Ascension Read online

  ‘Thanks, Re’lien,’ Muur said.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For opening up. Your story isn’t a pleasant one. It can’t be nice to talk about it, but you confided in me.’

  Muur looked up.

  ‘Thank you for trusting me.’

  Re’lien blushed and tried to change the topic. ‘What’s your story, Muur? You said your father is in Extos III. Too many systems, I’m not sure where that is.’

  ‘My story? Not nearly as interesting. I was born on Eran-Lar. It is the largest exanoid colony outside of the core worlds. My dad, Quok, gave up a lucrative off-world position at Grag-Tec to spend time with me. He gave up so much just to be with me. He didn’t need to be. We had nanny-syns and all the amenities of a planet dominated by tech. But he didn’t care. He wanted to be with me as I grew up, despite his own dreams. When I turned fifteen, that’s our age of majority, I told him that he needed to think about himself again. To force the issue, I moved to Mars and started studying and working. He was sad, but I think also a bit happy. He loves his work.’

  Muur beamed. ‘He’s a real stereotype. Big business exanoid. All about the deal. The Great Exchange is his philosophy and life. He’s happy now. Grag-Tec reinstated his position. He’s now the Grag-Tec Executive for Extos III. One wouldn’t be able to tell, though. He likes getting his hands dirty. Him and his best friend gray, Molok, are always going to backwaters like Zona Nox and Grengen to mix with the locals. Always the adventurer.’

  Muur seemed to look into the void, at a time long past.

  ‘You miss him?’ Re’lien asked.

  ‘Always. But I’m happy. He’s happy. It’s what he really wants. Family…that’s important. But we all have our own dreams. We must work towards them and let our family work towards theirs.’

  Muur paused, and then hesitantly continued. ‘Do you have any family?’

  ‘Yes,’ Re’lien replied. A weight seemed to fall off Muur’s shoulders. She must have been worried that the alternative was true. ‘I have a sister here on Mars, but we don’t…well, get along.’

  Muur cocked her head. Re’lien sighed.

  ‘It’s not like we fight, or anything. In fact, it might be better if we fought. That would mean something. She’s a genius lecturer, sure, but when she talks to me – it is so insubstantial. She doesn’t tell me anything about herself, or what she did, or why. She left me to be tortured for ten vokken years and all she can do is make bad attempts at small-talk.’

  Re’lien had started shouting. Muur looked away, fidgeting with her satchel strap.

  ‘I’m sorry…I don’t talk about myself often and it seems…’

  ‘You just needed to vent,’ Muur smiled. ‘It’s only human, or edal, or exanoid.’

  Re’lien laughed, and despite all she had been talking about, she felt good. Cleaner.

  It seems all I needed to do is vent.

  ‘Thanks…for letting me vent.’

  Muur waved away the comment. ‘That’s what friends are for.’

  Friends.

  Re’lien smiled, slightly.

  ‘I think I’ve got an idea to get you out of that hole.’

  Re’lien sidled carefully past the hole and disappeared into a chamber. She re-appeared holding the FireLance.

  Muur frowned. ‘Are you really okay with that? It seemed to harbour bad memories.’

  Re’lien shrugged. ‘It’s a tool. And a virtual one at that. A real one may have burnt me once, but I’m stronger now.’

  Re’lien held the lance down, ensuring it wasn’t armed, so Muur could grab onto it. With a grunt from both girls, Muur was pulled back to the surface.

  ‘Thanks, Re’lien,’ Muur grinned and engulfed Re’lien in an amiable hug. Re’lien froze. She didn’t know what it was. Well, sure, she did know. Edal were not so warlike that they did not understand the most basic of affection. She understood what it was and when she figured out that it was happening to her, she liked it.

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ Re’lien smiled, a genuine, relieved and happy smile. ‘Let’s get back to Unity.’

  

  Smoke rose from Unity, but as Muur and Re’lien approached, they were relieved to find minimal damage to their virtual home. Crashed buggies and dead dire-horses bearing scrap-metal saddles scattered the clearing around the homestead. The avatars were mostly human, wearing red bandanas around their mouths – like the bandits of old.

  These must be the Blood Hunters. Re’lien noted how they dressed like the raiders from Roses from Venus. Re’lien wrinkled her nose and frowned at the smell of gunpowder, blood and ash. Muur seemed unscathed. She must have sensibly turned off the violence-related scent setting.

  The Blood Hunters’ corpses stopped at the fence of the homestead. Most of them had been shot in the back. At the entrance to Unity, Franc and Grettaduk stood. They were arm in arm, staring silently at what they had built and what they had just successfully defended.

  Muur didn’t seem to notice their two friends in the archway entrance. Re’lien tapped her shoulder and she stopped.

  They turned to each other and touched foreheads. Eyes closed. A soundless, tender moment that spoke more than words ever could.

  When they were done, Muur and Re’lien announced their arrival. Franc and Grettaduk regaled Muur and Re’lien with the tale of the battle – or massacre befitting frontier justice, as Grettaduk put it. Muur and Re’lien didn’t speak about their experience. It was their personal moment, like that of Franc and Grettaduk’s. Re’lien hoped to have such personal moments with both Franc and Grettaduk in the future. And Muur again.

  They went through the loot. Muur crafted some widgets and marvels. Grettaduk shook her head at the waste of good armour material. Franc just laughed. Re’lien joined in.

  Eri had been right. There was nothing more important than friendship. So great was her time in Frontier, with the members of Unity Homestead, that she didn’t even note that she had not had a single dream of Kei, of Xerl or of burning planets. Her time was spent among friends and she was happy.

  “Please don’t go. Edmund? Fight it. Please.”

  “Goodbye, Peron. Thank you…”

  “Don’t leave me. Not alone. Not again. Never again…please.”

  Chapter 9.

  Family

  ‘Class dismissed,’ Sola announced, barely hiding a sigh.

  The students began filing out. Many of them had been with her since her first-year course. She knew most of them by name. They were her students. Her charge. She had been as close to friends with as many as professionalism would allow. They challenged her intellectually. She challenged and taught them. But, one of them had something to do with the attack on Re’lien. That realisation made Sola sick in her stomach. Every day, it took everything in her to pretend that everything was okay when it really was not.

  Sola’s long, pointed ears twitched in irritation when she saw a ginger haired boy named Franc shoving his way past the class to the front. He had that look of eager curiosity about him. Sola had loved that look in the past, but now she hated it. It could belong to someone who had hurt Re’lien. Franc was a human that Sola served. A human who may very well have harmed her sister. A human who may want her dead.

  ‘Professor,’ Franc greeted.

  ‘Not now, Franc.’

  ‘I’m not asking about orbital bombardment, Professor,’ he held his hands up, diplomatically. A look of sincere worry crossed his face. ‘How is Re’lien?’

  Sola almost dropped the class-presentation stylus in surprise.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘She told me you two are sisters. We’ve been talking, but it’s been weeks since she came to class. I can’t tell through the v-link if she’s actually fine.’

  ‘Re’lien…doesn’t speak to me.’

  ‘Why?’ Franc cocked his head, like a dog.

  ‘Wouldn’t you say that’s a bit personal?’

  ‘I give up on protocol when my friend may be in a bad way.’

  Franc h
ad earnest eyes, burning with the passion he usually had for discussing orbital bombardment. Sola sighed.

  ‘Re’lien, and I, have led dark lives. Imperia is not a good place. When I escaped, I had to abandon Re’lien. She only managed to escape by herself over ten years after.’

  ‘Why did you have to abandon her?’ Franc sounded accusing.

  What right does this soft Martian have to ask me?

  But a word struck her. Friend. He had said he was friends with Re’lien. And he was called a xenophile by people in class. Maybe, just maybe, Franc was a good one.

  ‘I haven’t even told her…’

  ‘Tell her.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Re’lien struggles to make friends. I know this because I hope that we’re finally friends now. If you didn’t see her for over ten years, she’s going to blame you for it. And she’s not going to make the effort to make amends. If you value your relationship with your sister, you need to tell her.’

  Sola was stunned.

  Franc checked his wrist-tab. ‘Sorry, Professor. I got to go. Please send my regards to Re’lien.’

  Sola didn’t respond. She stood in an empty lecture theatre. A cleaning-syn floated in and began to pick up discarded wrappers and chem-paper scrap.

  Sola clenched her fist. It was time to speak to Re’lien.

  

  ‘Just a bit more,’ Muur muttered to Re’lien, but as if to herself.

  Clang. Clang. Clang.

  Muur hit the orange metal with a hammer, shaping it into a cuirass. Grettaduk wanted her xeno-scrap chest plate and wasn’t going to take some pacifist exanoid’s excuses seriously. Muur wanted widgets, but Grettaduk wanted some battle apparatus. The hulking sheriff won out. Re’lien was helping Muur with the ambitious crafting task, holding down the metal with a pair of hand-held clamps so it wouldn’t move away when Muur hit it.

  ‘Just a few more…’

  Black. And then light.

  Re’lien blinked. She was in her apartment in Fredala. She had moved back there a few days back after her recovery was complete. Over her stood Sola.

  ‘Hi, Re’lien,’ Sola smiled, weakly.

  ‘What do you want, Sola?’ Re’lien didn’t mean it to come out with such venom in her voice, but the damage was done. ‘I was busy.’

  Sola’s mouth twitched. ‘I wanted to talk to you. It’s been awhile.’

  ‘Always been awhile. Was awhile then, was awhile now. But sure, you were busy. I’m busy now.’

  Re’lien reached for the switch on her MindBand to bring her back into virtual. Sola grabbed her arm. It didn’t hurt, but the action shocked Re’lien. Sola recoiled and held her own hand, as if chastising it.

  ‘Re’lien…I’m sorry.’

  ‘If you’re sorry, then let me go back into virtual. Or is this about that? Don’t like it when I study too much, read too much, watch too much or game too much. It’s always just sorry. You barge in and interrupt my life – a sorry. You stop me from going out unattended – a sorry. You…you vokken leave me for most of my life and it’s just a skiting sorry.’

  Re’lien could hold it back no longer and the flood gates of years of torment came flooding out. Repressed tears streamed down her soft, light-blue skin. Through her misty eyes, she could see tears fall down Sola’s.

  Her sister reached out and Re’lien considered recoiling, but she didn’t. Sola touched her head. With one hand. And then another. Sola kneeled down and they touched foreheads. And they wept. For all their darkness. For the void they had both witnessed and survived, barely. For the dreams. The tormenting dreams. No game could allow Re’lien to escape her memories now and no studies could let Sola forget her crimes.

  ‘I watched you die,’ Re’lien finally said. ‘I dreamed of your death and I was…I was Kei. Please, Sola, please tell me what it means.’

  Sola looked her sister in the eyes with all the concern, love and guilt an older sister can have for the younger sibling that they had abandoned. Re’lien saw the void in her sister’s eyes, and realised that it had not been a dream. Sola had died – one way or the other.

  ‘Please, Sola,’ Re’lien whispered. ‘Please tell me what happened.’

  Sola stood, without a word, and sat on the bed next to Re’lien.

  ‘I…was young. Powerful. And hopelessly in love with a rebel leader named Kei’thyn…’

  Sola spoke. For hours. For what seemed an eternity. Re’lien hung on every word. Of how her sister fell for the man that they both loved. How Sola became a rebel by choice while Re’lien had become the Devil Child by no fault of her own. She learnt of the love Sola held for this man, the man who had used Re’lien to plunge a planet into war. And she learnt of Ter’un, a planet of ash. She learnt of the Godkiller. That Kei loved Sola and her him. But that he had turned her into a weapon – and she had accepted. For they loved each other, but Sola had grown to see how important rebellion was. Imperia had to fall. For freedom, for peace, for Re’lien who came afterwards. But the Godkiller was never to be…

  ‘The power…it was more than I or hundreds of the top rebel warpmancers could handle. The vortex, the manifestation of the Godkiller, it was meant to contain Grexus’ essence, but how can a wooden bowl contain magma? Grexus accepted the invitation into the vortex – and burst it open. One by one, we were extinguished. Grexus left me for last. He let me watch my comrades die. One by one. Their warp energy was brought from their conduits and forced down their own throats. They were impaled by their own power. After my final friend fell, there was black. He spoke to me and showed me…’

  Sola brought her hand to her face and shook her head. Re’lien, despite all anger she had once held for her sister, put a comforting arm around her sister’s shoulders.

  ‘The End?’ Re’lien offered.

  Sola looked at her with eyes red with tears and white with shock. ‘He spoke to you?’

  Re’lien didn’t reply. Sola jumped up.

  ‘What happened, Re’lien? How do you know that phrase? His End? His Promised End?’

  ‘He spoke to me. In the dream where I watched you die. He spoke to me – and to Kei. Not to Kei. No, to Kei. I don’t know.’

  Re’lien shook her head. She was too confused to continue crying. She steeled herself.

  ‘I kept dreaming that I was Kei, in his final moment. When he was executed. But in this dream, on what must have been Ter’un, I was both myself and Kei. Kei warred inside my dream-head, asking to save you and asking to be spared your death again. When Kei cracked and the warring sides were lost to each other, I faced the void. It spoke to me. I did not reply. It told me about the Promised End. To watch for the Star Horde. To prepare, or not, to die. It didn’t matter…Sola, was that Grexus?’

  Sola didn’t reply.

  ‘How could he speak to me in my dream? And how could he speak to me from the past? It must have been just a dream. I couldn’t have been there. Just a coincidence. My feeble mind unable to disconnect from Kei. The man you loved, that I thought I loved…’

  ‘I don’t think it was a dream,’ Sola said. She summoned up a nanite-chair from the floor and sat, hands rested on her thighs.

  ‘How?’ Re’lien asked, simply, but filled with a desperation she had never voiced before.

  ‘Warp is the god element,’ Sola sighed. ‘It has been a long time since I studied our people’s art, so I’m a bit rusty, but bear with me. Warp is energy, it is an element and it is neither. It binds space and it binds time – and it destroys it all.’

  ‘Please, Sola. We have been on Mars long enough to abandon this Imperial prattle.’

  Sola raised her hand apologetically. ‘Prattle or not, it is the truth, or as close to the truth as we can fathom. Warp overcomes space and time. Warpmancers work to twist warp to manipulate space. Warp-drives work to manipulate time. This is what allows FTL. It is how modern civilisation overcame the ancient theories of relativity, of time dilation – of all these concepts of physics that are no concern to a social scientist like myse
lf. What I do know is what I studied as the heir to Xerl, and what I learnt from Kei. Warp makes connections, between points in space and points in time. The warp attuned experience this in the form of dreams. Visions. Images and all the senses of a time before. The warp connected the Warpmancer with a time and a person, a place, an event. A great unravelling of the present and the past. Thank Terra, the void, the Great Exchange and all that is somehow holy that it is only temporary. Warp-visions are traumatic. It is why blighted planets are uninhabitable. Not only is the air toxic, but visitors are assailed with waking warp-dreams. Even the strongest are consumed by madness.’

  Sola looked Re’lien sternly in the eyes.

  ‘We thought that I was the warpmancer heir to Xerl, but if you spoke to Grexus, across space and time, you are also a warpmancer, my dear sister.’

  Re’lien didn’t reply. She couldn’t. Darkness fell and the automatic lighting of the apartment activated. Nano-bots coaxed them to drink, in silence, as they absorbed what they had said and what they had learnt.

  Finally, Re’lien broke the silence.

  ‘But that isn’t all.’

  Sola tensed up.

  ‘Please. I need to know.’

  ‘Need to know what?’

  ‘Everything.’

  “Civilisation exists because there are men and women willing to die for it.” Jacques Lukke, Civilisation and Society.

  Chapter 10.

  Sacrifice

  ‘I loved Kei. I still love him,’ Sola said. ‘And when you love someone, you are willing to sacrifice for them. If necessary, everything. If necessary, yourself. And above all, if it is for them, truly, for the essence of them – you are willing to hurt them. I died at Ter’un. My body was stripped of its essence. The Godkiller vortex, overwhelmed by Grexus, destroyed me. But I let go just in time. My body was crushed. I died. Truly. But warp goes past space and time. With my final power, I was rebuilt at the place that meant the most to me. The archives in Xerl, where I met Kei for the first time. I had survived, but I was powerless. I was no longer a warpmancer. Whatever inside of me that allowed me to twist the god element to my will no longer answered me. Unfortunate, or fortunate, for you who never had been bred as a warpmancer, I was the equivalent of crippled. Imagine losing the use of your eyes. Your ears. Your nose. For me, warp was everything. And I lost it. But above that, I had lost Kei.’