Maybe that’s why the Monarchs made sure this stayed a no-go zone. There was new stuff here and they wanted it for themselves when they got around to it. I couldn’t see the Battle Spire anymore as I stared off to the west, but apparently they had decided to get interested.
She was nearby. The Monarch who called herself the Seeker. And was now a member of Reaper. Official standing in the Strange Company. File that under weird things Sergeant Orion never expected. She’d heard Hauser’s assessment of the tiny microscopic squids with thousands of eyes that emitted low levels of radiation and lived in a lake of boiling sulfur water. Water that was gold and purple and weirdly hypnotic. And I wanted to just bliss out and stare at it for hours.
How much weirdness can one fit in a paragraph, I wonder, as I read back over this. And the answer is… that much. That much weirdness can fit in. Which, when you think about it, is a lot of weird. Lotta questions there. But hey, I’m just a merc. I don’t ask questions and I don’t play silly games.
I kill. For mem.
And I don’t believe in anything. That’ll get ya killed. Both sides of this war currently fleeing for their lives in every direction knew the Ultras had a no-discrimination policy during First Pass.
“The Monarchs wanted this to be a no-go zone, didn’t they?” I asked the Monarch. The rest of what was left of my platoon was milling about, urinating, eating, or trying to rearrange their gear to lessen the torture the next several hours over bad terrain would produce.
“They did,” she answered, and then realized the inadequacy of the statement. They were her. She could read it in my eyes. Seeing that I was silently screaming, but you’re one of them. Sensing this, she corrected the mistake.
“We did, Orion.”
We both turned away to watch the vast lake, me wondering how we were gonna navigate around and through it. It seemed shallow and there were land bridges out there we might try, but who knew if we’d end up in a dead end, or quicksand, if that was a thing.
Her? I have no idea what she was thinking. She’s a Monarch. They ain’t even human anymore.
“This…” she spread one alabaster arm, long and thin, muscles delicately sculpted to perfection, across the strangely hypnotic vista we were entranced by, “…this is the most important place in the galaxy. But there’s a caveat, Orion.”
She paused. Like she was dangling a mystery in front of me. And asking me to bite. I truly despise vague statements like that and have a hard rule that I never bite. No matter what. I won’t give the satisfaction.
I wanted to though. Real bad. But I was NCO cool. Which is really just a kind of grim resignation in which all hope of anything ever going right has been beaten out of you by experiences.
“Oh, yeah. I think I know what that is,” I said sarcastically. “Caveat. I used to think it was a snack they served at rich people parties I’ve seen movies of. Then I found out it means… a condition to the premise of something.”
I gave her a look I hoped indicated I was not interested, nor did I have the time to be played by vague manipulating statements. I was busy trying to save our butts out here.
She didn’t bite. Just gave me a cool appraisal like she was considering whether she should buy me for some project she needed to get done. Not sure if I’d do the job. Not sure if I was up to the task. Maybe I was on sale. Or pass on by for some other better tool to get done what she needed getting done.
Or at least that was my take on her look. Who knew?
“Listen, does this place, and what you’re trying to get me to bite on, does it have anything to do with me getting done what you need done, and getting my team off-world?”
“It does.”
“Okay, then tell me. Why is this the most important place in the galaxy?”
“It’s important if you accept the caveat,” she said patiently. Not condescending. Just calm. Patient.
“And accepting that this place… is important… it helps accomplish the mission?” I asked, trying to clarify. Trying to get whatever I could to get what remained of my command out of here and somewhere safe. The Spider. If it didn’t get shot to bits trying to effect the suborbital rendezvous.
“It does, Orion.”
“Okay. So then what’s the caveat? Tell me. Daylight’s burning. Night soon and we’ll have to move slower.” I checked my rifle. Magazine. Port. Sights. If just for something to do to show I needed to be convinced and had important stuff to see to.
“The caveat requires that you believe in something, Sergeant Orion. And as you said, you don’t believe in anything.”
A Monarch who wants me to believe. Get religion or buy some subscription. Of all the things I couldn’t imagine about such a meeting, and I never did because I don’t think situations like this are supposed to happen. It’s unnatural. We don’t mix. Monarchs and anyone else.
But the universe is a strange place. And these are strange times indeed.
That book I finished. The book about the scout who discovered this world. The mystery that sucked me in and made me finish the last part of it in one night when everyone else in Strange was off drinking and playing cards.
It ends with a clip. The last recorded image from the flight logs of the scout ship. Airlock door. The first few seconds are just Amos in his environmental suit, getting all adjusted. Breathing heavily. It’s dark and there are few lights inside the airlock. Then he taps the door panel, and the airlock slides open, top to bottom.
Daylight on a new world. The first look. The scout is now a silhouette in a spacesuit. An image as old as spaceflight. The new world
