Destiny Abounds (Starlight Saga Book 1) (6 page)

The Captain gestured with her eyes and made a slight circle in the air with her fork for a moment before becoming unburdened enough to reply. “It is an interesting tale, to be honest.” She paused and swallowed, making a vague gesture towards the com’s speakers in the meanwhile. “I am certain Mr. Leonard already knows about it, as it is one of the big mysteries of our cluster.” Merlo focused her attention on her Captain as she continued. “The jump to the Nygotha system was discovered by Altair long ago. Its slip branches off of the midpoint of the jump to the Elysian and Niallassian
systems, so you can safely bypass it, which is what most almost everyone does.”

“Why? What’s in it?” Merlo’s curiosity was getting the better of her.

“Nothing,” Branwen replied, smiling with her storyteller’s expression.

“Nothing?” Merlo queried, and Branwen nodded in partial response to her question while simultaneously taking another bite of her meal. Merlo furrowed her brow. “You mean, like an uninhabitable system, or just a star with no orbiting planetoids, or what?”

“Well, they say it used to be an inhabited system, possibly hundreds of years ago, with about the same level of technology Altair has now. Three to four of those ‘garden worlds’ used to be in the system, but now the remnants of those planets and everything else in the solar system float throughout, torn asunder by some grave force and now utterly lifeless. They say you can still find remnants of cities anchored in some of the debris.”

Merlo munched consideringly for a moment, then said “You mean like explosions or something? Like the fusion weapons that messed up that one planet?”

“No, nothing like Jiraxi, which is still intact, still inhabited. They say these worlds, and indeed all the solar bodies save the Nygothan star itself, seem to have been ripped apart by some great, external force,” Branwen intoned with a mystical, storyteller’s mien, first looking down at her datapad, then back up at Merlo as if to gauge her reaction. The Captain kept her own expression amused, but still playfully mysterious.

“What? You’re shitting me.” Merlo reached out for Branwen’s datapad, skepticism scrawled openly across her face.

“I do not jest,” Branwen protested with a smile. She rose slightly and leaned forward, handing off the pad with the information in question and settling back down to eat more. Merlo scanned it quickly, disbelief melting from her face as her eyes widened in a measure of surprise.

“Indeed, Miss Merlo,” Mr. Leonard’s cheerful voice offered helpfully from the wall panel above them, “It’s no joke. As far as I’m aware, no comprehensive scientific explanation has ever been offered for whatever phenomenon stripped the life from Nygotha, though there are countless theories.” Merlo supposed that with Mr. Leonard’s help, the Captain could have rigged the datapad with this as a prank, but she didn’t know if that was the kind of thing either of them would do. Besides that, a quick Exonet search revealed far, far too much confirming information for it to be a reasonable practical joke.

“Wow. Huh.” Merlo shrugged with indifference at her own perceived lack of eloquence. Branwen was still grinning broadly at her as Merlo transferred ownership of the datapad back to her Captain, and the young Arlesian realized that Branwen had probably been waiting for her to show enough interest to warrant diving into the story.

“The rumors, many of which are, of course, not rooted in any manner of science, range from strange gravitational distortions, to massive slipjump anomalies, to colossal alien creatures with unknown powers,” Mr. Leonard continued. “But, if you’d like to know, the thing I find most interesting about the system is the star, Nygotha-890. It’s a blue dwarf: a classification of star our galaxy is dated as too young to have produced by this point in time.”

“See, that is exactly the kind of tale I enjoy hearing,” Branwen said, gesturing indicatively with her eating utensil toward the com, as if it were actually a person involved in the conversation. Merlo couldn’t help but notice how brightly the royal blue of her eyes flickered with life as she delved into the discussion with her usual gusto. “Not that I understand the significance of all that star-age science, but I do so love the mystery inherent in it. It could be anything.”

The sleek com panel made a slight noise as it rendered Mr. Leonard’s voice once again with clear, digital precision. “I’d be more than happy to attempt to explain it once more, or to explain any solar phenomenon in general, at a time of your convenience, Captain.”

The Captain nodded as Merlo watched, and she wondered if the Captain ever thought back over their conversations and realized that there was no way Mr. Leonard could possibly see her body language. “Niallasi remains another one,” Branwen noted, gesturing towards Merlo. “Do you know that one?”

Merlo shook her head, not bothering to continue the charade of familiarity at this point. She was pretty sure the Captain could see right through it, and besides, this conversation was both interesting and useful. She’d need to know stuff like this to make her way in this cluster. She didn’t know yet what she was going to do with her nebulous future, but for now, the
Destiny
was a damn good place to be.

“Niallasi is a garden planet, just shy of the standard size, in the Arden system,” Branwen began, seemingly partly reading from her pad and partly speaking from previous study on the matter. “From what Altairan and Kepo scientists have been able to determine, Niallasi appears to have been terraformed at some point in the past, and its planetary core somehow reinforced. Its surface is about half land, half water, and has a comfortable temperature that barely varies over the course of the year. It only contains a handful of large cities, which are populated entirely by several thousands of children, ranging in approximate age from four to eleven.”

Merlo coughed out a small mouthful of her beverage, wiping her mouth with her arm and rising, with Branwen already offering her datapad across the table and flashing her teeth in an amused smirk at Merlo’s expense. “When first I heard of these places, I believe I made quite a similar expression,” she said with a low, honest chuckle.

“I just think you wanna see how dumb I look when you shock me with something,” Merlo grumbled back playfully. She perused the datapad once again, silvery eyes tinted a lambent blue by the soft hues emitted from it. “I don’t get it; I mean, how does a planet full of children work? There’s more to it, right?”

“There is,” the Captain admitted. “I have actually looked into it a good bit, wondering those very same things.” She certainly seemed to have studied up on it, as she kept rattling off facts without having to reclaim her pad from Merlo’s grasp. “Their technology is advanced far beyond anything else in the cluster, way beyond the Kepo’s jump-drives or Altair’s greatest dreadnoughts. Supposedly, the children are taken care of by advanced, city-spanning artificial intelligences called Superintendents, and all of their needs are seen to.”

To Merlo, this was stranger than the Nygotha system by far. “Okay, so what happens when they grow up…” Merlo trailed off in mild shock as she read the answer in the passages highlighted on Branwen’s pad. “They... don’t? Seriously, what is up with this cluster?” Now engaged, she read further as the Captain took the opportunity to finish her meal in earnest and thump her carved drinking tankard down onto the table with a kind of symbolic finality. “Oh, okay, that makes a sort of sense. They’re maintained by some sort of advanced nanotechnology.” Not unlike her suit, then.

“Indeed, I am glad it makes sense to you, then.” The Captain smiled, gathering Merlo’s emptied plate up along with her own before the distracted woman could protest, and hustling them all off to the sink to start cleaning up. “A society comprised of eternal children, maintained by machines born from incomprehensible technology, that eschews almost any relations with the rest of the cluster? One wonders how that came about, and how it holds together. And if they are truly happy there, enshrined in unending play.”

It appeared to be something the Captain had thought over a bit. “Yeah, that doesn't sound very enticing, to be honest.” Merlo replied, eyes still buried in the datapad.

“Does it not?” Captain Branwen queried, methodically spraying clean, then drying dishes and reaching easily to those damned, too-high cabinets to slide the plates away, and finally thoroughly rinsing out her giant mug. “No pain, no sickness, no disease, no death. No worries about the future.” She paused for a moment, taking a thoughtful breath. “One theory, since both the Child and Superintendent are unforthcoming on their origins, is that with their level of technology, one could supposedly revert to youth. Perhaps after creation of such marvels, they decided to revert to a simple, carefree life.” She paused for a moment, with her back still turned to Merlo, her emotions shrouded. “When you get to my age, it perhaps sounds more appealing than it does at yours.”

Her eyes breaking from scouring the datapad to instead follow the Captain, Merlo could almost see it for a moment, a slight bend to the spine and weight to those otherwise strong shoulders that would indicate age, or at least weariness. But it was the voice that painted it most clearly of all, the sound of sights seen, but blemished with loss; something in that resonated deeper within Merlo than she could admit right now. So she shook her head and tried to change the subject. “I guess. I don’t really remember my childhood too much, just, um, pilot training and stuff.” She shifted with a bit of unease as the Captain turned to face her, a hint of a knowing gaze showing as she shifted toward a happier demeanor again.

Merlo frowned down at the pad in her grip. “It says here that visitors are not prevented from landing on the planet, but that sometimes ships that go there just... disappear. I don’t get it, if they’ve got tech like that, why not trade it? I figure everyone would be clamoring to get their hands on it.”

Branwen smiled again without the robust enthusiasm of before, instead seeming to warm to the conversation once more as they continued the discussion. “Why? If such stories are true, what would anyone have that they want? What trade could be made?”

Merlo grunted as the Captain came over and sat again, gathering her datapad collection but making no move to leave quite yet. Merlo folded her arms on the table, leaning her small frame onto it as she looked up at the Captain. Once again in the clear, ambient light where Merlo could see her face, relaxing casually in her chair at the head of the table, Branwen looked once more as if she were hardly a few years Merlo’s senior.

Dressed today in a simple brown tunic with white animal fur edges that draped comfortably from one shoulder, hair loose except for an intricate core braid of gold hanging long in the back, Merlo again noted how pretty she was, in her own undeniably strong and confident way. “So, any other cool or weird stuff you want to tell me this morning, Captain?”

Branwen smiled in response. “That begs the question of what you will find strange,” she said, putting the leather, straps and battered steel of her boots lazily onto the table with a careful tap of metal on metal. She slid the stack of datapads to the side and they dimmed, going on standby as she crossed her arms behind her head and relaxed. “We could talk about the Kepo.”

“Those odd, bipedal fox people with the tall ears? I’ve seen them all over the docks on Altair, and several other places. They kinda weird me out.”

“I figure they once felt similarly about us.” The Captain smiled gently. “I have dealt favorably with them several times now, since they deal so much in trade. I have never known one to be less than nice.”

Merlo frowned lightly, making a slight negative gesture with her head. She realized belatedly how, well, accidentally
racist
her statement had sounded. “No, I mean, I never really knew of any non-human, non-Arlesian species before. Now I know there’s the Kepo, and you’ve mentioned the Boshta before, but I’ve only actually seen Kepo in passing, for the most part. And I’ve never seen a Boshta.”

Branwen nodded with an air of quiet, casual reassurance. “Oh, indeed, I do understand. Remember, all such things were once quite foreign to me, as well. It took time for me to adapt, as it will with you.”

Merlo found herself smiling, and abruptly felt her cheeks flush lightly. It caught her off guard, and she moved to sweep wisps of her short cut hair away from her face to mask it. “Good to know.” Merlo was glad that Branwen showed no signs of noticing her embarrassment, at least. “What else did you have in mind?”

“Besides those things, we could speak of the crystals of Mizar, the vast riches of Elysian, the aberrant orbit of Eraki, or the wonders of the Zelturi Ringworld.” Branwen laughed, a rich, resonant sound rising from deeper in her chest and spilling out. “Myriad are the wonders of our cluster, I suppose.”

Merlo’s ears perked up at the last in the list. “Hey, tell me about the… ringworld, was it?”

“Altair discovered the jump to the Zelturi system… ahh, I simply cannot remember how long ago.” Branwen trailed off, sweeping her feet off of the table and reaching out to rifle through her datapads, which glimmered back to life from standby at her bidding. “Mr. Leonard, care to help me out with this?”

The Captain glanced up with hopeful eyes toward the outline of the com, and it obligingly began to emit Mr. Leonard’s voice. “Unlike Nygotha, the ringworld in the Zelturi system was discovered within the last century, as Altair has been making efforts to use fast-traveling ships to investigate physically nearby systems, instead of simply seeking out new slip connections from which to add to the cluster,” He said. “They discovered a system that had been, up until then, almost unnoticed via unmanned probes. They had noted it previously as anomalous, but upon investigation, found a system comprised solely of the ringworld, set in place around a small, long sequence orange dwarf star. It was completely abandoned when they found it, and though Altair has made many tried extensively, they have never found any trace of who, or indeed what, created it.”