The Sword of Myn': VIII: Seeking
The change in speed pressed Earthiana back against her seat as the still stars around them turned into streaks of colored light. The jump pressure eased off as the spacecraft steadied, and she was able to stand again, albeit shakily.
“You were worried,” Brendan murmured, watching her.
“Well, yes,” Eya admitted, rather startled that it had shown that strongly beneath her mask. “I haven't flown before… at least, I wasn’t old enough to remember.”
“Mm. What a rush for such an old heap of junk,” Brendan said lightly, running his fingers through his hair to straighten it.
Mira took up her favorite seat and began typing away on the extension tablet of the data center, studying their target of Aiala.
“Ah-ha!” she cried triumphantly, not a few minutes later. “And you thought we couldn’t land.”
“That was quick. What did you find?”
“According to the very few and scattered reports of visitors, as long as the energy shields are up, there are heated vents in the southern regions which will keep the ship floating at the surface. The shields and the surrounding vents will keep the ship from drifting off. And-”
The hologram snapped off, and all of the lights on the data center went out.
“Mrow,” Mira yelped, and toggled the power on and off.
“Looks like it’s something on the inside,” Brendan said, after checking the external power box.
Mira’s eyes lit up.
“I’ll fix it!”
“Miraaa, I’ll ask for your help if I need it, but it’s probably just a loose connection, and I wouldn’t want you to be disappointed.”
His sister grumbled and acquiesced, contenting herself with constructing a pattern out of a handful of glass stones.
Brendan ducked into the utility room, but the tools were nowhere to be found. As usual.
“Mirmir, you took the tools again, I think.”
Mira was humming to herself and didn’t look up.
“Mira. Miiiiraaaa.”
Brendan dropped his hands on her head, and she jumped.
“Tools?”
“Hmmm, we used them last after Sai'itha.”
Brendan noticed Earthiana’s questioning look.
“A planet we visited while searching for a friend,” he said briefly. “We lost someone there.”
“A sweet girl,” Mira added, studying her brother’s face. “She’ll be with better people now, though.” She squeezed Brendan’s wrist. “You need to know it’s not your fault, Bren.”
“Yes, yes, now the tools. Are you sure you haven’t used them since the last time we used them?”
“Lalalooo, no idea, but I’ll go track them down.”
Mira paused to forcibly acquire her brother’s approval of the pattern she had made, and then began her quest.
Fifteen minutes passed. Brendan shook his head. Mira was half cat, half serene machine. One of her many traits, she had a knack for putting things in ‘logical’ places which she could never find again; not on the first try, anyway.
Mira poked her head in, waving the toolkit.
“You’ll never guess where I had put it!”
“I never can, Mira.”
“It was in a garbage can.”
“What – you threw it out?”
“No, I was storing it. I put a bunch of things I forgot about in there.” She looped a necklace over her newly styled half ponytail.
“I will never know why you would store anything in a garbage can, but I do know that I need those tools if we’re going to get anywhere on this mission.”
Mira dutifully delivered the kit into his hands.
The bolts proved to be stubborn and rather rusty, and it took some doing and a lot of patience to loosen them. At last, Brendan was able to remove the panel and he set it to the side, peering into the void it left. It was too dark for him to see anything but a mesh of mechanisms, so he grabbed a flashlight and shone it inside.
“What in the world-?” he muttered, seeing a black sludge coating them. Frowning, he started scraping it off, dumping it onto a cloth that he could dispose of. He then heard something strange: a soft, squishy bump inside the data table. He paused, listening.
There was a slithering, then all was quiet.
Seeing nothing, Brendan figured that it was simply a part which had come loose, and embedding the screwdriver into the goo coating the projector box, attempted to rip it off. It proved too sticky, and after a few tugs—
The flashlight flickered off.
“Ah!” Brendan gasped softly as the screwdriver broke free and slashed across his skin on the back of his hand. He swiftly pulled out his handkerchief and pressed it against the gash, whacking the flashlight lightly on his knee until it flickered on again.
“What’s the matter?” his sister inquired, peering over his shoulder.
“Found a situation,” Brendan muttered.
“It’s just a loose circuit, huh? Bren, come on, I could even fix a smashed engine in my sleep. Let me do it, please.”
Mira nudged him aside to inspect the system.
“It’s no use, sis. Even you can’t fix this mess.”
“How bad is the damage?”
Brendan got to his feet and flung the screwdriver back into the toolbox, contemplating the sticky mess inside the data center before replying.
“Well, my technologically advanced sis, according to my limited knowledge, the circuits appear to be fine. If I worked hard enough, I could probably scrape the residue off the mechanisms, but the data-com itself is ruined. Whatever that stuff is, it’s crept into every crack of it, and we’ll be lucky if we can even extract its memory. We’ll have to get a new one. Unless you’re capable of vacuuming all the goo out of it, of course.”
“Sadly, no. I don’t have the parts to build an appropriate tool.”
Earthiana had been watching anxiously.
“How long will it take?”
“I can deal with the sludge during flights in hyperspace, but we will have to stop at a planet and find a parts dealer. Aiala won’t have one, being a water-based civilization, if there even is one. We’ll have to make another stop afterward.”
Earthiana sighed and rubbed her arms, her limbs now aching with her body’s stress. Still, the soreness was nothing compared to what her family must be going through. She had to find them, and soon!
“Don’t worry, Princess,” Mira soothed her. “Your family will be alright until the kidnappers obtain what they want.”
Eya paced before the window.
“I wish I knew what they wanted,” she whispered, closing her eyes against the images flashing through her mind. “I’d give it if I could. But I guess it’s not something I can give. Not for the safety of the whole world-!”
She studied her hands and touched the belt at her waist. If only she could give protection to them all, as Brendan and Mira were trying to give her.
“I’ll go to my cabin now, if that pleases you.”
“Third door on the left, Princess,” Mira murmured, and watched her go. This was nothing like the girl she used to know.
“Mira?”
It must have been the third time her name had been said. She snapped out of her thoughts and glanced up to see Brendan hovering close to her. His eyes met hers, filled with deep anxiety and near-anguish.
Mira smiled soothingly, taking her brother’s hands, the gloves now removed, and cuddling them to her cheek.
“It’s alright,” she whispered. “I know. Just wait. We’ll know soon, Bren. We’ll know soon for sure!”
Eya slid aside the door to her cabin. It was small, but in a cozy way, and she could tell some effort had been made, quite skillfully, at transforming it from a guest cabin into a royal one. Woven vines of faux flowers and pearls garlanded the closed viewport, with its light curtains, and a silk throw lent some color to the bunk. It was pretty for a ship, she would have owned, had she known of others to compare it to.
All her things were there; they had been somewhat loosely unpacked by Mira and Will, clothes still packed away in their carven boxes. These Earthiana opened, and she began to place them in the dresser drawers. She noted the travel clothes that would not hint at her identity, despite their beauty. There were a few dresses and robes she might wear on the ship, and a simple organza gown for church, that would feel like home; there were stellanene sequins on one, and bands of braided stellanene in the folded hems; the shimmering sounded like her mother’s steps in the evening.
She opened another box and smiled a little, drawing out a heap of rose-gold and peach silk. These were the aerial silks which had hung in her room, on which she would spin and play when she was deep in thought or frustrated. Beneath them were a few books and clay sculpting supplies.
Whether she would use any of these things was the question. She would make herself ill should she lighten her own load by them when her family suffered so. She set the books and clay on a shelf and dragged the silks out of her room, unsure as to what she’d do with them, or even if she ought to.
She glanced up and down the corridor as Brendan came from the bridge. He halted, staring at the silks she held.
Eya met his gaze, steeling herself as she trembled a little, wondering how he managed to be so intimidating without physically being frightening.
“Do you need help, Princess?”
“I found these packed in with my things. I’m not sure why, and I’m sure it would be imposing of me to have them placed, so I’m just thinking where I should put them for now.”
“Let me see those?”
He took them and examined the hooks by which they had been suspended.
“Aerial silks. I haven’t known anyone who has used them since… I was young. The cargo bay, small as it is, has strong beams from which I think these will hang safely. I’ll put them up and clear the space so you might not hurt yourself on anything.”
Earthiana smiled again and met those maple eyes, seeing them soften again in a way that almost made her cry. Instead, she dipped her head in thanks and retired to her room to wonder.
Eya lay in her cabin that night, the golden glow of the lights somehow both soothing and lonely. It was strangely silent; silent, at least, compared to the bird-sung days on Solaria. There was a soft hum of the temperature control, but that was all. She couldn’t even hear Mira or Brendan; whether they were awake or asleep, she didn’t know.
It would have been supper at home; she’d taken convincing to eat a little earlier, and now her system wouldn’t even take that much. All was night in space, anyway.
She missed her family.
Her mother coming to brush Eya’s hair, and soothing the scars that still burned.
Her father’s step, and the kiss he’d drop on her cheek.
Mercir’s twinkling eyes as he carried the younger boys off to their rooms, playfully twisting the sword in Eya’s braid as he passed by.
The giggles when Aura, Eya, and Aphrodelle would “secretly” sneak into the private passage between their rooms to say goodnight, trying not to be spotted by their parents, though both parties knew the other was aware.
Eya hung her head and bit back a sob, lest it be heard outside her door. Most of all, and guiltily, she felt, she missed Bran and his gentleness, his purposeful sharing of her pain. He was her only brother by blood, and if she lost him, she’d lose more of herself than she would know. The bond between them could not help but be stronger and stranger than the rest, for the shared, yet unknown secret pain drew their hearts closer than blood, despite the unshared knowledge. What past would she lose entirely without him?
Eya’s hand went to her sash, finding the smoothly beveled surface of the vio-cam. She fingered it and experimented, in vain, to contact Bran. His lunar crest blipped on the hologram, and faded after a hopeless minute, the signal going nowhere.
If there was only something, anything—! She plunged her hand beneath her pillow and drew out the satchel which she had placed there, as though it would keep its owner closer to her. Most of its tooled leather bulk was empty; she had given the tome that had filled it to Mira.
Eya had mentioned the book when her companions had pressed for any other clues to aid the quest, Mira asking whether there was anything else she could research.
Eya had pulled out the tome, and, barely managing not to cry, told them the little she knew of it. While she hadn’t been able to take more than a passing glance at the pages, she’d seen enough to know that it was in a language she could not understand. The title itself had been easy to read – but it must have been a newer addition over faded text, for the bulk of the book was in what was called Latinite: an extraterrestrial language with declensions and complex grammatical forms such as the ancient Earth language, hence the colloquial Vestar name.
Mira had taken the book at once, carefully cracking it open, and her eyes had glowed at the mysteries within.
“Where did you find this?”
Eya had hesitated.
“It was Bran’s find. I assume that he found it at Universe-City, but he never spoke of it to me.”
Mira had grown quiet and stroked the book’s scratched cover; Eya recalled the expression on the maiden’s face, which had echoed her own sadness. Mira had promised to study it and find whatever she could, and so Eya had relinquished the volume into her care.
Eya shook her hair over her shoulders and the thoughts from her mind. She was aching for the sound of Bran’s voice – she thought of the tapes he had recorded. She dug through the remaining contents of the satchel, finding the tape labeled “The Search.”
There was a personal console within her cabin, which included various methods of playing back recordings. She found the tape insert and pushed the tape in.
For a moment, she felt a prick of guilt, wondering whether Bran, or anyone else, had intended for her to learn this story; it may have been among the many things they seemed loath to tell her. But it was out of their hands, now, as it was out of hers.
Read the previous chapter here.
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