Post 68
Mercedes
You’re following a shadow. Both in the physical world and in your mind. You can feel the Natural Shell slipping along the darkness of the corridors she’s led you into. She’s skipped past Shori’s air lock and is now deep into the outpost’s ruined wings. It obviously used to be an extensive gas mining colony - the infrastructure is there - but you can only sense people on the far side of the planet, far past this abandoned section and the minds that greet you on that far side are simple, weak, and focused purely on survival.
Not like the thing in front of you.
That mind is intense. Stronger than anything you’ve ever encountered, but very, very familiar. A Void Dragon. You wonder where she’s going in this maze of ruined metal and supplies and you wonder how a Nat Shell can move so much more quickly than you. You with your Wuxing Dragonmark of Air and Storms stamped between your shoulder blades. You exhale gently and let the current of air slip under your feet to carry you faster along the corridor, but the shadow in front of you doesn’t get any closer. If anything, she feels like she’s moving even farther away from you.
How is she doing this? You wonder. How can she move this quickly, carrying Kas in the dark with only a Natural Shell? Something occurs to you. You stop and look more closely at the base around you. The layout looks familiar and there is something naggingly important about the markings along the overhanging doorways. You move to the closest one and brush away the dust and grime. The familiar logo of Wuxing stares back at you.
No. It couldn’t be. You think as you move to a nearby utility closet and tap the backup power access panel. It opens with a command that you thought you would never have to use again. Your personal PIN, as a Lyrandar pilot. You flip one of the emergency breakers. A distinctive ca-click reverberates through the hallway and one-by-one lights flicker on in the hull. You know exactly where you are.
This is the flagship Ayumu. Your mother’s ship. Not a station, not a colony. Impossible. Something else occurs to you.
“That’s enough, whoever you are,” you call out into the emptiness. “I’m tired of playing your little game. If you want to talk, come and talk. Otherwise, give me Kas back and we’ll call it a day.”
You feel something snap in your mind, or rather, mental inertial fields shift and the Natural Shell that looks like Seema is standing in front of you. No sign of Kas. You are abruptly bored and annoyed with the whole thing. “Stop it,” you say again. “There’s no need of all this,” you wave to the Wuxing ship. “I haven’t been my mother’s daughter for years.”
Seema pouts at you. You recognize the manipulation, note it, and put it in the back of your mind. She’s wearing the same simple, streamlined uniform that you wore once and you are surprised at the small twinge of nostalgia you feel seeing it. Maybe I am more of my mother’s daughter than I thought. It is not a comforting realization. You close your eyes and focus, trying to break through whatever mental illusion the Sunyata has wrapped around you, but it’s too strong. Or you’re too weak. Same difference. You can’t snap out of it. The walls of the Ayumu remain stubbornly solid around you. How irritating, you think.
“You’re ruining the fun, you know,” Seema says.
You shrug. “I don’t particularly care. What do you want?”
She sighs. “I wanted to play with you a little. The last Seema’s memories of you were much more interesting.”
“You have my condolences,” you say, drily. “But I still don’t care. Kas, please. And if you wouldn’t mind going away, that would be very convenient.”
She drops the pout. “Monk, if you are not going to play, there’s no reason to keep you alive. Aren’t you curious where your family is?” She motions to the Lyrandar crest near the utility closet. “You don’t care about this ship?”
“I assume it’s just an illusion to try and evoke an emotional response in me,” you reply. “And I’m not interested in participating.”
“It’s not an illusion,” she says, tapping the hull. “I killed the operational group and took over the family. With Burkenthiel’s help.” She looks at you as if expecting a response. “I’m Wuxing now. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“No,” you say. “We all die. All things change. I am sorry that you feel the need to be an agent of destruction, but that’s hardly unique among people like you.”
“People like me?” She cocks her head to the side. “And what would you know about people like me?”
You hear what’s under her words. Pain. Loneliness. A deep craving for power from someone who has had nothing for a long, long time. “We have a lot in common, you and me. I made some assumptions.” You run a mental probe along the cold Void linking the Shell to whoever was controlling it. You can Hear barely restrained violence, deep sensitivity, and grief so intense that it makes you wince. It’s the same chaotic mind you felt near the Old City, several worlds ago and a number of things fall into place. “You’ve been following us for a while. You’re Chiyoko, aren’t you? The one Hoshi has been searching for.”
She glares at you and you can feel a moment when she loses her mental control. “You are NOT fun,” she almost hisses. “You were supposed to be different.”
Your eyebrow twitches up slightly in almost surprise. “Was I? How inconvenient for you. What do you want to do now, Chiyoko? You’ve done your best to hurt Hoshi. You have your precious Mentem. Are you happy? You have all the power.” You open your arms as if to take in the whole ship. “You have a whole Corporation at your beck and call. You have the Sunyata metapsionic Gifts. You’re the most powerful person in the whole galaxy.” You let your arms fall back to your sides. “Is it enough yet?”
“I’ll kill you,” she says after a moment. The words are almost gentle, more exploratory than a threat. “Doesn’t that make you afraid?”
“No,” you say and take a risk to reach out to her. She doesn’t stop you as you lay a hand on her shoulder. “Death can be a relief, not a punishment.” She doesn’t say anything. “What do you want, Chiyoko? What do you want to do, with all the power you have?” She shakes you off and you step back, feeling the intrinsic discomfort that caused her to do it. “I certainly can’t stop you. Kas can’t. Hoshi can’t.” You shrug. “You win. There. Is anything different?” You close your eyes to Listen more carefully to the leaks in her Mindstream. Vague thoughts and something you don’t quite understand seeps into you and you open your mouth without thinking, channeling that ineffable thing. “Why did you leave Moira Burkenthiel alive, Chiyoko? Why are you working for a mere human? Why did you look so hard for Kas? Why did you follow Jiro all these years?”
Chiyoko has seemed to shrink in on herself when you open your eyes and she seems to be shaking slightly, but you can’t tell if that’s mental strain on your part or actual emotion on hers. It’s hard work, this. Hard mental effort to See her and you can feel yourself getting more tired by the second.
“You weren’t supposed to be like this,” she whispers. “Stop it.”
“Maybe you left Burkenthiel alive because you miss your mother. Maybe because you’re so lonely that the tiniest comfort or connection is all you have and you can’t bear the thought of killing your one link with the physical world. Maybe you can’t stand the thought of being alone with yourself and all the things you’ve done.” You pause. “After all, you used to be Sunyata, didn’t you? One of the Great Houses. What would your mother say if she could see you now?”
“MY MOTHER IS DEAD!” Chiyoko shouts at you. Between one heartbeat and that shouted phrase, you see her as the same broken child that Hoshi is. Still filled with fear and despair that never left from a lifetime ago.
“So she is,” you say quietly and with genuine compassion. “And she’s never coming back.”
Chiyoko screams. Not just a physical scream. This scream rips through your mind and the halls of your mother’s dead ship as space and time ripple and shear apart. You drop to your knees to hold your hands over your ears, even though you know that won’t help. It’s an instinctive reaction against not just the noise, but the anguish that you feel behind it. And then, it cuts off. Brutally, sharply, aborted in a way that makes you throw yourself to the side without conscious thought as a fireball explodes through the corridor where you just were.
Monuments of flame blossom from all sides as the Ayumu starts to come apart, the illusion fading with each yellow, red, green and purple bursts as metal burns and chemical tanks explode.
Once again, it’s just the ruins of a colony. Once again, you can hear the minds on the far side of the world. Once again, you can feel Shori’s mad presence just beyond the far airlock. You start to run, capturing another hot gust of air from still another explosion to lift your feet and carry you back to the ship. Faster. Must go faster, you think, grabbing another zephyr and another and flinging yourself into space itself, cocooned in their tiny bubbles of oxygen to carry you to Shori. I can’t die, quite yet, you tell no one in particular. Just let me make it to Shori in one piece and we’ll go find this madwoman. You say it like a small prayer, reaching into that deep place of courage and darma that makes the emptiness bearable. Not yet. Don’t die yet, Chiyoko. We are coming.