The Gardener of Nahi

Chapter 1

Cassidian

The last few moments were of muted predictability, and I look back on them now with both wonder and sympathy. I was falling to my death, but nestled comfortably within my own naivety I didn't even realize it. I didn't realize anything back then. I was my former self.

The matte blackness of space became indigo. Indigo became a youthful blue. And then this luster became the imposing grayness of the Cassidian sky.

My life was on a similar journey, I now realize. I was a Hunion courier then. But one day I would have become something grayer and more imposing. A sergeant, perhaps. Or an ambassador on some distant world. I was being groomed for their dark intent, and their goals would have become my goals. As success fell into my lap I would yearn for more until the day I would find myself an old man, realizing my mistakes all too late.

I'm not certain if it was fate, luck, or something else that intervened that day. All I know is that the wisdom of old age came to me early on the beach and I embraced it.

The wreck had been easy to spot from orbit - high resolution scans in my visor picked up the obvious abnormalities, which only became more apparent the further I fell. Once I was in the shadows of the highest tier walls, I pulled my preliminary chute.

Towards my left I could see the spires of Canopy Level. The hazy morning sun was already filtered through the translucent walls, but this high up natural light was ample. To my right lay a stark contrast - the unending sea which dissolved into grey. A lonely ship meandered in wide circles far away, a local Cassidian fishing vessel undoubtedly. From my recollection of this world, private vessels were rarely sanctioned.

Further I fell in silence, until the wall to my left became jagged and opaque and the light of the sun became distant, something altogether fake. I put one hand behind the other, noting that no shadow was present.

Before long, the beach was rising up to meet me.

"Landfall successful, at target site," I murmured needlessly into my headset as my feet touched sand. My superiors perched safely in the orbiting comm station high above would appreciate the extra detail, even though they could see what I could see through my visor. I was playing to the itching feeling that this operation was of great significance. Certainly the silence which followed reiterated this. Many sharpened eyes sat behind mine, and I could almost feel all of them watching with keen interest.

I surveyed the damage. The ship in front of me was smaller and more luxurious than I expected, seemingly capable of fitting only two inside - what we would call a private innership. Glossy black paint covered most of its surface, except where it had been worn off by the harsh entry - a greenish metallic color not unlike oxidized copper shone through. Underneath its body lay shards of concave glass, the result of excessive heat I presumed. From a partially opened gullwing door sprouted a network of footprints in the sand. These circled the ship, and emanated in a few directions, but most of them led away through a field of barren dune grass, up a large hill to the east. As I detached my chute in the sea foam beneath my feet, I looked up in that direction, at the massive energy curtain which veiled me from the rising sun.

The tier boundary rose up sharply at odd angles where the buildings began at the top of the bluff. Beyond this unending wall I could see dark shapes moving, people walking and gathering based on their speed, but like everything else past the barrier, they were blurred and left trails of color and shadow. It was strangely beautiful, this shifting mosaic of sorts, but I knew it was only an illusion. Many times before I had been through those walls, and I was keenly aware of the lack of beauty behind them. This was as far down as one could get on Cassidian. The lowest of the three tiers: Still Water Level. People called it the Still for short, perhaps because it perfectly described the people living there. Prisoners going nowhere, and most of them didn't even realize it.