indistinct as best, and only a part of it can be held in the mind¡¯s eye at one time. Which is how I know that I do not possess a mundane mind.


    The image is nothing short of astonishing.


    What did I do to get top-tier mental augments?


    This is the first glimpse of myself and yet I do not doubt its accurate.


    In the mindspace, the information comes to me as I will it. Six-foot-two, a height that indicates rank and status. 17 years of age ¡ª at least, in biological terms. I am lithe, with definition if not mass, which is to be expected from stasis. Even so, my frame is broad and strong ¡ª a good foundation for future strength.


    My skin tends gold. My face is a face in which you might see what you want. Like most of my kind, we are a mixture of lineages. My hair is straight, medium-dark, and in-between red, brown, and blond. I frown and so does the avatar. It is an unfortunate face. A few good fights could fix that. The mouth is made to smirk, the eyes to burn.


    Picking fights won¡¯t be a problem.


    The avatar is a basic test of the mental upgrades. The mindspace is a tool that can be customized as the user requires, to be useful in any circumstance.


    I do not need to create a clock. It is a single data point that I know at all times. But I enable a simple alarm and countdown timer.


    I create some simple notification systems, sweat combat overlays, enable threat assessments.


    Creating the map is not as simple. A map is a complex object of many parts and behaviors. Once I create it, I will have this information available to me at any time, without having to access the mindspace.


    Thankfully the mindscape has preprogrammed options for many common functions, and I merely have to tweak the map to my liking.


    The map is no mere map, it is a realistic rendering based on information gathered by my senses. And yet, I would never have thought that I had seen so much. As a single person, I am limited in focus. But the mind, and its augments, can process far more information than the narrow spotlight of my focus. It processes this input and applies algorithms to render detailed models and accurate approximations. I cannot see in the dark, and yet my eyes receive information even from what it cannot interpret, which can be rendered by the augments.


    In the mindscape, I can return to the forest ¡ª I can relive, everything I have experienced up to this point.


    And I want nothing more than to replay the entire sequence. This is the danger of too much information ¡ª you can get lost in it. To live in the mindspace is to neglect the world. It is time sink that I can¡¯t afford right now.


    I search my mindscape for anything else of interest. I will need to explore and modify it further.


    Two objects that hover in the mindspace. They coalesce like the sphere over the flesh-scorpion¡¯s body.


    An object that presents itself in the mindscape is something that has been put there by the unconscious mind for the attention of the conscious mind; these items can be unpredictable ¡ª but that is because I had no presets for these circumstances.


    One sphere is white, the other red.


    I approach the the red sphere.


    The moment my fingertip grazes the surface it bursts like a bubble filled with blood.


    The blood falls to the floor, splashing over my feet and legs. I step away, slipping in red liquid.


    It spreads over the zero-friction environment of the mindscape.


    But the blood hasn¡¯t finished ¡ª it isn¡¯t blood at all but an unconscious mental construct. It isn¡¯t content to splash over me, it rushes up and over my legs, my groin, my chest, my eyes until all I see is red.


    With a thought, I eject my consciousness from my avatar, which is covered in slick red.


    My mind reels in terror. I feel my racing heart as a phsychic force that fills the mindspace that beats my consciousness like a bass drum.


    The blood recedes from the avatar. The baptism was perhaps  a symbolic act.


    Something has sprouted from the ground. It is more than a symbol ¡ª it is an invasion in the private mindspace.


    It sinks into the ground leaving behind a lattice of colonising tendrils that IU know cannnot be removed. But I tear at them anyway.


    A limp root sprouts at the center, a twisted growth of bloody meat ¡ª like something that wants to be a plant but doesn¡¯t know how.


    Knowing does not work the same way in the mindspace. Anything that happens here happen in my mental domain.


    So I know that the blood orb is related to the feeling I get when blood is spilled around me. The blood generates blood energy. The orb represents a data point. Blood energy level. And this parasitic invader is the embodiment of this blood energy.


    And it is going somewhere and doing something.


    The fact that I do not know what is happening in my own mindspace is the first thing that sets my mind on fire. The spheres are unusual manifestations, but not unreasonable. But the blood root, is something, that is not under my control. Yet is takes root in the space where I am most vulnerable ¡ª in my own mind.


    The whole concept of the mindscape is to control the mind¡¯s malleability and rein its dormant capabilities.


    This means it is something so deep in my nature that I cannot remove it.


    Or ¡ª and the alternative is even more troubling ¡ª something from outside my own mind has taken root within the mindscape, the place where I should have complete control.


    Things may easily influence and infiltrate the mind ¡ª a hammer, for instance.


    But the mindspace is an architecture written in the language of the brain. To introduce disorder is simple, but to grow a tree in the middle of it, is something totally different ¡ª it implies a level of unheard of sophistication.


    But the root might not be the only invader in my mind.


    I approach the white sphere and reach my hand out to it.


    I jerk back as a form explodes from the sphere in a whirl of whipping motion.


    It is a confusion of ripping parts, claws, and fangs that echoes my own turmoil.


    I instinctively look at my hand but remember I am not yet embodied in the mindscape.


    Which a quick adjustment, I summon my avatar and examine the wound on my hand. I know what the fury of rending parts represents: it is the wraith.


    The model must be inaccurate. Unconscious representations tend towards the symbolic. They are like a dream where you know the place represented, even though it looks nothing like the real location.


    The mindspace brings the mind¡¯s unconscious capabilities under the control of the conscious mind. This is possible only when the conscious mind enters the unconscious through the the mindspace architecture ¡ªa engineered structure in the brain. The unconscious mind has the capacity to contain the conscious mind but the stream of consciousness is shallow, and cannot contain the deep unconsious mind.


    Distortions occurr when the conscious mind is overstimulated but, for example, strong emotion. Which is why mental augments are often complimented by emotional quotients.


    The mindscape is accurate in the case of a map where it renders unconscious information. Mental augments cannot easily interfere with your conscious experience in the moment. When this happens, what you see through the eye can be distorted by your mental state, which distorts the information supplied to the unconscious. It is the reason the augments will not help me to see in the dark ¡ª because the mindscape cannot mix with the moment, it can merely collate what you have seen for later experience.


    The question, is what is he wraith doing here? Did it have such a great effect on me that it is buried in my psyche? What is the subconscious mind trying to tell me?


    It is best best not to think too hard about the subconscious mind. But it has unlocked a feeling ¡ª a thin thread that tugs at me. I know the wraith is out there, cutting, biting, killing. It is a bundle of scars and screams. And it calls to me.

 NINE — ANOTHER MAN’S SKIN

    SLATE


    Something hunts me in the waste.


    I should expect no different. In a fertile world, are virile creatures. The calories are rich, the competition fierce. To survive the predator and prey must be faster, stronger, more deadly.


    I need to reach the crash site. With it I may stand a chance. In the open, I come closer to death with every moment. Give me clothing and a good weapon and I have a chance ¡ª my species has a chance.


    Colonists will come ¡ª I sounded the beacon. I have to believe it. Rangers and soldiers and mechs. Scientists and terraforming engineers. Colonists.


    But I can¡¯t be sure.


    I can¡¯t be sure the beacon¡¯s fired. I need that ship; it may be the only means of ensuring the success of my mission. More than that, I need it not to fall into the wrong hands. It contains a wealth of technology.


    The wind lifts me and throws me as I run ¡ª I have that in my favor. I have fallen on the ice more than once but I fall forward, and roll, barely losing speed. I run with wild abandon, trusting my feet and the terrain will agree and not snap my ankle or tibia or impale me on a spike of ice, of which I have had enough close calls to be called lucky.


    It is not just the wind at my back. The fresh air, my lungs, this body. It is like I have been held back all my life and finally, I am unleashed. It is impossible to explain the feeling, but everything in this world is more real than anything I have known or experienced.


    Things here feel that they are what they were always meant to be.


    I am in the crater, running on hard ice and soft snow, along flat expanses and over sloping mounds. I have nothing in my knowledge banks that would make sense of the landscape. My best theory is that there is something below the ice that gives it its form. The center of the crater is huge and jagged like broken teeth.


    There is a strangeness about it that is unsettling.


    It might be the strange emptiness of a space crowded by thick forests on all sides. Or it might be the illusion created by the forest, which makes the massive basin seem small, though, really, it is the forest that is massive. I am far off, yet the forest seems mountainous on all sides. It is ever-present, like a wall nearby, and yet, not. I can scarcely believe how tall the trees must be. ¡®Big¡¯doesn¡¯t begin to describe it. Titanic. Gargantuan. Their size strains my inbuilt thesaurus. I must see it for myself up close.


    In the dark, I did not realize the sheer scale of the trees. It¡¯s possible that I didn¡¯t see these giants, as huge as they are. They are widely spaced, though they cover vast mileage with their branches. It is possible I never got close to their mountainous stumps.


    Are these what made the night so dark?


    It started as a feeling. The feeling of being watched. I do not rely on superstition but neither do I ignore it. It causes me to question whether I successfully activated the threat-detection. My hairs raise and stand on end before my vision can even flash red.


    I was wise to put the cub in a sling. I may need my hands soon. I still have a dangerous lack of offensive capability. Not everything can be beaten with a fist or poked with a curved tooth. The wraith, while not large, could do more damage to me than the flesh scorpion, which is why rescuing the cub was a dumb idea and very nearly an act of treason against my species.


    Even now, I can somehow feel the wraith, its fury, its terrible hunger, the constant pain of its existence.


    It is in the waste. I sense it''s cold. It seeks me. I feel its icon blinking in the map, though I did not set up the capability.


    I wear white fur on the outside. As camouflage. It is not warmer, but would I sweat otherwise. The skin is disgusting ¡ª grimy and wet. There was no tanning involved, just butchery.


    It is worse than nakedness.


    Shapes, streak in my periphery. A shadow blurs with the whipping wind and snow. I veer right and feel a rush that is out of sync with the wind ¡ª faster.


    I feel a sudden sharp pain in my leg.


    *First blood.*


    My lower legs are uncovered. The ape was stockier than I am. Its torso was long ¡ª no problem there. But its legs were short. I had to make concessions to wrap my feet with straps of leather and to make the sling, and the cinch around my waist. Still, there are holes in uncomfortable places. The freezing air steals in and around me.


    It is not a deep cut but that is missing the point.


    It was the test.


    Is it tasty? Is it strong? Is it dangerous?


    It might be that I got too close to one of the pack. A pack ¡ª that¡¯s my working theory.


    They have been shadowing me, gauging me. They will come closer and closer. Their attacks will be small at first. With each successful attack, they will grow bolder. They will bleed me if they can, weaken me, and then go in for the kill. My best hope would be to kill the first attacker, sudden and brutal, without stopping.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    But that opportunity has come and gone.


    I grunt.


    Another cut, deeper. Blood spurts onto the ice. I hear them, no longer silent. They titter and laugh, whooping like wild dogs ¡ª not that I have heard anything like it.


    Without looking down I know blood has left my body. I know it the same way I feel a rush of energy when I spill the blood of another. But losing blood is the opposite. It feels like hope trickling away. It feels like the promise of his world dripping onto the snow.


    But there is nothing I can do about it.


    Another flits past me. It is long and low and bounding. I do not see it lash out, but I feel the cut.


    Blood streams down my legs. It into the leather bindings and I leave red footprints in the snow ¡ª a trail of blood to follow. Many things like the smell of blood; many things smell it from far away.


    It was the smell of blood that brought them to me. A poorly cleaned skin, with the stink of meat still on it.


    My deeds follow me. I paint a target on my back.


    An unfortunate miscalculation. The ship is not far, I can feel it on my map. It is so close.


    The loss of blood drains my energy and my will. My feet are numb, my legs heavy, and the words swings.


    Still, I run onwards. The pain drives me onwards. But it does not matter unless I can somehow turn the situation to my advantage. If I do not change the paradigm, then I am running to my death.


    The ship is tantalizingly close. It is bait on a hook. This is what kills you ¡ª the in-between. The indecision. The hesitation. It is why I keep going ¡ª because it is so close. Just a little further. Just a few more steps.


    If only I could make my legs work.


    I grunt in pain.


    A bold hit, deep.


    I catch another glimpse. Hairless, and pale, the bound of powerful hind legs, low to the ground.


    They whoop their delight, louder. They sense my weakness.


    Soon.


    Soon they will close.


    I am loping now, like a wounded animal. I am that. I become what hunts me, brought low to their level. The trail of blood is one continuous line, no longer broken.


    I see my story end here.


    The cub on my back will die, alone on the ice, just minutes from shelter.


    Water. I never see water. Flowing water. I never see a lake. I die on the ice. There are a billion ice planets that I could choose to die on. But I come to the most fertile world ever detected and die mere miles from water.


    Fresh flowing water. More than a man could ever drink.


    They are on my heels now. They are no longer trying. They celebrate their victory over me. They clamber over one another And there is a frag-ton of them. Over fifty buzzing red dots swarm my map.


    They make their move. One runs between my legs. Another rams my side. One is on my back, digging long teeth into me, raking me with its powerful hind quarters. Then another, and another.


    But I run onwards like a mech into battle. I will not make it easy for them.


    They are alive, so they have never met a Solarin. They will meet one today.


    Their titillating is loud in my ears. Their screams are raw and lusting.


    I must be carrying half a dozen paces before they bear me to the ground. Still, I roll on the ice. I roll into a sea of bodies and come to my feet. They dive on me at once, I must have a dozen on me when they bring me down. And more pile on to keep me there.


    Which is exactly where I want them.


    I pull my legs underneath myself. I hunch and pull another man¡¯s face over my own and draw the flesh scorpion¡¯s stinger.


    Frag. I thought things would never stop running. I kill the ones at the bottom first. The untanned hide is uncomfortable but tough. When an animal''s teeth sink into it, they broadcast the position of the skull. I grab their mouths with the gauntlet and shove the stinger through their tiny brains ¡ª instant kill.


    I twist and repeat. I built a shield of corpses and strike through my shield wall.


    Their blood is weak and dirty; it burns like cheap alcohol.


    There was no fortress, no hole in the ground to hide in.


    I have made my own, from stones of living and now dead flesh.


    The animals are in such a frenzy they hardly realise when they die. Why would they? They do not think that they are scrambling on a mound of their dead. They do not expect a fist to stab between corpses, stabbing their small bodies.


    Their group feeding behavior takes over ¡ª a literal frenzy.


    It is this behavior that I invoke. It overtakes them. The group overcomes the individual ¡ª a mass psychosis. The behavior triggers under special circumstances. In a locust, the swarm is triggered by the stroking of their legs which occurs naturally when a large number are close together. Something similar is at work here.


    In frenzied behavior, animals are insensitive to pain. The animal in a feeding frenzy is not prepared for a direct attack from within the food source.


    I think¡­I think they are eating their dead and thinking it is me.


    So the experiments begin. I don¡¯t go for the safe kill. I rip open jugulars. I open bellies so their entrails spill out. I snap necks with my hands and tear the heads clean off.


    I think¡­I think it is a combination of blood and sheer brutality ¡ª in other words, points for style.


    That is not all the information the experiments yield. The creatures are rabbits.


    It wasn¡¯t obvious at first, without the ears. But a rabbit doesn¡¯t need long ears if it''s a predator. The scoring cuts from sharp bones on their hind legs. It might even be metal that somehow protrudes from their bones ¡ª that, or the actual bones are metal.


    On a planet with fierce predators, prey are put under pressure to adapt. In a planet of fast prey, predators are forced to adapt. Everything here is faster and stronger.


    Ecosystems are generally underachievers ¡ª they find a lazy, economical balance.


    I do not think that that is what has happened in this world. The bare minimum, here, is far greater than the maximum anywhere else.


    By the end, I just stand and stick the last of them like a meat skewer. They are so full on their flesh that they lie with motionless with bloated stomachs.


    Everything is a tool. Everything can be used, must be used. Even a man¡¯s skin.


    It was really not such a bad decision in the end.


    I take the hood from my head.


    The vision from behind the ape''s empty eyeholes is not good.


    I take a deep breath of the piercing fresh air.


    How rude of me.


    I turn my attention to my guest.


    A massive white tiger stands in front of me on a mound of ice ¡ª though tiger is just the closest earth-species to it.


    Its face is long, and like a pit-bull and its long ears taper backward. On its neck and upper back is a mane of sleek white.


    It¡¯s forlimbs are thicker than my thigh, It¡¯s paws could take my head with a swipe.


    Yet it stands, with blazing white eyes, unmoving.


    Something about the eyes ¡ª ah, yes, they are not slit like cat¡¯s eyes on earth, making it seem strangely intelligent, like a human.


    Perhaps that is why it didn¡¯t fall for the ruse. A pity, the richness of its blood would be a prize.


    We look at one another for a long while, before I bend down and pick up a naked earless rabbit, throwing it at the tiger¡¯s feet. It studies me, without taking the bait.


    I turn my back to the tiger and limp the final steps to my destination.


    In the battle of survival, predator and prey are relative terms.

 TEN - PRISONER ALPHA AND WEAPON OMEGA

    NOTHING


    Beyond the clutches of stunted bodies, hanging like crippled goblins or imps, the great titan doors are protected by an atomization field. The air vibrates as a courtesy, preventing the careless from having their limbs divided into their most basic component particles and redistributed to waste dimensions. The thermodynamic order, as every solarin knows, is from something, nothing.


    Nothing had never seen the vault doors move so quickly, as they did before the burning Eye and the Scribe. Nothing had not known they were capable of such agility ¡ª churning magnetic gears, and rolling into storage dimensions.


    ¡°My hearts. You do not keep him with the others?¡± The Scribe strokes his chest tenderly. ¡°Such cruelty!¡±


    Nothing struggled to conceal the sharp intake of breath.


    Bands of light slammed their circuits with cracks that echo through the towering chamber. Stasis pods crawl over the walls in slowly moving magnetic channels, like the eggs of some giant insect, except that these eggs will never hatch.


    Nothing had never seen the full height and breadth of the holding facility.


    One light was as much as a nothing deserved, and it had illuminated only his steps, and barely.


    *How could their be so many?*


    Nothing bites down on its tongue. An unguarded thought ¡ª and worse, questions. Thinking in questions is worse than thinking in reasons, for questions are the source of reasons. A nothing does not have questions ¡ª a nothing is not permitted to know what it does not know.


    ¡°Isn¡¯t this something, my sweet!¡± The Scribe clapped wobbling arms together.


    Shallow breaths, shallow thoughts. The nothing repeats the mantra that is learned at its hatching.


    ¡°Come, come.¡± A bony knuckle scrapes the nothing¡¯s ribs. ¡°Don¡¯t hide it, you fiend.¡±


    ¡°Forgiveness, Lord.¡± Nothing bows, extending a hand. ¡°I have hidden it. And at your command, it appears.¡±


    A single chamber hangs at the end of the walkway, unmoving.


    ¡°That!¡± A guffaw escapes the Scribe. ¡°Hasn¡¯t it been here all along?


    Nothing¡¯s eyes twitch painfully. ¡°As you say, Lord. It¡­hasn¡¯t been here all along.¡±


    ¡°Well, my sweet nothing learns,¡± The Scribe considers as the ambulator glides onwards. ¡°I think you finally see things clearly, my sweet boy.¡±


    Nothing stops. Its jaw tightens and neck strains against the tremor in its body.


    Boy. Boy is worse than child. Boy is something else, something more. No nothing would let the insult go without an answer ¡ª at least, that is how it would be, if a nothing spoke to another nothing.


    ¡°Which one is in there?¡± The Scribe¡¯s voice trails. ¡°Is it the weapon, Omega? Or the prisoner, Alpha?¡±


    The Scribe¡¯s laughter booms through the open space, though if there is a joke, the nothing does not see it.


    ¡°It is, as you say, Lord, Omega.¡± The nothing jogs to catch up. ¡°Or, if my Lord prefers, it is Alpha. With your permission¡­?¡±


    ¡°Yes, yes. Have a reason. Have ten.¡± Long fingers wave. ¡°You can be so traditional sometimes.¡±


    ¡°They are kept apart, my Lord, with seven dimensions of separation.¡± Nothing observes the Scribe. ¡°The dimensions¡­¡±


    ¡°Yes. Yes. They change constantly. A prime dimensional lock.¡± The Scribe shifts in the ambulator, narrowing the nothing¡¯s path. ¡°But seven? Seven shifting dimensions?¡±


    ¡°As my Lord knows.¡± Nothing sidles along the edge, glancing nervously downwards. ¡°The three-dimensional lock was thought to be excessive ¡ª though not you, my Lord.¡±


    ¡°Yet it was broken.¡± The Scribe sighed.


    ¡°As you command, My Lord.¡±


    ***


    Prisoner Alpha turns slowly upwards ¡ª on a grav table.


    The eyes are wild with fury.


    It shouts into the muzzle, squirms in its restraints. Small movements are the only movements available to it.


    Electricity shoots through its body, through the network of living needles burrowing into its nerve centers. Triggered by movement, or mental quotients.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    Heavy titan shackles cover its wrists, locking fingers in place. ankles and feet are similarly locked and fused to the table.


    ¡°Chains? Barbarous!¡± A long finger traces the steel. ¡°When every other person is linked?


    The Scribe pouts. ¡°She has not even the diversion of otherworlds? Not even the lowest? Imprisoned in this cruel reality. Can anything live like this, unplugged?¡±


    She. The nothing frowns, ¡°The nothings above this nothing, do not fully understand how its mind works, and whether it is compatible with our links. They would know its secrets, without damaging the specimen.¡±


    The body on the table arches. A wave of electricity follows a spasm of muzzled emotion.


    ¡°And how do they intend to discover her workings?¡± The scribe tested.


    The nothing swallowed. ¡°Pain, Lord. Pain.¡±


    ¡°And this approach has yielded results?¡± The scribe put a hand near the top of the floating table, in the aura of frizzed hair.


    ¡°Not as yet, Lord.¡± The words came slowly as Nothing puzzled over them. ¡°Though they claim it is amusing.¡±


    Nothing¡¯s hand jerks, almost extending forwards. The Scribe¡¯s long fingers stroke the side of the specimen¡¯s face, somehow tolerating its smoothness.


    ¡°What have they done to you?¡± The Scribe does not look at the object of his concern, feeling the face blindly.


    ¡°They have investigates her¡­physiology.¡± The scribe shifts uncomfortably, working its feet into a spot on the ground. ¡°They, eh, have run their scans and built their models to help their understanding.¡±


    ¡°Is it so different?¡± The Scribe¡¯s face pursed in thought.


    ¡°The alienists ¡ª they set seem to think so. There are whole areas of the brain, they cannot understand or provoke.¡±


    ¡°Tusk, tusk.¡± The Scribe tutted. ¡°They have theories, surely?¡±


    ¡°This nothing does not understand theories. Yet they speak about dimensional biology.¡± The nothing thought he kept the interest from his tone.


    The Scribe swept his gaze across the room. ¡°Of course, of course. Fascinating.¡± The Scribe¡¯s voice, for once sounded with matching emotions. ¡°She is most fascinating, don¡¯t you agree?¡±


    Nothing¡¯s words cut off in its throat.


    Nothings were not curious.


    ¡°And most beautiful, don¡¯t you think?¡± The Scribe¡¯s hand rested over the specimen¡¯s face, caressing it lazily.


    ¡°This nothing thinks nothing.¡± There it was again. The scribe worked at the spot of dirt with his feet. ¡°And knows nothing, my Lord.¡±


    ¡°Oh, dear!¡± The Scribe reverted to exaggerated tones. ¡°You don¡¯t think she¡¯s beautiful?¡± His tongue flicked his lips. ¡°Answer me honestly. I command it of you.¡±


    ¡°Yes, Lord.¡± Said Nothing.


    ¡°You do think she¡¯s beautiful!¡± Asked the Scribe.


    ¡°No Lord.¡± Said nothing.


    ¡°But you just said she was?¡± Said the Scribe.


    ¡°Yes, Lord.¡± Nothing sank into the trap he felt closing around him. He was tired of the footwork, the sparring.


    ¡°Look at her, Nothing. How can you answer my question if you do not look any her?¡± The Scribe raised the table, and the specimen bucked against its restraints. Tears dripped from the muzzle.


    ¡°Yes, Lord.¡± The nothing raised its unfocused gaze. A hand turned the specimen¡¯s head with handfuls of frayed hair. Nothing could not bear the specimen¡¯s blazing eyes.


    ¡°See her smooth skin. Her round eyes.¡± The Scribe peeled the eyes open, though the Nothing wished the Scribe would pull them out so that he would never have to see them again. ¡°Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?¡±


    ¡°No Lord ¡ª I mean¡­¡± The Scribe jerked away.


    ¡°So you do think she¡¯s beautiful! Marvelous!¡±


    ¡°No!¡± Nothing blurted. His voice shook along with his body. ¡°I mean, no, my Lord. My apologies, Lord. This nothing¡¯s mind is whatever you think she is.¡±


    ¡°She!¡± The Scribe¡¯s vision snaps into the mundane world. His hand snaps shut over the specimen, making its eyes bulge and water. ¡°Who said she was a she? did I say that?¡±


    ¡°My mistake Lord.¡± Nothing became stuck in a repetitive bow. ¡°I must have heard it from the nothings. You did not say it, Lord, if you do not wish it, Lord.¡±


    The Scribe¡¯s head wavers.


    ¡°Come now. Look again.¡± The Scribe spoke faster now. Long fingers peeled back the specimen¡¯s eyelids. ¡°Have you ever seen eyes this color? Do you like this color?¡±


    ¡°No Lord.¡± Nothing said firmly.


    ¡°No?¡± The voice cracked like a whip. ¡°You would contradict me?¡± A free hand probed into soft flesh. ¡°You make this heart quite angry. I am never angry. But my first can be quite¡­disconsolate when it senses rebellious children.¡±


    ¡°Look!¡± The scribe commanded.


    Still another hand closes over the Nothing¡¯s head pulling back its eyes until peeled back eyes matched peeled back eyes, but it was not eyes he was to look at. ¡°Do you like the honey of her hair?¡±


    ¡°Honey, Lord?¡± Said Nothing.


    The scribe throws up an arm. ¡°Like oil, but yellow and clean.¡±


    ¡°Yes, Lord.¡± Said nothing.


    ¡°So you like it?¡± Asked the Scribe.


    ¡°No,  Lord.¡± Said Nothing.


    ¡°I say! I am growing tired! Did you not receive enough punishment before?" Asked the Scribe.


    ¡°No Lord ¡ª I mean¡­nothing means¡­¡± Nothing struck his head hard with a fist, pain shooting through his face.


    The Scribe sighed heavily. ¡°You don¡¯t find her beautiful, do you?"


    ¡°No Lord.¡± Said Nothing.


    ¡°Can nothings not like something?¡± Asked the Scribe.


    ¡°No, Lord.¡± Said Nothing.


    ¡°Well.¡± Said the Scribe. ¡°I tell you she is beautiful. So look at her.¡±


    The Scribe looked up, resigned to his fate ¡ª whatever it might be. ¡°As you command, Lord, I think.¡±


    ¡°Do you want to see what is under her mask? Don¡¯t ¡ª ¡° The SCribe gritted his teeth. ¡°Don¡¯t look away. I warn you.¡±


    ¡°If my Lord, wills it, then I do.¡± Nothing said. The specimen looked at him. But the Nothing did not have the will to interpret the stare or to avoid it.


    ¡°Well, Well. You seem to like her after all.¡± The Scribe slapped the table with a laugh. ¡°Shall I play Cupid for my Cupid?¡±


    ¡°And what do you think of these ears? Have you ever seen anything like it?¡± The Scribe asked.


    Nothing did not reply. Or maybe he did. Or someone else did. He was not quite sure.


    ¡°What do the alienists say?¡± The Scribe. ¡°¡­blasphemies, is it? Tell me of their blasphemies, I command you.¡±


    ¡°It was not made. They say, it just grew this way, on its own. Something called, natural.¡±


    ¡°Hmmm¡­¡± The Scribe hummed. ¡°What about her body? Do you like it?¡±


    ¡°If my Lord wills it.¡±


    ¡°Good, Good. There¡¯s a good nothing.¡± The hand moved to pat the nothing¡¯s face and it recalled that it had one. ¡°Would you like to see what is under her clothes?¡±


    The spidery hand crept to the fat deposits on the specimen¡¯s chest. ¡°Would you like to see her body?¡±


    ¡°You would?¡±


    The Nothing¡¯s slack jaw managed a single dry word. ¡°No.¡±


    ¡°You really mean that, don¡¯t you?¡± The Scribe¡¯s processors were light years beyond the nothing¡¯s basic hardware, yet for some reretso he did not understand this simple fact. ¡°It is well. It is well. I have distressed you. You are a good nothing, truly.¡±


    ¡°There was a time, nothing.¡± Continued the Scribe. ¡°When men found such things beautiful. They might have fought a war over one such as this. Do you believe it?¡±


    ¡°If my Lord says I do, then I believe it.¡± The nothing looked up. ¡°But pardon, Lord, I do not know all your words.¡±


    ¡°What word?¡± Asked the Scribe.


    ¡°Men, Lord.¡± Said Nothing.

 TEN - A BLIND WOLF

    SLATE


    My first contact with water is not what I expect.


    I might forget in the barren basin, that I stand on vast quantities of live-giving water. But here, up to my arms in sloshing liquid ice, it is impossible to forget ¡ª and it doesn¡¯t feel live-giving. No mods can record the feeling of wet feet, squelching in clammy leather bindings that serve as footwear, or the numb feeling that creeps over my limbs.


    I flinch from the burning ship. Its heat is still untamed by the sub-zero conditions. Yet it is not the heat of the ship that stings. Rather it is the blackened tips of frostbitten fingers against the hot surface.


    The entrance to the ship is not obvious from a distance or even from up close. The ship is alien in design, even to me. The thought would be staggering were I not floating, the numb ache of cold penetrating deeper into me with each second.


    What is the probability of another alien ship appearing precisely where I have parked my own?


    The vessel is curved edges and loops without angle or seam or any indication of divisions or parts that the eye can perceive or frostbitten fingers can feel. I see no obvious weapons or thrusters, though these may be under the surface. My gauntleted hand is protected from the cold and somehow retains sensitivity, through the surface of the artifact. Its touch is all I have to go by.


    The build is unlike anything I have seen and brings to mind the body plan of the flesh-scorpion ¡ª but only for its alien symmetry. It resembles more the head of a bull, with horns, or wings, that curve over the head or body of the ship. Nose-to-nose, the horns of the bull rear up, as though to smash any who would attempt entry.


    It should be broken open and strewn across the landscape like the raining debris of a space battle. Here and there, torn metal, like an animal¡¯s claws ¡ª but intact. Instead, it stands proud and intact and, for the moment, impenetrable and I swim its periphery, in search of some handhold or pressure release.


    I almost swallow a mouthful of the icy liquid as I hear and feel a shift underwater. You can drink water I know. I¡¯m just not sure about this water. After all, nothing grows in the ice desert of the basin.


    Pulsing light thrums in the water ¡ª turning ice blue into a deep azure. I deep vibration penetrates my bones, alleviating some of the cold and a tunnel opens in the ship''s side, partially submerged by water. Layers of field tech protect the ship from environs, leaving the pond suspended state that confuses even the delimited mind of a solarin.


    I grab the bundle from the artificial shore. The body of the cub flops from the pouch, its tangled black hair matted with sweat ¡ª probably my own and blood ¡ª from the carnivorous Lagomorphs ¡ª the killer pack-rabbits, whose piled body heat provided brief insulation from the cold.


    Entry into the portal, which is not fully in or out of the water, is simple ¡ª simple, apart from the millions of water molecules and foreign particulates that are expelled by the environmental fields. Simple except for the perfunctory scans that have neutralized any bacteria that I have metabolized.


    I lie on in the access tunnel as the tunnel seals behind me. A fact I note by the breath of ice ¡ª not wind exactly ¡ª that is not filtered by the ship.


    The black flooring is has a pleasant warmth. I press my face irrationally into the soft black layer, wincing at the pain in my nose and ears.


    Frag. It has not even been a full day in this world. A full night, half a day running. 30 hours on the overlay, out of an estimated thirty-six-hour day.


    To be out of the wind and ice. To be out of the wild world with its sharp teeth ever-present death. To have made it, through stinking flesh scorpions, and murderous apes, and packs of razor rabbits. To be finally out of all that ¡ª to be finally safe, to have a chance.


    Safe. I laugh ¡ª or cough. One of the two.


    I put one arm over another ¡ª it is permitted to dream, after all ¡ª and haul my ass down the tunnel and find myself in the place where I started. I am dizzy as I stand, not just from the sensation of coming full circle.


    The cabin is clay and smart tech. The frozen ripples where the walls have absorbed competing stressors will take time to renew their form. Here and there, a hanging access panel and naked wires, spoil the veneer of technology, like the crude viscera of a sleek animal.


    But though the ability to self-repair is one criterion for life, the clay is not alive.


    The room is dead and empty. The absence of the rendering sphere, usually full of light and motion, leaves the cabin hollow and vast. The stasis chamber, another missing person, leaves a streak across the ground and I trace its trajectory to the tunnel I just crawled from, which answers one question.


    The chamber must have been ejected as a safety measure, except for the fact that the ship was unharmed, while I faced nothing but danger after danger, which makes it as likely that the ship, or something on it, though I was the danger.


    ¡°Computer,¡± I speak tentatively into the silence, my voice bending against the soft walls. I do not expect an answer.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    The ship''s systems seem to be one notable casualty of reentry and likely will need manual input to restart.


    I lay the small black animal on the cushioned omnichair and stare at it, my mind giving way. The black bundle manages a slow turn onto its back and a twitch of one empty eye. A tired paw folds inwards. Its abdomen moves slowly like a deflating balloon. Its heartbeat, faint and irregular.


    What good am I to a living creature?


    I am doing everything wrong. Every effort to keep it alive, and it only creeps closer to death.


    Perhaps, while I fear this world infecting me, instead I carry some disease that is incompatible with its fragile biology.


    It has fed on milk and blood from its world.


    It receives warmth from my body.


    What does it still need?


    I suspect that the answer would be obvious to any earth human throughout the history of our abandoned planet.


    Water. Food. Warmth. Rest. Perhaps that is it. Yet it does not sleep.


    I do a medical examination. There is some discharge in the eye sockets but nothing that indicates infection.


    With the obvious answers, I resort to the more questionable claims of the mods.


    A stupid idea but I admit I am¡­desperate.


    It needs to hear my voice. But what do I say? What does one say to a dog? I do not know what to say and pause a long moment in choosing the words like a magic spell that will revive the pup.


    What if¡­what if it is sad?


    One thing at a time.


    It¡¯s not the words stupid, It¡¯s the tone, the concern, the feeling behind them. The reverberation of your chest, the vibrations through its tiny body.


    You¡¯ll be surprised by the things that don¡¯t make it into training manuals. The things we¡¯ve forgotten, disregarded by the minds that scraped our collected knowledge from a great web of information that once blanketed the globe. The things that people think are obvious are the very things that fall through the cracks of our imperfect memories.


    What could an animal need more than food and warmth? What would its mother do?


    I briefly consider grooming as a solution but even the mods do not recommend licking, though it is a commonly described behavior.


    I will not let it die. That would be a failure.


    I have a mission, yes, and can this small life form not be a part of it? It could be a small mission, one that I give myself.


    What does one say to a wolf pup?


    In the end, I consult the limited repertoire of words that have been spoken to me, since my arrival.


    ¡°Stand. Fight. Live.¡±


    A small black ear flicks, which I take as encouragement.


    It¡¯s stupid -- talking out loud like it understands, and my words are filled with the stumbling cadence of felt stupidity and borderline hypothermia. ¡°Come on you fur-thing. Stand, fight, live. don¡¯t give up on me.¡±


    I carry him around the ship, keeping a small but steady stream, which stumbles on a few rocky patches. Yet, boldly trickles on as I poke my head into doorways.


    Jackpot.


    A storage room. I grab an MRE in a shaking hand and rip it with my teeth.


    Cranberry Mealworm. The prolonged choking reaction is the most vigorous reaction I have seen from the pup, yet I decide that it is ultimately a failure. Some consultation, however, causes me to exchange the item for a sachet labeled Gel of Turkey.


    I offer it to the cub, who sniffs distrustfully, before attempting a weak lick.


    ¡°Eat.¡± I compose this word of encouragement as I root around the storeroom, tearing out compartments, and turning over...


    Frag me.


    Fresh, white T-shirts ¡ª and fur-lined jackets, perfect for the cold.


    And¡­the breath reverses in my throat ¡ª I¡¯ve never been so pleased to see pristine glowing white underwear.


    I reach to the clean white undergarments...and stop.


    I am filthy. I have not cleaned once, not even partially. I could not afford to wash away the nano-slurry which probably saved my life more than once. I don¡¯t even touch the precious white garments, afraid to foul them.


    I have just had the most insubordinate idea. High-end ship like this ¡ª there¡¯s got to be.


    So I am out of the storeroom jostling a handful of fur. ¡°I know. I know what will cheer you up.¡±


    I start to incorporate the vocal patterns that were once universal to humans. The short high tone and sloping low that was once called baby-talk. A baby is like a pup but human. ¡°Good wolf. G-Good wolf?¡±


    I try to repeat a variation that does not make the wolf shrink back or show other visible signs of displeasure.


    It is tricky to get the hang of.


    The other door off the cockpit leads to living quarters and that¡¯s where I find what I¡¯m looking for.


    A cubicle of glass. I don¡¯t know how to use it but I¡¯m pretty sure, I need to get inside.


    I look at the puppy whose say face still manages a doubtful cast. ¡°I won¡¯t lie, wolf. This is going to be a shock.¡±


    The cub has taken some licks of food but not much. I will try anything


    The door closes.


    There is a visual cue, light flashing three times, and jets of hot water, fall from above, and from the sides. I take mouthfuls of it involuntarily. This lasts until I take a mouthful of soapy water, the cleaning cycle. The shower senses dirt and sprays jets of water where it is needed. In my case, they are needed everywhere, and the shower is thorough.


    Frag me. It is the most wonderful thing I have ever felt. Maybe not better than fire, but also, maybe.


    The smell of wet wolf and the feel of wet fur are somewhat less enjoyable.


    Until the water stops and the jets of warm air fill the cubicle from all directions, drying every part of me at once.


    Dead gods. Could it be better than fire? It would be a close call and a subject that would need a lot of research.


    The jets of air would stop sooner if not for the pup. It directs jets of air at it sensing the moisture in its fur.


    A shower is in unimaginable extravagance in space, at least, to a soldier used to scouring chemical baths off the barracks.


    I narrate to the wolf cub. ¡°Thirty seconds of falling water ¡ª You don¡¯t know how fortunate you are.¡±


    True enough.


    ¡°But I¡¯m not in space. I¡¯m on land and there¡¯s water here, in this land of the wolf. Lots of it.¡± And that¡¯s another thing I can¡¯t wrap my head around, like giant trees, or giant wolves. I scratch his soft belly. I think I¡¯m starting to get the hang of¡­talking. I no longer feel awkward, in part due to the wolf¡¯s small reactions.


    Hard to believe that the pup will one day be a great big wolf as big as a horse. ¡°How big is a horse, here, do you think?¡±


    Playing with its paws makes me feel ridiculous again.


    But as long as we¡¯re enjoying it I run through the shower another three or seven more times.


    That. That is what does the trick. I laugh. Talking. Talking was never the answer. It never worked. I might as well have said that other word, for which the mods gave no intelligible definition, love.


    And here I thought a problem could be solved by words. How foolish.


    A wolf is a wild thing.


    It is born to run and feel the wind in its now more voloumous hair. It can feel the water and wind on its skin, and that must be something like seeing.


    I laugh long and loud and cold, to cover the ache that is not of the cold, because a blind wolf will never run.

 ELEVEN — THE IT

    SLATE


    ¡°Computer?¡±


    The word dies on my lips. I stop dead.


    The wolf pauses, listening for a sound. Pawing the ground and sniffing.


    I stop cold in the doorway. One hand on the seal keeps my tired legs from folding.


    The skinsuit I wore has stood up.


    It stands in the center of the cabin, where I left it, but it has taken shape and it moves.


    My heart pounds ¡ª It comes to seeking its revenge.


    No, this is not dead skin and neither is it the ape-man¡¯s relatives but I am no less on edge, for it is no less startling than entering a room and finding an animal skin come to life.


    My mind screams like a skiff in afterburn. Everything has changed in an instant and my fists clench. I hold onto the pain of cold-burned hands, contorted in vicelike readiness.


    It is deep and hooded, covered in grey skin and fur. Not the matted skin I produced ¡ª Rather, the lush furs look like thy belong t a living creature, a possibility I cannot discount. The figure faces away from me, motionless.


    It heard me alright. But it gives me its back ¡ª a staggeringly unwise choice. My weight is on the balls of my feet. Before me is an opponent with their back turned. Behind me is cover, and probably a weapon, if I can find it.


    A sound struggles out from the creature like an animal has limped from its jaws.


    It is slow and halting and full of cruel imitation. The sound curves like a vicious blade with hooks and barbs, and the sound drags across the folds of my brain matter, leaving their indelible mark.


    It says, ¡°Com-pu-ter.¡±


    The word stops me, sakes me, almost brings me to my knees. Vocal mimicry is a common strategy in nature but seldom is it used as an attack.


    But I should not be surprised. Words are weapons. Everything is a weapon to the one who knows how to use it.


    It turns its cowled head, but not its body, which remains facing away. I can just make out a pale shape within. It drinks in my form with a lingering stare and I become conscious of my lack of bodily protection or even basic covering.


    ¡°Computer?¡± It repeats. The mimicry is better now, even the intonation. It sounds like me ¡ª not just the word, the intonations, the tone of voice. But the sound is tortured through inhuman apparatus. If a blender and a computer could have a conversation, this is how it would sound.


    Something is off; at least, something else ¡ª mimics recreate sound. It bounces in my processing unit, before presenting itself. A small thing, that itches with implication ¡ª mimics do not sound words into syllables.


    Breaking a word into syllables suggests an understanding of words and perhaps some language fluency, which is a marker for intelligent species.


    The thought chills me. I feel the cold again. The cold that seeps into my core ¡ª burning cold, and numb pain.


    Words are weapons and weapons can kill, even words, to the one who knows how to use them.


    ¡°Computer.¡± It says finally, the imitation is good enough now for the blind wolf.


    ¡°No.¡± I bark loud enough that the pup seizes mid-motion and rolls into the center of the room. It scrambles away from unseen danger in an unknown direction, and succeeds only in violent motion, without linear progress.


    The figure turns its full body to me. It looks at the wolf sprawled on the ground and leans to peer at the wolf pup from within the deep hood.


    The wolf squirms under the glare and scampers back. Yes, the blind wolf feels the invisible gaze. It senses the threat ¡ª and clambers to the threat that it is more familiar with.


    It speaks slowly and deliberately. The alien mouth wraps unnaturally around the word. In the shadow, I perceive the hint or lateral movement, like a wave where a mouth should be.


    It says ¡°No.¡±


    Everything has changed.


    My word returns to me softer, but with the same clipped intonation as I gave it.


    The Shadowed head ¡ª a working theory ¡ª climbs slowly from the wolf to my own.


    ¡°No.¡± It repeats, its whole body giving a quiver that charges my nerves, which I shake out, in readiness for violence. Perhaps we shall see whether the creature is as skilled at mimicking my fist.


    I feel the shiver against my leg. The soft whine.


    I resolve not to say another word for this thing to use against me. But my mouth doesn¡¯t stay closed. It falls open in mute horror as the hood lowers.


    I regain control with a cold of my own ¡ª a cold from within, that chills the air around me. I recite the mantra. Everything is a weapon. A word is a weapon and a face is a weapon, to the one who knows how to use it. And I know how I will use it. I will cut off its face off and wear it; take its weapon and use it.


    Its skin is smooth and pale as new snow, yet is not a dead white, as you might expect, but a living one, accented be dead blues and pale pinks, and in its furs. I judge it is not pale from cold ¡ª this is its natural coloring, like a creature that has never seen the sun. It is not the absence of pigmentation, I decide, but the presence of it that gives the pale face its vital appearance.


    My body wars against my mind and my defense must be corrected as it slips. A nervous heat spreads over me, my pulse quickens. I feel the veins in my throat and arms engorging with pulsing blood and cold I consoled myself with flees from me, replaced by warmth.


    It is a human face.


    No. It looks human, but it is not homo Solaris.


    As sure I know myself, I know this thing does not share a common origin with my species, now or ever. It has two large eyes, pale blue ice, that drink in everything about me. I do not look directly at it. It has a nose, like mine. A mouth. Curved with soft lines that must have conformed to some pleasing mathematical ratio.


    The degree of its facial symmetry is uncomfortable ¡ª solarin engineers know that imbalance is desirable in a face. The face had no ounce of fat, suggesting her body to be athletic and fit ¡ª a specimen to be wary of until her full capability is known.


    But it is not human. Pseudohuman, I decide.


    It shifts its head like a snake that has learned to stand but hasn¡¯t got the hang of it yet, or still thinks standing to be an inferior posture. It is in the musculature, in the shifting under its skin. Even below layers of thick fur, there is something unnatural in its movements suggestive of extra joints and vertebrae.


    The threat assessment is unable to compute her threat level ¡ª no baseline, not enough information. But I don¡¯t need an algorithm to tell me: she is dangerous all over.


    ¡°No, computer, no.¡± It experiments with the words together, perhaps trying to initiate some response but only succeeds in reprimanding a computer, which is not in any position to feel chastised.


    The female form is strategic. A male is less likely to attack a female of its species, and more vulnerable to manipulation by it, assuming that its gender works as it does in base animals.


    But the strategy has changed. Whatever it is, it is not an animal. Beneath the heavy coat, it wears clothing that creeps over its form. The cloak has marks of simple manufacture, but it was not made by one person, it was made an economy, social complexity, and intelligence.


    It likely has language also, given its ease of imitation. A bird learns imitation starting with bird sounds and slowly listens and conforms the sounds. It takes a fluent species to ape sounds easily, to break them up, and put them together.


    It studies the changes in my body with cold interest, but without human expression or knowledge of human cultural norms.


    This would tell me something about its anthropology being divergent from our own if I could think well enough to make deductions.


    I find my hands again loose at my side. My body does not seem to accept that this is a dangerous alien enemy ¡ª so its mimicry is partly successful.


    My body is in its adolescence and for some reason its biological imperatives are unchecked. My heart pumps like clean fuel in a brand new engine.


    There is no procreation on a starship. We have enough adults in the prime of their physical and mental capabilities. Children are a drain on resources, with little return, and if a child were needed ¡ª an absurd thought ¡ª it would be hatched, as all civilized species do in the solar age.


    Even so, its appearance on the ship has initiated a new set of protocols.


    Social protocols. Diplomacy.


    I cannot afford to anger a dominant race on a planet I intend to conquer.


    This would be a good time to introduce myself, but one small problem ¡ª I don¡¯t know my name, and it''s probably better I don¡¯t give that away.


    ¡°Human¡± I gesture to myself. ¡°Wolf¡± I gesture to the wolf. I use the wolf as a third object, hoping it will be clearer when I gesture to it.


    Diplomacy does not go as expected, however.


    These types of situations are carefully gamed out.


    We begin by establishing communication, learning simple words.


    That doesn¡¯t happen here.


    It breaks the paradigm; strides across the room.


    I am prepared to defend myself, but until I am attacked, I can take no action to provoke it.


    It slips out of its heavy grey cloak in its stride. Exposing white expanses of skin where its garments do not reach. I seek out its vulnerabilities ¡ª the arteries and pressure points of its form. A human shape, but not human, I remind myself.The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    It breaks the center line and continues to close the distance.


    My body is neutral posture but my mind is poised for sudden and extreme violence at the slightest hint of aggression.


    I catalog every item in my radius, in the room ahead, in the store behind me.


    Everything is a tool and everything is a weapon, to the one who knows how to use it.


    It stands inches from me. She stretches her head up at me, exposing her delicate throat. All its pipes in one narrow package. I see its pulse ¡ª it has a pulse.


    Its eyes are perhaps its most remarkable feature. I swallow. They are what I imagine lakes to be, translucent pools of cold blue. There are hundreds of solutions to the problem of visual stimuli ¡ª hundreds of eyes of various designs. Whatever these are, they are not human eyes. The deep pools stare back, assessing me with all the emotion of a lizard.


    It waits, its body winding in liquid time.


    Eyes dart over my form and its hands begin to travel glacially as it unties the clasps of its tunic. It takes the smooth plains of her upper chest for me to realize what is happening ¡ª Diplomacy.


    ¡°Yven.¡± She puts a hand on her bare chest.


    It is not a sexual advance, but a meeting on equal terms, the adoption of a foreign custom ¡ª mine. I am partially naked, so she makes herself likewise. A meeting on equal terms and an introduction.


    ¡°Human, volf, Yven.¡± She gestures to each party to confirm her understanding.


    This is within expected parameters for a first encounter. The mimicking of actions and customs is often a basic first step towards more advanced communication. And yet it somehow comes as a shock ¡ª I blame the unchecked drives of my body for mounting a response from several of my body''s systems. If I were a ship, I would be swirling with flashing lights and alarms.


    ¡°Yven,¡± I repeat. The sound is foreign and comes out strangled.


    Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. It gives up the defense of its clothing, exposes its body¡¯s design, bearing its weaknesses and secrets.


    Even I am surprised when my hand closes over hers before my brain can override the command.


    ¡°No,¡± I say.


    I do not want to see its form.


    ¡°No.¡± She says.


    Her voice does something to me from this distance, and I¡¯m not sure whether it is how she says it or the fact that I feel her words on my skin. They down my back, and back along my spine.


    Her hands draw apart her open tunic and a passage of skin opens.


    I take her quickened pulse through her skin, noting every place a surface throbs.


    There is something different to her skin ¡ª it has no pores, but there is a texture.


    ¡°No,¡± I confirm, drawing her hands back to her centerline.


    If it is a sexual advance, I risk giving offense by rejecting it. I have no clue as to the sexual hangups of the species if it even has any ¡ª sex or hangups. Any strategic advantage gained by her nakedness is shortsighted. This is no longer a fight. The last thing I need is to set a precedent of meeting this race naked, or worse.


    Her eyes roam over my face like I am confusing terrain that must be navigated. I have confused her somehow.


    I read the increased attention as urgency. She needs something. She has an objective to achieve with this interaction. She sees her advance as a means to achieve it. Yet I have frustrated that advance and that objective.


    Needs are weapons. Everything is a weapon. But only to the one who knows.


    Her head drops stiffly, chin to chest. Shoulders rise, fall. I read the increased breathing and heart rate as signs of frustration.


    Then her hands are on the move again, they travel with the same careful slowness. Slow as to be non-threatening.


    They travel down, down, ignoring the shifting open garment.


    My hands follow hers, like two dogfighters locked in combat, as she draws a hand upwards. My hands are defensive and warding. She is too close for comfort.


    She pauses, observing me with vulnerable intensity. But she resumes her considered movements, even with my hands now making firm contact with hers. Some warmth seems to be generated from the limited contact and spreads through m body.


    This is not the sort of fight I know. She will kill me ever so slowly, slipping a blade into my flesh, and I will still be waiting for the attack.


    It is a weapon she draws. But then everything is a weapon and this weapon is a calendar of patterned and polished bone. It is well cared for, but with unmistakable antiquity and long use.


    My open hands travel on hers, directing them away from my vital centers, as though we are in a slow dance of choreographed movements. The seconds feel like minutes. And for those crawling seconds, it would seem to the observer that our purposes are aligned. But we are opposite and opposing forces.


    Despite the appearance of harmony, she maneuvers the bone between our throats, like it is a collar that will link us at the neck. This endgame somehow comes as a surprise to me. Like the slow dance and contact have put me in a trance.


    I lock eyes in with it, totally vulnerable in front of her. If she releases her weapon, I am dead.


    Cold steel slides from the cylinder and meets her exposed neck. And just as she maneuvers the blade without my knowing, I find my hands now directly on the cold bone, holding the knife to her throat. I am stunned ¡ª yes by the fact that she has skillfully manipulated my hands without my realizing it, but more by more by the fact that she leaves herself vulnerable to me.


    Her life is in my hands.


    Her eyes are rolling glaciers, crushing me. They are primal force, an ancestral voice. They are a time when men took what they willed, from whom they willed. They are wild dominance, cracking ram skulls, locking antlers, savage snarls.


    They say. You are mine. I own you.


    She gives up the advantage and somehow seems to say, that she still holds it.


    But I am not cowed.


    I hold the knife against her throat until I see the sharp line of steel twinned on her skin.


    She could have killed me. That was the point. Now, she gives me power over her. But it is her power, her victory. Not mine, which kills any pleasure I would receive from opening up her throat, from turning her throat into a faucet.


    She no longer crawls through time. Time stands still around her. Her eyes are now stuck, her chest holds her last breath.


    I feel the wind at my back that carries the scent of the forest; the wind that picks me up and puts me down without breaking stride. But maybe it is because she has the scent of pines in her hair.


    This is not a game of chivalry. We are not taking turns like children. It does not matter how the advantage is gained, only how I use it. If she gives me the knife at her throat, then she is an idiot, asking for death.


    There is blood on her neck. A line of blood as thin as the blade¡¯s sharp edge.


    At the first released vessel, her hands seize over my own. As mad as it sounds ¡ª I think I feel a single blood vessel spill open followed by an avalanche of breaking vessels like heavy meteorites vapourising on a planet with no atmosphere.


    She is far too strong for her size and build.


    But I am in position for a fatal strike and not easily dissuaded by such a thing as pain.


    Bloom wells under steel, a ripe rivulet bursts forth; a long line on her slender throat, a red blaze on pale skin. To me, a serving suggestion.


    I do not know what she sees in my eyes, but there is terror in her''s now.


    ¡°No.¡± One word and she knows how to use it correctly, to stop a wolf in mid-stride. But I am not a wolf pup. ¡°No.¡±


    My eyes pour into hers but I no longer see.


    Liquid fire slashes my naked brain. Her blood is a river carved from the beating heart of worlds. It thrums with vital birth and brutal death and rutting sex. Veined wings, reaping claws, binding fire. It is the wind of the sun in the sail of life, strata of churned starlight.


    Blood and jump fuel.


    For all our diplomacy, it ended in a fight after all.


    I hold a knife to her throat yet somehow I am under attack.


    Yet out is not she who attacks. Everything is a weapon, even blood. To the one who does not know how to defend against it.


    The fight is in my mind and though the fight is within me and against me, I know how to fight. Especially against a stronger opponent.


    The seed is planted in my brain, the red weed in my mindscape. The spineless vine. Its tendrils thread through my thoughts, calling every neuron to the fight against me. It wants blood. No, it wants this blood. It is thirsty. It cries with the grating cry of a newborn whose indelible wails are etched into the human psyche.


    I cannot win.


    So I feed it slashing red rain.


    A small thing ¡ª a matter of millimeters, a subtle push to release the sweet treasure.


    I release the catch at the back end, the second blade sides into the meat of my trapezius. Primitive pain bypasses the red root. The pain floods my brain like the blast of a supernova, sweeping aside the root as though it were space dust.


    It will have to be satisfied with my blood for now.


    I will not be controlled ¡ª I will not be governed by a parasite. It thinks it sits in the control seat ¡ª it better buckle the frag up. I would rather die and frag the fragging mission. If it is a parasite in the true sense, then its host.


    Every option is on the table, and every option is live.


    Blood pours from my shoulder ¡ª the pain that overwhelms the root also feeds it. I stagger, a hand on the blue-eyed serpent¡¯s shoulder.


    I don¡¯t think. I need to stand, it is there.


    It gave me a blade to its throat, yes, all the while knowing it was double-edged ¡ª double-ended. It had but to shift the release mechanism that was under my hand.


    I fall. It bears me up.


    It was the wringing of her hands that gave it away ¡ª the undue force on my backhand.


    With martial training and her strength, she could easily have disarmed me.


    I lean against the wall. A hand is on my face.


    If I can read alien expressions, it is deeply perplexed. It studies me more intently.


    I would have thought ¡ª anger. But there is none of that on the alien¡¯s face.


    I shove it off, heading for the store. Yet somehow it is under my shoulder. As though I need its help.


    Objective: diplomacy. Report.


    Trust. That was the aim of the exercise.


    Alcohol. Stitch gun. Bandages.


    I use my remaining resources to sort through what happened.


    It put itself at my mercy or, rather, intended to give that impression. It would not have been so bold, without a hidden blade. But if things had gone to plan ¡ª its plan ¡ª it would have proved trusting and I would have proven myself trustworthy. I would trust it because it had shown me ultimate trust. It would trust me because I had refused ultimate power. It was a bold plan, filled with risk, and cunning, and I can¡¯t help but admire the audacity of it.


    Things didn¡¯t quite work out that way, however.


    I wince under sloshed alcohol. She works to fasten her garment, then cleans her wound. It is a scratch, deserving little attention, yet she cleans it meticulously.


    Blood. There is something about blood in this world and this is reflected in her ritual cleansing.


    I don¡¯t know when my mind shifts from it to her, but at some point, it becomes a conscious exertion of will to keep it up, and I have to force myself as a way to remember: it is alien and dangerous. It is inhuman, a shapeshifter assuming human form. It wears a skin that does not belong to it as I did. My respect for it ¡ª for her grows.


    I cannot say it is truly a shapeshifter, or to what extent it can alter its form. It seems more likely that it can change its form than that it should have the same form. And didn¡¯t I see it change in front of me, in its voice and appearance?


    I grit my teeth with irritation and I allow it to use the gun for the exit wound where I cannot reach. It adapts quickly to a level of technology and manufacture it has probably never seen. And it does not flinch, so it has seen violence. No surprise in a world such as this. I make a note of its quickness ¡ª a stitch gun and a real gun are similar enough in concept and function.


    Diplomacy. Allowing its participation is diplomacy. It is a psychological principle in social species. I allow her to some concrete means of helping me. She invests her attention and action in my well-being. I give her a part to play ¡ª an important part ¡ª that validates her.


    And there is some reciprocal feeling of obligation that is unavoidable.


    I grunt grudgingly at her work and do the bandaging myself.


    She grunts in return. Her expression is misplaced and comical ¡ª it is my own.


    I let slip a wry grin that seems to interest her. I upbraid myself mentally ¡ª without, I congratulate myself, teaching her any new expressions to mimic. I should be mimicking it, not the other way around. It should be feeding me information, instead, the information flows only one way. I must adapt to the habits and customs of this world ¡ª I must forget my own.


    I must its weapons against it. Cut off its face and wear it. Just an expression ¡ª until my tanning skills improve.


    I have a hard time suppressing my relief as I tug on a pair of underwear. The sense of relief is disproportionate to the negligible armor rating they provide.


    Frag, but it feels good.


    What were the technicians thinking? Genitals are inconvenient at the best of times ¡ª particularly the dangling male varsity ¡ª but running naked in the icy cold?


    The ritual does not go unstudied. She is a is keen a study of behavior as she is of language. And she is ahead in information gathering. I will have to do something about that.


    I sigh deeply and reach for more precious white fabric. White is an impractical color but I justify it because ¡ª snow.


    Truce: that was the outcome of the exercise. Perhaps grudging respect and wariness, also, but not open hostility.


    I pull on neutral camouflage pants, that will work in crater or forest, to balance out the impracticality of unbroken white.


    It could have killed me if it had wanted, but it was not altogether honest either. I can respect its cynicism. I dearly wanted to kill her and resisted the action at a cost to myself. So I am both dangerous to it and not. So respect and wariness.


    I did not resist out of a need to preserve its life, except perhaps for diplomacy ¡ª but it doesn¡¯t need to know that.


    Gods.


    More relief washes over me as I pull on soft socks and sturdy boots. I catch her in a moment of contentment at my satisfaction.


    Does it have to be an alien? An enemy?


    Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes.


    But acting like it is an alien will get me nowhere. Successful infiltrators do not act, they become.


    A person cannot live a lie, but they can believe a lie.


    I glance at her, she returns a nervous flash on blue ice.


    The lie I must believe is that this is a person, a she. The lie is that I am not repulsed by her, that I would not kill her while she sleeps. Perhaps, this lie will even be that I care for it.


    I must become the lie, until it is no more a lie but merely falsehood.


    A bird uses bird sounds and slowly conforms them to human speech. I must use my resources, and slowly conform them to feeling normal human emotions towards that which is not human. Towards her, I force.


    Disgust. Contempt. Universal emotions, that have universal expressions ¡ª in humans at last ¡ª even in isolated populations. I cannot allow these to give away my true feelings.


    I will think of it as a fight. That will be easier. I know how to fight. My beliefs and attitudes are the enemies, and I must make allies of new emotions.


    Not just her either. I must win over the people of this world. I must gain trust and acceptance. I must win their hearts and minds.


    Frrag.


    Deep breaths. I picture the tension leaving my body. the smile is more advanced than I am ready to attempt.


    I look at her face and give a simple nod. It¡¯s not much, but it''s a start.

 TWELVE — THE TWINKLING LIGHTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

    SLATE


    I lower the ship¡¯s temperature to zero.


    She is gone. The alien. The it.


    I step on the quarterdeck, alone. The sudden emptiness is irrational. I have miscalculated and failed in diplomacy. I lost an inroad to this planet¡¯s intelligent species. But none of that should feel like a hand has reached inside my chest, taken hold of my heart muscle, and squeezed.


    Thoughts assault my mind to call her awkward-sounding name, Yven. I must leave the ship. I must reinitiate diplomatic relations at once.


    But I do not call out. I have my objectives to achieve first, and I do not act on irrational emotions.


    Black earth. I never felt alone until I met her. And the introduction of that weakness is inexcusable. It would be better I do not see her again. Yes, like cauterizing a wound.


    She crawls into the room from the access tunnel.


    I remember my purpose.


    I do not know much about floods, but I feel a flood of relief. But the tension in my body only increases as her eyes flash with heat that spreads through me.


    ¡°Out¡±


    She speaks. My back is already turned.


    If eyes can be weapons, then blue eyes specifically.


    My pack holds the pleasing heft of steel. I ransacked the armory for basic items. A hybrid justicar that has the pleasing heft of steel. The full energy auto. A set of total spectrum communicators, and anything that wouldn¡¯t slow me down, compromise my world¡¯s technology or alter the course of this world.


    That¡¯s what you¡¯re supposed to say, isn¡¯t it?


    ¡°Out¡±


    I don¡¯t give two frags about the course of this world, but I¡¯d rather not break its pretty exterior, or have its people packing advanced weaponry when the first colonists arrive.


    Guns equalize power. A warrior, trained from birth to be the ultimate weapon, can be dead by an untrained peasant. They only need to shift power once, then they can shift back on you, and equalize you.


    That¡¯s the sort of world-altering I don¡¯t like.


    But guns aren¡¯t what I¡¯m worried about. It¡¯s the giant fragging alien spaceship they¡¯re stored in. That¡¯s probably the reason It is trying to get my attention.


    I feign misunderstanding.


    She has a facility for language. ¡°Out¡± is perhaps the most difficult concept to grasp, especially when it is accompanied by a shove.


    Yet as she uses the word, and I find her difficult to understand, she doubts her ear and tongue. Had she said it right? Had she understood it right?


    I should attend to the mounting concern in her actions, which are becoming more animated with gestures of meaning.


    If there is an army rushing towards us, or a village, they will die for the crime of seeing.


    The it¡­could go either way, depending on the advantage she offers.


    But I¡¯m not worried about the ship, I¡¯m worried about its brain.


    A vessel cannot be abandoned with a functioning AI on board. I must kill the AI, or take it with me. An AI cannot fall into enemy hands. AIs can be infiltrated, by other AIs, tortured, or they can even defect.


    Minds are not omnipotent and do not contain the total of human knowledge, but they are vastly more dangerous in enemy hands than things that go BOOM.


    It is the first voice I heard. It placed me in the stasis chamber when I was unconscious, and ejected me, probably in an attempt to save my life.


    I ought to thank its programming for that.


    But whether it lives or dies, makes no difference to me. If it dies, it cannot be used against us. If it survives, it dies in the wild world. There are worse things.


    The AI lives in its stasis chamber, where it is kept at zero degrees, in zero gravity. Without these conditions, it will cease to function. Permanently.


    Removing it is not kindness.


    It has only ever known one condition of existence, and I would remove it, to die. Better for it to die free.The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    The vault contains a series of three gravity tumblers that must be opened by the memory of a predetermined sequence. If I cannot replicate any of the sequences exactly, the mind will be chemically erased. It is a failsafe to prevent an enemy from stealing the brain. The vault can be opened through trial and error, but not without erasing the mind within.


    Of course, I do not know the sequence.


    So the decision is irrelevant. I will kill it.


    Better I, than a stranger.


    I close my eyes, shifting into mind space. I am always in the fight. I subtract all distractions, including the emotional variety. This is an advantage of the mind space; complete control over the domain of your mind.


    The red root cannot be extracted.


    Limiting the visual sense will allow integration of the mind''s space with touch and hearing, provided the task is simple.


    The mind space is suited to accessing procedural memory since it is the stream of consciousness that interferes with this form of memory.


    I place my hand on the first of three floating orbs and think of nothing.


    I strip away as much of my connection to my mind as possible, restricting consciousness, until I am nothing but mindless instinct. It is the reverse of bootstrapping, it is more like lacing yourself in the boot.


    There is only a thin thread left. A movement with no one to observe it. That movement hears and feels the haptic clicks of gravity as it moves the orb in three dimensions of freedom.


    []


    Emerging from mental stasis is like waking up after anesthesia, with no sense of the time elapsed. It is disorienting stepping back into your mind.


    And I only need to do it twice more.


    I won¡¯t know it worked until I open the vault.


    Even the mind space has regulations. Using the mind space to hack your muscle memory isn¡¯t sanctioned action. You won¡¯t find it in any sim.


    [Black box is training that erases any traces of what was done until it is needed.]


    But there¡¯s something else, nagging. Absolute control is dangerous. Peeling away the mind has¡­some effect.


    What is it? Will I remember more? Or is it something else?


    And should I risk my mind for a Mind?


    No. And I don¡¯t. I choose possible gain, over the possible loss. I choose the course I set, regardless of cost. I am homo Solarin not sapien. I do not cling to dead soil. I venture forth to voyage in the shadow of foreign stars.


    My hand clasps the second orb, and I snuff the twinkling lights of consciousness until.


    []


    I am time without time, space without space. I float in a dark expanse. A spark on a broken thread, a dying fuse.


    Her eyes have no bottom.


    I drift into them like a ship in helix nebula, into the eye of God. Blue. The unnatural color. The color humans must learn to see. Large, bottomless oceans. Translucent is not an exaggeration. There is no iris or pupil, just gentle striations if you are close enough to see.  I seek the ending of them, the source of blue waters, where I will quench my thirst.


    I lean.


    My skull flips on its axis. Pain bursts like a ripe blister. My entire face is a flash of stinging heat that reaches the bones beneath. Nerves caught between fist and bone.


    Solid connection.


    It is what I needed.


    A pale hand on her mouth. She expresses shock with the hand that shook me.


    No, you would think I had hit her.


    I must have head-butted her accidentally.


    I cannot be sure what happened exactly. The mindscape can be unsettling for the observer. The whites of the eyes. The slack jaw. It might appear like a disease or injury. Primitive people believe the body can be possessed or bewitched. It is not that far-fetched when you consider that there are lifeforms that can perform similar tasks.


    I lift my head with a dizzying effort.


    One tumbler remains, a mocking third eye.


    ¡°Stay down,¡± It says.


    But I am homo Solaris, the child of the void. We stare into the black face of hopelessness and bite chunks off it, and spit hopelessness in its eye. And if it should bite back, and swallow us, we will open it from within.


    She helps me up. Mainly because she does know what I am about to do. Or perhaps she is still shaking from whatever I did not do to her.


    Diplomacy.


    I take the third orb and everything falls away.


    Untethered. Cut loose. Free. Winding in the black. Darkness darkens. Stars dim, distant, fading. I unfurl. Dissolve. An object, refracted, trapped in a facet, broken, refracted, trapped, until I am the smallest part of a fractal of who I was. The thread floats airless, a cut string.


    In iceberg jags into the black. An ark returning from the depths of space. The boat of Charon, ferrying souls.


    But it is not a ship, for its face is rough, its surfaces curved, and its texture is the texture of skin.


    []


    I sway awake. Her body is pressed against mine, her arms hold me up. She leans back, eyeing me warily as though I might bite.


    I regain my footing.


    The vault is open.


    I didn¡¯t kill it.


    I¡¯m sorry for that.


    Whatever I went through, whatever it did to me, is nothing compared to what I¡¯m about to do to it.


    This operation should be performed in space, by AI technicians. Not by a man with his bare hands.


    The Neural network glows blue. It is all mind. All brain. And I¡¯m about to put my hand inside its brain. Pure intelligence is about to feel a hominid''s brutish fingers disrupting its organization, with all the sensation and feeling only a higher intelligence can realize.


    The egg reminds me of my chamber. It dragged me from out.


    I can return the favor.


    The vault contains a chamber for temporary transport. I don¡¯t expect this to be a temporary arrangement, but well see what use I get from it before it expires. The transport chamber is spherical and has open vents and handles, but it is not meant to be used in gravity. It opens into hemispheres.


    Frag.


    The blue thing fights me. It is not much of a fight, but it struggles. To support intelligence, a creature must sacrifice strength. A superintelligence sacrifices everything. It is helpless. Such creatures do not exist, except under very rare conditions.


    It shrinks from my hands, compressing its form protectively to evade my touch. It makes a sound, a keening trill. It is an almost imperceptible shiver of treble that would call for support from a stronger protective species, the Braun to its brain. But it is far from its home.


    It is said that humans could cause fish to sleep by tickling their underbelly so that they might simply pluck them from the water.


    This is nothing like that.


    I drag the mind into the world kicking and screaming, as much as stubborn slop of neural matter can kick and scream.


    My fingers dig into the blue goop. I feel the contractions, as it attempts a slow, pathetic escape, almost splitting itself in the halo as it slops into its new home. I slam the hemisphere down, trapping the brain, wiping the glue residue off my hands.


    Yven watches open-mouthed.


    I have only one word for her.


    ¡°Out.¡±

 THIRTEEN — IN THE FOREST OF GIANTS

    TWELVE


    The scale of it is overwhelming. The wall of forest rises with hand outstretched. Not in welcome, but a warning. As though from myth: Do not go into the dark woods. Nightmares live there.


    I know that for truth.


    The size of the forest is discordant, like something the human mind is not meant to contemplate. It warps my sense of space, feeling near before it is close. Monstrous, before I am anywhere close to it. The treeline fades into the atmosphere, drinking the delicate hues of the sky.


    The ship is now submersible, melting through the thick ice. The water it displaces will freeze in place over it. The ability to hide is standard in scouting vessels ¡ª any vessel with reentry capabilities.


    In the barren ice, we are exposed to the wind, which gouges the ice formations, barrelling through its curved passages.


    For the first time, I great the world fully clothed. The wind seems to disapprove, jerking at the fabric and slipping into its openings like a cold blade.


    A tightly strapped pack holds an assortment of basic gear and supplies and a wolf pup, who sleeps or hides from the cold.


    We run like Olympians.


    In space, size is status and rank ¡ª genetic predestination. Height is expensive, requiring greater caloric intake ¡ª you are fed more because you are worth more. You are worth more because you are fed more.


    Of course, there are the sleepers or titans. These behemoths are the shock-and-awe troops that crush stubborn species. Extreme creations combine every type of genetic manipulation. The aliens we did not find but made in the dark.


    I cannot say for sure, but I believe I am faster, stronger. Not faster than a titan, of course, but faster than a scout or grunt has any right to be. Perhaps this shell is some upgraded iteration, solarin 2.0 ¡ª though 2.0 is obsolete, of course. It¡¯s just an expression.


    Though I am still not as fast as It.


    Yven glides like a serpent over the ice. Like the oncoming trees, her movement doesn¡¯t make sense. Shorter stride, she yet manages to pause often and never fall behind. She follows the arcs and curves of the landscape, according to some mathematical law. It is the same law that defines her every proportion and motion.


    A snake¡¯s body plan is deceptively fast. Even seeing it, its speed of motion is confounding.


    She pauses at the apex of a rise, half face a pale moon under her deep fur hood. Light traces the edge of her face, like the moon¡¯s crescent. She is a model of scale, vanishing against the yawning forest.


    Unable to bear its size, it leans over us. If it falls, it falls with the force of a mountain and crushes us. Don¡¯t look down, and in certain conditions, don¡¯t look up.


    We run in the shade of its branches for some time, which veil the full might of the giants.


    I slide down an ice slope, pushing into a run. My stride is strong. It feels like I am running in low gravity, which is impossible. The breath in my lungs is like gulping helium fusion, fuelling every part of me without effort. Even against the wind pulling us of course, we eat the ice of the basin.


    The wind quiets at the lee of the forest as though the wind refuses to enter the high arches of a dark cathedral. Intricate stone lattices form between its forking branches, each as large as a massive tree.


    The giant trees themselves are spaced far apart and none are close. I catch an expanse of curved bark, like a mountain face, through the stained glass window between leaves.


    Yven slips into the darkening shadows, without ceremony, and is gone, becoming shadow herself.


    You would not expect to see any living thing so large except in water worlds or low gravity environments. The physics of an object so tall are confounding. The root systems must be as deep and sprawling as the trees themselves. The water required is inconceivable. Yet the forest can support the smaller trees, larger than any on earth.


    The sense of insignificance is like turning in space, in some asteroid garden. Or breaching a planet from orbit. The size of it cannot be appreciated from close up as one cannot appreciate the curve of the earth while standing on it. The arks of space, the metal guardians of the earth, the megaliths of deep space, are all I can compare it to.


    I pry a shard of the tree with a cold hand and a gauntlet holding my knife. It gives stubborn resistance, but a shard comes away in my hand and tests its tensile strength informally. Bark, the outer layer of a tree. A normal sight for an Earther but strange relic for a black-market solarin.


    I have a sudden sting of pain inside me. I have broken the tree. My act of vandalism is found out. An arboreal species will take offense to my trespass. Steel does not just come apart in splinters. One does not pry a knife into a ship and take a slice.


    My vision increases in light sensitivity. It is not hard to find. She hovers in shadows, perched on a low branch that takes substance before me. In the deep cowl, her blue eyes glow, wasting faint light on her pale face and snagging the wreath of fur over her face. The semi-precious stones sway gently, a liability in the dark.


    She floats to me, slow and soundless over rock and branch and fallen leaf. Her eyes swoop upwards, and her pale face catches a trickle of light through the trees that makes her glow.


    Her face is a full moon in the dark; it sets my nerves aflame with a dull burning with its closeness.


    Without disturbing her center, or turning, she extends an arm, and I turn at the napping sound, to find it in my hand, like a magic trick. She studies me at an angle. It is a broken thing, a demonstration of fragility. To a grub, it would be a common thing. But to me, it is like nothing I have ever seen. My hand closes over it. I hold it. ¡°Branch.¡±


    I catch an impermanence of blue as she animates leaves a brief trail in my vision. She rises from the ground, and adds a broken treasure, thin and crossed with veins.


    I feel her eyes as I turn them over in my hand.


    I thank her. ¡°Leaf.¡±


    ¡°Yeaf¡± she repeats.


    She weaves around me.


    The leaf breaks apart, and spins, like a clipped ship to the ground. The ground is a quilt of wet leaves, dried and decaying.


    A toadstool, a worm, and a flower are presented with equal parts reverence and curiosity. Another branch is added ¡ª a test of consistency. A spotted gecko on a leaf that is partial to the said worms. I receive these in my gauntleted hand if they are some poorly conceived attack or contain a substance that is poisonous to my body.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    I have become one of the conveniences in upper levels, where marines exchange credit for selected items. Except I produce words in exchange for foraged items.


    I am now the foolish and ignorant species, who will exchange land and gold for trinkets.


    Yet these trinkets, hold value. They mean it is all real. I am here. This isn¡¯t some simulation. It is a dream of millennia, realized in a day ¡ª this day. The dream of a species.


    The leaves are cold and wet against my knees, the ground is cold and hard. Falling seems an expedient way to investigate the world¡¯s surface. I take of wet leaves and crawling things beneath, no longer worrying about poisoning. I squeeze drops of precious water from leaves into the ground.


    One drop ¡ª a drop in the ocean. What a strange expression.


    I laugh.


    Water is trapped and wasted in layers of mulch.


    The first genuine smile splits my face. I throw my head back and let the laughter roll through me, letting desiccated leaves fall in clumps to the ground.


    They will name this forest for me. Hells, they will name the continent for me, when I lay it at their feet. The forest is made to break, fall apart, and be crushed underfoot. It has been expecting me, then.


    Laughter ebbs on smiling lips.


    Enough. Enough kneeling in the dirt.


    I stand and brush the leaves from camouflage pants, now wet and cold. A foolish expenditure of heat. My white T-shirt is flecked with dirt and the debris of broken leaves.


    Yven hisses, and turns, peering into the dark. But her hiss lacks conviction, and she glares through shuttered eyelids that bleed blue light. She does not look so much into the dark, as much as away from me.


    I walk to her with heavy feet. A twig snaps under a footfall and too late she suppresses her flinch. I take a handful of fur-trimmed leather and spin her off-center. It works better than expected and worse. She faces me, and we are uncomfortably close, her arms trapped between us. ¡°Where are we going?¡±


    I stare into her blank eyes. Her eyes have no pupils, or they are all pupils. This would make her seem dead, where their not so much life and movement in them. And their strange operation begs to be studied. Closer. The direction of her gaze is contained in the deepest shadows beneath the shifting reflection of their surface.


    I fight the gravity of her eyes and the pull of warmth around her body. I am close for a reason. To disquiet her, to pull her off balance, and, yes, even to look into her eyes.


    She understands me well enough. Her facility with language is remarkable for a primitive species. I have seen it again and again as she grasps single words and their meanings and pronunciations. Now I test the limits of her digestion with larger mouthfuls.


    A direction. That is all her eye shift tells me. It is better than nothing. What is it? An attempt to distract me? I don¡¯t think so. The direction of her home or village?


    Then her hand is over mine, crushing and jerking it painfully. She is strong, but not as strong as before when we wrestled with the bone blade. I have her by the nape of her neck and she doesn¡¯t use her full strength. Why? What does she get out of it?


    But it is not enough to dislodge my gauntleted grip, and we are now more entangled than before. I use my height to keep her off balance and to neutralize an attack. She huffs, sending a spill of her black hair into the air.


    My eyes narrow in intensity. ¡°Your village?¡±


    Her head hovers between a nod and a shake, languid and winding.


    I shake her hard, and suddenly we are studying each other, in the warm halo of our breath. Inches closer and the world is turned around, like she is the forest, looming. Her lips part, her voice is a whisper. ¡°Village?¡±


    She understands all right. I see that in her eyes. She understands a phrase, without context. I read it in her eyes. But what did she read in mine? Her expression says¡­I am a curiosity. A plaything she may lose interest in.


    Her smile is one-sided. It twists with unnatural alacrity. Her brow bends in a precision curve, slowly arching. My grip loosens. I have the sudden feeling that I have grabbed a snake and it has me right where it wants me ¡ª where it can latch onto my face.


    It rolls out of my grip.


    I give a half-smile if only to recover. ¡°Why?¡±


    She likes words. This one is a peace offering.


    ¡°Why?¡± She echoes, savoring it.


    If she understands, she does not answer, but her expression is reserved for the slow in understanding. I hear the voice in my head. ¡°Isn¡¯t it obvious?¡± She seems to say.


    Her gaze takes the lines upwards. I fell out of the sky, which would pique anyone¡¯s curiosity. But the hand on my chest brings my gaze down to earth. It feels the welts on my chest gently through the fabric. The burn marks, the lightning.


    A brief flash of blue and she is turned away, stiff and full of purpose. She spares a look backward. ¡°Enough. Talk.¡± Each word is an island. ¡°We. Out.¡±


    She waivers.


    ¡°Go,¡± I say, in acknowledgment. ¡°We go.¡±


    A nod.


    It is a treaty of sorts, an understanding. It says we will cooperate until we receive countervailing information. A little more give and take, a little less stubborn resistance.


    And we are a go.


    The wet leaves are spongy underfoot unlike the hard earth, but I follow Yven¡¯s feet onto roots and boulders and branches. It is a forest within a forest. In the thick of it, you would not know you are standing in the shade of giants. Until you brush past a monolith of red-black bark, looming and unnatural, like the wall of a tree fortress. I factor the trees into tactical assessments and strategic resources.


    Somehow the snow makes it to the ground to lay in banks, yet has the resources to burden the dark boughs of conifers.


    Snow bends and blankets heavy branches, yet still manages to find its way to the ground forming broad banks of smooth snow.


    I have no choice but to trust in her leadership.


    Being light of foot is a function of the entire body. The softness of a footfall is the angle of the foot, its landing place, the stride, the transfer of weight, the balance. It is the understanding of the surface and terrain and how to parse any layers beneath.


    Understanding this principle does not make me an expert; it is a physical skill, perfected by experience and practice.


    Her greater skill is in navigation ¡ª in how she wends unerring through the tangled maze. The thick forest presents a succession of insoluble obstacles that she blurs through like we are inside a puzzle cube, that is being solved around us by giant invisible hands.


    The solution is obvious: She knows the forest. But some solutions are inadequate answers. Some primitive peoples are capable of feats their descendants can never replicate. But she is something else, something more. The puzzle of the forest is not nearly as infuriating or complex as she is. Highly intelligent, for a primitive species at least, and yet wearing clothes without advanced manufacture. Carrying complex artifacts, and yet carved in bone. Human face, and exterior, but eyes that are novel in their design.


    In any new skill, the progression is faster, and therefore more noticeable, at the start. Any person may attain intermediate skill, with enough practice. But to be elite in a skill requires a lifetime of dedication. This is the learning curve: a task repeated becomes simpler.


    Within minutes, my footfalls are lighter, my landings more elastic. Learning is easier in this shell or perhaps it is this place ¡ª an incentive structure of some kind. Repeated movements seem to ¡®lock¡¯, something I noticed while running. The ¡°learning curve¡± seems shorter and more controlled. I will need to set up skill progression in the mindspace.


    But what if the curve is different here ¡ª flatter, easier?


    It is more likely to think it is this shell than this world. An upgraded shell is simple enough. An upgraded world, one that has been home to advanced technological species that would be capable of such a technology?


    Yet there is something about this place that is more than any other. It is a thing impossible to explain fully. It is something in the air, in the definition of the world. It is in every ochre rock and umber tree, in every frayed leaf, and especially it is in looking up into the endless winding corridors of the forest. It is more than the simple impossibility of its existence ¡ª it is in its quality of it. A falling leaf here is more extraordinary than the idea of some global mindtech interface.


    The sims of old earth are restricted except for training purposes. Yet I know their capabilities through the mods. The trees on earth are a mockery of this place, a pale attempt at imitation. like every tree on earth, even in pristine forests, was somehow stunted. Their roots clipped, soil dry, water, weak and dirty.


    You know it when you see it. A person is born with defective vision, yet they do not realize it until they receive ocular upgrades and they realize their vision was cheap and monotone.


    Here the veil is lifted. Everything, here, is like that.


    It is hyperreal. As though reality itself received an upgrade. Everything. Like this world is the truth and everything else is a lie.


    And as irrational as it is to think that this world has a regulated learning curve, I feel that I am meant for it. The genetic sequence of prima Solaris was purified over long ages of costly experimentation, without hope or expectation of this world. How, then, does it feel this world is made for us? As though we have been building our fitness and capacity, just so that we might thrive here.


    I feel more alive here than I have ever been. A strange proclamation for someone born yesterday, but it feels true.


    It is a heady feeling. I must suppress the urge to whoop because I don''t think I''ll be able to control it. But I lift my face to the caress of the cold wind, and breath deeply. It is simple though, that gives deep and swelling satisfaction ¡ª inexhaustible air, unpaid, just¡­everywhere.


    But the air is not long in my lungs.

 FOURTEEN — THE WORLD SPLINTERS

    SLATE


    Air is never free and I forgot to pay the price.


    Spine meets spine as I slam into the ridge of the tree. My skull hits hard bark like a kettle drum. I bounce, bend, and am born up by my attacker.


    Sweeps of nauseating pain. My mind is in and out of hot noise. The world contorts, bends, and splits open like my skull.


    A blow to the back of the head always feels wet. I can taste the iron from here. I bite into something soft.


    Steel slips from my hand. My arm is dislocated behind my back.


    I draw the justicar on instinct.


    She is stronger than I credited. Technique could account for only so much of the impact. Technique ¡ª as though the alien practiced it.


    Her hand is over my mouth.


    I pour salt and fury into her blue eyes.


    I will put the bullet in her spine, and watch her try to crawl. but if she wants to kill me, why now? Why not do it on the ship?


    I cough blood and spittle which bubbles in the hand over my mouth.


    Everything. I could lose everything because I am weak. Because I let my guard down. But I will not waste water on her.


    The heat of a sharp edge or a shallow cut - or both - is at my throat.


    Her eyes are bottomless; they drink my rage and pain, without flinching. She nods her head slowly, rhythmically.


    It comes back slowly. In the twist of the forest, over a root and under branches, I sprint into a clearing and am speared by a striking snake. The motion is elastic acceleration and pinning force.


    I breathed too much and too deep. Took more than my share, and now I am punished. The collector comes calling.


    Then I see it.


    The forest stalks forward. Figures like trees blurring. My eyes shift into focus ¡ª men. Or, at least, aliens, moving silent as wraiths.


    Pain is a fuzzy embrace of my brain. With it comes a noise-canceling stillness, like a ship emerging from an asteroid field.


    I see everything. The motes of dust on a rebel beam of light that warms my face. An eyelash on a pale cheek. The delicate reflective patterns on her eyes, and the cool depths beyond, like water.


    I retreat into my mind space as the world splinters into fragments.


    There is no pain in the mindspace - unless you want there to be. Pain registers as interference; it slows things, makes them hazy. The mind-space cannot mingle with the stream of consciousness - not directly - so the removal of pain is a requirement for the smooth operation of the mind-space.


    A clock appears and slows to a crawl. From the mindspace, I control the perception of time or the speed of thought.


    I summon my avatar, without context. Data from the nervous system is collected at a cellular level and reconstructed by the mind-space. Every injury and sensation is collected and analyzed. The conscious mind, overwhelmed by sensation, is not able to give an accurate report. But the mindspace is not limited in the same way.


    There is no need to visualize the injuries - in the mindspace I know what they are. But we are visual animals. So I turn the avatar with mental gestures, surveying the injuries that would be obscured by the tree I am impaled on.


    The avatar is an anatomical model that can be pulled apart by layers.


    I swipe aside my hair to examine the impact - minor head trauma to the back of the skull. The skin of my skull has split, and blood trails my neck.


    Minor spinal trauma to the thoracic vertebrae is visualized with a red glow. With a command, the skin and muscle become translucent.


    Muscle trauma through the neck and back highlighted throb through transparent skin. Muscle and nerve pain radiates through the nervous system.


    Dislocated shoulder, dangling a gauntleted right hand.


    The avatar turns to me. It is the arrow in my gut that is the real problem.


    Health at 43% and falling.


    There are fewer nerve endings in the internal organs. Even so, the avatar registers that the arrow has pierced mid-abdomen, and nicked the aorta and gut. Bloody shit. Literally.


    This means a good chance of infection and little chance of surgery. No hope of self-repair, not unless I¡¯ve got nanites left in my bloodstream - their presence might not register in the mindspace.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    5 minutes of functional time, before my shell becomes a prison.


    I set a five-second timer ¡ª real-world time. A soldier does not usually enter the mindspace in the heat of battle. So whatever scene plays out, is already old. But I have nowhere else to go.


    I call up the surroundings.


    The rendering spreads outwards from the avatar ¡ª Yven, the tree at my back, the underbrush, the figures in motion ¡ª until I stand in the crawling tableaux. It renders in the speed I have assigned. The fuzz of pain registers as blurred detail.


    She presses me against the tree. With her left arm, she pins my shoulders, the blade still in her hand but no longer at my throat. With her right, she staunches the bleeding abdomen.


    She presses against me with her body, making her form large, her cloak spread over us. Her head just from the deep hood to take in the scene.


    She is in exquisite high definition - my mind knows her form. Every dark hair drifting, every long eyelash curling.


    I dismiss her; she sucks up the resources of the mind-space.


    Better.


    I walk in frozen time, leaving my avatar pinned to the tree. Wood splinters in from trees in concussive clouds. Arrows crawl in mid-air. I add trajectory lines like multicolored lasers and see no immediate threat from pointy objects - besides the obvious. Are we hidden, or just unattended?


    I trace the lines - they are not aimed at me. At least, I am not the only target.


    The moment of the arrow''s impact is lost, even to the unconscious mind.


    I have to assume, at this point, that the figures are racially identical Yven, though I have no immediate confirmation. I see no pale forms and glowing blue eyes but I have no idea of the genetic variance of her species.


    Through the haze, I see blurring swords and axes. Their clothing is a blur, though I make out some in muted greens and shades of black. It is not any type of uniform, but I judge these to be opposite sides.


    Then there is the black of the unknown - the void - on the other side of the tree. Arrows trace back to it, as though appearing from the darkness of non-existence.


    But there are also things I cannot account for. An old man with a staff or walking stick which seems a poor choice of weapon, with no obvious application ¡ª a poor choice for the soldier, also. An unarmed woman with her arms thrust outwards is nowhere near enough to land a hit with whatever martial combat she wields. A lance of red fire in the air. Wounds appear that seem to have no source.


    In the center of it all, glides a mind, wobbling under the unbalanced weight of a bundle of excited fur - I had almost forgotten the ship''s computer and the wolf somehow snagged on the floating transport device.


    I pull up a war room table on the forest floor and consolidate the information onto the war map so that there is nothing left but the table and an accurate representation made of a hand-crafted landscape with painted figurines.


    It is a psychological tool to prepare my mind for battle. My mind is the only weapon I have at my disposal, and it will not be in its optimal state.


    Sometimes, too much information can be just as dangerous as too little.


    I bend down to look at the figure against the tree.


    The primary problem is one of mobility - the arrow pinning me, like an insect or a display, is severely limiting my options.


    I cannot break the arrow, or it will, with high probability, splinter inside me. Not that splinters will make a difference to the outcome. I¡¯m dead either way ¡ª unless there¡¯s a butcher nearby, or whatever passes for a surgeon in this world.


    I could slide off the arrow forwards if the girl will permit it. She is the entomologist in this scenario, I am her specimen.


    Death will come fast, at least I will die on my feet.


    The beginning of a plan begins to form in my mind.


    The timer completes its revolution. The clock accelerates.


    The world rushes back.


    From the silent mindspace, the rush of pain is excruciating, as though felt for the first time - indeed, far worse.


    The pain resolves into a fog of comforting pain. There is more clarity now like I have spent time in deep meditation.


    Yven catches me at the moment my eyes roll back into my head. I have her attention then. Good, I will need her help.


    I make moves to push off the tree, feeling the tug of the arrow on me. So doing, I signal my intention.


    Yven gives a vigorous shake of her head and pins me with force, that ignores muscle and connects bone to bone to grinding tree. She relents quickly and I can breathe again.


    She does not know her strength or rather my weakness.


    This is why her tackle split my scalp.


    I have seen her body, though not as much as she has seen of mine. She is fit but not excessively muscular. How can an inferior physique, at least in dimension, could possess superior strength? Perhaps it is something like density? Could I also become so strong?


    Another attempt to climb the arrow is met by another shake of the head, and a firm push, that seems to require conscious restraint.


    I meet her eyes. She understands. Language is just a game to her, reading expressions and behavior is her real talent. Are they all this strong, or is it just her?


    Let¡¯s see how they do against bullets.


    I look down at the justicar on the ground, an impassible distance for the crippled arm that can do not more than dangle with purpose. The arrow just opened negotiations. Let me off or hand me the weapon.


    She might not have seen a gun before, but the inference is not difficult to make.


    We exchange looks that speak.


    ¡°You¡¯ll fall over if I don¡¯t hold you up.¡± She says.


    ¡°But I¡¯m held up by this pointy stick, see?¡° I say.


    ¡°Your arm is useless.¡± She says.


    ¡°But I have two of them, see?¡± I say.


    ¡°One looks as good as the other.¡± She says.


    ¡°You¡¯re going to need me,¡± I say.


    ¡°You are a liability.¡± She says.


    ¡°You don¡¯t know guns,¡± I say.


    The look I give her does not make arguments but settles the argument. The last wish of a dying man will do that.


    ¡°Fine,¡± her eyes say. ¡°Just don¡¯t shoot me with it.¡±


    ¡°No promises," I say aloud.


    I can''t say I''m not tempted. But the itch to put a bullet in her faded once I realise she was trying to save me. I don¡¯t have the luxury of shooting people who are trying to help me. If it was a helpful world, maybe, but with a sample size of one? Who knows? She may be my only ally.


    And as hard as it is to admit - I need her.


    Something slithers on the ground ¡ª a white coil falls from underneath her heavy cloak. I think I¡¯m hallucinating. I look between her and it. She arches an eyebrow.


    The gun lifts into my field of view, over her right shoulder.


    I am too shocked to take it right away and, frankly, a little suspicious.


    I don¡¯t know why it takes me so long or I am so shocked ¡ª something to do with my declining mental state.


    The devil has a tail.


    I feel the tug of the arrow as I laugh to myself. ¡°Giddy¡± is not a word I would often use of myself. Yet something about the situation, and the loss of blood makes me lightheaded. I nod to her in and she appears satisfied that I acknowledge her. Her expression contains a trace of vulnerability.


    Was she hiding it or did she just not have a reason to use it?


    What a world - and I have only seen the smallest part.


    We adjust awkwardly; my chin brushes her forehead. She shimmies. My left-hand rests on her shoulder. I take the gun in my off-hand.


    The gun is heavy in my hand, and I think it is more comforting than useful.


    The world around is still and silent as though waiting to hear its first gunshot.

 FIFTEEN — WOUNDS WITH NO SOURCE

    <u>SLATE</u>


    ¡°You can come out now.¡±


    I really can¡¯t.


    It takes a beat before the thought slams my heart into hyperdrive. There are voices beyond the trees; they speak my language.


    I draw wheezing breath.


    Calm, you don¡¯t need to lose any more blood.


    No. They don¡¯t, but I understand thier language. I don¡¯t know how or why, but I know someone has put things in my brain. Knowledge and, apparently, alien language mods. But how would they ¡ª they ¡ª know what languages are spoken on another planet? Unless¡­my arrival is not an accident. And if it is planned, who plans it?


    Not my people; they surely do not know of this world or I would certainly not be alone.


    And what purpose in sending me without memory?


    Wait. I put the pieces together, and scowl the pale alien who called itself Yven. She had never uttered a word of her tongue, had she? Could I have understood her all this time? Or did she not speak, just to learn my language?


    The pale alien pretends innocence. For the first time seems not able to understand my intention. Her nose twitches like there is something on it that she cannot quite shake, with her hands otherwise occupied stemmign the bleeding from my abdomen.


    Her expressions appear exaggerated at times, cartoonish, due to an unnatural level of control over her body.


    Of course, she would not have known that I ¡ª a stranger to her world ¡ª could understand her.


    So many questions.


    The forest floor is carpeted with bodies. Like leaves, they are frayed and torn and separated. Lying there, they could be anyone or anything.


    The snow is a canvas stained with red.


    No one wins this fight. Bodies clad in black and green lay dead or dying. But the voice is from beyond the stand of leaves that hides us from view ¡ª not well, apparently. [bc]


    The thin covering of leaves falls in a series of straight lines, though. I see no blade or swordsman. Straight, not arc or thrust.


    In the middle of the clearing, a bear of a man in a patchwork of green bends over a body struggling weakly. It is a grey-haired female with a staff. He holds the head in a massive hand and draws his blade easily across her throat. She falls over another corpse, her mouth open.


    No. Not her mouth. She wears the same muted greens. I do not see her face or who or what she is, just her hair and general outline.


    It is a type of camouflage, rags of cloth sewn onto the garment. Cunning and simple.


    Not just green against black, then. Not with the black-cloaked figure in the background. Green works together with black, green kills green. Things are not simple here.


    The bear stands to his full height, head back, and takes a deep intake of breath. I did the same, not long ago, just before a certain female spiked me into the crotch of a tree.


    He long takes breath one for my three shallow wheezes. I cannot match him, but by the barrel of his chest, I am not surprised.


    ¡°Moments,¡± he says to the dark figure. You might call the thin line on his face a smile, or a scar.


    The bear is a monster of thick, corded muscle. Not tall, but broad. He is covered in short body hair. A genetic mutant. Hands that could close over your skull. Forearms that have two many muscles, like each muscle fiber has become a separate thing that needs its own name on an anatomical reference. They crawl with veins that visibly pulse to supply additional blood to his musculature. Hence, the barrel chest and deep breaths.


    He could have been human, once. Or a porcupine. Or three humans forced into the same body, along with a porcupine. He is not unsightly exactly ¡ª just correspondingly hard. His face is lines and angles, like folded mountains.


    He is a weapon. Equal to a mech suit.


    I adjust the gun to the highest setting. The rounds will stun the target with galvanic energy and explode for good measure. It would drop any normal man or beast ¡ª I¡¯m not sure it will be enough.


    The tall figure is shrouded in long robes of shadow like it is part antimatter. It wears a deep hood that rolls off his shoulders, and its face is veiled in something like silk made from shadows or an organic membrane.


    The figure is like watching the stars and never being quite sure whether they are moving. Take your eye off him, and he is somewhere different, but not different enough to remove doubt. He carries two long curved blades of dark grey, like sickles ¡ª impractical weapons to dual wield, but I have not seen him use them, and I think I would rather not.


    The main point is that there are four people in the clearing ¡ª two of them, two of us ¡ª and in this limited sample of four persons, there are four unique races. One race per person. At least, enough genetic variability to appear as separate races or even species.


    Green Man cleans his blade over a black-clad corpse.


    Are there more, lying on the ground? Is each person, here, unique? It violates the laws of biology and yet, in this world, I cannot discount such a possibility.Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    To survive I will have to be as strong as these aliens, and stronger if I am to thrive.


    Living is a long shot. Killing, on the other hand, is a more immediately attainable goal. But who to shoot first? Who is the greater threat? Big and strong or dark and creepy? Make the wrong choice and I die. I am confident in my aim but not, in my body and may have only one good chance ¡ª it needs to count.


    I¡¯m waiting for the men to make their intentions clear. People don¡¯t like silence and idiots are always the first to fill it.


    The green man does not disappoint.


    ¡°A lifetime asleep, and moments awake, life is.¡± The voice is heavily accented, which makes sense for an alien from another planet.


    The Shadow ¡ª the dark, robed figure ¡ª watches.


    Green man sheathes his blade but is never unarmed ¡ª his body is the greater weapon. He walks forward.


    Yven hisses.


    Hiss is an inadequate word for the animal sound. Part hiss, part roar. Part snake, part jaguar. Her mouth stays open. Intelligent she may be, but whatever she is, she is a wild thing.


    Even Green Man seems taken aback.


    Shadow¡¯s hood turns an inch.


    ¡°I have walked in the city and in the forest, seen many, but never like you.¡± His head tilts to the thing in black who returns a slight nod. There is something in his look that I mislike.


    City. Faces. Ot hits me. Keep talking Green Man.


    If he has never seen anyone like her, does that mean he has seen others that look like me?


    ¡°Show me what you keep under that hood, girl.¡± I cannot say what he intends to achieve, yet he talks as if he is somehow doing her a service. If this is intelligence gathering, then the aliens are not all as intelligent as they are strong.


    Her teeth snap closed like a steel trap.


    No one, yet, seems to have noticed the floating wolf cub dangling from a valuable artificial intelligence so I will not be the one to draw attention to it. Unless¡­it is somehow normal for things to float¡­


    I manage to keep the confusion from my face.


    ¡°No harm meant.¡± The sharp sound has caused Green Man to reconsider his approach. He raises his hands but takes another slow step. ¡°Your friend is hurt. I have Herbs.¡± He gestures to a pouch on his belt.


    ¡°No,¡± Yven says. This time in solarin ¡ª in my language, not theirs. Is she speaking to me?


    She likes language and is unusually quick, but she does not like this language. Or she doesn¡¯t know it.


    ¡°No friend.¡± She speaks his language now, which answers one question. Or does it? I try to work out whether the man has said both words. Your friend is hurt. No harm meant. He has at that. This means...she may just be regurgitating his words, as she did with me.


    She holds the bone blade to my throat.


    I try to anticipate where this is going. Two sides ¡ª green and black ¡ª fight in the forest. What do they fight over? Over us? Yet, if that is true, then over me, for Green Man seems surprised by Yven.


    If they want me alive then threatening my life could be a means of protecting me. If they want me dead, she is doing them a favor.


    A third option ¡ª she is deciding what will benefit her the most ¡ª whether to kill me first or them first.


    Perhaps I am not the only one confused. Both sides test one another. For the moment, neither one seems sure.


    Green man unclips a pouch and takes another step forwards.


    Yven jerks the blade across my throat. Blood pours. More than a trickle and less than a fatal wound. I don¡¯t think I can afford either right now.


    The cut takes effort; the effort, in this case, is trying not to cut my head clean off. I guess she¡¯s not trying to kill me ¡ª yet.


    How many times must she not kill me for me to trust her?


    ¡°Herbs.¡± He pats the pouch. It seems light enough to be what he says but unless there¡¯s a surgeon in the pouch, I don¡¯t think herbs will be much good. Unless he means to season me.


    Unlikely.


    ¡°He is dying,¡± Green Man says.


    He has a point.


    He takes another slow step, tossing the pouch.


    Yven jerks but makes no corresponding cut and at that moment he knows her threat is empty, while I learn that ¡ª whatever his intentions ¡ª he is not particular on whether I live or die.


    I try to calculate whether or not I should be relieved.


    A fault line opens on Green Man¡¯s face. He takes another smug step.


    I think not.


    Yven grows taught for a sawing option, perhaps trying to reclaim the sense of threat.


    I sigh inwardly. Never make a threat you are not prepared to follow through on. Always follow through, if only for the principle. Be unjust sooner than a liar, or worse ¡ª weak.


    ¡°We will see the wound.¡± Green nods to the shadows as if to say, be ready. He keeps up the ruse of helping me.


    But before Green Man can take another step my shirt begins to split apart. It pulls and saws like it is being cut by an invisible blade. It¡¯s not any kind of magic; it¡¯s an actual bladed object, just invisible.


    I recall from the mindscape. The wounds with no source.


    I feel cold. The weapon has been here the whole time.


    An invisible blade, controlled by an unseen hand ¡ª a definitive tactical advantage. Why do they show their hand now, giving up this information for a mundane action?


    They have decided they hold the advantage. They do.


    An that we can do nothing about it. Also true.


    And¡­they still want something¡­they are still deciding.


    What are they waiting for?


    My new white T-shirt hangs in shreds, stained in blood and dirt. I fuss at it, gun in hand.


    I look for the blade. It waits somewhere. It could be at my throat, at my eye. It could be at Yven¡¯s. It¡¯s not a worry, just blood loss.


    Green Man draws his sword. For the first time, he looks worried. He takes a step back. ¡°Two. Nobody said he¡¯d have two.¡± A chink in his armor ¡ª he¡¯s superstitious. I suppose shouldn¡¯t be surprised for a primitive world.


    ¡°One mark, two, what does it matter?¡± The shadow speaks for the first time. ¡°How many have you?¡± His voice is overlapping whispers that are not fully heard and yet I understand as though I perceive them with some sense other than hearing.


    The green man grunts but remains wary.


    It takes a beat for me to sync. They are talking about the twin burns on my chest, compliments of the sentient storm. They call them marks as though this carries some significance.


    ¡°Twice is good. Twice is more.¡± He pauses. ¡°To a clever man.¡± The shadow eyes green man. ¡°To a wise man.¡±


    Can¡¯t fault his arithmetic. But I¡¯m not sure the green man follows. Two marks, two payments. They will skin me, and sell me twice. One must admire the industry.


    Yven is quiet, which is not in itself unusual. Her body is quiet also and that is unusual. Usually, she is wound with coiled energy.


    ¡°What do we do with him?¡± Green Man asks.


    ¡°Take him apart, leave his bones.¡± Says shadows.


    ¡°What do we do with her?¡± Green Man asks.


    ¡°Take her whole, leave her empty.¡± Says shadows.


    The masks are off now ¡ª they is no pretense or subterfuge and their meaning is clear enough. They do what I would do in their position. They exercise their power over us.


    ¡°Mine wanted him alive.¡± Green man snorts and scratches his nose.


    ¡°His body for the worms. We will eat his spirit.¡± Says shadows. ¡°Why give the fat to another?¡±


    ¡°This wasn¡¯t the plan.¡± Green Man says. ¡°I don¡¯t like it.¡±


    ¡°You always do.¡± Says Shadows.


    Green Man glares at Shadows. The muscles on his jaw are hard planes. ¡°This is not like that.¡±


    ¡°No.¡± Shadows lets out a groaning breath. ¡°It is nothing like that. Do you not sense it? She is quite unique.¡±


    Shadows produce a bundle wrapped in black cloth. The cloth slips away. An obelisk of dark stone is caressed by spider-like fingers. It has an unsettling perfection that does not suit stone. He lowers the object with both hands, in a reverent gesture.


    ¡°Do not fear¡± Green man¡¯s eyes crawl over Yven. ¡°I will keep you.¡± The Green man follows his feet forward.

 SIXTEEN — BLOOD SPEAKS

    SLATE


    That gaunt and lank figure that I dub Shadows moves in a series of precise and complex forms around the stone, twisting spirals, and stuttering thrusts. It is a dance of dark art.


    I feel it before I see it.


    The life bleeds out of me and color bleeds from the world. It is nothing so crude as the arrow in my gut ¡ª it is some other sort of life. It might be the snuffing of joy, the murder of hope, the twisting of the will to live. It is like these things and unlike them; it is less substantial and more real. There is some part of me, invisible, intangible, and unnoticeable until someone tries to bleed it from me. Only then do I realize what it has and I want it back.


    It feels wrong, in the same way, everything in this world feels right. A word from the annuals of knowledge given to me for unknown purpose; a word from long ago, that crawls over my skin. I test it on my lips, wrapping them around its syllables. ¡°Evil.¡±


    Green Man has stepped closer. He prods Yven with his long arms, almost playful. He tests her, like a snake handler with a cobra. He numbs her, provokes her, unbalances her, while she continues to nobly staunch the bleeding hole in me.


    A push on the shoulder, a tug on her furs, a slow touch running up her arm, a hard slap on her head. Nothing to harm her, or do lasting damage, physically speaking.


    I must wait for my chance. Too long and I may not be able to lift the metal in my hand. And somewhere an invisible knife that could kill both in a beat.


    I must be losing a lot of blood because there is black smoke in the air like squid ink and the black obelisk is pointed at both ends and floating before Shadows.


    The intricate sequence of gestures outlines an orb-like structure of moving parts, it takes physical shape and presence in the air. Bony fingers mirror the motions of gyrating parts. His arms widen to their full and unnatural length to encompass the orb. Symbols flash on its surface.


    Green Man places a hand over Yven¡¯s head and slides it over her face. A single massive hand can close over her entire head. He whips is back before she can snap her jaws over him.


    The black smoke expands and contracts like a living thing. Each time it expands, it becomes more substantial, coalescing around the stone in its center. Wisps take form and substance until there is some perverse sense to them. It is a fractal of living parts. An eye wrapped in thorns becomes a flower of blooming fingers. A tangle of spiral horns becomes a split tongue, swallowed by a serpent that swallows itself headfirst. And on it goes, changing forms.


    Shadows takes a scrap of bloody cloth from within his robes ¡ª mine. ¡°Bile and blood.¡± He casts it into the cauldron.


    A tendril of black smoke reaches from the orb-like a vine to the sun. It carves paths in the air, surging forward, pausing, forking like lightning. The sun, I realize, is me.


    The forked tugs and winds into one neat cord from sphere to center mass.


    Green Man lifts Yven by the head so her legs swing and scrape the ground.


    Out of view, blue liquid drips from an orb of its own. Its protective shell has become a colander for straining a brain, drop by drop. A life form that is only brain feels its life dripping away with slow regularity, calculating its loss of functionality with exquisite exactness, measuring its pain exactly.


    Green Man rips Yven away by the hood and throws her to the ground. She holds the hood in place with both hands to counter the violence.


    He toys with her like she is a kitten. She snaps and claws at him, and the Green Man laughs at the bloody scratches on his arms.


    The knotted black cord connects me to the orb and pulses dully. I¡¯m not sure what it takes, but I know I want it back because it is mine.


    The Green Man and Shadows exchange words and looks ¡ª it is not going according to plan. His eyes flicker from me to the orb and back. His face firms and he redoubles his attention to Yven.


    My belly sucks at the rough shaft as I begin the slow, painful climb. Nerve endings snag on course wood; the friction of sucking layers of guts snagging on the length of the shaft makes progress agonizing. A tug of war within me.


    Green Man is light and quick despite his bulk, pulling her across the ground by her leg or arm or hair. A stroke then a slap.


    Bloody hands paint the stiff bristles of the arrow¡¯s feathers. It feels I am going the wrong way, as though I try to force the arrow back into my belly.


    A hard slap is broken on Yven¡¯s arms and rolling body but drives her to the ground again.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    I reach the gauntlet behind me closing on the shaft of the arrow. My other hand closes over the front end. The gauntlet provides strength that my weakened body does not possess.


    Pausing, I gather resolve, count down.


    I rock forward, feeling the shaft splinter in a gauntleted hand. The gauntlet¡¯s grip keeps the shaft from splintering inside me. The grip on either end does the same, keeping the shaft in one piece.


    I hit the ground hard ¡ª by design, slamming my shoulder on hard stone and back into its socket. The experience of pain is steered by the mind¡¯s limited ability to focus on multiple stimuli. The pain in my shoulder takes the reins of my mind for blessed seconds.


    Blood splashes on the red root and I keep nothing back from it ¡ª if the parasite can give me any strength, I will take it. Blood pools in the vacuum left by the shaft. That suction was keeping me alive ¡ª shoring up the damage, and keeping the blood from flowing out of my body.


    But there is something to be said for the warm flow of blood and some blood finds its way back, through the root. Its tendrils stretch into my mind. Inside me, the blood rain births tender red leaves.


    The root rewires my brain: pain is pleasure and benevolence. Pain retreats and the world around me comes into sharp focus, including their voices.


    ¡°I tell you, something is wrong. It isn¡¯t working.¡± Says shadows.


    My change in position is not even worthy of his comment.


    I look down. The tether that connects me to this¡­organism also knits my wound closed. When I try to rip it out, my hand passes through the cord.


    Green Man has his hand on Yven¡¯s chest. He cannot just throttle her; his hand is too big. He manages to hold her down and cut off her airway with one hand. ¡°I told you. She is not the nerve ¡ª he cares little.¡±


    ¡°He can be made to care ¡ª you¡¯re holding back.¡± Says Shadows.


    ¡°She¡¯s all edges.¡± He slams Yven into the ground in frustration and enough that I feel it in the ground.


    ¡°Every other time you find a man with a maiden, there¡¯s a tie. But not always so.¡± Green Man flips Yven¡¯s back on her back. ¡°I can understand. This one¡¯s spitting feral.¡± His hand probes her thick furs. ¡°Flat as a board and all edges. Like a sewer cat humped a skeleton. No wonder he doesn¡¯t have a single shit to give.¡±


    ¡°Look at her.¡± Green Man squeezes her face roughly, ¡°She¡¯s unlovable.¡± A long scarred tongue snakes from his lips. ¡°But I¡¯ll do my best.¡±


    ¡°Yess.¡± Shadows sighs as the cord twitches with a surge of energy.


    ¡°Arf!¡± Green barks, sudden and loud. The action so completely breaks the rules of expected behavior as to be dumbfounding. He throws his body into a crouch, performing something like a push-up with one hand on Yven¡¯s chest. ¡°Arf! Arf!¡° His eyes are full of cruel amusement; his smile is wide. Bearing his weight on Yven¡¯s chest, he draws a hooked knife from a scabbard at his back.


    The sudden shift destroys any appearance that the pair were floundering.


    It says they know what they are doing; they have done it before. They are not out of ideas. They have not reached the depths of their creativity. Their control is total. Any appearance to the contrary is an act. They play with us.


    Shadows stops suddenly. His empty hood crawls slow degrees.


    Green Man draws a single drop of blood with his blade.


    The single drop, vivid against the white skin under her eye.


    The minute particles Yven¡¯s blood fill the air. How few they must be from to reach my senses. It is a savor measured in parts per million. I don¡¯t smell or taste it, but the root does. It hijacks my brain and screams at me to finish what Green Man started. To seek the vein and let it be free.


    Green Man doesn¡¯t feel it ¡ª not like I do. But he reads the room.


    Yven¡¯s heart flares ¡ª I smell that in her blood ¡ª her breaths stab upward, causing Green Man¡¯s hand to rise up and down on her chest; she instinctively punches oxygen to her body and brain, preparing herself for what comes next.


    ¡°Sweetblood.¡± Says shadows, like it is her new name. ¡°Her blood speaks.¡±


    I will the cut on Yven¡¯s check to open. It does.


    Yven jerks forward, Stabbing her face into the tip of the blade.


    My vision magnifies. I see her flesh part and blood flow into the cavity. Rivulets splash over the lip, stop, and spill into the air like it is in zero-Gs.


    Her blood is intoxicating. Trace amounts streak through my veins, filling my body with wrap fuel and the desire for more.


    The invisible knife appears. It is painted in bright Yven¡¯s red blood and I see a second cord stretching out to Yven as it does to me.


    The painted knife sails smoothly to the orb and drips Yven¡¯s red blood into the ball of twisted potentiality. The orb responds, accelerating like a blender. The second cord snakes from the orb, branching in the air until it finds Yven¡¯s core.


    ¡°Spirit and soul.¡± Spider-like hands close in reverence.


    Whatever it wants, it now gets. Whatever I lack, she has by the shipload. Her cord pulses fast and strong, filled with whatever vital force it carries. The black orb bulges with the influx of energy, swaying as though it will burst. It drinks in deep gulps.


    Tongues of shadow lick from the black orb but the fire steals light instead of giving it. The leaves around us have turned to black ink. The snow is iron filings in an electric field. Bodies are bags of skin and cloth.


    I pry a sword from sticky flesh and stagger towards the orb. It is a physical force, something I might call ¡®bleakness¡¯. Every inch towards the orb is an inch towards death. A very real death, that might leave you standing afterward.


    Shadow takes notice of me now. His form stutters in what I take as irritation.


    His hands blur and he pushes. I fly backward towards the tree.


    The knife bores into my chest, twisting into the raw flesh of the burns on my chest, forcing me backward.


    He is not ready to kill me yet, but he doesn¡¯t want me to interfere either.


    Yven twists her head to watch me. Taking no notice of Green Man¡¯s roaming hands. Her cold is stronger still, overflowing with whatever energy they collect.


    ¡°We had it wrong¡± Green Man shouts into the flames. ¡°She is the source. He is the nerve.¡± Green Man points a finger pointed toward me.


    ¡°Perhaps¡± Something like a smile spreads beneath the veiled face of Shadows. ¡°Or perhaps, they are both nerve and source.¡±


    The black orb has gathered strength and substance. It is a real thing now, not energy. It has an outer membrane covered in bulging veins. The veins form a cocoon ¡ª or a womb ¡ªpulsing with energy.


    Shadows hand closes around the orb, and yet not the orb in front of him ¡ª but that which carries a super-intelligent mind, and wolf pup in a leather pouch.


    Shadow¡¯s back is towards me. I see the sling fall. I see the edges of spidery fingers closing around the wolf cub. He holds the cub in the air, and the cub twists.


    The cub does not whine, it screams. It is the sound you expect to hear from a human child.


    ¡°They will both feed the spell. And each other.¡±


    The cord that connects me to the black cocoon begins to throb.