Chapter 6
Karath arrived at the Vega-Bremen jump-point and passed through without hesitation. She could feel the looming presence of Tee's pirates stretch out across space, grasping at her ship's tail: the feathers on her neck stood out straight; her eyes constantly twitched toward the radar in anticipation. When she was out the other side, she warped to Rytif, afraid she would be interdicted before she even got there.
She approached Rytif and wondered at the big tan rock. Its cities were few and far in between, and when the ship's navigation took her down through the atmosphere she questioned whether or not she was headed in the right direction. As she neared the planet's surface, a town came into view a few miles outside of the well-established urban development, Stalford, but she doubted that she would be able to find a port to dock at: It had the smallest urban development she'd ever seen up close.
It made her feel nervous, afraid that somehow Tee's influence had already reached this far and anyone she met was just going to hand her right over to him. As she got closer she noticed that it was expansively mostly farmland, the machine harvesters toiling away, from this height looking like little insects caring for a hive. She saw a hangar near a cluster of buildings in Stalford's direction and headed there, sending out a beacon for a landing request half-expecting no return signal.
Her request was approved, and she was part excited, part terrified, so she flew over the town into the hangar as quick as she could. When she landed, she felt even more nervous seeing nobody else in the whole place. A boy a few years older than Karath, wearing what could only be loosely assumed were dock-wear, exited an office and walked towards her in a quick pace. Defensively, she opened the cockpit, stood up with one foot on the ship's hull with her hand in her pack, gripping and charging her pistol. The boy waved as he continued in her direction, stopping about 30 feet from her, wearing a wide smile.
"Wow, a tevarin!"
Karath stood unwaveringly, studying the center of the boy's face, ready to blast it away.
"We don't get many of your kind, here," he continued. "Well, actually we don't get many of any kind: You're the first visitor we've had in days!"
Karath loosened her grip on the pistol and put her hand to her side. "Yeah?" she stated.
"Yeah! My name's Tip. I'm here a few days out of the week, and the others I work at the library."
"This place has a library?" she asked in genuine concern.
"Doesn't everywhere?" he replied.
Karath shrugged her shoulders and stepped down the ladder. The ground comforted her warmly, as if the planet itself was greeting her.
"My name's—" she started. "It's Kay."
"Good to meet you, Kay," he replied. "Kinda young to fly, you out here by yourself?"
"Yeah, you're kind of young to be running a hangar," she said.
"My dad owns it, I help him run it, well," he thought for a second, "even though I'm here more than he is. I guess it's payment for all the dinners he and mom give me. 'Food don't come easy' he always says."
Karath cocked her head listening to him ramble in an attempt to grasp his peculiar nature.
"Except," he continued. "Really, the harvesters do most of the work for us—all, actually. And the separators and the lifts, the packagers...I guess food does come kinda easy out here, thanks, K!"
She was taken aback. "Thanks for what?" she said.
"Your presence here has gifted me with the courage to stand up to my father," he explained. "I'm gonna go tell him right now that he can run his own damn hangar!"
He sauntered off as Karath stood there blankly, confused at his attitude, but his disinterest in who she was made her feel better about being here, eased the tingles down her spine, tingles that she was having trouble getting rid of.
She pulled out her mobi. The town didn't have more than a few thousand people vastly spread across the land, but she gasped as she read the distance she'd need to walk to get to Ecklestein's estate. She straightened up, shook it off, and walked towards the hangar exit to search for public transport.
She hopped into the only automated air taxi the hangar had, and was greeted with robotic pleasantries and direction requests when she sat in it. She spoke into a grated mic screen next to an artistic decal which read Stalford Air Services, and gave the address before the taxi immediately started up and rose into the air.
As she floated over and through the town she took in what culture she could from the viewing windows. The few people she managed to see moved slowly, seemed to talk slowly, and a chance meeting among any two or more of them almost always led to smiley conversation: It was unnervingly peaceful, but also a welcome change from her past few days in outer space.
She questioned what kind of people it were that grew up here, where they ended up, who they turned out to be, and then remembered that this was the place where Ecklestein grew up. She thought about the library, the calmness of the town, the air about the people, and began to tear up as she realized a little bit more about who Ecklestein was. She didn't come to any grand revelations, but simply seeing where her only loved one grew up really tugged at her emotions; she never would have understood this part of him without being exposed to this particular thing and it made her sorry, sorry for every time she snapped at him, was immature, made him feel bad. She cried in the backseat of the taxi, embarrassed that even the robot understood her expression but gave silence in respect, instead of trying to say words when they both knew no words would help.
Ecklestein's estate was 30 miles of farm squares away from the town center. As they landed, she paid from a joint account she had with Ecklestein, and the taxi thanked her jovially before taking off back towards the hangar. She stood in a yard and gawked at the big empty space that surrounded the big empty house. With grassy fields, large, thick-trunked trees sprouting out selectively across the landscape, and painted-blue skies all the way to the horizon: It was the most peaceful, picturesque place she'd ever seen.
The house stood 3 stories tall, with a hundred feet from one end to the other of a smoothed out, stone-slab foundation, and large tinted windows fitted along all sides of it. Smooth stone pillars atop the foundation stood guard around a lush garden that thrived throughout the entirety of the home's second level. Karath slowly walked up the steps leading up to the garden, entranced by its beauty. She stepped through it with her hand out, caressing every plant she could, inhaling the aura of the garden, letting the smells of all the different plants permeate her soul.
As she got to the center of the garden, she came to an open space with a small, unassuming console, below which an elevator must surely have come down to allow entrance to the living space above. She inserted her data stick in the console, and as it read the digital fingerprint Ecklestein left in it, pressurized hydraulics sounded above her. The lift came down, illuminated by the same amber glow Karath remembered from their salvager. She inhaled the last of the garden's scent as she walked into it, and exhaled, gazing upwards, as it slowly lifted her up into Ecklestein's home.
The glass doors slid open and as she stepped into the wide open room of the living space, all the lights turned on, electronics and other knick-knacks began to move and make subtle noises as they worked away; a large hot tub decorated with exotic wooden fountains made soothing water sounds in the corner of the room; a complex stereo system, hidden from view, played classical 21st century music recordings from Earth hundreds of years old. She spent several minutes taking slow steps and gandering about the living space which took up the majority of the house; she slid her fingers across the old destroyed-leather couch which lined the walls past two corners; she peeked into what was a large kitchen, complete with marble islands and an open fire pit; she gasped at the wallscreens that covered every inch of every wall, showing serene footage of breathtaking scenery across different planets on year-long loops.
She sat on the couch and looked out through the window at the orange light of the sun setting over large trees a hundred kilometers in the distance, and laid her head against a soft throw pillow. She felt like she was in Ecklestein's presence; she felt like she was at home. For the first time in a while, she was at peace in this house she'd never been in. She thought that, at this moment, she was closer to Ecklestein than she'd ever be.
The music and the sounds of the home rocked her to resting, and for the first time in perhaps forever, she had a long, dreamless slumber.
She awoke in the early hours of the dawning day, hungered and thirsty. As she sat up on the couch eating a ration, she decided it was time for her to search for this relic Ecklestein left for her. She recalled the code from the letter, 1437, so she looked around for the nearest control panel, and punched in the numbers. She hit enter, and a slow-moving panel creaked open from the space inside the bedroom.
She walked up to the thick fogged glass door of the room and it slid open, begging for entry. This room was large, with lots of open space and a floor of hardwood in some areas, and smooth soft fabric where the bed was. She tracked the newly opened chamber to a large open square behind the bed, and peered inside.
She found a case the size and shape of a large flat book, took it out, and sat on the synthetic-fur covered bed with it laid out in front of her, staring at it for several minutes. A magnetic coin rested in an indentation: The lock. She twisted it and felt a click from within the case, and opened it slowly.
Laid within the case, was a picture of an adult male tevarin, and the military badge that he was wearing when the picture was taken. He had bluish-silver feathers on his head, just like Karath, and was standing in a proud manner in front of a heavy Tevarin fighter ship. Karath had learned basic Tevarin from Ecklestein, and could read the symbols on the face of the picture.
"Yaruf-Haj," she read. "Your father."
She barely got the words out before her beak quivered so hard she couldn't speak, whimpering as the tears streamed from her eyes. "My father." she repeated, and stared at his photo, studying his face, the shape of his body, and the bluish-silver feathers on his head. She was burning it all into her memory so that she'd never forget, and she laid her chin against the bed, staring at the blurry image through tears, firmly gripping the photo, creasing it.
After gaining her composure, she glanced at the back of the photo at a message that was written onto it, and wiped her eyes so she could read it.
My dearest Karath. I'm sorry you would never get to know me. I'm sorry that you were born so late you never could have any memories of me. But know that if I hadn't flown with Corath'Hal, on this mission through which we all know we will not live, I would have done you great dishonor. What I've done is for you. For your mother. And I wish you to be great, and honor us, for I know your mother will do her best to instill within you the qualities and values that she sees within me. And when you watch her grow old, remember that each other is all that either of you have, and I hope you can find it within yourself to forgive me for leaving. Life is a journey, here ends mine, just as it begins yours.
Honor yourself, my Karath, and know that I love you. My spirit, the tevarin spirit, will always be with you. Be smart, be strong.
The last words rung in Karath's mind as the last words she heard Ecklestein say, and she read them aloud, over and over again to herself on his bed, in his home, stomach tensing, body shaking, tears flowing freely down her pewter-grey beak and pooling in the sheets. She lay there for what seemed like eternity, her mind spinning around like a top that wouldn't fall, the platform upon which she rested tilting, upholding her mind's momentum, and if it weren't for the distant sound of an approaching vehicle she might have stayed there, forever, stuck in a blurry, interminable cyclone.
She stopped shaking as her eyes widened, and sat up in the bed trying to look through the walls as her stomach continued tensing. The sounds of the vehicle only got louder, and knowing that Ecklestein's house was the only thing for several kilometers all around, her defensive instincts started to warm up. She walked up to the window and searched as her eyes met with a bright, flashing white light approaching from a distance.
Civilian Security Forces, she thought. She kicked into motion, and checked in the compartment one last time for she thought she saw something else hiding in there as well: It was a small, sheathed blade, unused, brand new yet in an ancient design, made out of a light, titanium-alloy, a high carbon steel edge, and with tevarin engravings all over. She secured it in a loop on her backpack, took the medal and the picture, and headed for the lift exit with no ideas of where to go thereafter. She peered around the room for a few seconds as if to say goodbye to Ecklestein, and attempted to collect herself as the doors of the lift closed in front of her.
Her eyes stayed locked onto the opening of the doors and as they separated she saw a CSF ship, through the tall plants of the garden, landing a few dozen feet from the home's marble entrance steps. She ducked out of sight and moved through the garden towards the rear of the house. She got to the edge and scanned the steep decline of the stone foundation and fancied sliding down it. The sound of the lift doors giving way to the officers' commands signalled her descent, and she swiftly slid off of the house and landed in the tall, unkempt grasses that surrounded the foundation.
Karath slithered through the grass around the house and peeked around its corner at the unmanned CSF vehicle, contemplating whether or not to chance being able to commandeer it without fail. She wisely decided against it, as the officers more than likely could remotely deactivate it before she was able to take off, or worse, mid-flight. She crept backwards through the grass, her eyes locked on the lights darting around the different rooms of Ecklestein's home.
The sun was perched on the distant treeline when Karath was a kilometer away from the house, still backpedaling slowly through the tan grass. She heard the CSF vehicle switch on, and watched carefully as it rose into the air, and started floating in her direction. At first she froze in disbelief, but turned around and started sprinting when she realized it was coming straight for her. She swam through the grass, and as the officers got closer, the distance between the blades grew greater and greater until eventually a clearing came into view. She panicked, her heart racing, and though she knew she was less safe in a clearing she felt she had run out of options anyway: This was it.
As she birthed out through the grassline into the clearing she slid on the ground and stuck her hand in her backpack, but froze with her hand on her pistol as she helplessly studied a human figure slowly limping towards her with a Behring ballistic rifle pointed at her chest.
"K-Karath, is it?" he stuttered. "You're, I mean, it is Karath, isn't it?"
She stood frozen as her eyes drifted down to the obvious prosthetic underneath his black cargo pants.
"It's fake," he continued. "I mean, it was bitten off by a landshark, cool huh?" Karath slowly removed her hand from her backpack and raised both of them into the air beside her head. Her eyes twitched over to the CSF vehicle landing behind the man, next to a small anti-grav bike.
The officers walked up to the pair, not once taking their eyes off of Karath. One of them spoke on the approach.
"She can't be more than 10 years old, look at her."
"They made it seem like they stirred up half the galaxy," the other one said. "This little thing made all that trouble?"
"It was a special request from Tee," Peg said. "And she wasn't alone. Manne's out there, somewhere." A somber look melted over Karath's face as she grimly looked down, her eyes glazed, pointed at the ground behind him. "Or maybe not," he continued. "Maybe they did get him."
Karath's eyebrows scrunched together and she looked up at him in a rage. "You'll never get him," she gritted. "And one day, he's going to hunt every single one of you like rats and stick his blade through your throats."
The officers glanced at each other incredulously, one with his lip curled, the other with his mouth opening wide to say something. "I guess we'll just leave you to it, then, Peg."
Peg nodded and the officers walked back and as they approached the ship, one of them turned with a hand on the ship's door. "Hey maybe we'll see you at the hall, you should come by before you head back to Nul and gamble away that leg of yours." he yelled, laughing boisterously before entering the vehicle, and they took off in the direction of Stalford, leaving Peg alone shaking his head.
When they were alone, Peg still stood stoically before Karath: His rifle had hardly lowered an inch. "Off with the bag," he ordered. She reluctantly complied and stood there with her hands up at her shoulders, squinting at the bright sun over Peg, anticipating the piercing shot of the rifle, and hoping that he was a good shot so that she wouldn't have to suffer.
"Is Manne dead?" he said finally.
"Of course not."
"Then where is he?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?" she said firmly, her gaze piercing Peg's insecurity. He nodded at her to step away from the bag, and limped over to pick it up.
"This thing's heavy," he said, struggling.
"I'll carry it," she replied.
He smirked back at her, tipping his head up in the direction of the bike, and she stepped, seeing at the edge of her vision that he'd lowered the rifle and loosened his grip.
"You're one of Tee's goons?" she said.
"Something like that," he said back. "And what about you, are you Manne's goon?"
"Manne doesn't have goons, doesn't need a—"
"Doesn't need any 'cause they, I mean he's got you, huh?"
She halted and he stopped behind her. "Your name's Peg?" she said.
"That's right, for my leg, it was, I mean, a giant snake bit it when I was swimming." His lies revealed some truth about him, Karath thought, and turned slowly to look him face to face. "What do you plan to do with me, Peg?" she said lowly.
The creases in Peg's forehead disappeared. "Well, Tee wants you, I mean, if we found you, dead."
Karath gave him an honest, innocent look. "So are you going to kill me?"
"Yeah, well I mean . . . " he trailed off. It was a question he didn't think he'd have to answer, and now that he was actually thinking about it, taking her prisoner was his way of stalling something that maybe he didn't really want to do. "How old are you?" he asked.
"I'll be 12 sol tomorrow."
He flashed back to when he was young, when he drifted from town to town, spending more time in the deeper urban jungles simply because it was easier to leech off the people there. He looked into Karath's eyes and it reminded him of his own, when he had no one to trust but himself.
Karath watched him carefully and saw the wheels turning in his mind. "How old are you, Peg?"
"How am," he started. "I mean, how old am I? I'm, I mean..." The life he lived yielded little need for him to keep track of his age, but even so, he really had no idea. He never had a specific birthday, let alone a birth year, he couldn't even begin to figure out how old he really was, and he'd never know. "I don't know, are you messin' with me?"
Karath held her gaze. "I'm not messin' with you, I'd just like to know a little bit about the person who's going to end my life."
"Know a little bit..." he trailed off again. How long had it been since anyone really tried to get to know anything about him, he thought.
Karath noticed his pondering, then was startled when she saw his upper body dive forward and stop as if a rope were tied to his neck from behind, and she gasped as her eyes followed a black, blood soaked blade retract back through his throat. He dropped his rifle and her bag to the ground, gripping his throat when he landed, spinning around to look through bloodied eyes in horror at the figure standing over him.
"T, T, T—" he spat, but the assassin finished his life by skewering him right through his heart with pinpoint accuracy, and Karath could've sworn she saw his heart explode from the impact in his chest. The event dropped Karath to the ground as her heart raced, her emotions dancing atop both horrified and grateful extremes, and she almost forgot that the killer still stood before her.
"Karath." he said, her bag now in his hand. She looked up as he tossed it to her, and she was too weak to hold it up so it yanked her upper body downwards as she caught it. She studied her savior—if that was a word she could use—carefully as he cleaned the blood from his blade. He was wearing an EVA suit, helmet off, and his shiny ebony head-feathers reflected the sun-lit scenery which surrounded him. A tevarin, she thought, and her mind raced in wonder.
"How did you find me," she gasped. "Who are you?"
The tevarin's feathers twitched to the realization that she had no idea who he was. He covered his blade and took notice to her own; his eyes felt over the engravings in the sheath, the look of it, the design. "Where'd you get that?" he asked.
She looked down at the sheathed sword as the feelings flooded back into her body. "My mother." she replied, using what strength she had to straighten up, proudly.
"Your mother was a soldier, then?"
"My father was." She looked back at him curiously. "Who are you?"
Tee searched her mauve-colored eyes and thought he had recognized something he hadn't seen in a long time, but couldn't quite place it. He pierced the gaze of this young girl of a tevarin, who had seared his reputation, who had slipped his grasp more than most ever could: He judged her. This child, spawn of a warrior, represented something that made him uneasy, that made him question his own path, his own fabric. He stayed his blade and decided to see where doing so would take him, and if not just to have a young, capable, malleable soldier—cut from a warrior's cloth—in his ranks, then at the very least he could find out exactly what it was about her that penetrated him.
"Sithen," he said.
She looked back at him in question.
"Sithen," he repeated.
"Sith-then," she echoed. "Is that your name?"
"It was my name at my birth," he said. "And you? Karath?"
A familiar shiver hopped down the small of her back. "Yes?" she said, gulping.
"That was your name at your birth?"
"Y-yes, I believe so."
"It is beautiful, strong," he encouraged. "Only strong tevarin would name their spawn something like Karath."
"Th-thank you," she said, blushing, the encounter with this well-spoken tevarin quickly fogging up the glass between her and recent events, "Sithen."
A strong gust of wind swayed them aside and sounded out from the distant trees and tall grass all around them in a wide ambient symphony. Karath's uncertainty had crept back into her mind, and before she realized it she was looking to Sithen for guidance.
"It isn't safe here," he encouraged. "A murder like this in this town will be quickly and easily noticed. Have you somewhere to go, young tevarin?"
"No," she admitted.
"Then come with me, I can take you to safety," he said, flashing a quick look at her sword, "and maybe teach you how to swing that thing like a tevarin."
Karath looked at the blade carefully as another pushy gust of wind broke her trance. Like a tevarin, she thought. Maybe this had been what she'd been waiting for. Maybe to clear her head she had to move on, fill it with new memories, and what better place to be than alongside a tevarin, one of her own. She could learn from him, if not to collect that tevarin part of her that she'd missed growing up with Ecklestein, then in the least to learn how to wield her blade like he had: Like a tevarin.
As they jogged through the grass towards Sithen's ship, she gazed up at his back and wondered: There was something about him that tugged at her subconscious, something about him that seemed so familiar; somehow, she should know him. She let the feelings shapeshift into romanticized nostalgia, an elusive puzzle piece morphed to fit into an empty space labeled home, some hopeful belonging.
Sithen's expression radiated a shrewdness that Karath couldn't see—nor would she really have understood if she saw it—and underneath the mask he began to realize what he had acquired, what was in his possession, what tool he could grow Karath into. For hers were the exact circumstances of one yearning for strong leadership, who would follow, who could become the epitome of refined power. He had caught her at the exact age and moment he needed to begin his slow and insidious imprinting onto her personality, and he knew that as a tevarin he was precisely what she would think she had lacked in her infancy, and what he could manipulate her to thirst for in her adolescence. As he realized what this was all unfolding into, his almost uncontainable drive translated into a smirk under his feathers, at the back edge of his jade-black beak, that telling symbol of truth that he'd always keep angled away from his newly found protege...