Chapter 1

3221 A.L

 

            The sky above her bleeds out a spurt of red clouds. It happens so fast and then the sky is gray again. Not blue. She’d been projecting blue a moment ago, a dark blue like the center rim of her father’s irises. Or what she remembers of her father’s irises. But then the enemy, taller than her, a wet hand wrapped around her neck from behind, presses into her back, his breath rustling the short hairs of her neck, and her vision’s slipping away until it’s only the dull reality of Hera 6 grinning back at her.

            Lee grunts, pushing back against his body, shoving aside the worry and panic that has more to do with how his grip - tight but not tight enough to snap her neck - loosens of its own accord as soon as the sky shifts its color. As if he doesn’t want to hurt her.

            But that doesn’t make any sense. Of course he wants to hurt her.

            Suddenly, the world sinks beneath her and her veins feel tight tight tight, like someone’s gotten a hold of one artery and is pulling it like a piece of loose thread. She makes an embarrassing sound, like dying, acid burning up her throat, and he pushes her away, gasping, letting her fall to her hands and knees, palms stinging against the cold dirt.

            On her back now, ready to spring up, her eyes blur and then it’s only him towering above her, a dark silhouette against a stray shaft of pale sunlight, but she can feel him looking down at her intently, can hear him breathing hard.

            Why did her projection slip when he grabbed her? She has the ridiculous thought that he had felt it too. Had felt the world slip away, tilting out of reach like losing balance from a precarious ledge. But he couldn’t have felt it because he can’t see her projection. Can’t see any projection. That’s what this whole thing - the small battle swirling around her, his hand grabbing for her neck - is all about.

            War. War doesn’t allow for moments of indecision, or moments of fear, or moments staring up at some tall shadow that should be killing you and wondering why it isn’t. He has a gun. She can see it holstered by his thigh but he doesn’t reach for it.

            And then he turns and leaves her there, disappearing into the scuffle.

            Just another skirmish in this long, tiresome war. By the time she gets to her feet, it’s already wound down, the other side disappearing back into that forest of theirs and they can’t follow even though she wants to because of whatever protection they have around those trees.

            One of her men comes up beside her, face cut and favoring his wrist. He looks irritated and she almost wants to snap at him. His minor cuts and sprains are nothing to the pain she’d felt just a moment ago.

            “Sir, should we go after them?” His voice is thin, like a leaf fluttering against the ground.

            She shakes her head. “No. We don’t go into the Forest.” She looks at him - he’s new and she can see that he wants to disobey - and narrows her eyes. “None of our people have ever come out of that place. Do you understand?”

            He nods. Sourly. She doesn’t have the time of patience for his petulance. Not now with confusion pressing in on her, and grief. The battle had given her a brief respite from thinking about her brother’s death.

She needs something else to focus on. She practices bringing up another projection. The dirt turns to sand. The Sora river turns clear blue. Sunlight. Yes, good. A few clouds. Easy. No problem at all bringing up the images.

            What had happened a moment ago then?

            She rubs her neck gently. There’s no pain, probably not even a mark, but she feels the ghost of his hand there, still squeezing lightly. His breath curling against the skin of her cheek like wisps of smoke.

            She looks deep into the forest. A tangle of black limbs and gnarled leaves, a few heavy fruit weighing at the branches, round and distended as if full of water. Lee had never tasted one before. They belong to the others. A strange thing to respect, but to pick fruit you had to enter the trees. No one returned from there, swallowed up into the branches and weeds. Soldiers who had stood sentinel for troops to return from offensive attacks reported a soft trilling coming off the wind. And then silence.

            They stopped sending groups in once families started walking them to river’s edge, saying farewells.

            There’s already too much death on their side. Slow and steady and always creeping over them.

            But the others wouldn’t know about that.

            The boy next to her sighs. There’s a fresh face beneath all that dirt and soil smeared across his cheeks, barely over 20. He has that look in his eye that she’d seen before in the younger soldiers.

            “So we’re just going to let them go?”

            She clucks her tongue, eyes on the hulking mountains pressed against the horizon way above the canopy of trees. The Land of Flames beyond that, out of sight but always sending a dull wave of heat over the land.

            “For now.” She holsters her handgun. “I’ll talk to the councilor about being better armed on water expeditions.” A pause. “This is getting ridiculous.”

            “We can get the seers-“

            “No.” She tries to keep the irritation from her voice but fails. “You were trained better than that. The seers are of no use in there.”

            “What kinds of cowards pick people off when they’re getting water?”

            Lee shakes her head. Grabs the boy’s hand and presses her thumb into his palm to see how deep the cut is. It’s shallow, but she knows there’s no such thing as too careful.

            “Go to the med bay and get that cleaned and disinfected. You’re off-duty for 10 days.”

            “But-”

            “People have died from less.”

            He shuffles off huffily.

            She used to be like that. Worse, in fact, because she’s woman with more to prove.

            The other men are standing around, checking their guns and brushing off their coats, shooting her glances. Waiting for orders without wanting to ask her for any.

            She feels the phantom pulse of that hand against her neck. For a moment, without meaning to, she strains for the singsong trilling she’d always wanted to hear for herself.

            Nothing. After awhile, her men wander off back to the caves, leaving her staring into the trees. She wonders if they’d seen the enemy spare her. She feels a flush of embarrassment. She would rather he had just killed her than humiliate her like that in front of her men.

            She shoves her hands into her pockets and looks at herself in the black, reflective water of the river. Collecting herself, she arranges the landscape into dark, soft grass, clear water, leaves like brightly pale snow gathered on lower branches, a dark yellow glow seeping through the tree trunks. Her face blurs in the shivering ripples moving across the water’s surface like shattering glass.

            It isn't her best projection, but she’s tired and just needs something to hold on to. She still feels that hand. That strange pain in her mind like a swordshard lodged in her head.

            Whatever the enemy had done to her " if he had done something to her " she didn’t like it.

            She’d have to ask Basile for a larger gun.  

            Instead of heading back to the caves for the debriefing, she enters the cave gate and walks the perimeter all the way back to the cemetery.

           She never tries to project over The Garden of Graves. Projecting something nicer would be cold. Or disrespectful, maybe. 

It was dug years ago, fifty feet into the dirt, and stretches for a mile. They’re on the last layer of bodies, and there’s a line of twenty people to be buried and space for only 3 more.

            Her brother’s naked body is wrapped in rough cloth, bundled up next to the rest of the dead.

            She’d asked the councilor about a soldier’s burial but he couldn’t jump the line merely because of his service.

            She enters through the short bricked wall, and goes to where the bodies are wrapped up, making sure to keep off the line separating the hard soil from the mass grave. She presses the edge of her boot on the cloth covering her brother. The gravewatcher comes up to her, hands dirty, and nods at her. She’s thankful for the dirt covering him. Gives her an excuse to keep her own hands in her pockets, to keep her distance.

            “How are you, Lee?”

            She nods curtly in response, and she sees the familiar look of curiosity pass over his face at her seeming indifference. But she wouldn’t be out here if she were indifferent, would she?

            “Are you finding any way to get them in here?”

            He passes a hand through his white hair, leaving streaks of soot and dirt there. “I have my own thoughts on how to do it, but the elders don’t seem too keen on my suggestion.”

            He puts his hands on his hips and stares out at the land. The only clue that it’s a mass grave is the curve of the ground, a slight sinking.

            “What’s your suggestion, sir?” she asks, looking past the graveyard towards the hillsides peeking over the cave wall.

            “Dig up the lowest level and burn them.”

            “Yeah, I can see why the elders wouldn’t go for that. They’re stubborn about ceremony.”

            He clucks his tongue in agreement and for a moment they both simply stand quietly. The wind rustles her hair in to her face and the man " what was his name again? " watches intently as she pushes it back behind her ear.

            “How far down is the top layer? You’re sure there’s no room for some more?”

            He shakes his head. “I used to be able to walk all over this plot without a second’s thought. But now…now I feel like I’m stepping all over them. That’s how close they are to the surface. I always think a hand’s going to reach out and grab me. Childish, I know.”

            She glances down at her brother.

            He catches the look. “Sorry.”

            “Don’t worry about it. I still think I’m going to see his feet dangling over the side of his bunk in the morning. For a moment. Before I remember that he’s dead and can’t do anything.”

            She doesn't want to deal with this. She wishes that man had just choked the life out of her out there in battle instead of simply searing that feel of his warm hand into her neck. If he had, there’d be no need to worry about her brother or what is or is not done with his corpse.

She has the traitorous thought that it would be easier to simply bring him to the Land of Flames and cast his body into the fires. But that would be giving in. Giving in to who? her mind asks her over and over. The planet? She doesn't think it cares either way about them. Those of the Camp? Maybe. Their own fate? Yes. Yes, that’s it. But the dead are multiplying and multiplying and some concession will have to be made at some point. Her people are holding out for some victory. Some breakthrough that will help them to grow strong, healthy, almost invincible. Some breakthrough that will help them turn into the others. Those of the Camp. The Camp Ones. The Brothers. The Blessed Ones.  The Enemy.

            But until that time - that time that seems so far off - something will have to be done about the fact that the land is running out of space for the dead. And if she who had loved her brother with all the channeled ferocity of a girl with no one else to care for could suggest cremating her own, then others would follow. But no, she won’t be the one to say it first. She can’t openly disagree with Councilor Basile, the man who has raised her and doted on her ever since her father died as if she were his own daughter.  She cares for him. Loves? No. But cares. And respects enough to not defy him openly. Respect is something Lee understands more than anything else. Love is all fine and good - inevitable. But Lee’s always felt that their people would benefit from a bit of reigning in.

            She leans down at tucks the corners of the material underneath him. His shoulder is heavy, like weighted with water, and she tries to touch him as little as possible.

 

Author's Note

I'm trying to avoid doing information dumps since this is science fiction and that is always a problem. Even without knowing all the details yet of the environment and the conflict, is the story starting off interesting? You do you already feel lost?