Destiny's Blood by Marie Bilodeau (superbooks4u txt) 📕

In under an hour that would change, when Layela and the Mirialers would leave them in peace. For now, the bridge was the only place free of them — Cailan had forbidden them access.

Avienne’s eyes ran the length of the nebula displayed clearly through the view screens. It was a beauty. Purple reflected down to its core, as thin as fairy dust from here, but Avienne knew it was quite thick up close. Lights shimmered at the edges of it, made visible by Destiny’s ultraviolet and infrared eye. At the centre of the spherical beast lay a faded light, presumably the sun named Mirial, from which many old men had recently claimed to come.

“Now that’s hard to believe,” Avienne mumbled. She leaned forward again, her skin tingling with anticipation. A place to call home.

“What’s hard to believe? That someone would willingly hang out with you?”

“That we come from there,” Avienne responded, ignoring the Berganda’s sweet smile. “And that we want to go back. It’s a planetary nebula. What could still be alive in there?”

“Ah, how you enlighten me with your wisdom, my smuggling friend.”

“Don’t you know anything about space?” Avienne shot Josmere an annoyed look.

“Plant. Like planets and fresh earth.”

“A planetary nebula,” Avienne said, leaning back again, “means the star burped, shed its top layer, effectively destroyed its star system, and is now dying a slow, meaningless death.”

“Cheerful,” Josmere mumbled, her eyes trained on the nebula. “But I can still see the star.”

“It’s dying, not dead.”

Josmere sat back in her chair, her eyes still on the star. “Do you really believe that?”

“Believe what?”

“That the First Star could be dying? That Layela could save it?”

“Why do you care? No offence, but aside from your two little friends — my sympathies, by the way — you don’t exactly seem like the, ah, heroic type to me.”

Josmere shot her a crooked smile. “Takes one to know one?”

Avienne smiled back. Protect your own and let the rest rot, had always been her motto.

The Berganda shook her head, still gazing out at the star. “It’s just, why would they take such a risky journey, and why would they need to bring Layela, and why did Yoma have to die?”

Avienne sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “You’re asking the wrong girl.” She looked down at the Berganda. Josmere was folded in two and hugging her knees, looking more vulnerable than Avienne had believed possible. Or she was about to be sick. Avienne softened her voice. “I really don’t know, but I do know that Cailan is no fool. He would not believe in this if he didn’t have good reason.”

Josmere stayed as she was, but turned her head to meet Avienne’s eyes. “Reason enough to get your father and the old engineer killed, too?”

Avienne shook her head without words, looking back at the nebula. It didn’t make much sense, she had to admit. Nothing made much sense anymore. Why did so many have to die for a dying star? Why couldn’t people just let nature be?

“Do you think Cailan will go?” Josmere asked.

Avienne sighed. “I really don’t know.” Though part of her hoped so, another part feared the disappointment and danger. She had had enough fun with this little adventure. She was ready for something that didn’t involve collapsing tunnels and the threat of being reduced to a one-dimensional state.

“There’s a story my aunts used to tell me,” Josmere began, looking at the nebula. “That the First Star feeds all the ether races, and that for the past few years, the races have been withering without its ether. No matter how many tried to reach it, none could, because only the protectors of Mirial can. And they had all vanished, presumed dead, and the First Star was helpless without their care. Most, including the Berganda, can’t be fertile without ether, so I always thought — I always accepted that my people were doomed, because no one could reach it, could revive it. And therefore, no one could seed children. But now, it’s so close, and my people might be saved. But Layela is all I have left, and…” she trailed off, looking a bit disgusted with how much she had revealed.

So that’s why people mess with nature.

Avienne pulled one of her knives free again and twirled it, watching it catch the light of the nebula. Struck by how small her weapons were, she sheathed them, sighed and leaned back into the old, creaky chair.

i

The length of the ship was hushed; whatever life she had once held was now mute. The great engines no longer pulsed in her belly, and the soft heartbeat of the beast lay silent. There was only the quiet hiss of oxygen releasing from the vents, growing more mournful with each exhale.

Even the flickering lights brought no life to the low hush of the Destiny, creating macabre dancing shadows out of the Mirialers who worked to repair her; she that had once been greatest among them.

The blows she had withstood to protect her crew had cost her dearly. Scars that would never heal crisscrossed the length of her hull, and holes were scattered along her beautiful sides, hidden by quick, ugly patch jobs of mismatched alloys, mocking the vision of her builders. Only one item did her repairers bother sifting through layers of mistreatment to find, and that was her old symbol, the symbol of Mirial herself, First Star of all the worlds.

Cailan remembered the First Star. And, as his hand softly stroked the cold door, he remembered promises made to her that had to be broken. Promises he had honoured, first blindly, but now by choice.

Cailan remembered the battle back then too, which had also cost the Destiny, not so much in scars then, but in people. Sixty-four dead: Captain Malavant amongst them, and Cailan’s wife, Ingrid. Her eyes flashed before him for a moment, and he took a deep breath and let the memory pass. Sixty-four on Destiny, and so many more in the rest of the fleet, and on Mirial…

“Stop it, old fool,” Cailan muttered to himself.