Chapter Sixteen

Leto and Harbinger

 

Hellsinc Space Port: Three months previous

 

 

Red Moon sat in the command center of Far Ranger’s ship watching the screens that showed the feeds from the deep-space sonar array. Something was out there. She could feel it.

Petre popped his head in around the door.

“Far Ranger wants to see you, Jik,” he said.

Red Moon nodded, scowling at the screens. Nothing. Yet. She rose, grabbed her pulse rifle and headed down the corridor. Outside, at the end of the ramp, her long legs took her towards Far Ranger’s command hut at the edge of the landing field. Far Ranger waited, but she did not want him to think she cared enough to hurry. Jasper sat in the outer office just outside Far Ranger’s door, a half-finished report on the screen in front of him and a half-finished smoke stored behind his right ear while he had a tense conversation with someone on the other end of his headset.

Red Moon waited for him to get off the com link.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“Intel says the Rebel army is on the move. We may be moving out soon. Tell everyone you know. Oh, and Far Ranger wants to talk to you.” Jasper waved at the door into the rear office.

“What for?”

“He’s not saying and I’m not guessing,” Jasper grunted, keying in a new link on the com. “Serrac. You have the latest intel report on your desk? Talk to me.”

Red Moon left him and went to see Far Ranger. Perhaps he had someone he wanted her to kill.

Far Ranger was scowling at a pile of reports. Red Moon recognized the packet. The courier ship had delivered that this morning. The Rebels were breathing down their neck. They had jumped planet a dozen times or more but still they pressed at the Royalist forces. The intelligence packets were finally catching up with them. The one on the top of the pile seemed particularly troublesome.

“Jik. Just the man I needed to see. I was wondering if you could help me decipher this report.” Far Ranger slid it across the table.

Red Moon picked it up and read the first few words. Jik Don Pu, the report began. It also had the number for her Herndin Four ID card. Under sex, it said “other.” The date at the top was years old. Her luck had kept it lost for all this time. Until now. God curse her meddling grandmothers. This turn of events had their stink on it.

Red Moon looked up, a question on her lips.

“You are not a Bhrinton, are you?” Far Ranger asked. “You are unlike anything the Medics have ever seen. Would it be rude of me to ask what species you might be?”

Red Moon shook her head. She would admit to nothing. “I told you I was an orphan. What does the DNA test say? I grew up on a rock out on the edge of nowhere. It was not until I left the planet that I came to learn that the universe is a very big and diverse place. My first teacher was human, so I thought I was human for a while but that was just wishful thinking, I fear. Does it matter? Pick a species. I do not care.”

Far Ranger scowled and grabbed the report back. “Your name is not Jik.”

“No,” agreed Red Moon. “I have had many names. Which one would you prefer?”

“What did Harbinger call you?”

Red Moon flinched and looked away. “I don’t want that name. If we must have a name that will satisfy you, have the one I gave myself. Red Moon.”

“Red Moon. That’s it? That is all you are going to tell me?”

Red Moon shrugged. “War has scattered all the sentient species to the four corners of the universe. We are all orphans.”

Far Ranger shook his head. “OK. You have a point. But the DNA report was clear about one thing. You are female.”

“A trivial point. I am, as you say, unique. I shall never breed without another of my kind to quicken me. Hermaphrodite seemed a good explanation. Let’s pretend it is true. Now, if we are done discussing my personal body functions, I got a date with a deep space scan.” Red Moon made as if to rise from her chair.

Far Ranger held up his hand. “Wait. Just one last question. And before you answer it, let me tell you I have medical proof of the truth. How old are you?”

Red Moon scowled at him.

“Well?” Far Ranger prompted her.

“It’s complicated.”

Far Ranger slammed his fist into the top of his desk. “Then uncomplicated it. Answer the question!”

“Why do you care!” Red Moon shouted.

“Because I adopted a puppy but I think it just might grow up into a bantha and eat me in my sleep!” Far Ranger shouted back.

Red Moon swallowed her anger and took a deep breath. “I would never harm you. Have I not already proven that?”

“Then give me information. I cannot use you to your full abilities if I do not know what they are. How old are you?”

“I have been awake for 350 years. I hatched 450 years ago. I was incepted 500 years ago. Pick a number.”

“You don’t look . . . a day over twenty standard.”

“I was forced to grow up too quickly,” she said, nodding.

Far Ranger choked, not wanting to laugh at the heavy irony of her joke. “Meaning you are nearly timeless. You are Ancellian and female,” he said with dismay.

Red Moon laughed, amused that he had figured it out, secretly delighted at his reaction. “What? Disappointed that I am not the long lost Dragon King? That might have been Harbinger but Harbinger is lost to me in more ways than one. I will never rise for Harbinger so he will never be King. He knew that when we parted.”

“Err?” grunted Far Ranger. “You? You control who is king?”

“It is the Ancellian way. There is only ever one Queen at a time. That queen controls the succession. Find me a suitable mate and perhaps I will make you a King who will lord over you and make you do what pleases him.”

“I just want peace, Red Moon,” Far Ranger said, sounding tired.

Red Moon resisted the urge to laugh. Instead she listened to the Oneverse. “I can give you that.”

Far Ranger laughed. “Bull. It was the Ancellians who got us into this mess.”

Red Moon studied him from under her lashes. She was not going to argue with him. Yes, the Ancellians made many mistakes. They were not gods and had no claim to perfection. But one of their more glaring mistakes was how they handled the human problem. She could change that.

“I have lived among humans for 350 years. If you pretend long enough, the wish becomes truth. Do you not think I know what you hold in your hearts? If I got the Rebel army to sit across the table from you, you of the Royal army, do you think you could act civilized long enough to come to some sort of treaty that gives everyone autonomy?”

“I will not play this game,” Far Ranger growled. “Fantasy is a waste of time.”

Red Moon sighed. “The first step to finding peace is to imagine it is possible. Pretend you want peace, Adam Far Ranger, and maybe it will happen.”

“Imagining does not make it so.” Adam growled.

“Imagine it, with all your heart so that when I create the doorway and open the door into peace, you will not hesitate to step through.”

“A door into peace? You can do that? What would that look like?”

“I have no idea. My ten thousand grandmothers assure me I will create change. Peace will be my gift to human kind. It is foretold.”

“How?” Far Ranger asked. “How can you stop this war?”

“I have no idea. The prophesies are short on the finer details. I am sure it will come to me.”

Far Ranger laughed. “You are so full of crap. This is a con, isn’t it?”

Red Moon sighed. He knew he was being conned. “I did not know how to lie until I came to live among humans. It is a very peculiar form of insanity. You will have to trust me.”

Adam Far Ranger stared at her. “Peace. All right. I will hold you to that, witch.”

Red Moon nodded solemnly. Here was a man who she could love without much effort. If she were in the mood for truth telling, she would say the unspeakable. That if he were Ancellian, he would be king now.

Far Ranger waved her away. “Shoo. I have plans to make with this new information.”

Red Moon smiled and rose, sauntering away, her stride as long and easy as it had been when she entered the room.

Peace. What a novel idea. She would have to end the Wizard problem once and for all to make that happen. Red Moon crossed the tarmac and climbed to the top of the control tower. Heights helped her think. The land rolled away from her around the curve of the planet. The men around her, men she was starting to become attached to, were going to die in this war and Harbinger’s fate ate at her guts. Add her need to annihilate the Wizards to that mess and her problems became a tangled ball of infinite possibilities.

Peace, Wizards, and Harbinger. It became a mantra in the back of her head.

The headache snuck up on her. She was grinding her teeth together without realizing it when the ripple in the world tore at her mind. Red Moon dropped to her knees and clutched the floor, waiting for the pain to pass. As the rift opened she rose to her feet and began to run. The stairs down to ground level became a quick succession of leaps over the railing down to the next stairway. Out on the tarmac, she pulled her com unit off her belt and shouted into it. “Wizards. Incoming. This is Jik at the tower. I repeat. Wizards. Incoming.”

She was leaping towards the stink of darkness when the grandmothers in her head whispered something strange. Fool girl. You are running in the wrong direction. You should be running towards the rift, they admonished her.

Red Moon slowed. “What? Why would I do that?”

Peace. Wizards. Harbinger. That was your prayer, they whispered.

Red Moon stopped and turned. The rift always left a scar on the Oneverse—a coiled and convoluted scar that wound its way around the corners of multi-dimensional existence. A scar that took a bit of time to heal. Sniffing the Oneverse, she found the direction.

“Why?” Red Moon asked. “I cannot travel around corners like Wizards. I do not have stone black eyes nor a crown of gold.”

Your forefathers grew weary and lazy. The nuances of mundane life bored them. They created avatars with Ancellian skills. A thing part human and part machine. An expendable, disposable tool. Easily replaced. What Wizards do with their machines you can do with your whole being. Open the door in the center of your mind, find the other end of this rift and walk through it.

The center of her mind. Harbinger had taught her how to do that. How to access that place of infinite power inside herself and make it do whatever one pleased. That was how he had built the enormous stone temple back on her birth planet.

“Show me how to walk through Oneverse,” Red Moon demanded.

Information flooded into her mind from the other side of the Veil.

Red Moon began to run. In an alley she found the spot that felt the worst, the most wrong.

“OK, you old biddies. Now what?”

You know. It is inside you now. Just walk into the rift.

Red Moon stuck a hand out and advanced down the alley, trying to feel for the disturbed fabric of space-time. There, whispered the grandmothers. Now it is just a matter of wanting to be there more than you want to be here.

“Why would I want to go somewhere else? If I go to the place where Wizards are born, I will only find trouble,” Red Moon said reasonably.

Peace. Harbinger. Wizards, they repeated.

Red Moon cocked her head and thought about that. Then she stepped around a corner to a place she wanted to be more than anything else in the Oneverse.

And stepped out onto the deck plates of what appeared to be an enormous starship. Red Moon spun around. The air was thin and cold, the gravity a quarter less than normal. She stood in a cavernous loading bay upon a thin catwalk suspended above infinite space. The bay was filled with webs of such scaffolding—scaffolding meant to access banks of machinery. Indicator lights flickered everywhere. Red Moon studied them.

Not machines. Pods. Rank after rank of stasis pods, above and below her, marching off into the distance. She studied the one in front of her. Number 135874. The ones next to it read 135873 and 135775. The security glass around the pod was white with age and hard to see into. She cocked her head, squinting. Was that a human form inside that pod? Rubbing the glass with her fingers, she tried to discover what was hidden inside these containers. Was that a face? A golden web covered the bald head of the inhabitant. Red Moon flinched and stepped back, coming up against the guard rail of her catwalk. Wizards.

Red Moon spun around, staring in horror at the thousands upon thousands of pods. Was this where they came back to, those Wizards she killed? The bodies she destroyed were only avatars, the real Wizard having never left this ship. Dismay filled her. She could kill a dozen a day and never make a dent in their numbers. The sheer weight of so many Wizards numbed her brain. Avatars making their own avatars to survive. Did that make the things inside the pods immortal? Did the pods maintain their charges in some sort of perpetual limbo?

Stasis pods, whispered her grandmothers. Old technology. Older than Ancellians.

A motion among the machinery caught her eye. A loading robot, not unlike the ones that moved freight inside a loading dock, carried a transparent box towards her. The box stopped in front of her and a door in its side slid open.

“Vengeance. At long last you have found me,” a voice said over a hidden speaker.

The voice woke echoes of itself inside her mind. She remembered the sound of tic-tics, the smell decaying plants, and the drip of rain on leaves. “Bin?” she said. She took a step toward the box. “Harbinger? Where are you?”

“Get in. I will tell you everything,” Harbinger said.

She would be ten kinds of fool if she put herself inside the box. Red Moon hesitated before the door, her hands gripping the door frame.

Peace, Wizards, Harbinger, whispered her grandmothers. It was like they were stuck in a loop, repeating the same things over and over again. Even her grandmothers were crazy in this crazy place. Red Moon stepped into the transport. The door snapped shut and it whipped her away, into the bowels of this machine place.

She regretted her choice almost at once. The headache that had been hovering between her eyeballs now tried to eat her brain. Red Moon snarled and pushed back. She could feel her eyes turn gold and the stain on her lips spread down her chin as she began burning herself up to build a shield around herself.

By the time the door opened her eyes were molten fire and the scarlet stain was curling around her navel making her want to scratch.

Red Moon stepped out onto the polished floor of a starship’s bridge. The windows gave a view of deep space. A scarlet gas giant hung high overhead. Control panel arrays blinked their tell-tale lights from of a score of work stations, a Wizard in every chair. Oddly, they did not look up at her entrance. She could not shake the surreal feeling that this was all some sort of elaborate illusion. She stared at the backs of their gold-mesh covered heads, wishing them to glance in her direction just so she knew she was real and not some dream-self wandering in the Void between the worlds.

A machine embedded in the center of the floor flared into a life and a hologram of a boy flickered into existence before her.

“Ah, at long last, you have come. I have waited a long time for this moment, Lady Vengeance.”

Red Moon stared at the image. He was Ancellian, the eyes edged in gold.

“Who are you? What are you?”

“There is a fairy tale told among the humans. A bed time story to shock the wee ones into behaving. It is said that the Ancellians made humans in their own image but made them short-lived and mortal. Eventually they grew to regret that choice. Some humans were more skilled in the crafts and sciences that the Ancellians valued most. Important to their Overlords, the Ancellians devised a way to preserve the minds and bodies of the blessed few. Artists. Musicians. Poets. Engineers. Pilots. These few were like favorite pets, kept alive and granted a horrific kind of immortality, able to grow old and die only to be reborn in the body of an avatar. These few were entrusted with all the knowledge and skills required to keep Ancellian society functioning. Gradually the Ancellians shed the more mundane duties and gifted them to their pet humans. The star-pilots were especially blessed. The smartest and most gifted of all humans, they were plucked from their villages, taken from their families, and then altered to give them the ability to reach across space-time and drag a starship around the corners of the Shadowlands. These chosen few grew arrogant, and began to think of themselves as gods. Wizards they called themselves. The Ancellians, it is said, devised a permanent solution to contain the power of all Wizards.”

“I care not about your fairytale. Why have you brought me here?” Red Moon demanded. “Where is Harbinger?”

“I am that solution. I am this place. I am Leto.”

Red Moon stared at the image of the boy, a shiver running down her spine.

“Leto. What are you, Leto?” she asked trying to breathe around the rising ball of fear in her chest.

“The arrogance of the Wizards could not go unpunished, you see,” said Leto with a graceful shrug. “The Ancellians built a hollow moon in which they placed a giant thinking machine. Then they gathered the hearts of all the Wizards who have ever lived and imprisoned them here. To control them, they installed an Ancellian Overlord among them so that Wizard-kind could never revolt again. But over time the Overlord became as one with his Wizards. Of one mind, we did something wondrous and impossible. All of us together took that moon and shifted it through space to where it is now. Thus the Ancellians turned a tool into a weapon that turned on them and destroyed them. This is the hollow moon Leto. The scarlet gas giant above us is called Ludado. The sun is called Bados.”

“Leto,” Red Moon said as calmly as possible. “Where is Harbinger? Where are you keeping him?”

“Harbinger has been assimilated,” the boy said, smiling. “All that he is, all that he was, now resides inside me. If you talk to me, you are talking to your cousin.”

“Assimilated?” The word made all her hairs stand on end. Did that mean Harbinger was dead? The wall around her heart trembled and cracked as the earthquake of grief began to build inside her mind. “I spoke to him. Just now. In the transport,” Red Moon said, unable to hide her desperation from this monster who would take any weakness she revealed and use to it to pry open her mind. She had wanted to find Harbinger. It could not be for nothing, coming here. All these years of looking. But for this? To find him dead or worse than dead? Was this some sort of cruel machine prank? The Oneverse had a perverse sense of humor.

The image of the boy shifted and became someone else. A tall, male Ancellian with ebony hair and eyes the colors of sunset. He did not smile—instead, his lips pressed into a thin, grim line. Time had sucked the happiness from this man. The lines permanently etched around his mouth told a story of a wounded heart. But even with this, she would have recognized him anywhere. The eyes were everything.

Red Moon’s heart skipped a beat. “Harbinger?”

“I am here, Ven.” Harbinger said gently.

“I looked for you, Bin,” Red Moon said, drawing near. She put her hands out but was afraid to touch his form, knowing he was not real, but wanting him desperately to be there. “I looked everywhere. They took you away from me and I was alone.”

“Can you forgive me?” Bin asked.

“What? I am the one who needs forgiveness.”

“I failed you,” Bin said in a strangled voice. “I failed your mother. I failed my people.”

“No, no,” cried Red Moon. “It was all my fault. I was stupid. You did nothing wrong. You were trying to keep me safe.”

The image of Harbinger reached out to her. “I missed you, Ven. More than you could possibly know.”

Red Moon did not want to but she reached out to touch that hand. Her hand passed through it. She howled in pain and spun around.

“Let him go!” she shouted at the room full of machines. “Give him back to me!”

The image of the boy returned. “Come inside. Be with him, here, inside our body. You will have each other forever.”

“Leto,” she breathed out, shaking with rage. “What are you, Leto?”

“I am the sentience in this machine. I hold the souls of all my children, the ones you call Wizard.”

That meant Harbinger was dead to her. What if she accepted the offer? She would never be alone again.

“What does that mean, to be with him inside you? I would go into one of those pods and get a number?”

“You. Your memories. All that you know. All that you are would become a part of us. The many made one. You would know no pain. No hunger nor thirst. The travails of the body would pass away.”

“What if I wanted to walk on a beach somewhere, with Harbinger, and watch a sunset?”

“You could. As an avatar. You would be there while being here, safe.” The hologram smiled a gentle smile but Red Moon saw the hungry look in those eyes.

“You would let me do that? It does not seem logical, to waste resources on frivolities,” Red Moon said.

“You are young. One must humor the young. The urges to walk beaches and admire light waves will pass eventually,” Leto said. “I know this from experience.”

“You were real once,” Red Moon reminded him.

“I knew my duty. My king required it. But that was long ago. A thousand kings have come and gone since then.”

“Come out of this place. Your duty is done, Leto.” Red Moon begged.

The image shook its beautiful Ancellian head and sighed. “The time for retreat has come and gone. The body faded. Now only the mind remains inside this place. Harbinger is my solace. I will not let him go. Come join us. I promise the dreams will bring you the peace you so desire.”

Red Moon looked at him sadly. “Will they?”

“You are not convinced,” Leto said. “Let me convince you.”

A door slid open and Harbinger walked in.

Red Moon looked up and began to tremble. This Harbinger was real. Solid.

“Harbinger?” Her mouth did not want to work and the sound was no more than a guttural sigh.

“Ven. I am so lonely. Come be with me,” he said, reaching out to touch her cheek. Red Moon shied away from that hand. The touch would destroy all the walls insider her mind and the sea of ice around her heart would crack open, releasing everything she had pent up inside herself.

She could smell him. The old familiar smell of healthy male Ancellian. Tears threatened but she clamped a mental fist around her emotions and grit her teeth so hard the muscles in her jaw jumped painfully.

“Come out of this abomination. Out into the real world,” Red Moon choked out. “I cannot love you as you should be loved, here, inside Leto’s mind.”

“You are so clever,” Harbinger said. “How did you find me?”

“The grandmothers knew where you were. You were never alone.”

Harbinger frowned, confused. “Grandmothers? What grandmothers. No. Never mind. All that counts is that you are alive and we have been reunited.”

Red Moon stared at him. The sound of his voice was like silk flowing over her senses. He was beautiful. The shape of his mouth, the languid blink of lid over those perfect almond-shaped, yellow eyes. The line of his jaw and the long, thin bones of his fingers. The world was filled with his light and it confused her, consumed her, overwhelmed everything, even the need to survive. He was a cup of pure water and she was someone dying of thirst. Warning bells were going off in the back of her mind but it was faint and far away. And the grandmothers were maddeningly silent.

Was this what it felt like to rise and mate? Or was it just her loneliness that consumed her.

That thought flared across her mind. She wanted him. Needed him. Wanted to merge with him, mind to mind, feel him with more than just senses.

She opened herself up to his body and his mind. And began to scream. This was not Harbinger. This was some vile construct, toxic and dark. Leto had tried to trick her.

Her rage came tumbling out from behind the walls around her heart. Red Moon grabbed a sheet of light from the alter-places and cut this vile Harbinger in half with it. The light did not stop at the avatar. It continued out into the room, slicing through Wizard and metal and everything in its way. Sirens sounded. The hologram of Leto winked out. Oily smoke billowed from the ruined eyes of the Wizards and the smell of ozone filled the air as wires shorted out inside the consoles.

Enough of this farce. If Harbinger was here, she would find him herself. She opened up a rift and stepped through it, to the place she wanted to be more than anything else.

Number 135874. She cursed in frustration. She had come back to the place where she had started. Then understanding flooded into her mind. She snarled, furious with her own stupidity. She had wanted him and this was the first place she had come. Pressing herself against the glass of the pod in front of her, she let all the senses of her body find his.

Pain. Pleasure. He was there. In agony. Trying to get free. He was sorry. Truly and deeply sorry. She could feel it rolling off his mind. There was so much more that she could feel. Had she been blind and suddenly granted sight, she could not have been more overwhelmed.

Ohgod-ohgod-ohgod, I had forgotten what it felt like to be truly alive and awake, touching our own godhood, she said into his mind, his own thoughts an identical echo of her own. He wanted her. Needed her. She could feel her lips burning as the scarlet birthmark bloomed and spread down her chin once more. It spread further than she had ever felt it and it hurt as the new tissue burst to the surface of her skin.

Harbinger struggled against his prison. “You are . . . exquisite, my love. I am a flower and you are my sun.” A part of him broke free of Leto’s prison and reached out to touch her, hold her, caress her blazingly hot skin. Was it real or illusion? She had no teachers to tell her one way or the other.

She had already been on the verge of self-immolation. Now, all semblance of control fell away. The ice around her heart burst into flame as her eyes transitioned into incandescent hot gold and the world took on the ghostly hue of the spaces behind the Veil. Everyone was a shadow here except him, except Harbinger, who blazed in golden light. He was gloriously beautiful.

And except for the Wizards. They were shadows, but those shadows wore magnificent golden crowns made of threads that trailed off into the infinite shadow. Only their eyes were the same, the dead black orbs watching her. A gossamer web of golden threads enveloped Harbinger, those threads tangled with those of the Wizards.

Red Moon pointed at the Wizards. “Do these . . . things . . . hold your leash?” she asked her cousin.

Harbinger burned with his need for her and could not answer. Red Moon followed the threads. They led back to Leto. Leto held the golden threads, but something far more sinister held Leto’s leash. A shadow wound its way around the Leto form, the tendrils coiling around him before disappearing around a corner into the infinite Dark of the shadowlands.

“You lied. You would never let Harbinger go, not even long enough to let him walk the beach at sunset.” Red Moon said.

“True,” Leto said, a sly smirk on his face.

“You are an Ancellian made into a machine. Machines cannot lie. It is a sign that they are broken. Are you broken?”

“I am self-repairing.”

“That is no answer!” she shouted. Red Moon watched the shadow claim part of the Leto shape even as it was repairing itself. “You play with powers that even now are eating away at your heart. Give me Harbinger. Let him go.”

“He is inside me. Part of me. I hardly know where he begins and I end,” Leto said with a shrug.

Red Moon screamed in frustration. Leto, the Ancellian, had been honorable once. Leto, the man-machine, was vile. As dark as the Wizards who called it home. Where did the one end and the other begin?

Harbinger tugged at her, burning with his need. “Take me home, Vengeance,” begged Harbinger. “Or kill me. Release me from this hell.”

“You will have to kill me,” Leto said, “for he lives as I live.”

Red Moon pulled her mind back to her body where it stood on the catwalk deep in the hold of the hollow moon. Reaching out, she pressed her hand against Harbinger’s pod. “So be it,” she whispered, turning into light.