Infinity's Shore

The fake noon waved happily for me to enter the cubby on the far right.

“Name, rank, and serial number only,” I told Pincer.

His worried—“Huh?”—aspirated from three leg vents in syncopation. When I glanced back, his cupola eye still whirled indecisively, staring in all directions except at the translucent qheuen in front of him.

A hanging divider closed between us.

My silent guide in hoonish form led me to a white obelisk, an upright slab, occupying the center of the small room. He pantomimed stepping right up to it, standing on a small metal plate at its base. When I did so, I found the white surface soft against my face and chest. No sooner were my feet on the plate than the whole slab began to tilt … rotating down and forward to become a table, with my own poor self lying prone on top. Huphu scrambled off my shoulders, muttering guttural complaints, then yowled as a tube lifted up from below and snaked toward my face!

I guess I could have struggled, or tried to flee. But to what point? When colored gas spilled from the tube, the odor reminded me of childhood visits to our Wuphon infirmary. The House of Stinks, we kids called it, though our traeki pharmacist was kindly, and always secreted a lump of candy from an upper ring, if we were good.…

As awareness wavered, I recall hoping there would be a tasty sourball waiting for me this time, as well.

“G’night,” I muttered, while Huphu chittered and wailed. Then things kind of went black for a while.

Asx

STROKE THE FRESH-FLOWING WAX, MY RINGS, streaming hot with news from real time.

Here, trace this ululation, a blaring cry of dismay, echoing round frosted peaks, setting stands of mighty greatboo a-quivering.

Just moments earlier, the Rothen ship hovered majestically above its ruined station, scanning the Glade for signs of its lost spore buds, the missing members of its crew.

Angry the throbbing vessel seemed, broody and threatening, ready to avenge.

Yet we/i remained in place, did we not, my rings? Duty rooted this traeki stack in place, delegated by the Council of Sages to parley with these Rothen lords.

Others also lingered, milling across the trampled festival grounds. Curious onlookers, or those who for personal reasons wished to offer invaders loyalty.

So we/i were not alone to witness what came next. There were several hundred present, staring in awe as the Rothen starship probed and palped the valley with rays, sifting the melted, sooty girders of its ravaged outpost.

Then came that abrupt, awful sound. A cry that still fizzes, uncongealed, down our fatty core. An alarm of anguished dread, coming from the ship itself!

Shall we recall more? Dare we trace this waxy trail yet further? Even though it gives off painful molten heat?

Yes?

You are brave, my rings.…

Behold the Rothen ship — suddenly bathed in light!

Actinic radiance pours onto it from above … cast by a new entity, shining like the blazing sun.

It is no sun, but another vessel of space! A ship unbelievably larger than the slim gene raider, looming above it the way a full-stacked traeki might tower over a single, newly vlenned ring.

Can the wax be believed? Could anything be as huge and mighty as that luminous mountain-thing, gliding over the valley as ponderous as a thunderhead?

Trapped, the Rothen craft emits awful, grating noises, straining to escape the titanic newcomer. But the cascade of light now presses on it, pushing with force that spills across the vale, taking on qualities of physical substance. Like a solid shaft, the beam thrusts the Rothen ship downward against its will, until its belly scours Jijo’s wounded soil.

A deluge of saffron color flows around the smaller cruiser, covering the Rothen craft in layers — thickening, like gobs of cooling sap. Soon the Rothen ship lies helplessly encased. Leaves and twigs seem caught in midwhirl, motionless beside the gold-sealed hull.

And above, a new power hovered. Leviathan.

The searing lights dimmed.

Humming a song of overpowering might, the titan descended, like a guest mountain dropping in to take its place among the Rimmers. A stone from heaven, cracking bedrock and reshaping the valley with its awful weight.

Now the wax stream changes course. The molten essence of distilled chagrin veers in a new direction.

Its heading, my rings?

Over a precipice.

Into hell.

Rety

RETY THOUGHT ABOUT HER BIRD. THE BRIGHT bird, so lively, so unfairly maimed, so like herself in its stubborn struggle to overcome.

All her adventures began one day when Jass and Bom returned from a hunting trip boasting about wounding a mysterious flying creature. Their trophy — a gorgeous metal feather — was the trigger she had been waiting for. Rety took it as an omen, steadying her resolve to break away. A sign that it was time, at last, to leave her ragged tribe and seek a better life.