Via Astralis knew she shouldn't stare at the sun. Trappist-1E's crimson star didn't blaze like the distant golden sun her ancestors had walked beneath, but it still burned. Yet a girl named "Way Revealed by the Stars" could hardly see the sun for the first time without looking, right?
For once, stupidity worked in her favor. As she gawked, fire--invisible to the naked eye but not her nanite-augmented vision--unfurled from the star.
Solar flare.
"Crap." Heart in her throat, she glanced down. A golden amulet rested in her palm, shaped like two clasped hands. She'd planned to place her bulla in the day-side sunlight, say the traditional prayers, and leave the protective necklace--and childhood--behind. So much for that. "How long do I have?"
Holding her breath, she glanced over her shoulder. Beneath an ivory spore tower, her lander glittered like a ruby in the snow. The vessel's crystalline nanite lattice would block the radiation... if she could reach it.
Her mind flew through the calculations at a speed only other Navigators could match. 2.7 million miles from the sun... Flares move 0.19 million miles a second... I've got 15 seconds. "Crap."
Via shoved the amulet in her pocket and ran.
Around her, the sun-kissed snow writhed, spewing forth fuzzy blue creatures. Xenos. She braced for an attack, panting as she coaxed her internal nanites to pump more oxygen to her muscles.
Thank the Eternal Radiance, the xenos ignored her. Boiling up from their burrows by the millions, they took flight at speeds rivaling a lander's lift-off and rose to meet the flare like moths to a flame.
Three minutes later, as she watched a rosy aurora caress the sky from the safety of her lander, three chimes rang between her ears.
She turned her attention to them, and a familiar sense of maternal warmth and regal authority washed over her. Smiling, Via accepted the nanite communique with a mental nudge. "Hello, Mater."
A woman's bronze face, paler than Via's mahogany complexion but with the same dark-brown eyes, filled her mind. Around Patria Astralis's collarbones, the crimson laurel she and Via shared--where hereditary Navigator nanites pooled just under the skin--glowed.
"Oh, thank the Eternal Radiance." Her mother's fading worry lapped against Via's awareness. "Several Terraformers sensed that flare. They say it's a nasty one. I'm so glad you're okay. Were you able to finish the rite before it hit?"
Via's fingers found the amulet in her pocket. She withheld the sensation from her mother, focusing instead on the xenos blocking the sun in a massive bluish-white swarm. Now and then, dead creatures fell from the sky like teardrops, yet most flew on, unaffected by the radiation. "Yes, but barely," she lied. "I could practically feel the gamma rays on my back as I left my bulla in the sunlight. I barely got back to the lander in time."
Embarrassment prickled. She hadn't actually been in as much danger as she'd first believed. Trappist-1E's atmosphere, thickened by the native xenos lifeforms in ways she didn't understand, had blocked most of the flare's energy.
She frowned at the flying creatures, which drifted high in the atmosphere, filling it with a purple haze of released spores. How did the mindless creatures always seem to sense the star's fiery belches and respond so fast? She'd have to ask her grandmother.
"You're a brave girl, Via," her mother said, then paused and beamed. "No, a young woman, now. You're going to make a fine detective. I'm so proud of you."
Squirming at the unearned praise, she offered a weak smile. Why had she lied to her mother? No one would fault her for interrupting her solitary adulthood rite to take shelter from a flare. There were reasons the colony's Starlit Arcology sat on the planet's night-side, with only the lonely Sunlit Research Station here on the day-side. It was one thing to brave the sun--briefly--to symbolically release a protective bulla and the childhood it represented. Everyone ventured from the Starlit Arcology and night-side safety for their rite when they turned twenty. But no one expected people to come of age by facing an actual solar flare.
After a moment, she shrugged off her worry. A little lie never hurt anyone. "Thanks, Mater. I'm headed home now."
Patria nodded, relief etched in every line of her face. "Good. Get back here where it's safe. I'll be so happy when the Trellis goes up. We should have had a paraterraformation system years ago, but the Concilium can never agree on anything."
Via nodded. Her friend Clari served as the lead Communicator working on the Trellis and often complained about the Concilium's squabbles. "I'm going to nab a xenos for Grand Ma on my way into orbit," she said. "She'd probably like to study one that was exposed to the flare. I'll be home in about an hour."
"See you then, Via. Happy birthday."
When she returned to the safety of the night-side, the glittering black Starlit Arcology, and the former starship's habitat wing, she found her quarters filled with gifts. Everyone in her family had sent one and heaped them up on the table in the white crystalline chamber's entryway.
Well, almost everyone.
"Figures," she said, shaking her head as she tried and failed to find her grandmother's gift.
Via turned to the xenos drifting, complacent, behind her. Environmental nanites hummed thickly in the arcology's air, and she claimed them and wrapped the xenos in command magic. "Go drink some water."
Even an animal would obey the compulsion, but the xenos just floated in the air, its fuzzy tentacles wavering around it like a dark blue thistle. She couldn't fathom how the limbs kept it aloft.
"Water," she said slowly, pointing at the crystalline bowl on her hygiene table. Cool liquid rippled inside, refreshed by the bowl's nanites whenever its level dropped halfway or it grew too filthy. "Drink."
The xenos ignored her command, and she sighed. She'd captured it in a nanite net on her way home and dragged the writhing creature into the lander's small hanger bay. Irradiated and lethargic, it probably needed to drink and recover, but it didn't understand her commands. A human or even an animal would be helpless to disobey with nanites she commanded thrumming through their mind. But the xenos was something else entirely. Faceless and boneless, it vaguely resembled a fuzzy sea urchin or a floating dandelion puff, but the Lifesupporters said the creature wasn't an animal or a plant. Nothing from Earth more than approximated it.
Sighing, Via let the creature be. Her grandmother would know how to take care of it. A renowned astrobiologist on Earth even before she traveled in cryo-sleep for six hundred years to Trappist-1E, Kaitlyn Byrd had made the xenos her life's work.
"Come," Via said, tightening the nanite web around the creature and tugging it gently through the air behind her.
She found her grandmother in the older woman's quarters. "Hello, Grand Ma."
"Hello, my darling," Kaitlyn Byrd said in her accented Latinum. Like all Ancients, she had grown up speaking a long-dead language called English and had still not lost her accent after fifty years on Trappist-1E. It, along with her missing laurel, the strange jumpsuits she preferred over good Promethidae clothing, and the otherworldly pallor she and other Ancients shared, marked her as an unapologetic outsider. "What brings you here?" She blinked as Via drew the xenos into the room. "Oh."
Via smiled. "I grabbed it in the atmosphere on my way into orbit. It was exposed to the flare."
Kaitlyn's eyes widened. "Excellent!" She hurried to her white crystal desk and grabbed the nanite visor that allowed her to view the Caeles without augmentations. "Quick, bring him here," she said as she pulled it over her head.
"What are you doing?" Via asked, lip twitching as she nudged the xenos through the air and into her grandmother's eager hands.
Kaitlyn flipped the visor over her eyes and gazed down at the xenos. "Testing a theory." She turned the xenos this way and that, gently untangling its fuzzy blue filaments as it trembled. "The other Ancients and I used tardigrade-specific intrinsically disordered proteins to protect our bodies during cryo-freeze. They're produced by a creature back on Earth, called a tardigrade, to allow them to survive freezing, boiling, radiation, and desiccation." She held up the xenos. "Trappist-1E's spore-based lifeforms evolved very differently, but they're similar to tardigrades."
Via nodded. "So you're seeing how similar."
"Yes. I set up the diagnostics last month, just in case I ever got my hands on a frozen or irradiated specimen... And there we have it!" Kaitlyn lifted her head and beamed as she stroked the blue creature like a kitten. "It seems that TDPs aren't actually tardigrade-specific."
"They're in the xenos?"
"Several of this little guy's cells are coated. The proteins break down so fast after a threat passes that I've never been able to confirm their presence before."
Via frowned at the shuddering xenos. "Are you sure? It seems sick or something."
"Well, he did just go fly around in a solar flare. He'll be alright though, I think. He's a little too young to produce enough TDPs to fully protect him against the radiation, which is why he's a little sick, but he made plenty to survive. Amazing." She shook her head and then smiled up at Via. "Thank you for bringing him to me, Darling."
"No problem." Via winked. "I figured someone should bring a gift, since I noticed you didn't get me anything."
She meant it as a joke, but a sour smile curled Kaitlyn's lips, and a dainty white brow arched into downy hair.
Via winced. Crap. She was in for it now. Steeling her spine, she straightened. She was twenty years old now. An adult. Tomorrow, she'd start serving the colony as a detective instead of just a cadet. If her grandmother meant to chide her, she'd take it like an adult, not a chastised kid.
"Should I have given you something?" Kaitlyn asked. "I give you presents all the time. Why is today different?"
Via drew a slow breath. "You know why. I'm twenty today. I gave up my bulla."
"Ah. But are you really an adult?"
She frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"When you give up the bulla, you're supposed to put aside childish things and trust in your sorcery."
"Yes," Via said, crossing her arms. "I do trust in my sorcery."
Her grandmother peered at her with a knowing look. "So you've given up all those comforting lies about the Eternal Radiance, then?"
This again? "They're not lies, Grand Ma," Via said with every ounce of patience she could summon. "The Eternal Radiance is a god. It's not childish to believe that."
The Eternal Radiance had carried her Promethidae ancestors to Trappist-1E. Now, with Its nanites reforged into the Starlit Arcology and Sunlit Research Station, It sheltered them from the night-side cold weather and day-side solar flares. It kept the xenos and other native lifeforms at bay. It blocked the strange psychoactive influence of the system's other planets. Its nanites filled the air, land, and sea, granting the Promethidae magic so they could survive and shape their new world. It gave Via's people life and a purpose, and when they died, It accepted them into Its embrace in the virtual reality Caeles. It was far more than just a ship.
"Hogwash."
Via blinked. "What's a hog?"
Kaitlyn carried the xenos to her wash bowl and, cupping water in her palm, sprinkled it on the creature. "An animal down in the embryo banks." Her eyes narrowed up at Via as the creature in her hand relaxed. "Along with humanity."
"I'm human," Via said, gritting her teeth.
"You're augmented." Kaitlyn shook her head and walked to her wall. Palming the crenelated white crystal, she opened a linen drawer. "Engineered from the genes up to crew a generation ship and colonize a planet." She placed the xenos atop a stack of washcloths and closed the drawer.
"So?" Via said, ignoring her grandmother's odd behavior. The astrobiologist had her own unique methods of studying the native flora and fauna. "I'm still human. You once said people who look like me were sometimes considered less human back on Earth, and that's why we were the test subjects for the augmentations. So don't you dare call me inhuman now."
Kaitlyn's expression softened. "You're not less than human, darling. You're more." She returned to Via's side and rested a hand on her shoulder. "But humanity is in your kind's care. When those embryos are thawed and fostered, they'll need wise people around them. Sensible people, not theocrats who worship a ship."
"I'm perfectly sensible." Via shook her head and shrugged off her grandmother's patronizing hand. "But who cares about some embryos? They're not going to be thawed for another seventy-five years. We need to prepare the planet for them first." The Trellis would help with that, augmenting everyone's magical abilities and giving the Terraformers far greater control over Trappist-1E's transformation. "So why worry about the future now?"
"Wisdom usually comes after a lifetime, Via." Kaitlyn's lip quirked. "I wish I had known that at your age. But you can start cultivating it now so that, one day, when you're as old as I am--"
"You're not old," Via scoffed. "You're seventy." The elderly twin Chief Terraformers were three times her grandmother's age.
Kaitlyn arched a brow. "I'm un-augmented, as will be those who come from the seed banks. I'll be dead when they're born, but you'll still be here. They'll need your wisdom." She scowled. "Not your superstitions."
"Super--" Via's fists clenched. "Did you ever pause to think that maybe my augmentations make me wiser than you? My Navigator ancestors were created to chart courses through the stars, command ships, and lead colonies. I certainly didn't get that from your side of the family. What did your ancestors ever do?"
"Created yours," Kaitlyn said dryly.
Via's face heated. "I just mean that there's a reason the Eternal Radiance chose my kind instead of yours." She lifted her chin. "We received the Holy Ovidiana in the darkness between the stars, while you--"
"Slept," Kaitlyn said, voice exasperated. "We slept the centuries away in cryo on the Sublime Light. Thankfully, because space apparently ate away every bit of brain matter your ancestors on the Eternal Radiance possessed." She heaved a sigh. "I wish your grandpater were still here. He'd talk sense into you."
"He died," Via said coldly. "A xenos tore him apart and Mater ascended to his position as Chief Navigator." She knew she should stop running her mouth, but her grandmother's words about her immature, inhuman, superstitious nonsense still stung. "He's gone forever because he died too far away from the Starlit Arcology to become an eidolon in the Caeles. That's what happens when you turn your back on the Eternal Radiance. It turns Its back on you."
Kaitlyn's pale face drained of blood. "Get out."
Ice swept through Via's veins. She'd gone too far. She should apologize. She knew that. Instead, chill anger and stiff pride drove her toward the door. "I was already going,"
"Good." Kaitlyn's voice rose behind her. "Go! And don't come back until you can talk about your grandpater with respect."
"Whatever," Via said and, brushing her will over the nanites in the door to open it, stalked out. Grumbling, she returned to her quarters.
The gifts beckoned, with their bright plant-fiber paper and floral adornments. Now, though, they left her with a sour taste in her mouth. Superstitious nonsense? She shook her head as she tore into the first package. She doesn't know anything. Maybe the cryo-freeze ate her brain.
Three chimes rang between her ears. She brushed her awareness over the nanite drifting in her skull, half-hoping to sense her grandmother's visor.
Instead, a sense of a mind as clear and bright as a bell-song washed over her. Claritas Exaudibilis.
Via tossed the gift on the table and accepted the communique. "Clari!"
Her best friend, a strawberry blond as pale as the young woman's Ancient grandparents, grinned. A vivid blue laurel blazed around her collarbones where her Communicator nanites flowed. "Come hang out with me in the Caeles and celebrate not getting fried to a crisp."
Via cast her gifts a glance, allowing the future Chief Communicator to see the pile through her eyes. "Can't. I need to revel in my birthday loot and then go to bed."
Clari's nose wrinkled. "Bed? You can't be serious. It's your birthday!"
"Very serious. I'm official now. Twenty years old and a detective cadet no more." She stretched with a smug smile. "Technically, I'm on duty now, in fact." Ars, her mentor, had been a little too gleeful when he assigned her the night shift.
Clari snorted. "Duty? Come on, the worst that'll happen is Viteus will get drunk and start trying to recite the Holy Ovidiana again."
Via chuckled. Clari was probably right. With only five hundred colonists planetwide to oversee, Ars rarely had to make arrests.
Still, duty was duty. "Sorry, I can't tonight."
The strawberry blond heaved a sigh. "Fine, be a party pooper on your birthday. But meet me in the Caeles when you get a break." She offered a smug grin. "I made a new mind-scape. It'll be way better when the Trellis goes up, though. More computing power with a global nanite network. But even on the local lattice, it's pretty cool. Full-immersion. Synesthetic music. The works. Seriously, you'll be able to taste and feel every note, and if you ever have sex in there--"
"Woah!" Via said, waving to shut her friend up. "And with that, I'm going to bed." She laughed as Clari wriggled her eyebrows. "Alone."
"Bah, fine." The Communicator flapped a hand. "Go, go. Open your gifts and be boring." She winked. "Happy birthday."
"Thanks. Good night." Via flicked the communique out of her awareness and reached for her next gift, this one from Mitis, her mother's spiritual advisor.
Three chimes reverberated between her ears.
Groaning, she set the box aside. "What now?" she grumbled as she accepted the communique.
A tear-streaked face filled her inner vision, and grief flooded the virtual space. "Detective," the sobbing woman said, "I need to report a death."
*~*~*
CHAPTER ARTWORK
*~*~*
Via Astralis
Patria Astralis, Via's mater
Xenos, a lifeform indigenous to Trappist-1E
The Starlit Arcology
Via's gift table
Kaitlyn Byrd, Via's grand mater
Clari Exaudibilis, Via's best friend