Chapter 9: 'Homecoming' (3846 words)

Halycen convinced her cousin Vievel to join her on an unauthorised expedition into a Dwurkn starship, only to get caught by the elite military force in service to her uncle, the 'Ulmadr Advance'.

Halycen noticed the Aælfir at the center of the room immediately; even if she hadn’t been looking for the Aelfr she imagined her eyes would have been drawn to him first. His suit of armour was burnished in a vibrant red, much brighter than the uniform dull-burgundy of the soldiers surrounding him. Along both the suit’s recesses and joints ran lines of brilliant silver, and on his chest stood a similarly-silver crescent, the sigil of the Ulmadr, but the rest of the suit was unadorned and lacking in excess. He stood apart from the roughly fifty soldiers in the room nearby, taller than all but one or two of the Aælfir; where the soldiers were tearing their way through the hall’s storage crates, cages, and containers, organising the various found salvage into piles by purpose, the Aelfr simply watched over them at a distance, surveying their efforts and barking occasional corrections. Even the few power-armour clad warriors who were working in his vicinity were deferential; they maintained a respectful distance, avoiding eye contact until spoken to, and waited to be acknowledged before speaking. The Patriarch cut a singular and memorable figure, his presence loud even before he spoke.

A floating sphere hung close to the hall’s ceiling, a column of disturbed air pulsating and humming from just beneath the sphere until the floor some forty feet beneath it; the soldiers were making sure to stay clear of the whispering column, and a black mark marred the floor where the semi-invisible pillar came into contact with it. Suspended under its own power the droplight was a beacon for the rest of the room, a piece of salvaged tech that illuminated the space and let Halycen see everywhere in clear detail. The hall was the largest chamber on the Dwurkn frigate that she had seen, except perhaps for the nest of corridors where the home-ship had made its boarding breach, and Halycen had plenty of time to take stock of the room as the Ulmadr Advance marched towards her uncle.

The room’s walls, floor, and ceiling, were carved from a smooth white marble, charcoal lines of a second stone dividing it into four distinct quadrants. What few imperfections tarnished the otherwise-flawless alabaster surfaces were of Aælfir making, bullet marks and careless chipping; even as Halycen passed by him a young Aelfr threw a polymer-reinforced crate a little too forcibly and struck one of the hall’s support pillars, causing a cloud of dust and rock chippings to burst out. The soldiers in the room were mostly without exospheric masks or helmets, with disproportionately small heads poking out of their powerfully-built war suits, in contrast to the Ulmadr Advance. Each member of the Advance, save for Sera Odill, remaining helmeted even in the presence of their allies.

Halycen glanced toward Ardenfyrn, the scout-ranger who had kept a grip on her arm throughout their march. Ardenfyrn’s helmet was almost entirely comprised of a dark visor with a thin metillion frame locking it to her suit, but Halycen could discern nothing of her companion’s face; even as the glare from the hovering droplight caught the visor Halycen saw only her own reflection. As she looked toward the ranger Halycen glimpsed the middle of the hall, a grisly arrangement standing proudly in the midst of it; a stack of Dwurkn bodies, perhaps twenty or more, piled at least as tall as Halycen herself. The bodies ranged from armoured warrior Dwurkn to beasts as naked and fur-coated as the monster that had attacked her and Vievel. One particular body, on the edge of the stack that faced her, was still possessed of a wicked expression, its face forever warped in an open-eyed grin of hysterical fury.

Halycen slowed as she examined the Dwurkn bodies. The ranger Ardenfyrn tugged at her wrist and spurred her forward, threatening to drag her off of her feet with the force of it. The sharp tugs were jarring, and Halycen shot a sour glare at her in response. For her part Ardenfyrn had actually been kind and briefly talkative towards Halycen during their march, even offering to share from her drybread and water pills, but now the Aelfi scout had fallen as silent as the rest of the Advance and she faced forward unflinchingly, staring at the group ahead of them. As they drew closer to the Patriarch they passed by two younger members of the war-company, greenhorn squires who stopped organising a nearby Dwurka mess-cage so they could gawp at the passing group of rangers.

“Odill!”. The Patriarch greeted the commander of the Ulmadr favourably, as though they were old friends, dropping the pomp of titles and proper greetings; but despite cloaking his welcome in such an overture the acknowledgement came off as stilted and dry, unmistakably hollow.

“Patriarch”. Sera Odill returned no such favour, straightening up as he addressed the Aelfr. “During our operation, we discovered the lady Ulmadr had snuck aboard the ship-” Odill paused as he beckoned Ardenfyrn forward; the ranger took two long strides and pulled Halycen along with her. Ardenfyrn’s gloved fingernails dug into Halycen’s bare wrist painfully as she stumbled forward.

“Hey-ow,” Halycen protested. Ardenfyrn stood rigidly and to attention, staring straight ahead. Neither Odill nor the Patriarch acknowledged her presence but several other soldiers in the vicinity cast intrigued looks over toward the group. Odill continued speaking.

“-she claims to have boarded the ship alone-”

“I did,” Halycen murmured. All three of the adult Aælfir ignored her comment.

Stop talking about me like I’m not here, Halycen thought, feeling a rise of annoyance at the trio. The instinct to retort with exactly that thought rose in tandem with her irritation, but her situation felt far too precarious and reliant on the Patriarch’s goodwill for that.

“Was your operation a success?” He seemed to care little for Halycen’s presence. She wasn’t sure whether she thought that was a positive development or not. Sera Odill straightened up, drawing in a deep breath.

“I’m afraid not my liege,” he said. “The object was located but the Lady Ulmadr diverted our attention. I ascertained that returning her to safety was of the greatest importance”. Sera Odill paused, his words lingering on the air as he waited for the Patriarch’s reply. The Dwurkn frigate groaned, a strange metallic noise shaking the walls of the hall and causing Halycen to jump as it echoed throughout the room. Several soldiers of the war-company were briefly distracted by the noise, stopping what they were doing to glance about the room. Halycen felt Ardenfyrn’s hand slip from her as she twitched at the noise, but aside from that, the three adult Aælfir around her didn’t react to the ship’s cry, simply waiting for it to pass. As the sound faded Halycen glanced around her, rubbing the sore spot on her wrist where Ardenfyrn had been gripping. The nearby Aælfir who had been eavesdropping on the group, before the sudden noise, had now busied themselves again with the crates and cages closest by. Though she didn’t know why or what for, Halycen felt concerned that the marshall had just landed her in further trouble; blaming her for an objective left unfinished. The Patriarch sniffed, his squat nose wrinkling as he mulled over the marshall’s declaration. Halycen risked a glance toward him at the same moment her uncle turned to look at her for the first time, and the two locked eyes.

The Patriarch’s pupils were dark and slight, like needles piercing through her. Halycen resisted the impulse to look away, afraid that he might take offense if she broke eye contact.

“Halycen”. His tone was disapproving but he didn’t seem surprised to find his niece in front of him. “You realise your behaviour here today is a capital offence?” He stated plainly. Halycen felt the warmth leave her cheeks.

Is he being serious? Throughout the march she had assumed being a relative, and an heir even if not the heir- assumed that being blood- thought the punishment would be a flogging at worst- her mouth opened and shut fruitlessly, the words refusing to form upon her lips.

“Even as a civilian- to disobey my instructions during a military engagement?” The Patriarch glowered down at her, and at that moment Halycen felt half her age. She tried to remember why she’d planned the Illandr-damned expedition, but the Halycen of a few hours past seemed like a stranger now; a false Halycen piloting her body and making stupid andlátta decisions.

“Did you at least earn some offering for the home-ship?” he asked, continuing to bear down upon her with his heavy scowl. Halycen’s spirits lifted, her hand flying to the knapsack on her back as she remembered the chamber she’d looted.

Thank Ganymede, yes, I- No. She didn’t. Vievel had the medicine, she hadn’t stopped to gather any before the Advance had caught her. She felt her previous elation withdrawing, shrinking away-

“She has a Cairnknife my liege”. Halycen felt a hand on her knapsack and heard a quick cutting sound; suddenly her bag felt lighter and a flash of steel darted in front of her eyes. Ardenfyrn had stepped to her side, holding the pair of serrated scissors that Halycen had tied to her bag with twine. The same twine now hung loosely from them.

“And this is?” her uncle asked. His face seemed locked into a frown but his eyes didn’t deviate from the scissors.

“It, a Cairnknife, is a religious icon for the Dwurka my liege,” Sera Odill said, speaking before the ranger could reply. Odill glanced at her but Ardenfyrn was staring past the Patriarch, her helmet an expressionless mask.

“Dwurka priests usually destroy them with Magmafire rather than let them fall into Aælfir hands,” Ardenfyrn said. Her voice shook as she began to speak to the Patriarch again, causing her accent to jump slightly. Halycen turned toward Ardenfyrn as well, but the latter’s gaze was still rigidly locked forward and she didn’t notice the young Aelfi’s curious stare. The Patriarch studied the Cairnknife in Ardenfyrn’s hand, with intrigue plain upon his face. She stood rigidly to attention under his observation, her hand refusing to bend even under the weight of the scissors.

Wha-was that true? Halycen had never heard any such thing. She glanced back at the spiked scissors. In the droplight, they suddenly gleamed all the more brilliantly.

The Patriarch reached forward and took the oversized Dwurkn scissors from Ardenfyrn. He held them in both hands for a moment then calmly gripped the joined handles with a single hand and swung them to his left, slicing an imaginary foe in two with the double-sided blades. Drawing them back he hefted the Cairnknife up, lifting it above his head and feeling the weight of it, and then gripped the knife with both hands by the axis of the blades.

“Good,” he growled. “A fine find.” The Cairnknife glid downward, light dancing off of the metal blades as he pointed it at the floor. He then turned back to Halycen. She stood up as straight, snapping her hands to her sides and standing as tall as possible as she waited for her uncle to pronounce judgement. The passing seconds became a cruel new torture that she felt undeserving of, but finally, the Patriarch seemed to reach a conclusion on the matter and stepped forward, his shadow dropping over his niece.

“It was foolish to board the abomination’s ship unescorted, but your findings have brought some honour to the Ulmadr, and erased the blot of your own disobedience. There will be some punishment, but you were never in any danger from my law; I just wish for you to consider your actions before you act youngling”. He spoke softly but the gentle smile on his face sat falsely, giving the Aelfr a peculiar countenance. At once Halycen felt a wave of mixed emotions, her shoulders hanging relaxed as her whole body sighed. She took a deep breath, letting the snub of youngling pass over her head, and tried to reply, fighting her mind back from the verge of hopelessness and tears that threatened to shame her further.

“Th-thank you unc-my liege,” she stammered.

You were never in any danger. Halycen doubted her uncle.

A meager cheer went up across the hall, the noise briefly causing Halycen to flinch as she imagined it to be the ship’s continuing cries. A few throughout the hall clapped as a door on the other side of the room opened, and from the door marched a parade of armoured Aælfir, at least another thirty, filing slowly into the hall in rows of two. Each of the new soldiers carried themselves with their backs straight and heads held high, but a defeated energy permeated the group; they moved sluggishly and didn’t make eye contact with any of the Aælfir who had cheered their arrival. Their leader immediately turned from the column and headed straight toward their group, drawing a channel between the Patriarch’s own men as he moved through them. As the hurrying figure neared the group Halycen caught a glimpse of the Aelfr above the crowded heads of the nearby soldiers and groaned, audibly enough to draw a silencing glare from her uncle. Her hands still clasping her thighs she felt her thumbs trying to worry their way into her metillion greaves as she watched the figure, her father, push his way through two nearby Aælfir and step up towards their group.

“My liege,” he said, addressing his brother firstly. Thought it wasn’t apparent beneath their respective armours the Patriarch was the smaller of the two in frame, with narrower hips and thinner arms. Halycen’s father looked down at his older brother as he spoke, standing at least a head taller than him. Her father was younger than his brother but from appearance alone, that was difficult to ascertain; his eyes sat above a nest of wrinkles which betrayed long thoughts and worries, and his hair was thinned, lacking the natural sheen and glint of his brother’s. He twisted toward his daughter, unable to refuse to acknowledge her for even a moment longer, and he glanced at her with a feigned astonishment that fell short of masking his agony.

“Halycen-” he murmured with a sigh. She tried to draw away from his stare but her father’s eyes followed her as she turned her head.

The Patriarch cleared his throat, drawing both their attention back to him.

“Lord Vostoth. It seems your daughter took it upon herself to mount a solo expedition”. There was an odd quality to his tone.

Was he impressed?

“I see,” Halycen’s father said, stiffening. “What is to be done about this?” he asked. He stared at his brother unflinchingly, asking the question more plainly with his silence: What are you going to do to my daughter?

“This is a family matter-” the Patriarch said. He turned toward Sera Odill and the ranger Ardenfyrn, speaking loudly enough that any soldiers nearby could overhear his words as well. “-it is not an issue of honour,” he said. Halycen’s father nodded, satisfaction creeping across his face before a small grin flooded it. The smile curled his mouth and took years off of his appearance.

“My immediate duties will not grant me time to supervise any discipline, so I leave the task to you Lord Vostoth”. He nodded at his brother as he spoke.

“Your wisdom and mercy are legendary my liege,” Vostoth said. He glanced toward Halycen, a frown on his face as he contemplated it for a moment. “I shall see my daughter assigned to latrine work duty and the auto-filter disabled”. Halycen gagged, her mind filled with images of the task. Still, she was relieved. It was foul work but it was a much lighter punishment than she had hoped for. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a smirk settled on Sera Odill’s face. She cursed him for it internally.

“Good,” the Patriarch said, acknowledging his brother’s decision. “Hold for a moment whilst I attend to some other matters - we have something else to discuss,” he murmured. “Marshall Odill, please have one of your rangers escort my niece back to quarters and detain her until our return to the ship”. He didn’t wait for the marshall’s reply, immediately turning to bellow an order toward a nearby war-company soldier. The order was muffled beneath another of the Dwurkn frigate’s groans; a thundering of metal grinding against itself that echoed throughout the hall and caused crates and cages alike to quake in unison.

“Sire-” A tall and thin Aelfi, one of the few Aælfir in the hall not wearing the thick mechanised armour of the war-company, stepped up to their group. Her hair was tied at the back of her head in three adjoined buns, with messy strands falling over her ears and the front of her face. She wore a long silvery frocked overcoat with black buttons, under which was layered a metillion ringmail, and a pair of lenses on her face not unlike Halycen’s own. She moved up to them with such speed that she was standing in plain view before Halycen even registered a newcomer approaching. Even Sera Odill and ranger Ardenfyrn seemed briefly startled by the Aelfi’s frantic appearance. “By my observations, the Dwurka frigate is only a few hours from total shutdown- we should begin an evacuation,” she continued, ignoring courtesies and speaking without pause. The Patriarch frowned.

“Thank you, Scribe Bellea”. He turned back to the soldier he had tried to speak to before the ship’s rumbling.

“The oxygen field might fail any moment and the gravity stabilisers-”

“Thank you Scribe Bellea,” the Patriarch repeated, more sternly than before. He didn’t look toward the Aelfi but she nodded and glanced down at the floor, sufficiently cowed. “Marshall Odill,” he said, speaking to Sera Odill instead of the Aelfr waiting. “Please send your escort now”.

“Of course my liege.” Odill turned to Ardenfyrn and nodded. The helmeted ranger stepped beside Halycen and placed a firm hand on her right shoulder, giving her a slight push to encourage her to move. Halycen considered resisting, the goings-on of the hall appealing to the same part of her that had spurred her on to the ship in the first place, but her more tempered instincts won out. She turned to follow Ardenfyrn.

Glancing over her shoulder Halycen watched as the hall disappeared, the broken Dwurkn door which they had passed through growing smaller and smaller as she and Ardenfyrn walked away from it. The corridor outside of the hall was formed from the same charcoal stone that Halycen had become accustomed to, but she suddenly found herself yearning for the sleek bright hallways of the home-ship. Ardenfyrn’s shoulder-mounted flashlight lit the rocky walls in an eerie show of thin shadows, each cast from the bumps and crags of the uneven surface, giving the otherwise natural-looking wall a thoroughly unnatural appearance.

“You are luckier than you deserve,” Ardenfyrn said suddenly. The remark surprised Halycen. Annoyance had seeped into her words where previously only sympathy had existed.

“Some luck, didn’t you hear? I have to clean latrines”.

“Most dissidents would have been banished for what you did,” Ardenfyrn retorted. Halycen shivered, the memory of a previous public banishment rocketing to the fore of her mind.

“No-I- uncle wouldn’t do that-”

“Exactly, not to you”. Ardenfyrn’s annoyance curdled, becoming outright anger. Lost for a response Halycen dropped back into quiet, walking in tandem with the ranger. The rest of the walk was spent in the same silence, marching through the corridors of the empty Dwurkn ship until at last one of the corridors opened into a warehouse-like room that Halycen recognised. The breach.

There was no door as their corridor reached the home-ship’s breaching point, only a wide maw as it joined with the empty space where the Dwurkn frigate was open to the deep and the dark beyond. The blackness beyond the missing walls was broken only by the landing channel, a nanotubing enclosed bridge that extended from the home-ship itself to the Dwurkn frigate. In the distance Halycen caught sight of the massive Ulmadr flagship, a scintillating silver starship that housed the entirety of her family house and its vassals; bowed trusses encircled rising and falling ridges across it, creating a curvature that was more aesthetic than functional, and an intimidating magnetic-accelerator cannon, at least one-third the ship’s full length, sat fixed to the bow.

Ardenfyrn held up an arm, stopping Halycen in her tracks.

“Mask on. Air’s going to be thin.” the ranger said. Halycen nodded and unslung her knapsack, removing the exospheric breathing mask that sat above her other belongings. She placed it at the top of her hauberk, waiting for a moment as the smart-clips registered its presence, and then breathed deeply as the mask started to filter the air around her. The feeling made her light-headed, the filtered air hitting her head much more pleasantly than the thin oxygen aboard the Dwurkn frigate. As a smile crept across her face Halycen caught sight of the tunnel which Vievel and she had landed beside using their jump-rigs, the entrance of which they’d stored the rigs for the journey home. She neglected to mention it to Ardenfyrn, knowing Vievel might still need one of them.

“On three,” Ardenfyrn said, bending her knees and pointing at the landing channel’s opening. It sat some ten feet across the floorless space of the breach. “One-” The ranger didn’t get an opportunity to finish her count as Halycen leapt into the deep and dark, feeling the weightlessness take a hold of her the moment she crossed the corridor threshold. Unrestrained by the frigate’s gravity stabilisers she flew across the empty space, headed straight toward the channel’s mouth.

I never want to land, Halycen thought. The exhilaration quickly faded once her feet touched the landing channel’s surface, and as Ardenfyrn landed behind her.

“I said on three,” Ardenfyrn growled.

“Sorry, it’s just I nev-”.

“Quiet. Come on-” she grabbed Halycen by the wrist, agitating the already sore spot with her strong grip.

“Ow, hey-” Halycen protested. The complaints seemed to fall on deaf ears as the ranger dragged her across the landing channel. The home-ship glistened majestically as they approached, reflecting the light which occasionally escaped the Dwurkn frigate. As they drew nearer to the end of the channel, and the airlock it was attached to, a voice rang out from an unseen speaker, a slight crackle revealing the presence of an artificial sound system.

“Welcome home Ranger,” the voice said. In the absence of her house identification, Halycen wondered if Ardenfyrn’s occupation was known to her family. A rush of automatic motors engaging broke her speculation, as the airlock detected the presence of Aælfir. A bright light split the wall of the home-ship as the airlock door sunk back into a recess, dividing itself into two parts which then detached themselves from each other, revealing the see-through interior door of the airlock and the Ulmadr sigil on the adjacent wall.

Welcome home.